This is not a farm.

This morning a co-worker sent me this article:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/04/26/attention_whole_foods_shoppers#comment-183446

In the comments thread, someone pointed out that the author is closely tied to, you guessed it, Monsanto Corporation of Creve Coeur, MO, USA. Instant disregard ensues, of what is otherwise a very reasonable article. Here is my own comment:

This article is carefully and thoughtfully written, and isn’t nearly as invective as some that seek attention by riling the impassioned “eco-foodie” ranks (of which I am a proud and hard-working member). We are so impassioned because we have the luxury to think about what foods we’d like to consume, and about the human species’ deep connection to the land, and what all of this means. We are also impassioned because, unlike Africa, it seems, we do not HAVE this connection to the land. There are very few farmers left in the USA. Granted, the ones who remain are producing a lot of food, though much of it very unhealthy. Basically, food matters, and questions of food justice get people deeply excited. Thank god! There’s still SOMETHING in this society that can get citizens to think about their rights, and demand that they be preserved.

One of the chief “bugaboos” of the “eco-foodie” movement, as I’m sure the author must understand (since he studiously avoided mentioning it’s name) is Monsanto Corporation of Creve Coeur, MO, USA. We get VERY upset about Monsanto, and there are some extremely good reasons to do so, which I’m sure the author and most of the comment-writers are well aware of. I don’t need to go into them because they are so important to the issues in this article that it would take another full article to explain.

Let me just say that the Corporation (Monsanto) has so many immensely troubling practices that the author’s connection to the company makes all of his good points and carefully thought-out lines of reasoning completely unreliable. No self-respecting “eco-foodie” will take a grain of this piece seriously, and that’s truly a shame.

This is not because the “poor” Corporation has gotten a bad rap (that would be an understatement). It is because the Corporation has done a terrible job of corporate citizenship for decades. It profits from practices that are patently unjust (pun intended), and the populace feels this. If we “eco-foodies” got the memo first it’s because we’re educated and well fed enough to pay attention. We understand our privilege enough to wish that all of our fellow creatures get the same benefits from society and the environment that we have enjoyed so much, and that have fed our minds and guided our hearts.

If the Corporation wants us to accept its precise rhetoric and careful logic about international food aid, it will have to do a lot more than encourage one of its stooges to write a nice article for Foreign Policy. It will have to change the way it does business and stop egregiously disrespecting the sanctity of life forms; human, plant, and bacterial.

Start being a better corporate citizen, Monsanto. Demand careful and stringent regulation of GMOs so that you can hope to create some decent ones that don’t destroy all other live in their species. Demand careful research into the safety of GMOs so we stop fearing errant genetic material in the corn, soy, canola and cottonseed in all of the abundant processed commodity crops we are “so fortunate” to get to consume. Stop attacking farmers for the prolificacy of YOUR genetic material. Stop enforcing ridiculous copyright suits that occur because of this prolificacy and hyper-reproductive success. Stop patenting life forms. Stop pretending your pesticides and herbicides are safe. Stop Stop Stop!

And then let’s talk about how to get African farmers fields to be more productive.

Until then, I’m putting my trust in the Slow Food movement, the organic farmer, the permaculturists, all the new gardeners in America, aware eaters everywhere, small farmers everywhere, and in nature itself.

Certainly I’ll trust in these before one, narrowly self-interested, deeply misguided (ASSHOLE!!!!!!) corporation.

(Yes, Monsanto Corporation’s many questionable tactics make me very very very mad.)

Tonight I am staying with Sophia’s parents instead of commuting to Burlington after work. They live in Woodstock, Vermont, a small town near Dartmouth College. I walked into town to get a can of diced tomatoes so Vassie could finish making dinner. The walk is down a steep hill, a twisting narrow road, past a dozen or so New England homes, and onto Main Street to the grocery store.

Today it was drizzling and threatening rain. The air was cool but thick with moisture, making me sweat as I returned up the steep road. Spring is underway here, is engaged in what now seems an inexorable expansion of green. All contours are off, all shapes are up for sudden change as leaves and flowers burst open. Nothing stays the same for even a day, as those leaves fade from gold to green, the flowers drop their petals, the grass grows longer and thicker. Spring is powerful here. The glory and promise of the spring and summer in Vermont seem to match the length and darkness of the winter. I don’t know for sure yet.

Last summer was my first in Vermont, and last winter was my first. This spring is also my first (after this my experiences will be overlaid with seasonal memory, which will build in layers like leaf mold in a deciduous forest). I know that this winter was hard for me. The darkness, especially after the glut of light taken in while vegetable farming in the summer, was hard. Harder than that was my experience of the broken economy of our era, and my struggle to find a job. The hardest thing to endure was a desire to get my life started, strangled by lack of opportunity, and a real uncertainty as to what would come my way.

So I greet this spring with deep gratitude, perhaps an extraordinary sort, and perhaps a sigh of relief that future springtimes won’t inspire in me. This spring my life is secure (I found a job, at last, and it’s truly wonderful), and the warmth, the returning light, the green, well that is all just icing on this glorious cake!

This evening, as I walked in the fragrant dusk, smelling new grass and decaying leaves, and wet stones, I thought about spring. I thought about the power of seasons, and what they mean to a community like this. Spring matters because it is beautiful, of course, but also because of winter. This land (normally) freezes hard in the winter, and the people here struggle together to make it through. They shovel the heavy snows off their driveways and sidewalks. They pay men with plows to clear the roads. They salt the pavement so it can be walked and jogged on, and padded by dogs’ paws. People check on one another if power goes out. They care for the homebound. They manage to make it to church. They make soup and light woodstoves and sleep more. They have fun in the strangeness of snow, as well, snowshoeing, skiing and sledding.

Winter is important, and it occurred to me that this is part of what we stand to lose in the coming decades of global warming. I don’t think any scientist is ready to say what outcomes we’ll experience from the excesses of the industrial age. Maybe my speculation about milder winters is unfounded. That doesn’t matter for the sake of the speculation. This is my imagination, not a peer-reviewed exercise.

What happens to a community like Vermont if the experience of seasonality changes significantly?

The ever-returning cycle of seasons is a dynamo. It’s turning from darkness and cold back to light and warmth gives power to the beings that call this place their home. The human beings tell stories to one another about this turning. They have traditions, they have habits and a calendar associated with events in the natural world, like maple sugaring.

This, I thought, is one thing that could be taken from us if our climate changes. Our traditions of seasonality could lose their meaning, or at least lose their reliability. What traditions are these? What could be lost exactly?

Then I realized that this loss of tradition and story has actually been going on far longer than the past two decades of awareness about anthropogenic global warming. The industrial age itself started the process of eroding our need for tangible relationships with the natural world, in which we exercised our capacity for observation, our memory, and our ability to tap others’ memories by story telling.

So I don’t know, but I would like to find out. What is left of ecological culture in America?