Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Living In a Farmer's Paradise

Let’s talk about how great agriculture is for a second. It’s really great. You can put a seed in dirt and with minimal effort food will come out. You can get the best seeds from the harvest and propagate them so that you’re next harvest can be bigger and then just keep doing that until your species conquers every known region of the planet and develops religion, poetry, skyscrapers, and porn. You can clone a plant just by cutting off a section of it and putting it in dirt, making infinite plants because plants are basically immortal. You can plant a tree tomorrow that will feed your great-great-great grandchildren. You can use plants to make other plants better. You can make food grow on food. You can make your food make the soil better so that you can make even more food. You can use the parts of the plants that aren’t food to make more food for your food. You can give your plants to animals to make a whole new type of food.

Speaking of animal husbandry, you can get on the back of one animal and hunt down other animals on top of it. You can train an animal to protect and herd your other animals. You can feed animals plants and use the animals waste to feed the plants that feed the animal. Strap a plow on the back of an animal and it tills the farm for you while fertilizing it. There’s a bird that does nothing but make eggs. You can raise birds from those eggs to make more eggs. It’s unlimited protein. You can use pig waste to make the gas you use to cook a pig. When animals get pregnant, you can milk them.

Agriculture is dirt cheap, we’ve been doing it for millennia, and we’re really good at it. All of human history has been propelled by agriculture. Civilization was built with blades of wheat on the back of a chicken. Danish Vikings wanted a place where their seeds wouldn’t freeze in the ground. Portugal and Spain needed to find a better way to get to Asian spices and accidentally found half the world. The British and the Chinese fought entire wars over a flower that made you feel good. Agriculture is the greatest human asset and will continue to shape the fate of our species to come. The only problem is that nobody wants to do it anymore.

Before coming here my knowledge of agriculture was limited to say the least. Growing up in a suburban environment, the only thing I ever planted was the little tree we got at school on Earth Day. Now my knowledge of agriculture has hit exponential growth. There’s no going back, I’m addicted to how easy and useful this stuff is. So much of my life is now centered on agriculture it would be hard not to appreciate it. I love the way a group of women can tear up a plot of land in an instant and make it a garden. I notice how green corn looks after it rains. I think about how lucrative pepper is right now.

The reason I had never appreciated agriculture is because I’ve never lived in an agricultural environment. That sounds like a stupid thing to say growing up in Ohio where I could walk to my nearest farm, but I think it’s true. In the States, most agriculture is all or nothing. There are a lot of righteous examples of everyday people participating in agricultural activities on the side, but they are few. Most farms are large scale contract farms, plantations, and ranches (or the less nice “cattle facilities”) designed to produce as much food as possible while using minimal labor. There isn’t a lot of room for the old school farmers. With around one percent of the US population involved in agriculture, the vast majority of us don’t participate unless we choose to do so for novelty. I think we should choose to do that more.

I could get into the practical reasons for having a home garden or keeping some animals. Mainly it’s healthier, cuts down on transportation, and you’re sticking it to the man. But the most important reason is that it’s fun and feels great. It feels like you’re tapping into your human potential, mastering the landscape by coaxing the earth into making food for you. You keep some chicken friends and give them nice, happy, fat lives before nature takes its course. You eat that meal with pride knowing that you stand at the pinnacle of the known universe as a self-reliant being with control over its surroundings. Man, agriculture is great.

I’ve seen people here take a plot of land no bigger than the average US lawn and make it their sole source of income for the year. Fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, eggs, honey, and milk can all be produced in a space the size of a suburban plot of land and for a cost that’s insignificant to the average American salary. Nobody goes in for these things though and I find it really strange. I appreciate a nice green lawn as much as the next guy. And if I get off an eight hour shift I don’t want to go feed pigs. But I also think a suburban neighborhood fitted with full scale gardens would look nicer than lawns. And I submit that it’s easier to take care of pigs than it is dogs, but not many Americans have a problem doing that.

Here in Cameroon, with eighty percent of the population involved in agriculture, nearly every village has a Ministry of Agriculture representative. This is a guy that any farmer can go to, for free, and solicit advice. He or she is obliged to go to that farmer’s land for consultation, inform them of government support programs, and help mitigate any factors that might lead to a bad harvest. The Ministry of Livestock has a post in almost every village as well, offering free and low cost veterinary services to farmers as well as purveying veterinary drugs and donating them when they can. Of course it’s customary to tip these guys, but these resources are tax-payer funded and can be pretty indispensable to families whose livelihoods are dependent on good yields.
How cool would a service like that be in the States? I know we have extension agents but not on the level that the Cameroonian government has. Our government puts a sad amount of emphasis on agriculture. I bet you can’t even name the Secretary of Agriculture, you filthy commie. I think the Minister of Agriculture of Cameroon is in the same political weight class as the Secretaries of State or Defense are to America. It would be great if the Department of Agriculture got an influx of funding to promote home gardening. Ideally we’d have some guy walk around with the mailman inspecting all these front lawn gardens saying “Blight’s coming around, Marge. I’ll bring some fungicide by tomorrow if you want.”

That won’t happen anytime soon but there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have something like it. I’m a realist. I’ve gotten used to my Cameroonian neighbor’s pigs but if I had my own I don’t think my American neighbors would appreciate it. However there should be no reason why I can’t tear up my lawn to start planting corn and quinoa, and I shouldn’t be worried about how it looks or ruining the neighborhood aesthetic. Roosters are noisy but hens are quiet, easy to take care of, and delicious. Greenhouses are pretty easy to construct. There’s a lot of things people in suburban environments can do that aren’t going to disturb their own lives or their neighbors, so why not? You’ll feel really good about yourself.

Gardens improve United State food security and help to liberate you from a dependence on a globalized society. They increase our commercial agricultural surplus to be exported to other countries and reduce the food burdens of cities. Some gardening programs give new skill sets to ex-offenders and others offer chances for inner city families to help improve food security for their neighborhoods. The reintroduction of native crops can be beneficial to local ecology. You can just grow stuff for fun and donate it to a homeless shelter. Either way, you’re just the greatest and America will thank you.  Growing food is like fighting terrorism and nursing a bald eagle. Just like Cuba did after the embargo, and Britain did during the war, by home gardening you’re showing the world that America is a strong independent woman who don’t need no food imports.

I never would have been this jazzed about agriculture had I not come to Cameroon, which shows that the whole development thing is a two way street. There are lessons America can learn from Cameroon and this is one of them. So come now America, help fulfill Thomas Jefferson’s dream of a shining republic helmed by strong and rational farmers participating in a vibrant agrarian economy.  I know the next lawn I own shall not be a lawn for long.






Bonus Annoying American Agricultural Thing (BAAAT): If you live in a desert, don’t have a lawn. We should all be cool with using what water sources you guys have to grow food but if it’s just to have a nice green lawn then what the hell are you thinking? Then you use gasoline refined from shit we took out of the ground to cut the damn thing down every week like some sick god creating a creature where it shouldn’t exist and then tormenting it ritually. You can drain the Colorado River if you want to grow onions or something but not so your dog has a toilet. Besides, sandscapes are awesome and it really brings out your neighborhood's regional southwest flavor.

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