Farming With the Wild 385distant power centres, and farmers and ranchers, on the other, frequently perceived
as narrow-minded and steeped in a sense of entitlement. What may in fact help to
bring both camps together in alliances is a sense of unity in common goals and
common foes. Common goals would include maintaining arable farmland within
healthy rural communities, keeping rural lands open and free from subdivision
and development, restoring native habitat on private and public lands and creating
a more natural urban–rural interface. Common foes might include land-exploiting
absentee agribusiness corporations, massive concentrated animal feedlot opera-
tions and global versus regional food systems. In a recent essay on the subject, the
Kentucky farmer and author Wendell Berry wrote:
I am a conservationist and a farmer, a wilderness advocate and an agrarian. I am in
favour of the world’s wildness, not only because I like it, but also because I think it is
necessary to the world’s life and to our own. For the same reason, I want to preserve the
natural health and integrity of the world’s economic landscapes, which is to say that I
want the world’s farmers, ranchers and foresters to live in stable, locally adapted,
resource-preserving communities, and I want them to thrive. One thing that means is
that I have spent my life on two losing sides. As long as I have been conscious, the great
causes of agrarianism and conservation, despite local victories, have suffered an accumu-
lation of losses, some of them probably irreparable – while the third side, that of the
land-exploiting corporations, has appeared to grow ever-richer. I say ‘appeared’ because
I think their wealth is illusory. (Berry, 2002, p50)Fortunately, throughout the country, rural communities are launching their own
initiatives at the same time they battle the forces of urban development, consolida-
tion in food processing, the globalization of commodity production, rock-bottom
farm-gate prices and escalating costs, the flight of an agricultural infrastructure,
increasing government regulations and a myriad of other woes. ‘These efforts often
begin slowly, with farmers and concerned citizens meeting together, talking, shar-
ing, walking fields and grasslands, forming management teams, seeking advice
from others’, says the Land Stewardship Project’s Dana Jackson, who is co-author
and co-editor of The Farm as Natural Habitat. ‘Later they can develop yardsticks
to monitor their progress, becoming more conscious of the biological diversity in
their regions, increasingly building the knowledge of how natural processes con-
tribute to the farm and to the quality of rural life.’
Our relationship with food was once, and arguably should always remain, one
of our deepest connections with the biotic community, for it ultimately deter-
mines what kinds of fellow beings we are. At this crossroads early in the 21st cen-
tury, we face a revolution of no small proportions in how our food and fibre will
be produced and at what economic, social and biological costs. Our society will
determine, through policies and purchasing habits, through personal and com-
munal commitments, what kinds of landscapes we support and what species
remain on them. Farmers cannot be expected to shoulder the brunt of this burden.
Without technical and financial assistance in the form of incentives and cost-share