Dopis Alana Savoryho z knizky "Letters to a Young Farmer" (2017)
(vynatky)
(a jelikoz vsichni pozemsti zijeme na zemi a ze zeme, tak jsme taky v jistem smyslu vsichni farmari a tedy se nas tohle tyka)
full verze:
https://www.docdroid.net/tSyv1aM/2017-letters-to-a-young-farmers-a-savory-excerpt-notes.pdf
[Y]our millennial generation, [...], in my view, [is] the most important ever because American agriculture is at a turning point. People do not see it as a turning point, but history will, I assure you.
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[Agricultural] problems do not arise from crop production alone but from all production of food and fiber from the world's land and waters. Running fisheries, forestry, keeping livestock, hunting wildlife: all are agriculture.
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The big picture is depressing, but your generation will need to grasp it to truly understand the need for rapid and dramatic changes; otherwise, you will fall into accepting small, incremental change that is simply not going to work.
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American agriculture is a disaster, producing the least-nutritious food with the most environmental damage ever known. And through education, policy, USAID, and other means, the United States is promoting such agriculture globally. Every year, we produce ten tons of dead, eroding soil per human alive.
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Because agriculture's role in climate change is trivialized, let me describe the basics.
Climate change is believed to result from four atmospheric pollutants: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and black carbon. Unfortunately, soil degradation and desertification also contribute to climate change. Of these four pollutants, roughly half are by-products of fossil fuel combustion. The other half come from agriculture-from the burning of grasslands and forests and the destruction of soil, mainly. Therefore, even after we stop using fossil fuels, climate change will persist because of agriculture.
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[P]ut simply,
the agricultural problem is an ecological or biological problem. To remove the now-excessive amount of carbon in the atmosphere and safely store it for thousands of years cannot be done in the already-acidifying oceans. It cannot be done by planting trees, shrubs, or grasses because they are part of the normal ambient carbon cycle of life, which, in essence, means carbon is absorbed by the vegetation but only stored temporarily, until the plants die. The place we can safely store carbon for thousands of years without unintended consequences is in the world's soils-mainly grassland soils.
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Grassland soils developed over millions of years with an amazing synergy with the vast numbers of grazing animals kept bunched together and moving by predators. When grasses are grazed, they draw energy for their regrowth from roots, leaving dead root organic matter in the soil. As leaves regrow, so too do roots, and the constant pattern of graze and root recovery literally pumps carbon deep into the ground, forming the carbon-rich soils that industrial agriculture is destroying. Tree roots do not pulse like this when their leaves drop, and so do not pump anywhere near as much carbon deep into the ground.
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We face a crisis of massive ecological illiteracy.
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Industrial agriculture, as we know, is [...] based on chemistry, smart marketing of technology, large-scale monocultures, and low-nutrition fast food.
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I urge you not to fall into the trap of saying that all we need to do is increase the amount of organically grown crops and grass-fed cattle. Where civilizations failed to endure, the problem can be traced to environmental damage-and those past civilizations did not have the fossil fuels, machinery, and chemicals that we have today. All crops were organic, all livestock fed grass. Heed history and understand that what is needed is a truly new regenerative agriculture[.]
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[I]f something has to be done and all your experts say it cannot be done, then change your experts and do it.
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The problem is essentially one of dealing with enormous social, economic, and environmental complexity, and there are no experts. Experts in the current ways are as useful as expert candlemakers were to developing electric lights. Your generation may feel daunted by your lack of farming experience, but you also enjoy a tremendous advantage over those who know so much about organic and present agriculture.
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[Y]our generation is taking over as the most important ever in history, and you have the task of redefining agriculture entirely, if tragedy beyond imagination is to be avoided.
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Let me give you a brief account of what led us to develop the holistic framework, because this highlights two profoundly simple causes of both historical and present agricultural problems: the vilification of livestock for causing desertification and climate change, and the fact that management has always been mechanistic in a holistic world. Years ago, I realized that
with so much going wrong over centuries, yet with so many brilliant minds among us that we can explore space, it had to be a systemic issue rather than any lack of knowledge on our farms or among our experts.
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We believe we have thousands of tools to manage our environment. So we do, but
these essential tools fall into just three categories: we have technology in all its many forms, from the days of sticks and stones to the present marvels; we have fire; and we have the concept of actively resting the environment to allow recovery from damage or from lost species.
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It was our ever-improving technology that enabled past farmers to plant crops and redirect water, and it is easy to understand how we were lured into industrial agriculture.
But there is no tool that could have prevented or can reverse the world's and America's serious desertification. Environments that alternate seasonally between humid and dry dominate the world's land area, and grasses provide the main soil cover in such regions -more so in places where rainfall is less. These grasslands are where the soil life, plants, and large grazing animals and predators all coevolved together. Ever since mankind killed off most wild ungulates and predators and replaced them with a few domesticated animals, deserts have been expanding.
Soil life cannot be regenerated using the three tools I mention above. No technology even imaginable in science fiction can replace the role of billions of large grazing animals over most of the world's land. Fire cannot. Resting land does not except in regions of perennial humidity.
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By adding
the tool of livestock to our small toolbox, we
can now regenerate agriculturally damaged soils everywhere-especially where resting the land leads to serious desertification and where annual rainfall is between one and twenty inches. Adding this tool, however, did not address the failure of past organic farmers to preserve the soil their civilizations depended upon in regions of high rainfall and perennial humidity. Nor did it explain the erratic results I was achieving in my early work with ranchers. All we had learned was to add a tool in seasonally dry grasslands-a tool not necessarily needed in perennially humid environments where there never were vast numbers of grazing animals, because most herbivores were insects. In such environments, resting the land is the most powerful tool we have to restore life. Something was still missing.
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We always have objectives, be it to grow corn, kill invasive weeds, build a dam, buy toothpaste, or get an education. Government policies, too, have objectives. Common sense will tell you that objectives always need a reason or context, and our management objectives do always have a context. The context is always something like "meeting a need or desire," "making a profit," "increasing production," "providing employment," or "a problem being experienced."
Any management objective or action that has no context, or has too simple a context, is a loose cannon, likely to result in unintended consequences. ... When managing both organizations and agriculture, it is simply not possible to avoid social, environmental, and economic complexity. Everything we manage is complex by definition. Reducing the context for management actions to achieve a specific objective, goal, or mission to such simple contexts as need, desire, profit, or problem is reductionist management, be it a decision you make for your farm or a government policy. Yet even today, sophisticated teams of integrated experts, fully conscious that a policy will have social and environmental consequences, develop policy objectives with the context reduced to the specific problem being addressed, be it noxious weeds, drugs, or terrorism. We have managed similarly for thousands of years, with the context behind our actions too simple, too reductive, for our cultures' social, environmental, and economic complexity. Here lies the profoundly simple systemic reason for most tragedies we face and have ever faced. So common are unintended consequences that we talk of the Law of Unintended Consequences[.]
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that past civilizations failed not only because of their agriculture but also because their societies could not address the complexity of rising population and a deteriorating environment. Instead, they turned to faith and sacrifices, while shelving the problems for future generations. Sound familiar?
The hardest part of our task is to develop an overarching holistic context in management as the context for fulfilling needs and desires, achieving profit, or addressing problems; this is a new concept not previously found in any branch of science, philosophy, or religion.
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This is the
generalized holistic context I use when assessing any action on a farm or policy, imagining myself part of that community:
We want stable families living peaceful lives in prosperity and physical security while free to pursue our own spiritual or religious beliefs. We want adequate, nutritious food and clean water, good education and health in balanced lives with time for family, friends, and community, and with leisure for cultural and other pursuits. All of this to be ensured, for many generations to come, on a foundation of regenerating soils and biologically diverse communities on Earth's land and in her rivers, lakes, and oceans.
Assessing actions through such a holistic context, rather than simply looking at a specific need, desire, or problem, produces different conclusions.
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Since then, I have had thirty years to learn more about why things change so slowly in society. The reason is really because almost everything we do is controlled by our many organizations or institutions that reflect the prevailing beliefs of society. And when truly new counterintuitive information emerges, institutions simply do not change without a significant shift in society's views.
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in democratic societies, new knowledge only becomes accepted through grassroots change. So do not look to or expect leadership from any university, company, or organization[.]
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[Y]ou millennial farmers should not waste your energy on fighting, criticizing, or trying to change corporations, universities, the USDA, or the farming organizations that support industrial agriculture.
You need to concentrate your efforts on shifting public opinion. Period.
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[Y]ou need to know that the leaders shifting public opinion are independent authors, bloggers, artists, filmmakers, and keynote speakers. Work with them, because only a well-informed public will bring down the "Berlin Wall" that separates a pervasive agriculture based in chemistry and the marketing of technology from a regenerative agriculture based in the biological sciences. This wall has been held up by an unhealthy alliance of corporate agriculture using obscene sums of money to influence politicians, universities, research, laws, regulations, and farm policy.
You millennial generation farmers will have to demonstrate the ability to produce more nutritious food per acre while regenerating soil. You will have to provide truthful and convincing evidence[.]
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When faced with situations like yours, I stop and ask myself, what would I do?
First, I would build a solid business foundation for my family. To make my farm truly profitable-one that regenerates soil, remember-I would use the Holistic Management framework and its holistic financial planning process, developed for agriculture, based on the only true sustainable wealth.
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Using Holistic Planned Grazing, I would integrate livestock with crop production to regenerate soil as the most efficient way to deal with the full complexity of your farming situation. Today's fads of rotational or mob grazing do give reasonable results in more humid regions, but on large ranches and public lands and particularly in lower-rainfall regions, they lead to desertification.
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I would collaborate with fellow farmers and others who are developing markets while educating city families through food. Above all, because political and economic power has shifted from rural communities to cities, I would not simply preach to the choir but get the regenerative agriculture message into cities.