On September 13, 1501, Christopher Columbus wrote a letter to Father Gaspar Gorricio who resided at the Monastery of Santa Maria de Las Cuevas near Seville. With this letter, Columbus also provided a copy of a manuscript that he had prepared compiling several scriptures (over 100 pages of them) and sayings from early church fathers. This manuscript has become known as Columbus’s Book of Prophecies.
What stands out more than anything else in this volume is Columbus’s profound sense of personal destiny. His stated motivation for writing it was to convince the Spanish crown to free Mount Zion and Jerusalem. And so he argues that the hundreds of scriptural references to other people, to non-Israelite nations, to islands of the seas, etc. were all predictions of the rulers’ noble work.
Of course Columbus also saw himself in these prophecies. In fact it is hard to imagine that he saw much more than himself in them, even if he apparently made his argument for the king and queen’s benefit alone. Columbus’s biographers have been quite clear through the years that the Genoese explorer had an ego to match his determination. The Book of Prophecies might be understood as just another example of this inflated self-regard.
But I think that this would be a mistake. The book, if it implies that ancient holy men actually saw Columbus or knew of him, also sheds a good deal of light on the sincerity of the explorer’s faith. In fact, it sheds an interesting and important light on his understanding of what the word faith actually means. For Columbus, it was faith that enabled him to fulfill the many scriptural prophecies that he believed were referring to himself.
Columbus writes: “Everyone who heard about my enterprise rejected it with laughter and ridicule… Only Your Highness had faith and perseverance. Who could doubt that this flash of understanding was the work of the Holy Spirit, as well my own? The Holy Spirit illuminated his holy and sacred Scripture, encouraging me in a very strong and clear voice from the forty-four books of the Old Testament, the four evangelists, and twenty-three epistles from the blessed apostles, urging me to proceed. Continually, without ceasing a moment, they insisted that I go on.”
Columbus then proceeds to admit that he is not a highly educated man (although it is clear that he was no ignorant man either) and that he has sinned greatly in his life. Yet every time that he made mistakes, he was forgiven of the Lord. Then he proceeds.
“This is what I want to record here in order to remind Your Highness and so that you can take pleasure from the things that I am going to tell you about Jerusalem on the basis of the same authority. If you have faith in this enterprise, you will certainly have the victory… Remember, Your Highnesses, that with very little money you undertook the reconquest [sic] of the kingdom of Granada. The working out of all things has been left by Our Lord to individual free will, although he advises many.”
It is hard for modern historians to speak convincingly of such religious conviction. It is much easier for them to understand Columbus’s will for power, recognition and wealth. And yet, even allowing for a great deal of hyperbole in the Book of Prophecies, one cannot discount the priority of religious faith in the explorer’s life. Columbus had a great deal of self-esteem. He also had a great deal of faith in sacred texts. Understanding the combination of both in his mind (that these texts had predicted his role in sacred history) gives a much better insight into his personality than do so many secular arguments that fill our current curricula.
What makes this insight so compelling is that it stands as one of the great examples in the history of the world of the power of a certain kind of faith. For Columbus, this faith involved an understanding of the God of the Bible. It also involved his belief that his own life was known to God and was, in fact, accepted by Him to fulfill His divine pre-ordained plan. Furthermore, this faith was based on a free will that effects the “working out of things”.
This is almost a textbook example of the kind of faith described in the Lectures on Faith. There is the recognition of God and an understanding of His attributes. There is the recognition that one’s life is being lived in accordance to divine will. There is also the under-lying base of faith as the principle of action.
For Latter-day Saints who hold the Lectures on Faith in such high regard (in fact most of the book was written by Joseph Smith with input from Sidney Rigdon) this is evidence that Columbus was a man of great faith. Of course this is confirmed in The Book of Mormon where a clear reference to Columbus indicates that the “Spirit of God” rested upon him and led him to the Americas.
This is also a remarkable confirmation of Joseph Smith’s teaching about faith. Joseph, almost certainly, had no access to the Book of Prophecies and yet there could be no better fit of his understanding of faith than Columbus’s autobiographical account. This is all the more remarkable because The Book of Mormon leaves no room to doubt that the Genoese sailor was a man of divine destiny. This is a powerful testimony of both Joseph Smith and Christopher Columbus. It is also a benchmark for understanding that very misunderstood principle of faith.
This kind of faith is not a wishy-washy belief system. Neither is it a misinformed or gullible zeal. One might not believe in Columbus’s God, but it’s hard not to believe that Columbus believed in himself. The problem for nonbelievers is the recognition that Columbus would not have accomplished what he did without his particular kind of faith. And one of the profound messages of this kind of faith is that it is immensely powerful and that it comes with a big dose of self-knowledge.
In a world plagued with artificial causes and self-doubt, Columbus has much to teach us. He almost compels us to ask the self-penetrating question of whether personal understanding is possible without faith. In a post-Darwin world there aren’t many other choices on which we might anchor ourselves. Either we arrive at a tenuous self-fulfillment through competitive survival, or we develop our own gifts in the service of God. This simple dichotomy is perhaps the main reason that Columbus is so out of fashion these days.
References
The University of California Press (Berkeley) has recently published a series of texts on Columbus. Volume III (1997), The Book of Prophecies Edited by Christopher Columbus (edited by Roberto Rusconi and translated by Blair Sullivan) is my source. Carol Delaney’s book Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem was published last year (2011) by Free Press. My copy of Lectures on Faith was published by Bookcraft. The reference to Columbus in The Book of Mormon is in 1 Nephi 13:12.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Not All Composts Are the Same
Not all composts are the same. I know this sounds obvious, but I recently did a little experiment anyway just to see for myself. Last summer, I found myself back in the Sierra Nevada of California camping at an elevation of maybe 7,000 feet. We were near an impressive grove of old red firs. By the parking area I noticed that a pile of soil had fallen from the forest above an exposed bank of earth. It was dark and rich, very different than the pale dirt of the exposed bank. When I looked closer at the forest I realized that the soil was a thick matting of decomposing fir needles. It was then that I decided to conduct my little experiment.
I gathered a bag of the soil and took it home. Then I went looking for another large grove of trees with a thick and naturally composted soil. I found it near the San Joaquin River north of Fresno under some very large California sycamores. Finally, I gathered some of my own backyard compost made of yard leaves and kitchen scraps – pretty much a mix of everything urbanely biodegradable.
I then cleared a small area in the garden at the end of the summer and spread the three kinds of composts next to each other. Then I purchased a couple of varieties of lettuce and placed each one in the three composts. By Thanksgiving time, they were big enough to eat and I was ready to see if my little experiment would have anything meaningful to show for itself. I wanted to see if different kinds of soil would grow plants that tasted noticeably different.
In a way this seems fairly obvious, at least to serious gardeners. We, who have grown our own food for any amount of time, know quite well that a home-grown vegetable almost always tastes better than the same vegetable purchased from a supermarket. But being the experimentalist that I am, I wanted to see for myself in a direct comparison.
And I knew I would have a good chance to run a blind experiment on Thanksgiving. Erik and Tabitha were coming for the holiday and so were Alton and Bonnie (Kathy’s parents). They all agreed to participate in my little study. First, I cut enough of the lettuce for each of us to taste samples from each kind of compost. Then I arranged them so that only I would know which kind was which.
Almost immediately my participants could tell a difference in taste. Then Tabitha and Erik noticed a slight difference in smell too. Bonnie and Alton both came to the same conclusion. The lettuce grown in red fir and sycamore soils had a stronger bitter taste than the lettuce grown in the yard compost.
We decided that this might be caused by the more acid nature of the fir and sycamore soils. That’s my running hypothesis for the time being. In any event, the experiment was worthwhile. The differences were quite apparent. And it also made me think about soils in a broader context.
We truly are what we eat, and the things that we eat are made of the very substances of where they grow. Native animals and plants are not the only things that are tied to specific places. People are too. We don’t normally stop to consider what this means though. A typical day of a typical American involves eating food from all around the world – from soils that have no influence of any kind in purchasing decisions. We eat the food from cheap and expensive restaurants (and pseudo-restaurants) without an agronomic care in the world. I think this is bit naïve.
And I admit that I am mostly naïve myself on such issues. We should do better. Maybe we like the idea of owning an international body; fed, that is, from around the world. The only trouble with this thinking is that we really don’t know what it means. Does it mean that we are corporally (even viscerally) generic? I hope not. I expect that it partly means that we live in cages. The only internationally nourished animals that I know of are either kept in zoos or are otherwise domesticated and fed by humans. Wild animals all find their food locally.
But maybe I’m taking my little lettuce experiment too far. I’m not sure. Certainly “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in [my] philosophy”. But then again, Hamlet was talking about heaven and earth. And so am I.
I gathered a bag of the soil and took it home. Then I went looking for another large grove of trees with a thick and naturally composted soil. I found it near the San Joaquin River north of Fresno under some very large California sycamores. Finally, I gathered some of my own backyard compost made of yard leaves and kitchen scraps – pretty much a mix of everything urbanely biodegradable.
I then cleared a small area in the garden at the end of the summer and spread the three kinds of composts next to each other. Then I purchased a couple of varieties of lettuce and placed each one in the three composts. By Thanksgiving time, they were big enough to eat and I was ready to see if my little experiment would have anything meaningful to show for itself. I wanted to see if different kinds of soil would grow plants that tasted noticeably different.
In a way this seems fairly obvious, at least to serious gardeners. We, who have grown our own food for any amount of time, know quite well that a home-grown vegetable almost always tastes better than the same vegetable purchased from a supermarket. But being the experimentalist that I am, I wanted to see for myself in a direct comparison.
And I knew I would have a good chance to run a blind experiment on Thanksgiving. Erik and Tabitha were coming for the holiday and so were Alton and Bonnie (Kathy’s parents). They all agreed to participate in my little study. First, I cut enough of the lettuce for each of us to taste samples from each kind of compost. Then I arranged them so that only I would know which kind was which.
Almost immediately my participants could tell a difference in taste. Then Tabitha and Erik noticed a slight difference in smell too. Bonnie and Alton both came to the same conclusion. The lettuce grown in red fir and sycamore soils had a stronger bitter taste than the lettuce grown in the yard compost.
We decided that this might be caused by the more acid nature of the fir and sycamore soils. That’s my running hypothesis for the time being. In any event, the experiment was worthwhile. The differences were quite apparent. And it also made me think about soils in a broader context.
We truly are what we eat, and the things that we eat are made of the very substances of where they grow. Native animals and plants are not the only things that are tied to specific places. People are too. We don’t normally stop to consider what this means though. A typical day of a typical American involves eating food from all around the world – from soils that have no influence of any kind in purchasing decisions. We eat the food from cheap and expensive restaurants (and pseudo-restaurants) without an agronomic care in the world. I think this is bit naïve.
And I admit that I am mostly naïve myself on such issues. We should do better. Maybe we like the idea of owning an international body; fed, that is, from around the world. The only trouble with this thinking is that we really don’t know what it means. Does it mean that we are corporally (even viscerally) generic? I hope not. I expect that it partly means that we live in cages. The only internationally nourished animals that I know of are either kept in zoos or are otherwise domesticated and fed by humans. Wild animals all find their food locally.
But maybe I’m taking my little lettuce experiment too far. I’m not sure. Certainly “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in [my] philosophy”. But then again, Hamlet was talking about heaven and earth. And so am I.
Monday, January 9, 2012
A Raven's Wire Nest
There used to be a bird nest in the basement of the Bean Museum. It wasn’t built around a light fixture or above an exposed truss, nor was it made of twigs and lined with feathers. It was positioned artistically behind display glass in the hall outside of the auditorium, and it was made of carefully interwoven lengths of barbed wire. Mounted guardedly atop the whole was an erstwhile relative (now stuffed) of the former engineer: a raven.
You have to love a bird that can make a house from a dilapidated fence. There’s a bit of spite in the act, and maybe a sense of raw survival too. In a spare land, one learns to be resourceful – whether that one be a bird or a human being. But how could such a thing be done? At some point the raven had to drag, bend and otherwise maneuver a long heavy wire into an available tree. Presumably it had to fly to the chosen branches with the metal in its beak.
Ornithologists have been telling us for years that corvids are smarter than we think. Maybe all it takes is for one of them to be large enough and strong enough (like a raven) so that hefting a piece of decomposing fence into a home becomes inevitable. What would an elephant-sized magpie be capable of doing?
But there is also a timeless propriety in the subordination of a modern technology to a wild creature. It makes one pause to consider the fate of our own constructs. To what use might a feral species make of a computer, for example.
The power chord is, no doubt, easier to nidify than barbed wire. And maybe the circuits could warm frail nestlings when the sun is low in the horizon. A more likely use would be as a parasol for kangaroo rats. Eventually though, the miraculous innovations of decades to come, just like those of decades past, will be piled into heaps and left for the penetrating roots of organisms that are better adapted to live in raven-inhabiting austerity.
Unless, of course, we decide to adapt to a landscape that can keep us. Or, to put it more accurately: unless we learn to live sustainably where we are. Let our technologies come and go. Some people will get rich from them and others won’t. But most of the technologies themselves will not endure. Unless we are wise enough to treat them much like a disposable fence, our dependence on them may become too great. Human beings, just like ravens, can’t ultimately make a life from a rusted wire.
What we need is a soil that will sustain us for a thousand years. You may wonder what is so special about a thousand years. A lot of things are actually. You see, in a thousand years the only people left on Planet Earth will be those that are living on sustainable soil. This might be a handful of hunter-gatherers who wander in search of whatever the post-apocalyptic earth has to offer. Or it might be a world filled with our descendants living on a land that feeds them, because they have learned how to feed it.
Our traditions include a belief in a future Millennium when we will live in peace and harmony. Some of us have interpreted this to mean that a magical transformation will suddenly eliminate all evil and suffering from the world. If we have destroyed the land because of greed or of ignorance or even war, surely a divine providence will make it all better, or so we seem to assume.
I disagree. My millennial expectations are more in line with those of Brigham Young who insisted that “When we have streets paved with gold, we will place it there ourselves”.
Much of our confusion revolves around a misunderstood word in the Creation account found in the first chapter of Genesis (verse 28). “And God blessed them [referring to Adam and Eve] and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.” The same command was repeated to Noah after the Flood (see Genesis 9:1).
What are we to make of this word replenish? In many exegeses it is understood to mean reproduce. In fact all three injunctions are understood this way: be fruitful, multiply, and replenish. In this view mankind is commanded to have a lot of descendants and this is all the scripture means. I’m not convinced that this is correct. Having a family is certainly a big part of the verse, but I doubt that it is all that is meant.
In my Oxford English Dictionary (Compact Edition) replenish has ten definitions. Only one of the ten means to occupy with people (Definition 6). The others are transitive verbs referring to filling up or stocking with something. Definition 7 specifically refers to filling with food. Definition 10 means increase.
The overall sense of replenishing is to provide an abundance of something. In reference to a viable place like the earth, it carries the sense of fertility and health. As it refers to people it refers to that which sustains people: the soil, the water, the air. In reference to the earth the command requires that mankind make it abundant with life. It is a command to assume stewardship of the planet.
And, in fact, this is what the raven is doing in its own way on top of its barbed-wire nest. It is taking a lifeless length of wire and using it to give life. The raven, it seems, is filling the measure of its creation. What about us? Are we doing the same?
Sadly, I think, the answer is no. The posterity of Adam and Eve are expected to do more than just reproduce. If that is all we do, and then over-extract the life-giving resources of our world, we then become no more than the animal creation – intent only on increasing our Darwinian fitness. Actually we are worse than this. If we only use our super-natural intelligence for Darwinian ends, we will (and do) cause much harm. And, ironically, this is a mindset that will destroy the world.
Only humans, in harmony with the gifts of Creation, can make a fallen world a garden. The desert can blossom as the rose, but it can only do so over time if soil is built up and water is used wisely. These are gifts that we give back to the earth, not as beasts, but as divinely inspired and responsible stewards. Gardening is an act of the Children of God. On the other hand, ruthless (“limitless”) extraction is a Faustian game that never ends well for mortals.
So what is the human equivalent of the opportunistic raven? How do we replenish the earth amidst the piles of multi-generational refuse? I think that each one of us is left to answer this question ourselves. But while you’re thinking about it, I’m going to go out back, find my man-made pitchfork, and turn over my compost pile.
Notes
Thanks to the M.L. Bean Staff at BYU for the raven picture. I am also indebted to Wendell Berry’s insightful piece in Harper’s Magazine: Faustian Economics: Hell hath no Limits (May, 2008). Brigham Young’s quote is from Discourses of Brigham Young by John a Widtsoe (page 29).
You have to love a bird that can make a house from a dilapidated fence. There’s a bit of spite in the act, and maybe a sense of raw survival too. In a spare land, one learns to be resourceful – whether that one be a bird or a human being. But how could such a thing be done? At some point the raven had to drag, bend and otherwise maneuver a long heavy wire into an available tree. Presumably it had to fly to the chosen branches with the metal in its beak.
Ornithologists have been telling us for years that corvids are smarter than we think. Maybe all it takes is for one of them to be large enough and strong enough (like a raven) so that hefting a piece of decomposing fence into a home becomes inevitable. What would an elephant-sized magpie be capable of doing?
But there is also a timeless propriety in the subordination of a modern technology to a wild creature. It makes one pause to consider the fate of our own constructs. To what use might a feral species make of a computer, for example.
The power chord is, no doubt, easier to nidify than barbed wire. And maybe the circuits could warm frail nestlings when the sun is low in the horizon. A more likely use would be as a parasol for kangaroo rats. Eventually though, the miraculous innovations of decades to come, just like those of decades past, will be piled into heaps and left for the penetrating roots of organisms that are better adapted to live in raven-inhabiting austerity.
Unless, of course, we decide to adapt to a landscape that can keep us. Or, to put it more accurately: unless we learn to live sustainably where we are. Let our technologies come and go. Some people will get rich from them and others won’t. But most of the technologies themselves will not endure. Unless we are wise enough to treat them much like a disposable fence, our dependence on them may become too great. Human beings, just like ravens, can’t ultimately make a life from a rusted wire.
What we need is a soil that will sustain us for a thousand years. You may wonder what is so special about a thousand years. A lot of things are actually. You see, in a thousand years the only people left on Planet Earth will be those that are living on sustainable soil. This might be a handful of hunter-gatherers who wander in search of whatever the post-apocalyptic earth has to offer. Or it might be a world filled with our descendants living on a land that feeds them, because they have learned how to feed it.
Our traditions include a belief in a future Millennium when we will live in peace and harmony. Some of us have interpreted this to mean that a magical transformation will suddenly eliminate all evil and suffering from the world. If we have destroyed the land because of greed or of ignorance or even war, surely a divine providence will make it all better, or so we seem to assume.
I disagree. My millennial expectations are more in line with those of Brigham Young who insisted that “When we have streets paved with gold, we will place it there ourselves”.
Much of our confusion revolves around a misunderstood word in the Creation account found in the first chapter of Genesis (verse 28). “And God blessed them [referring to Adam and Eve] and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.” The same command was repeated to Noah after the Flood (see Genesis 9:1).
What are we to make of this word replenish? In many exegeses it is understood to mean reproduce. In fact all three injunctions are understood this way: be fruitful, multiply, and replenish. In this view mankind is commanded to have a lot of descendants and this is all the scripture means. I’m not convinced that this is correct. Having a family is certainly a big part of the verse, but I doubt that it is all that is meant.
In my Oxford English Dictionary (Compact Edition) replenish has ten definitions. Only one of the ten means to occupy with people (Definition 6). The others are transitive verbs referring to filling up or stocking with something. Definition 7 specifically refers to filling with food. Definition 10 means increase.
The overall sense of replenishing is to provide an abundance of something. In reference to a viable place like the earth, it carries the sense of fertility and health. As it refers to people it refers to that which sustains people: the soil, the water, the air. In reference to the earth the command requires that mankind make it abundant with life. It is a command to assume stewardship of the planet.
And, in fact, this is what the raven is doing in its own way on top of its barbed-wire nest. It is taking a lifeless length of wire and using it to give life. The raven, it seems, is filling the measure of its creation. What about us? Are we doing the same?
Sadly, I think, the answer is no. The posterity of Adam and Eve are expected to do more than just reproduce. If that is all we do, and then over-extract the life-giving resources of our world, we then become no more than the animal creation – intent only on increasing our Darwinian fitness. Actually we are worse than this. If we only use our super-natural intelligence for Darwinian ends, we will (and do) cause much harm. And, ironically, this is a mindset that will destroy the world.
Only humans, in harmony with the gifts of Creation, can make a fallen world a garden. The desert can blossom as the rose, but it can only do so over time if soil is built up and water is used wisely. These are gifts that we give back to the earth, not as beasts, but as divinely inspired and responsible stewards. Gardening is an act of the Children of God. On the other hand, ruthless (“limitless”) extraction is a Faustian game that never ends well for mortals.
So what is the human equivalent of the opportunistic raven? How do we replenish the earth amidst the piles of multi-generational refuse? I think that each one of us is left to answer this question ourselves. But while you’re thinking about it, I’m going to go out back, find my man-made pitchfork, and turn over my compost pile.
Notes
Thanks to the M.L. Bean Staff at BYU for the raven picture. I am also indebted to Wendell Berry’s insightful piece in Harper’s Magazine: Faustian Economics: Hell hath no Limits (May, 2008). Brigham Young’s quote is from Discourses of Brigham Young by John a Widtsoe (page 29).
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Growing Tomatoes on Cinderblocks
I kept a couple of tomato plants in an unusual way this year. Instead of bracing them with the usual wire frames or wooden trellises I used cinderblocks. That’s right, I borrowed a few of those weathered gray cement blocks from other places in the yard (bought a few extras) and piled them loosely around the plants.
There was a reason for this. I wanted to see if they would work as a stone mulch while at the same time provide support for the notoriously recumbent plants. They weren’t the most beautiful of gardening props early in the season (later in the year they were completely covered), but the overall experience was such a success that I am certainly going to repeat the experiment this next year.
I started by shoveling a nice layer of homemade compost around the young transplants and then placed 4-inch thick cinderblocks – flat side down – around the plants and over the compost. This was basically a stone mulch except that the “stones” where extra thick and had a big opening between the bottom and the top. By placing them this way, I was hoping to retain ground moisture around the plants, but I didn’t want to restrict air movement. The blocks were perfect for this.
As the plants grew, I started placing other cinderblocks on top of the first ones. These I placed with the open side down in order to make the wall higher. This worked well for a few weeks but then the plants began growing more rapidly than expected. In order to keep the leaves off of the ground, I was forced to both raise the block layer (by adding more blocks) and add another wall of bricks adjacent to the first wall. As the season progressed, even this outer wall was completely over-grown.
The result of all of this exceeded my expectations. Because I didn’t use any artificial fertilizers (just my compost layer) the plants produced both an abundance of vegetative growth as well as a good fruit set. The two plants that I kept ended up covering about 100 square feet and reaching five feet high. I had a veritable thicket of tomato plants and yet almost none of the leaves were touching the ground. As a result, there was virtually no disease on any of the leaves the entire season. When I finally took out the plants (a week before the first frost in November) there were still hundreds of blossoms and developing fruit on the vines.
What surprised me most as I cleaned up the blocks was how dry it was around the base of the plants. This in spite of the fact that the area had received regular water (via the sprinklers) all season, and the canopy was lush and very full. It seems that the blocks had indeed kept the area well aerated even as they supported the plants. But they also kept the ground around the tomatoes from getting hot and the soil, just below the surface, was moist. Earthworms and other soil creatures were abundant.
I should also mention that the stems were thicker than I remember tomato stems to be. Normally when the branches are left to tumble to the ground, they tend to grow roots where they come in contact with the soil. My tomatoes were not allowed to do this. As a result, their stems were as thick as a silver dollar (thicker actually) like tomato plants that are grown in production greenhouses. I have no doubt that if there were to be no killing frosts, these tomatoes would have kept producing for months to come.
There was a reason for this. I wanted to see if they would work as a stone mulch while at the same time provide support for the notoriously recumbent plants. They weren’t the most beautiful of gardening props early in the season (later in the year they were completely covered), but the overall experience was such a success that I am certainly going to repeat the experiment this next year.
I started by shoveling a nice layer of homemade compost around the young transplants and then placed 4-inch thick cinderblocks – flat side down – around the plants and over the compost. This was basically a stone mulch except that the “stones” where extra thick and had a big opening between the bottom and the top. By placing them this way, I was hoping to retain ground moisture around the plants, but I didn’t want to restrict air movement. The blocks were perfect for this.
As the plants grew, I started placing other cinderblocks on top of the first ones. These I placed with the open side down in order to make the wall higher. This worked well for a few weeks but then the plants began growing more rapidly than expected. In order to keep the leaves off of the ground, I was forced to both raise the block layer (by adding more blocks) and add another wall of bricks adjacent to the first wall. As the season progressed, even this outer wall was completely over-grown.
The result of all of this exceeded my expectations. Because I didn’t use any artificial fertilizers (just my compost layer) the plants produced both an abundance of vegetative growth as well as a good fruit set. The two plants that I kept ended up covering about 100 square feet and reaching five feet high. I had a veritable thicket of tomato plants and yet almost none of the leaves were touching the ground. As a result, there was virtually no disease on any of the leaves the entire season. When I finally took out the plants (a week before the first frost in November) there were still hundreds of blossoms and developing fruit on the vines.
What surprised me most as I cleaned up the blocks was how dry it was around the base of the plants. This in spite of the fact that the area had received regular water (via the sprinklers) all season, and the canopy was lush and very full. It seems that the blocks had indeed kept the area well aerated even as they supported the plants. But they also kept the ground around the tomatoes from getting hot and the soil, just below the surface, was moist. Earthworms and other soil creatures were abundant.
I should also mention that the stems were thicker than I remember tomato stems to be. Normally when the branches are left to tumble to the ground, they tend to grow roots where they come in contact with the soil. My tomatoes were not allowed to do this. As a result, their stems were as thick as a silver dollar (thicker actually) like tomato plants that are grown in production greenhouses. I have no doubt that if there were to be no killing frosts, these tomatoes would have kept producing for months to come.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
The Meaning of Faith in the Gospel of John
Some time ago I decided to look into what the Apostle John had to say about faith. I turned to the Topical Guide, found the appropriate page and discovered that there was nothing there. There were references to faith in each of the other gospels, and in many of Paul’s epistles, but not a single entry for the fourth gospel.
This surprised me and disappointed me at the same time. Faith is a doctrine I often ponder. And the Gospel of John is one of my favorite places to find answers. How could this very insightful man have nothing to say about the first principle of the gospel? It bothered me.
Then I decided to look under the heading for belief. And again I was surprised. Just like before, I found several references in the synoptic gospels and in the epistles. But there was a difference when I looked at the listings for John. Instead of nothing, or just a few, there were dozens, and they took up well over an entire column. In fact there were more references than for all of the other gospels combined.
This relieved me but it also puzzled me. What was the reason for this change? Was there a big difference between these two principles (of faith and belief) of the gospel that John had recorded? If so, it seemed to me that the frequency of the listings would have been the other way around. Why did John have more to say about belief than he did about faith?
I was about to learn that he didn’t. As I looked deeper into the subject, I was to discover that John had very much to say about faith. In fact his gospel and epistles are among the greatest records we have in all of World literature on this pivotal doctrine of Christ. But you have to read his writings in Greek to understand this.
The important Greek word is pisteuw which is a verb referring to faith. The trouble that translators have is that the word faith in English is a noun. A rare verbal form of faith does exist but it is awkward. To translate pisteuw more literally requires adding an auxiliary verb, something like exercising faith. But this can also be cumbersome. What is not apparent in most languages is that John does not refer to faith as a noun. He only uses it as a verb, but the verb is not translated as faith. It is translated as to believe.
Very often this word (to believe) worked well. At other times, though, it introduced a subtle change of doctrine that plagues us to this day. The long process of diluting faith from a profoundly life focusing first principle of the gospel to the passive or indifferent nod of today largely begins with this early awkward translation of pisteuw.
Consider, for example, the beloved verse in Chapter 3 (verse 16): “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoseover believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life”. Now this verse is one of the great treasures of the English language. To change it would seem profane. But it has clearly been misunderstood through the centuries.
It strains the imagination to think that Christ is here admitting the uninterested sluggard, who guesses that he believes in God, into His kingdom. But if this is not what John is telling us, what are we to understand from this verse? What does this pisteuw mean that rewards its possessor with everlasting life?
To answer this question requires that we look at how John uses pisteuw. And a good place to start is in the first chapter of his gospel. This is where he presents the panoramic view of Christ that begins with the unremembered past and the Creation of life. It identifies Christ (the Word) with the cosmic order as the great bearer of light.
“In him was life; and the life was the light of men” (Verse 4). “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not” (Verse 5). And then note Verse 7. “This same [John] came for a witness, to bear witness of the light, that all men through him might believe”.
This is the light that is given to “every man that cometh into the world” (Verse 9). And yet not all men continue in this God-given light. “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of god, even to them that believe [pisteuosin] on his name” (Verse 12).
So here we have a vital clue as to what John means by pisteuw. It means comprehending the light of Christ, continuing in it, receiving Him.
Another important element of John’s faith is that the Holy Ghost will be manifest by those who have this faith. In Chapter 7 we learn that living water will flow from those that believe, and this living water is the Holy Ghost. In contrast, those without this belief (pisteuosin) deny that the holy spirit can quicken our understanding and give life (6:64).
These are two powerful images of pistis - manifestly more profound in a hot sunny Mediterranean climate like Palestine. Life giving light and rivers of water cut to the heart of mankind’s vital needs. If we translate pistis either as faith or as believing without this vital dependence, we have missed the core of what John wants us to understand.
But there is more in this remarkable book. One of the important doctrinal contributions that John makes regarding pistis is that it is not to be understood as something different than knowledge. One can have both faith and knowledge at the same time. In fact we should aspire to this dual understanding of God.
In the great High Priestly prayer Christ thanks the Father that his disciples have received his “word and known them and have believed [episteusan] that thou hast sent me” (17:8).
In Chapter 6 (verse 69) Peter indicates that he and the other apostles “have believed and have known that thou art the Christ”. And again in Chapter 10 (verse 38) Jesus tells the Jews that they should at least believe His works, “that ye may know and believe”.
In a scientific age where knowledge is so valued and so little understood and where the expert and the specialist are more honored than an experienced farmer or a devoted mother, this may be hard to comprehend. We have come to believe, somehow, that faith and knowledge are either opposites or at least mutually exclusive values. How can someone have both faith and knowledge at the same time?
John would have thought the question ridiculous. For him, faith is its own form of knowledge. Faith is not a tentative belief system that comes from wishful thinking. It is a motivating inner light that comes from experiencing the power of God in one’s life. Faith is the basic element in the Redeemer’s Plan of Happiness.
Which brings me to one more insight from John: his understanding that faith is the path to truth. Truth is not a single “a ha” moment of discovery that acknowledges a new insight and is never doubted again. The way to truth is rather a continuous path of following the Light of Christ.
“Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, if ye continue in my word,” that is, continue in pistis, “then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (Chapter 8:31-32 ). Here, indeed, is a view of truth very different from the one used in our empirical world. It is also a perspective that helps us understand Christ’s silence before Pilate.
Remember that the Roman ruler asked Christ, “what is truth,” and that the question went unanswered. Pilate wanted a definition that he could spell out. He wanted a logical construct. But Christ’s truth is not so easily defined. It comes from faith. It comes from pistis. And this faith is based on an understanding of light and the Holy Ghost. Truth for John is knowledge that comes from the experienced journey of this faith.
For Pilate, who lacked this experience and lacked the light of truth, a short dictionary definition would not do. He was not capable of understanding. It would be like describing the taste of chocolate to a child that had never eaten it.
The greatest truths in life are like this. They involve the deep yearnings of the soul and the profound joy of finding divine truth. Religious ritual is an acknowledgment of this important silence. And this is also the lesson that John wants us to learn.
He couldn’t bring himself to tell us about faith as a static noun - as a mere mental place-holder of beliefs. To John, faith (pistis) is a silent active taxis towards truth. It is the cardinal response to light. It is the first principle of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
This surprised me and disappointed me at the same time. Faith is a doctrine I often ponder. And the Gospel of John is one of my favorite places to find answers. How could this very insightful man have nothing to say about the first principle of the gospel? It bothered me.
Then I decided to look under the heading for belief. And again I was surprised. Just like before, I found several references in the synoptic gospels and in the epistles. But there was a difference when I looked at the listings for John. Instead of nothing, or just a few, there were dozens, and they took up well over an entire column. In fact there were more references than for all of the other gospels combined.
This relieved me but it also puzzled me. What was the reason for this change? Was there a big difference between these two principles (of faith and belief) of the gospel that John had recorded? If so, it seemed to me that the frequency of the listings would have been the other way around. Why did John have more to say about belief than he did about faith?
I was about to learn that he didn’t. As I looked deeper into the subject, I was to discover that John had very much to say about faith. In fact his gospel and epistles are among the greatest records we have in all of World literature on this pivotal doctrine of Christ. But you have to read his writings in Greek to understand this.
The important Greek word is pisteuw which is a verb referring to faith. The trouble that translators have is that the word faith in English is a noun. A rare verbal form of faith does exist but it is awkward. To translate pisteuw more literally requires adding an auxiliary verb, something like exercising faith. But this can also be cumbersome. What is not apparent in most languages is that John does not refer to faith as a noun. He only uses it as a verb, but the verb is not translated as faith. It is translated as to believe.
Very often this word (to believe) worked well. At other times, though, it introduced a subtle change of doctrine that plagues us to this day. The long process of diluting faith from a profoundly life focusing first principle of the gospel to the passive or indifferent nod of today largely begins with this early awkward translation of pisteuw.
Consider, for example, the beloved verse in Chapter 3 (verse 16): “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoseover believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life”. Now this verse is one of the great treasures of the English language. To change it would seem profane. But it has clearly been misunderstood through the centuries.
It strains the imagination to think that Christ is here admitting the uninterested sluggard, who guesses that he believes in God, into His kingdom. But if this is not what John is telling us, what are we to understand from this verse? What does this pisteuw mean that rewards its possessor with everlasting life?
To answer this question requires that we look at how John uses pisteuw. And a good place to start is in the first chapter of his gospel. This is where he presents the panoramic view of Christ that begins with the unremembered past and the Creation of life. It identifies Christ (the Word) with the cosmic order as the great bearer of light.
“In him was life; and the life was the light of men” (Verse 4). “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not” (Verse 5). And then note Verse 7. “This same [John] came for a witness, to bear witness of the light, that all men through him might believe”.
This is the light that is given to “every man that cometh into the world” (Verse 9). And yet not all men continue in this God-given light. “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of god, even to them that believe [pisteuosin] on his name” (Verse 12).
So here we have a vital clue as to what John means by pisteuw. It means comprehending the light of Christ, continuing in it, receiving Him.
Another important element of John’s faith is that the Holy Ghost will be manifest by those who have this faith. In Chapter 7 we learn that living water will flow from those that believe, and this living water is the Holy Ghost. In contrast, those without this belief (pisteuosin) deny that the holy spirit can quicken our understanding and give life (6:64).
These are two powerful images of pistis - manifestly more profound in a hot sunny Mediterranean climate like Palestine. Life giving light and rivers of water cut to the heart of mankind’s vital needs. If we translate pistis either as faith or as believing without this vital dependence, we have missed the core of what John wants us to understand.
But there is more in this remarkable book. One of the important doctrinal contributions that John makes regarding pistis is that it is not to be understood as something different than knowledge. One can have both faith and knowledge at the same time. In fact we should aspire to this dual understanding of God.
In the great High Priestly prayer Christ thanks the Father that his disciples have received his “word and known them and have believed [episteusan] that thou hast sent me” (17:8).
In Chapter 6 (verse 69) Peter indicates that he and the other apostles “have believed and have known that thou art the Christ”. And again in Chapter 10 (verse 38) Jesus tells the Jews that they should at least believe His works, “that ye may know and believe”.
In a scientific age where knowledge is so valued and so little understood and where the expert and the specialist are more honored than an experienced farmer or a devoted mother, this may be hard to comprehend. We have come to believe, somehow, that faith and knowledge are either opposites or at least mutually exclusive values. How can someone have both faith and knowledge at the same time?
John would have thought the question ridiculous. For him, faith is its own form of knowledge. Faith is not a tentative belief system that comes from wishful thinking. It is a motivating inner light that comes from experiencing the power of God in one’s life. Faith is the basic element in the Redeemer’s Plan of Happiness.
Which brings me to one more insight from John: his understanding that faith is the path to truth. Truth is not a single “a ha” moment of discovery that acknowledges a new insight and is never doubted again. The way to truth is rather a continuous path of following the Light of Christ.
“Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, if ye continue in my word,” that is, continue in pistis, “then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (Chapter 8:31-32 ). Here, indeed, is a view of truth very different from the one used in our empirical world. It is also a perspective that helps us understand Christ’s silence before Pilate.
Remember that the Roman ruler asked Christ, “what is truth,” and that the question went unanswered. Pilate wanted a definition that he could spell out. He wanted a logical construct. But Christ’s truth is not so easily defined. It comes from faith. It comes from pistis. And this faith is based on an understanding of light and the Holy Ghost. Truth for John is knowledge that comes from the experienced journey of this faith.
For Pilate, who lacked this experience and lacked the light of truth, a short dictionary definition would not do. He was not capable of understanding. It would be like describing the taste of chocolate to a child that had never eaten it.
The greatest truths in life are like this. They involve the deep yearnings of the soul and the profound joy of finding divine truth. Religious ritual is an acknowledgment of this important silence. And this is also the lesson that John wants us to learn.
He couldn’t bring himself to tell us about faith as a static noun - as a mere mental place-holder of beliefs. To John, faith (pistis) is a silent active taxis towards truth. It is the cardinal response to light. It is the first principle of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
The Sierra Juniper
The Sierra juniper (Juniperus occidentalis, also known as the Western juniper) is the most impressive tree of its kind. It grows up to 60 feet tall in cold and wind-swept austerity high among the boulders of alpine forests. In the northern part of its range (throughout Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Northern California) it manages nicely at mid-elevations. But in the Central Sierra it is primarily a tree of the high country, preferring elevations from 7,000 feet right up to the thin air where trees no longer grow.
Sixty feet may not seem all that noteworthy in a land where other trees regularly grow over 200 feet. But this is a perspective of arm-chair naturalists. The giant conifers of the West, for all their magnificence, are trees that grow at lower elevations. The record-setting redwoods of California and Oregon are coastal species that drink in the mist of a vaporous sea. Even the mid-level species above the Central Valley enjoy plenty of water and a moderate clime.
The land of the Sierra juniper, however, is no such place. Most of the year freezing temperatures are typical, at least at night. And when a storm blows in, it often comes with blasts of wind and water. The life-giving snowstorms in this country not only leave a blanket of crystalline white on the forest floor but also a residual reminder plastered to the sides of trees. In such an environment it seems counter-intuitive that stately and long-lived beings ever thrive. But thrive they do, and often in grand style.
Perhaps the most famous Sierra juniper is the Bennett Juniper of Deadman Creek. It is 2,000 to 3,000 years old and its crown, over 85 feet above ground, is aging but strong. At its base, the tree is almost 13 feet wide. It is old and wise - most of its relatives are much younger - only several hundreds of years old. But these passing seasons should not be minimized. Survivors up here are not coddled into longevity, they earn it.
These trees have stories to tell of week-long winds and deep winter snows. They have learned how to capture the life source of the sun while enduring the pinioning of heavy winter ice - sometimes doing both at the same time. Theirs is a story of growth in spite of storms and their gnarled frames are grim reminders of the price that comes from living above the world.
On some of their branches - sometimes hidden and sometimes extending out in obvious proffer - are small round juniper berries. These are not soft sweet fruits that you might expect from a typical berry. In fact they are not true berries at all, but rather the tart woodsy cones of wild conifers. And they are small (about the size of small peas) and look nothing at all like pine cones. Unofficially they are called berry cones. In most kinds of junipers they are light blue or reddish brown. In the Sierra juniper, however, they are dark bluish gray with a soft waxy patina. But their pungency is just as distinct as their more famous relatives.
Crushed just lightly, juniper berry cones are loved by Northern Europeans as a wild-land spice for pork, beef or game birds. The flavoring is also used in gin and others blend it with garlic or rosemary. Yet most English-speaking countries are not familiar with this taste, which is too bad. A few crushed berry cones blended with olive oil and a touch of honey give a purposeful delectation to a Sunday roast.
At 9,000 feet, however, Sierra junipers feed very few of us. Their primary patrons are the alpine corvids that caw their defiant plaints from tree to tree. Watch closely as a Clark’s nutcracker plucks a berry cone with its beak and rolls it deftly back and forth. Then, if it is deemed acceptable, it tips its head back and gulps it down.
The High Sierra is a land of blizzards and lightning storms, and junipers bear the scars of both. Young resilient branches are often bent for months under snow or away from relentless winds. But as trees get older the suppleness ends and new growth becomes rigid. The contortions of wind and snow are locked in place leaving a record of battles endured.
Because of this old Sierra junipers do not flex rhythmically to Aeolian harps like timber lower down. Over a century ago, John Muir would write euphorically of his experience climbing a lower-elevation conifer in a gusty wind storm. He held to the upper canopy for hours as the tree swayed back and forth, breathing the sea and coastal air that had come from so many miles away. He was not in a juniper.
In fact Muir notes in the same essay that “There are two trees in the Sierra forests that are never blown down, so long as they continue in sound health. These are the Juniper and the Dwarf Pine of summit peaks… The burly juniper, whose girth sometimes more than equals its height, is about as rigid as the rocks on which it grows.” The roots, clinging immovably to granite boulders; the trunk, hard and thick, and the branches, reaching out for light are all staid, severe and secure. They endure by finding their place and staying there.
Sometimes the high country is pelted with bolts of electricity and junipers, like so many lightning rods, attract the searing brands with troubled equipoise. They carry the record of forgotten storms as cortical scars etched into their boles. Sometimes these wounds fester and trees die. At other times trees survive the strikes only to succumb to fire. Juniper bark, after all, is ideal tinder. As it ages, it peels free in places from the trunk and dries, leaving woody threads that are easily enflamed.
But if a tree is burned to death, the rich soil built from years of decaying scaly leaves will nourish new seedlings. But this takes time. Junipers do not thrive where there are frequent fires. Fortunately large fires are not as common at higher elevations as they are at lower ones. The air is thinner - with less oxygen - and fuel is not piled so high. There are places at lower elevations where junipers are expanding their range but these are usually places that have been managed free of fires.
In its high southern home, the Sierra juniper survives in spite of storms, fires and punishing air. Or maybe it is more appropriate to say that it survives because of them. At 9,000 feet it’s hard to know exactly what adversity really means. The wind that scours is a thrill to breathe and the wisdom surrounding these twisted trees can tempt the grateful visitor to never leave.
References:
The John Muir quote comes from his essay A Wind-Storm in the Forests. A bit on juniper spices can be found in Jill Norman’s, The Complete Book of Spices.
Sixty feet may not seem all that noteworthy in a land where other trees regularly grow over 200 feet. But this is a perspective of arm-chair naturalists. The giant conifers of the West, for all their magnificence, are trees that grow at lower elevations. The record-setting redwoods of California and Oregon are coastal species that drink in the mist of a vaporous sea. Even the mid-level species above the Central Valley enjoy plenty of water and a moderate clime.
The land of the Sierra juniper, however, is no such place. Most of the year freezing temperatures are typical, at least at night. And when a storm blows in, it often comes with blasts of wind and water. The life-giving snowstorms in this country not only leave a blanket of crystalline white on the forest floor but also a residual reminder plastered to the sides of trees. In such an environment it seems counter-intuitive that stately and long-lived beings ever thrive. But thrive they do, and often in grand style.
Perhaps the most famous Sierra juniper is the Bennett Juniper of Deadman Creek. It is 2,000 to 3,000 years old and its crown, over 85 feet above ground, is aging but strong. At its base, the tree is almost 13 feet wide. It is old and wise - most of its relatives are much younger - only several hundreds of years old. But these passing seasons should not be minimized. Survivors up here are not coddled into longevity, they earn it.
These trees have stories to tell of week-long winds and deep winter snows. They have learned how to capture the life source of the sun while enduring the pinioning of heavy winter ice - sometimes doing both at the same time. Theirs is a story of growth in spite of storms and their gnarled frames are grim reminders of the price that comes from living above the world.
On some of their branches - sometimes hidden and sometimes extending out in obvious proffer - are small round juniper berries. These are not soft sweet fruits that you might expect from a typical berry. In fact they are not true berries at all, but rather the tart woodsy cones of wild conifers. And they are small (about the size of small peas) and look nothing at all like pine cones. Unofficially they are called berry cones. In most kinds of junipers they are light blue or reddish brown. In the Sierra juniper, however, they are dark bluish gray with a soft waxy patina. But their pungency is just as distinct as their more famous relatives.
Crushed just lightly, juniper berry cones are loved by Northern Europeans as a wild-land spice for pork, beef or game birds. The flavoring is also used in gin and others blend it with garlic or rosemary. Yet most English-speaking countries are not familiar with this taste, which is too bad. A few crushed berry cones blended with olive oil and a touch of honey give a purposeful delectation to a Sunday roast.
At 9,000 feet, however, Sierra junipers feed very few of us. Their primary patrons are the alpine corvids that caw their defiant plaints from tree to tree. Watch closely as a Clark’s nutcracker plucks a berry cone with its beak and rolls it deftly back and forth. Then, if it is deemed acceptable, it tips its head back and gulps it down.
The High Sierra is a land of blizzards and lightning storms, and junipers bear the scars of both. Young resilient branches are often bent for months under snow or away from relentless winds. But as trees get older the suppleness ends and new growth becomes rigid. The contortions of wind and snow are locked in place leaving a record of battles endured.
Because of this old Sierra junipers do not flex rhythmically to Aeolian harps like timber lower down. Over a century ago, John Muir would write euphorically of his experience climbing a lower-elevation conifer in a gusty wind storm. He held to the upper canopy for hours as the tree swayed back and forth, breathing the sea and coastal air that had come from so many miles away. He was not in a juniper.
In fact Muir notes in the same essay that “There are two trees in the Sierra forests that are never blown down, so long as they continue in sound health. These are the Juniper and the Dwarf Pine of summit peaks… The burly juniper, whose girth sometimes more than equals its height, is about as rigid as the rocks on which it grows.” The roots, clinging immovably to granite boulders; the trunk, hard and thick, and the branches, reaching out for light are all staid, severe and secure. They endure by finding their place and staying there.
Sometimes the high country is pelted with bolts of electricity and junipers, like so many lightning rods, attract the searing brands with troubled equipoise. They carry the record of forgotten storms as cortical scars etched into their boles. Sometimes these wounds fester and trees die. At other times trees survive the strikes only to succumb to fire. Juniper bark, after all, is ideal tinder. As it ages, it peels free in places from the trunk and dries, leaving woody threads that are easily enflamed.
But if a tree is burned to death, the rich soil built from years of decaying scaly leaves will nourish new seedlings. But this takes time. Junipers do not thrive where there are frequent fires. Fortunately large fires are not as common at higher elevations as they are at lower ones. The air is thinner - with less oxygen - and fuel is not piled so high. There are places at lower elevations where junipers are expanding their range but these are usually places that have been managed free of fires.
In its high southern home, the Sierra juniper survives in spite of storms, fires and punishing air. Or maybe it is more appropriate to say that it survives because of them. At 9,000 feet it’s hard to know exactly what adversity really means. The wind that scours is a thrill to breathe and the wisdom surrounding these twisted trees can tempt the grateful visitor to never leave.
References:
The John Muir quote comes from his essay A Wind-Storm in the Forests. A bit on juniper spices can be found in Jill Norman’s, The Complete Book of Spices.
Friday, November 11, 2011
Organic Farming and the Sanity of Common Sense
At the very beginning of her monumental book Silent Spring, Rachel Carson acknowledged the many people who were trying to stop the irresponsible poisoning of the world. She then wrote that it would require many small battles to ultimately bring "sanity and common sense" to the world.
That was written back in 1962 when much of the agricultural community was intent on using a handful of very effective (and very toxic) molecules to bring the myriad insect pests, weeds and pathogens under control. This was a great period of change in America and the rest of the developed world. Previous generations had always assumed that the natural world (which they loved and which they relied upon for their lives) was a challenge to be overcome with hard work and intelligence. These new chemicals were just the newest advances in the on-going quest to bring nature to order. And, as it turned out, they worked very well.
We now know that these early successes came with a price and Rachel Carson's book was a large reason why things are so different now. In the half century that now separates us from Silent Spring we have a much larger variety of pesticides. These products are many times safer (both to people and to other living things) than the chemicals we were using 50 years ago. Our agricultural colleges now teach a wide variety of agricultural techniques that were unheard of back then. And the banner of Organic Farming is now being waved all across the country. Pesticide-free produce is becoming a big business and consumers now demand that growers measure pesticide residues in parts-per-billion, whereas their parents could hardly measure chemicals a thousand times more concentrated. We are much safer and much more concerned about anything on our food these days than our parents ever were.
And yet things continue to change. The rising generation is no longer as worried about pesticides as it is about global warming, water conservation and soil loss. This doesn't mean that nobody is worrying about weed killers. A lot of us do. But frankly, regulatory agencies and chemical manufacturers have been dealing with these issues so long now that an overall consensus has been reached. The rules are clear: you can't sell nasty chemicals anymore. Of course there are still people who ignore the labeled instructions that come with agricultural chemicals and sometimes accidents do happen. But people also drive cars even though they continue to kill so many of us. We have just come to a better understanding of the risks and the alternatives involved.
And so you'll have to forgive me for being so bold as to say that Organic Farming is failing to address the full needs of our new reality. This is a little sad for me to say. I started my career over 20 years ago developing a botanical insecticide derived from the neem tree of Asia. My job was to measure the activity of this natural product against a wide array of pests. My co-workers and I were convinced that the world would soon recognize how important this was and that we would soon replace most of the nasty synthetic chemicals then in use.
Well that isn't exactly what happened. We did sell some of our product, but in the end, the company was bought by another environmentally conscious company, which then filed for bankruptcy only a couple of years later. And this is the story of most Ag biotech startup companies. They somehow get some funding, tell a great story about the rising business of organic agriculture, and then proceed to flounder. Only a handful of well-managed exceptions are still in business.
Which brings me back to Rachel Carson's plea for common sense. We have much bigger issues to deal with than pesticide abuse right now. Our parents were right - as was Silent Spring - that there existed a toxicological crisis in the world that needed immediate attention. But it's time today to take a look back, another look forward and yet another look around us. Songbirds are singing again in rural America.
Now I am not suggesting that we eliminate our watchdog groups. They are important. I am saying that the volumes of dire toxicological angst that the environmental movement continues to bless us with should target a more worthy opponent. We need to take better care of the land. This is our new crisis. And until we consensually recognize this problem, there is no guarantee that it will ever get resolved.
An example of what I mean by misplaced advocacy is the state of organic farming in California right now. There are well over 1,000 growers managing nearly 200,000 acres of organic farmland in the state. On average organic farmers are working a bit over 100 acres of land each. This may not sound like much in today’s world of mega-farms but the size is important. Managing 100 acres effectively requires that an organic farmer use fully modern equipment. And in order to justify the use of this expensive equipment, large markets in far-off places have to be found. What this means is that organic farmers are using just as much fuel both in production and shipping activities as their traditional neighbors - all in the effort to tap into a niche market or to satisfy an antiquated ideology.
These old-school soldiers should be commended for their hard work. But we no longer need all of their services. What we need now are a few more farmers determined to build up organic soils and use less water. Some of us are, in fact, doing just this. But we need a much larger cultural recognition of these efforts. We need consumers to pay for this larger conservation. We need a larger motivation for farmers to participate in saving the land. We also need more of us to start putting our small plots of land into production and start caring for the little spaces we do have responsibility for. We can either do so now voluntarily or at some future time when soaring food prices leave us no other choice.
It's time for a new generation to take the organic movement in a different direction. If Rachel Carson's generation was threatened with poisons, our children are more likely to be threatened with hunger and malnutrition. We need to take better care of the places that feed us and the places we live. Much depend on it.
That was written back in 1962 when much of the agricultural community was intent on using a handful of very effective (and very toxic) molecules to bring the myriad insect pests, weeds and pathogens under control. This was a great period of change in America and the rest of the developed world. Previous generations had always assumed that the natural world (which they loved and which they relied upon for their lives) was a challenge to be overcome with hard work and intelligence. These new chemicals were just the newest advances in the on-going quest to bring nature to order. And, as it turned out, they worked very well.
We now know that these early successes came with a price and Rachel Carson's book was a large reason why things are so different now. In the half century that now separates us from Silent Spring we have a much larger variety of pesticides. These products are many times safer (both to people and to other living things) than the chemicals we were using 50 years ago. Our agricultural colleges now teach a wide variety of agricultural techniques that were unheard of back then. And the banner of Organic Farming is now being waved all across the country. Pesticide-free produce is becoming a big business and consumers now demand that growers measure pesticide residues in parts-per-billion, whereas their parents could hardly measure chemicals a thousand times more concentrated. We are much safer and much more concerned about anything on our food these days than our parents ever were.
And yet things continue to change. The rising generation is no longer as worried about pesticides as it is about global warming, water conservation and soil loss. This doesn't mean that nobody is worrying about weed killers. A lot of us do. But frankly, regulatory agencies and chemical manufacturers have been dealing with these issues so long now that an overall consensus has been reached. The rules are clear: you can't sell nasty chemicals anymore. Of course there are still people who ignore the labeled instructions that come with agricultural chemicals and sometimes accidents do happen. But people also drive cars even though they continue to kill so many of us. We have just come to a better understanding of the risks and the alternatives involved.
And so you'll have to forgive me for being so bold as to say that Organic Farming is failing to address the full needs of our new reality. This is a little sad for me to say. I started my career over 20 years ago developing a botanical insecticide derived from the neem tree of Asia. My job was to measure the activity of this natural product against a wide array of pests. My co-workers and I were convinced that the world would soon recognize how important this was and that we would soon replace most of the nasty synthetic chemicals then in use.
Well that isn't exactly what happened. We did sell some of our product, but in the end, the company was bought by another environmentally conscious company, which then filed for bankruptcy only a couple of years later. And this is the story of most Ag biotech startup companies. They somehow get some funding, tell a great story about the rising business of organic agriculture, and then proceed to flounder. Only a handful of well-managed exceptions are still in business.
Which brings me back to Rachel Carson's plea for common sense. We have much bigger issues to deal with than pesticide abuse right now. Our parents were right - as was Silent Spring - that there existed a toxicological crisis in the world that needed immediate attention. But it's time today to take a look back, another look forward and yet another look around us. Songbirds are singing again in rural America.
Now I am not suggesting that we eliminate our watchdog groups. They are important. I am saying that the volumes of dire toxicological angst that the environmental movement continues to bless us with should target a more worthy opponent. We need to take better care of the land. This is our new crisis. And until we consensually recognize this problem, there is no guarantee that it will ever get resolved.
An example of what I mean by misplaced advocacy is the state of organic farming in California right now. There are well over 1,000 growers managing nearly 200,000 acres of organic farmland in the state. On average organic farmers are working a bit over 100 acres of land each. This may not sound like much in today’s world of mega-farms but the size is important. Managing 100 acres effectively requires that an organic farmer use fully modern equipment. And in order to justify the use of this expensive equipment, large markets in far-off places have to be found. What this means is that organic farmers are using just as much fuel both in production and shipping activities as their traditional neighbors - all in the effort to tap into a niche market or to satisfy an antiquated ideology.
These old-school soldiers should be commended for their hard work. But we no longer need all of their services. What we need now are a few more farmers determined to build up organic soils and use less water. Some of us are, in fact, doing just this. But we need a much larger cultural recognition of these efforts. We need consumers to pay for this larger conservation. We need a larger motivation for farmers to participate in saving the land. We also need more of us to start putting our small plots of land into production and start caring for the little spaces we do have responsibility for. We can either do so now voluntarily or at some future time when soaring food prices leave us no other choice.
It's time for a new generation to take the organic movement in a different direction. If Rachel Carson's generation was threatened with poisons, our children are more likely to be threatened with hunger and malnutrition. We need to take better care of the places that feed us and the places we live. Much depend on it.
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