Going Back to the Start

I really enjoyed watching the little video clip entitled, "Back to the Start" I posted below.  Click on the arrow and watch it.  I think you'll like it, too.  It is an ad of sorts for Chipotle that was created by Johnny Kelly. You'll recognize the singer's recognizable voice as Willie Nelson singing a Coldplay song called, "The Scientist." Apart from the creative cartoon and singing, the importance to me was the message conveyed in a very simple way.

In the cartoon, the farmer converts the family farm into an industrial-type farm, converting pastures into confinement operations, heavily dependent upon herbicides, pesticides, and antibiotics.  The farmer is probably more profitable than before, but there are costs and unintended consequences.  The farmer is likely dangerously leveraged and stressed.  His farm is creating lots of waste products and the fertility of the land is being depleted.  He is no longer outdoors, but works in a factory.  His animals are full of antibiotics, hormones, and drugs and that goes directly into the food supply.

In the end, the farmer has second thoughts and goes 'back to the start' and goes back to a what I call a more pure form of agriculture.

I'm not anti-progress, but I am a decidedly old-fashioned nostalgic.  Critics of "old fashioned" farming (or sustainable farming - I don't like that term) complain about lower crop yields or an inability to feed the world. Maybe, just maybe, farmers aren't supposed to feed the world.  Perhaps we are supposed to feed our families and neighbors and local communities or at least people in our local region.

In my opinion, we are to be good stewards of the land.  I particularly like the term, husbandry.  It means: 1. the care, cultivation, and breeding of crops and animals and/or 2. the management and conservation of resources. By no means am I an 'environmental-wacko,' but I believe we should take good care of God's creation, so that we pass down to future generations thriving farms stewarded by a multi-generational families.  There are few things as self-centered as using something up completely without concern for what you are leaving for those who come after you.

Not only should we be conserving the land, but we should be conserving what I call peace of mind.  It reminds me of something that I read about a gentleman named Earl Butz.  Mr. Butz was the Secretary of Agriculture under the Eisenhower Administration.  He was famous for telling American farmers to "get big or get out" and "to plant fencerow to fencerow."  This type mindset is credited with the growth of the major Agriculture conglomerates and the decline of the small family farm.  Those that remain are largely in lots of debt and don't seem to have the quality of life that prior agrarians enjoyed.  And most of those require off-farm income (a "real" job) to keep the family's finances afloat.  I don't see that as progress.

I love farming.  I love the outdoors.  There is something about the smell of the soil when you turn it over, the sweetness of the taste of peas or corn that you eat seconds after you pick it standing out in the garden, the gentle glow of the sun sinking beneath the horizon on a Fall day as the cows moo and the chickens hurriedly head for their roosting place, the gratitude for a meal completely produced off of the land right outside your back door, the good night's sleep and contentment after working a hard day on the farm, and the simplicity and satisfaction of doing what you enjoy much the same as the first Man that tended the Garden thousands of years ago.  That, in part, is why I love the agrarian lifestyle and why I aim to go back to the start...