Futurism logo

Soil and Trouble

On appreciating where our food comes from and how we can all help

By Andy WarmingtonPublished 3 years ago 5 min read
Like
First early potatoes (Sharp's Express) making themselves known in mid-Spring

I had left my office job a couple of months earlier, and that's another story. There were a few bar shifts a week in a nearby town to begin with, and the first news reports from China of a new virus. Another thing to worry about. To save money, we moved in with my parents, a 3-acre plot of clay and tall grass near the County Antrim coast.

When we were kids we'd dug out a vegetable plot by hand, directed by my Dad to cut within the string lines that would eventually become troughs and rows of fledgling fruit and vegetable plants. For several summers in a row, the grocery bill would shed its weight of fresh produce, most of what we ate came from the ground fifty yards from the kitchen door. Vegetable plots and allotments were unnecessary for most people then of course, food was cheap and plentiful, markets has remained un-crashed for decades and the green-thumbed vegetable gardener was a curious hobbyist at best.

In the cold winter months of 2020, the vegetable plot we had carved out in the early 1990s had outpaced my retired father and the thorny brambles stood six feet tall above matted blankets of nettles, dandelions and wild grass. Suddenly faced with prospect of national lockdown and interminable queues at the supermarket, I wondered if a bulldozer or a stick of dynamite would make a bigger dent in the foreboding patch of land but in the end, I got a spade from the shed and started hacking at one corner.

A little over three weeks later, albeit with my arms and shoulders in a constant state of ache, the plot was returned to arable soil and the seed potatoes, raised beds and upright frames for climbing peas and beans were in place.

I should recognise at this point that I am immensely lucky and privileged to have the background and opportunity to create this space, free from the long waiting lists of urban allotments and wafer thin turf of new build estate gardens. This is not a piece blindly advising everyone to take out their spade and dig their way to health and prosperity. That would be, and I think I'm correct in my use of the modern parlance, a bad take. I do think, however, there might be a crumb of universal truth in what I learned as I dug, planted and harvested my way through a most extraordinary year.

We have to, and indeed can, get closer to the food production cycle where ever we live and whatever we do. The reason that this doesn't mean everyone has to be a landowner or active grower, is the same reason that not everyone has to be a doctor or a vet. Still, when it comes to the people who look after our families and our pets, the first point of contact in their wellbeing, we want to know their name, their face, and develop a sometimes lifelong relationship with their services. Who can really say the same anymore about the people who produce our food? Not me, that's for sure.

If I were to say regenerative farming is a controversial topic, that would be a huge understatement. The practice follows some or all core principles but the underlying concept is about one thing: soil health. Most practitioners will aim to minimise soil disturbance, use cover crops in winter, grow diverse crops and integrate livestock into their arable operation. Notably absent are factors that would have many farmers and growers across the world shaking their heads in disbelief. No pesticides, no tilling, no single species herds and no sizeable yield of a single type of crop. Yet soil health is in a sense, all we have. The more we plant single species crops, the more we hold it back and bring it forward with pesticides and fertiliser, the less it will eventually yield. In fact, it will eventually yield nothing at all. Look at the dust bowl in 1930s America and cross your fingers that it stays in the history books.

The 2020 documentary, Kiss The Ground, directed by Josh Tickell and narrated by Woody Harrelson, features a wide range of ecologists, activists and farmers who all agree on one thing - the old ways worked for a reason. Farms were small, crops were diverse, livestock was integrated. Soil was alive.

The economics of regenerative farming are often blurred by incentive policies, corporate lobbies and business subsidies. Many farmers just can't make it work and it's not for me to criticise, especially not in the middle of a deep recession. Many farms practicing regenerative farming operate as a boutique producer, putting high quality, high cost items on the shelf targeted at a wealthy customer base.

In my subtitle I said we can all help, and this is where I come back to my point about doctors and vets. If you are lucky enough to have a plot of land to cultivate and grow crops, I can't recommend it enough. You'll know where your food comes from and what it needs by matter of course. But even then, you'll still have to buy other groceries. I wonder how we can as individuals and communities be more connected to our food sources. Perhaps we could find out who produces food nearby - even in a huge city it won't be that far away. We could contact them, find out what's going well and what's working against them. If you are part of a community group, we could find out what price they could supply produce to 30, 40 or 50 of you to mitigate the costs.

It has to be worth a try. James Rebanks, in his excellent second book, English Pastoral wrote, "Above all, we need farmed and wild landscapes that balance our complex needs better. We should gradually limit use of some of the technological tools that have been changing farming over the past half-century, so that methods based on mixed farming and rotation can be re-established." That seems to me something we can all contribute to, not by the choices we make with our wallet that too often favours the wealthy, but by the choices we create for farmers and food producers to look after our soil.

habitat
Like

About the Creator

Andy Warmington

Writer based in N. Ireland, interested in literary fiction, gardening and growing, meandering features about Americana, the music and food of the Southern States.

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.