Diversity, Complexity, and Local Knowledge

         "There is, here and abroad, a slow, incremental, but ineluctable movement toward food that nourishes both person and place, that is grown with a far richer knowledge and awareness of biology than can be found in the 5-gallon cans of chlorinated hydrocarbons provided by Shell or Uniroyal. If the problems of modern agriculture are centralization, simplification, and biological reductionism, then the answers include diversity, complexity, and local knowledge. Such intelligence cannot be obtained in most of our land grant universities, and it is a pity this is so. For while we are justifiably confident that, when it comes t o anthropology, physics, and biogenetics, our universities uphold the highest standards of inquiry and experimentation, it is in the area of our land and food where they have failed us utterly. Here we must look to the land itself, and in particular to those people who “husband” it to find standards of truth that we can live by and that allow us to live in turn.
         It is satisfying and tempting to think that the major problems of our day have major answers, but I doubt it. The problems that we face— eroded lands, vanishing topsoil, genetic loss, toxic food, poisoned wells— were created by the temptation to find simple solutions. The answers reside in intimate knowledge of species, biota, soil, climate, and place, a type of observation that is embodied before it is taught of transmitted.
         It was Hans Jenny, a soil scientist, who first pointed out that there is often more life below and within the soil than there is above it, including Homo sapiens. This inversion of soil as medium to soil as life itself should be enough to convince any agri-scientist to adopt only those means of agriculture that support and nurture this life. But that has not been the case. Instead it has been (and will continue to be) the gardeners, truck farmers, and small landholders who recognize this fact and act upon it. Just as those who broke the prairie sod were pioneers, the new pioneers are those who restore the native land and soil. As biota leaves the soil, so does life vanish from society and civilization as we know it. The act of learning to garden and farm, so sincere and simple on its face, is an act of restoration that has implication far beyond one lifetime. It is a practice. And like any practice, it can only be learned through repetition, dedication, and good teaching. This is the good teaching."

              - Paul Hawken, Blessed Unrest

      "In one sense, it’s a mystery, but in the larger sense we know exactly what’s responsible—these huge monocultures in U.S. agriculture and world agriculture that are making bees’ lives very difficult and creating conditions where they’re vulnerable to disease and exposed to pesticides… In our culture, scientists have the last word- the ultimate authority commenting on matters having to do with biology. There are other forms of knowledge; very powerful forms of knowledge about biology.There is local knowledge, there is the knowledge of bee keepers, there is the knowledge of people who are really great observers of the natural world…We should listen. Because very often traditional knowledge gets there before the scientists."

              - Michael Pollan, on Colony Collapse Disorder