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Can charisma* alone buy Earth enough time?

The QEW Annual Meeting showcased exciting ecological projects and visions.
Now, how quickly can we learn to translate them onto a global scale?

by Louis Cox

On our way home from the QEW Annual Meeting in October, we spent an afternoon at the zoo in Washington, D.C., because Ruah had always wanted to see its world-famous Giant Panda family. We also joined throngs of visitors to ooh and aah over the zoo's celebrated Indian Tigers, Lowland Gorillas, Indian Elephants, Mexican Wolves, Przwalski's Horses, and African Cheetahs.

It was interesting to observe how we were drawn to these large "charismatic" species, while passing up the chance to encounter lowly worms, ants, centipedes, fungi, bacteria, and plankton ( "the little things that run the world," as E.O. Wilson describes them) at the zoo's Invertebrate House.

Were we being "species-ist"? —Yes. But being swayed by a little charisma isn't necessarily a bad thing. When pandas and other "extnction poster children" are able to leverage public support for ecosystem preservation, many lesser known and less attractive species receive protection at the same time. They are earning their keep by buying time and preserving options while humans hopefully gain the wisdom and will to leave room on the planet to sustain the entire family of life.

Later, as I was thinking ahead to the article I would be writing on the recent QEW Annual Meeting, it suddenly came to me that this year's gathering had largely been about the many charismatic people, like our keynote speaker, David Abazs, and his familywhose ecological wisdom and witness has been an inspiration for the rest of us.

In an upbeat but serious talk about the world's agriculture crisis, David confronted us with a number of "inconvenient truths":

• Holding up an apple, he cut away successive slices representing bodies of water, deserts, icecaps, and what good land has already been paved over. The remaining sliveronly 1/64^th of the original apple—represented all the land on Earth that is available for growing human food and fiber, averaging only a couple of acres per person.
• That living skin of topsoil, averaging only about three feet in depth, is rapidly breaking down from the abuses of industrialized farming.
• Less than 2 million people, or about 1 percent of the U.S. population, are now engaged in farming. About 90 percent of family farms are being subsidized by off-farm employment.
• Agribusiness giants are dominating the nation's food supply, increasing our dependence on nonrenewable resources and reducing farmers' traditional role in land stewardship, food quality, and food security.
• Farm mechanization is depopulating the countryside, resulting in the loss of rural culture along with farming and related skills.
• Monoculture and bioengineering are causing rapid loss of seed stock diversity. Of the thousands of apple varieties that were grown in this country a century ago, 85 percent have been lost.
• Out of thousands of heirloom vegetable and grain seeds only 3 percent are left. Remaining varieties are less adaptable to different climates and soils and more dependent on synthetic fertilizers and irrigation.
• Water tables are dropping at alarming rates, while weather is becoming less predictable worldwide .

Significantly, David summarized these ominous trends as a "devastating time bomb. A rendezvous with extinction."

Small family farms like the one the Abazses own and run in northern Minnesota are increasingly rare and endangered. Millions of farmers have already been driven off the land. After 19 years, this family too is growing weary of the unrelenting hard work and economic stresses.

But as charismatic leaders of the North American sustainable agriculture movement, they have been successful in rallying farmers and consumers alike to stand up to the tyranny of agribusiness.

This is why they and other family farm activists need our moral, political, and economic support. Their little pocket of resistance is buying the rest of the country some time to get its act together and reform the way food is produced and distributed in this country. When another farm family gives up and sells out it isn't just another statistic for government files. It's one less reason for us to know and care where our food comes from.

(This echoes another reason often given for protecting endangered species: When any strand is snipped from the web of life, there is one less reason to care about our connection to all of Creation.)

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*cha risma (ke·riz'ma) n. <Gr. favor, grace. A special quality of leadership that captures the popular imagination and inspires allegiance and devotion.

(Charisma, next page >>)

BeFriending Creation • November-December 2006