CONSERVATION: REGENERATING AGRI-CULTURE But character and community—that is, culture in the broadest, richest sense—constitute, just as much as nature, the source of food. Neither nature nor people alone can produce human sustenance, but only the two together, culturally wedded. —Wendell Berry ARTICLE BY JOEL JOHNSON
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onflict is often the result of a lack of creativity. Nobel Peace Laureates have educated the world not only in diplomacy and leadership, but also imagination. Faced with the simple paths of indifference and war, the ability of peacemakers to envision a “third way” forward—an effective path of creative action—has led to some of the most transformational revolutions in human history. Agriculture has been in need of just such a revolution for some time now. Headlines seem to draw a line of division among land stewards—conservationists fighting to protect land from development, and therefore degradation, and agriculturalists trying to protect their livelihoods and rural economies in the face of overwhelming data connecting industrial food production to global emissions and climate change. This dualism, while attractive in the simplicity of its explanation, is fatally flawed. At its root it suggests that food production can only ever be destructive to the ecosystems we call home. What’s more, it villanizes the individuals most tangibly invested in the soil beneath their feet. The uninspired logic of conflict takes our food system—the symbiosis of cultivating ecological communities in order to ensure human flourishing—and shatters it into many conflicts. The effect of this single story, ethnobiologist Gary Nabhan notes in Food from the Radical Center, is “Americans appear to be at war with one another rather than at work with one another. This trend,” Nabhan elaborates, “has dire consequences for the health of both our communities and our landscapes.” However, in the borderlands of the American Southwest, a host of grassroots movements is reshaping the
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way we think about agriculture. While the projects are distinctive, the movement is consistent: Rather than addressing issues individually—biodiversity loss, agricultural emissions, faltering rural economies, political divide, cultural conflict—reimagine the system itself. Imagine foodscapes that support local jobs and produce high-value products for local communities. Imagine cultivation that builds soil rather than eroding it. Imagine stories and culture preserved from plant to plate. Imagine regenerative agriculture. In the context of agriculture, the qualifier “regenerative” is typically credited to Robert Rodale, son of organic pioneer J.I. Rodale. In 1987, the UN Bruntland Commission defined sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Rodale pushed back against this definition, which was still ultimately extractive. He argued for an agriculture that was “beyond sustainable”—one that “takes advantage of the natural tendencies of ecosystems to regenerate when disturbed” in order to heal land while also providing for people. Dr. Gary Nabhan, who has had a hand in the founding of many of these community collaborations (Borderlands Restoration Network, Native Seeds/SEARCH, etc.), says that in practice, “There is no single recipe for a regenerative agriculture. You could say it should be looking at perennials. You can say that it should use integrated pest management that minimizes or eliminates pesticides and herbicides. But there is not a single recipe. It has to be place-specific and you get that by talking to your neighbors.” That discussion and collaboration among neighbors has been the foundation of the ecological restoration work taking
place at Deep Dirt Institute and Farm in Patagonia, AZ. Through the building of check dams, brush weirs, and gabions to slow down water flow, especially in areas of high erosion, Deep Dirt and a partner project in the Chiricahua Mountains has seen rainwater infiltration increase, eroded gullies restored, an increased diversity of wildlife presence, and substantially lower rates of wildfires as a result of higher soil moisture levels. “[The building of infiltration structures is] really the foundation of everything that we’re doing...and almost all of it has been done by youth,” explains Deep Dirt’s permaculturalist Kate Tirion. “Which to me is the most exciting thing, because these are our future leaders.” Deep Dirt has involved nearly 4,000 youth in community-based restoration efforts of the surrounding landscape, repurposing waste products in the process. “Have you heard the term, urbanite?” Kate asks me when we speak over the phone. It is the permaculture descriptor for “broken-up lumps of cement usually found in urban centers.” In 2006, a local school had to tear out and replace a recently built sidewalk. “Fortunately the contractor who was doing the removal work knew that I was looking for material,” Tirion recalls. “I didn’t know what I was going to use it for; I just saw it as a resource.” Under Kate’s direction, youth partners turned that urbanite—thirteen dump truck loads—into check dams and gabions that are slowing water, catching soil, and ultimately healing land in one of the most biodiverse regions of the country. Transforming the waste into a resource also meant the school saved $8,000 in landfill and transport costs. In addition to ecosystem-scale conservation work, Deep Dirt Farm, the area of Deep Dirt dedicated to food
