Fred Kirchenmann is someone I really respect. I heard him speak once, and I remember re-reading my notes and just being in awe of his prophetic and visionary words about our food system and being food citizens. (If you eat, you're a food citizen!) He just got a fancy award (article here) for his hard work.
He says about the future food system, "This
will need to be a food system that functions more like wild
nature, which operates on sunlight, and on self-renewing and
self-regulating biological synergies. This means that everyone
in each local ecosystem - farmers, researchers, politicians,
consumers, ordinary people - will need to become engaged as
'food citizens' to design food systems that function
well in these new circumstances in each watershed."
Here's another quote from the article: "My father somehow understood that the devastation of the
Dust Bowl was not just about the weather, but also about the
way farmers farmed, and he was determined that, 'That was
never, ever, going to happen to his land again,'" he
said. "So he inculcated a land ethic in me at a very young
age. Later when I first entered a career in higher education, I
was introduced to organic agriculture by a student of mine and
based on research he had done, pointed out to me how
dramatically soil health could be improved with good organic
management practices. That eventually led me to decide to go
back to our farm in North Dakota to convert it to an organic
farm to restore the biological health of our soils." That's a cool combination of wisdom, values, heritage, all of which he applied through his life.
I want to be like that.
Fred spent time with the lovely Leopold Center and currently runs the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Pocantico Hills, N.Y, where I hope he continues to make a big impact on our needy world.
