Kay McDonald

Having just returned from a trip to Eastern Nebraska, I feel as if I participated in a movie set for “The Road” or its equivalent. It’s all about ethanol in this region of the country and it’s not a pretty sight. Because of our unbridled and unquenchable thirst for liquid fuels, this policy is creating a vast environmental ruin not so different from that of the tar sands areas of Canada. In recent years, this land which was a prairie a short one-hundred-and-fifty years ago has become a region that produces primarily only two industrial agricultural crops, corn and soybeans.

World-renowned conservation scientist Gary Nabhan is an author and farmer at Patagonia, Arizona along the Mexican border, raising sheep, heritage grains, and orchard fruits…When asked his definition of sustainable, he said, “What’s just? What’s right? What’s healing? Leave the land in better shape than we got it.”

Koichi Yamashita’s four objectives for farming: (1) Be lazy. Save labor by cutting corners and not doing unnecessary work. (2) Be stingy. Don’t spend any money. Forget about the economic system. (3) Be safe. Don’t use poisons on your food. (4) Don’t be greedy with the soil. Determine its actual fertility and don’t try to get a bigger harvest than you ought to by using too much fertilizer. If you understand what your soil can really produce, you will have a stable harvest from year to year.