| Stories of Healing |
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In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan attempts to trace and report, in a creative way, the process of food production in America today. This challenging narrative-report naturally makes critique of industrial food as well as organic alternatives. A voice is given to the industrial farmer, the big-organic farmer, and the poly-culture farmer. It is challenging and informative with enough wit and charm to bear a grin. Healing is happening. Here is a hopeful excerpt from The Omnivore's Dilemma, describing the story of the Salatin family, who successfully parctices management-intensive-grazing to harness solar power rather than fossil fuel.
"From the time he was a young boy, William had wanted to farm; after flying planes in WWII and earning an economics degree from the University of Indiana, he bought a farm in the highlands of Venezuela, where he and Lucille began raising chickens. Why Venezuela? 'Dad felt he could farm the way he wanted there, get out from under convention and regulations.'
The chicken farm thrived until 1959, when a leftist coup toppled the government and 'we got caught as ugly Americans in the middle of this political mess.' Joel's father refused on principle to buy protection from the local authorities, who proceeded to look the other way when guerillas came after the family's property. 'We fled out the back door as the guerillas were coming in the front. We stayed in the country nine or ten months after that, living with a missionary friend while my dad tried to get the government to return our land. We had a deed, but not a single official would look at us without a bribe. And the whole time the American ambassador was dutifully reporting that everything was under control.'
In 1961 the Salatins were forced were forced to flee the country, leaving behind everything they'd built and saved. 'Now that I'm hitting the age he was then, I just can't imagine what it must have felt like to walk away from it all.' The episode clearly left its mark on Joel, undermining his faith that a government, right or left, could protect its citizens and their property, much less do the morally right thing.
Determined to start over again, William Salatin went shopping for farmland within a day's drive of Washington, D.C., so that he might continue petitioning the Venezuelan embassy for compensation. He ended up buying 550 acres of badly eroded and hilly farmland on the western edge of the Shenandoah Valley, in the tiny town of Swoope. (It's pronounced Swope.) After Drew Pearson, the muckracking journalist, publicized his case against the Venezuelans, Salatin won a small settlement that he used to buy a small herd of Hereford cattle.
'The farm had been abused by tenant farmers for 150 years,' Joel said. On land that was really too steep for row crops, several generations of tenant farmers had grown corn and other grains until most of the soil had been either exhausted or lost to erosion. 'We measured gullies fourteen feet deep. This farm couldn't stand any more plowing. In many places there was no topsoil left whatsoever--just outcroppings of granite and clay. Some spots you couldn't even dig a posthole, so Dad would fill tires with concrete and sink fence posts in that. We've been working to heal the land ever since.'
...Innovations like ...[rotational grazing, moveable electric fences, and shademobile manure spreaders]...helped rebuild the fertility of the soil, and gradually the farm began to recover. Grasses colonized the gullies, the thin soils deepened, and the rock outcrops disappeared under a fresh mantle of sod. And though William Salatin was never quite able to support his family from the farm, he did live to see Joel make a success of the place by building on his example, especially the devotion to grass and mobility--and a determination to go his own way" (204-207, Pollan).
Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore's Dilemma. New York: The Penguin Press, 2006. Print.
How incredible is this story of healing, among others, of people doing works of healing in our landscape? As Christ is Lord of all creation, and as He has overcome the world, it is encouraging to hear of desolate and degraded lands being restored. In a sense, it gives us hope of restoration and renewal in our own lives.
This is just one sign of opportunity in a post-modern, post-industrial age. There is opportunity to rethink our compartmentalized notions of a separation between our Creator, ourselves and the land. Likewise, there is ample opportunity for our culture to respond responsibly and creatively as it phases into the post-industrial world of consumption. How great are the opportunities to close the linear non-cycle of consumption and waste into recreation and restoration?
From as aesthetic stand-point, there is a visual impact in restored land that connects us to the inner transformation that Christ is doing. These stories must be told, for it can be through this medium that the light can penetrate the darkness. Recently, a family in my dad's office was touched by a miracle of reconcillation which has impacted people in every cubicle. The company business is in oil, energy, and convenience stores, but healing is bigger than that. Healing is bigger than our business and our concepts because healing is done by our Savior.
Our world has seen darkness--it has seen fourteen foot gullies; it has breathed smog; it has felt respiratory illness. What our world needs is signs of Christ supplying the impossible, signs of hope, signs of healing. This has become evident through knowing Christ and reading The Omnivore's Dilemma.
My challenge is this: find these stories. share these stories. pray for these stories. make these stories.  Above picture: Asbury College students, including Jeffrey O'Field (third from left) Jeffrey O’Field is a member of Renewal's Student Leadership Team and will be a 2011 graduate of Asbury College in Wilmore, KY. He is currently studying Christian Ministries and all of the liberal arts. He is a member of the AROCHA Asbury chapter and enjoys recycling at 1:00 in the morning. He has lived in northern WV and now calls Louisville, KY his home. Jeffrey’s interests include traveling, writing, listening to folk and hip-hop music, food, tea, coffee, and the outdoors. |