Watershed Media: Farming with the Wild Excerpts

Somewhere in America's Future

It is not that difficult to imagine a time in America’s future when the sun rises over vastly different agricultural landscapes. Out of vision, and out of necessity, citizens will begin to see and value food and farm policy as part of a much larger orbit of social, economic, and environmental concerns. Government support for food and agriculture may remain significantly high, (and may even exceed current levels), but spending programs will pass rigorous tests for costs and benefits. Of course, imagining is the easy part. Getting there may require moving mountains.

In such a future, citizens, consumers, and food producers will understand they are bound by similar fates. The nutrition of the body reflects the health of the land. American farmers and ranchers will produce an abundance of some of the finest crops and livestock in the world, but they will be more fairly rewarded for their efforts. And the farms, ranches, and forests that cover nearly two-thirds of the contiguous United States will supply far more than food. With incentives for proper management, they will also provide clean air and water, renewable energy, wildlife habitat, diverse forests, and open space.

Healthy, locally produced foods will form the basis of a modern national health care prevention strategy. With ever-escalating fuel prices and other concerns, the need for relative autonomy in food production will become an organizing principle in nearly every region of the country. In public schools, children will have direct contact with numerous farms that provide their cafeterias with grass-fed milk and meat, eggs, organically raised fruits, vegetables, and grains. A similar transformation will sweep hospitals and universities, corporate campuses, and government agencies. Obesity rates will eventually begin to decline, while the costs of Medicare, Medicaid, and public health fall. Worker productivity will rebound.

Traveling through the countryside, one will see that a new vision has taken hold. Monoculture fields that once blanketed entire counties and regions instead include large areas of perennial grasses, restored prairies, and cover crops. Wooded field margins and vibrant creek banks transect row crop and orchard operations. Large set aside areas of protected wildlands and natural habitats serve as buffer zones against extreme storm events. Organic agriculture, a preferred farming method in many regions, requires more people than strategies used in agriculture at the turn of the twenty-first century, but also reduces energy inputs and harmful air emissions and raises the nutritional content of foods. Greenhouses extend growing seasons for fresh produce categories that can withstand cooler temperatures, such as salad greens and root crops.

No single reform will more dramatically transform the landscape than the large-scale conversion from confinement animal feedlot operations to diversified farms that include grass-pastured livestock. Under a national grassland recovery campaign, grass farmers will become emblematic of a new family farm movement. On-farm generated incomes will also begin to rise. Soil erosion will significantly stabilize while agricultural runoff and farm-related water pollution decreases. Grassland bird species will become common as nesting habitats return. Herds of bison even return to vast areas of the Great Plains that for decades were fragmented by artificially green crop circles. Formerly threatened species such as the sage grouse and prairie chicken revive because of collaborative stewardship efforts.

“Food deserts” lacking in fresh locally grown fruits and vegetables will still exist in intensive agricultural production zones, though healthy food oases will have also sprung up across the country in rural and urban areas. Much of this is will be made possible through a new generation of supply networks. Regional economies will emerge as powerful supporters of family farmers, with a variety of innovative methods for storing, transporting, processing, and distributing locally grown foods. The Food Stamp Program remains a front line of defense against hunger and food insecurity. Yet it too will evolve through a heightened awareness that delivering not just calories, but nutritious foods to those in need best serves the long-term interests of citizens and the country alike. Thanks to nearly heroic community organizing and the difficult work of forging of public and private partnerships, access to healthy foods will expand into neighborhoods most at risk for nutritionally preventable diseases such as hypertension, obesity, and diabetes.

Such a transformation will only have been made possible by a transformation inside the Washington D.C. beltway. Food and farm policy, still subject to politicking and opportunism, becomes less of a Matrix-like parallel universe in which the corporations control and dominate the subsidy system in the name of the small farmer. The Food and Farm Bills that lawmakers debate and reauthorize every five to seven years will be more transparent and accessible to the average citizen. Research and development efforts will focus on finding solutions to urgent goals facing the country: decreasing energy inputs, reducing global warming emissions, protecting declining wildlife species, and encouraging the next generation to take up the challenge. The United States will find itself in a leadership role in the development of innovative small- and medium-scale methods and technologies that produce food, fiber, feed, and energy in response to ongoing environmental challenges and ever-changing conditions and awareness.

Looming problems will persist, including food insecurity for some, and climate changes that make agriculture and conservation even more unpredictable and vulnerable. The tug of war between global economics, the inclination to farm industrially, a continually growing population, and the fragility of wild nature will continue. We will still eat too many French fries. But a chapter will have been closed and a new one begun. The critical moment will occur when a coalition of previously isolated voices joins ranks to challenge the status quo by insisting on a healthier, more hopeful and secure future for themselves, their children, and grandchildren. Farm and food policy will become an integrated economic engine that not only encourages environmentally viable crop production but truly supports health and nutrition, renewable energy, entrepreneurial development, stewardship, fair trade, living wages, and regional food security.