Why sustainable farming is more than just organic
Walking through the fields on the farm where I am working now is a quieting and peaceful experience. You feel the presence of nature, filled with life and soul. The wind nestles your hair, the sun warms your face, and if you look closely, you can see thousands of little animals working tirelessly for you vegetables to grow. Among them, you can see many families of ducks and ducklings walking around - playing, talking, and searching for food.
Today, I overheard a discussion between a co-worker of mine and our farmer. My co-worker wondered why we had so many ducks, as they are not bred for their meat and we seemingly just feed them without them serving any purpose. That made no sense to him, from an economic perspective. Why would you turn losses just to keep fifty ducks on your farm?
I had liked our ducks, and I didn't mind them being around, eating, and being happy. They make for good company, are very chatty, and are generally a pleasure to look at. I simply assumed that our farmer liked animals, and that she kept them without any economic purpose. It's nice if not everything has to be measured in money. Still, I didn't see the whole picture.
Our farmer's reply opened my eyes: the ducks serve so many purposes that it's hard to count. First off, in economic terms, they are vital to eat bugs and critters that can hurt our crops. They wander through the fields all day, feasting on possibly harmful insects, while providing manure in-place. Every year, they get many, many little ducklings that we keep until they are mature. In the winter, the now grown ducklings will be sold to other farms and to private households where most of them can live in peace1. That is only part of the story, though.
She continued to explain: sustainable farming is so much more than simply running an organic farm. Organic farming basically means that you don't use pesticides, but sustainable farming requires a deeper understanding of the whole farm as an organism inside its ecosystem. Organic farms can very well be extremely harmful to the environment - if they are only run with profit in mind, and not with a focus on sustainability. Sustainable farming however is beneficial to the environment and to the people living on and around the farm. This, even though cows are an integral part of the way we do sustainable farming.
Cows and cattle are often used as prime examples for the negative impacts of modern farming. They are a major driver of methane emissions and are thus extremely harmful to the climate. That is only true for unsustainable, large-scale, industrial farming, though - including unsustainable organic farms. However, sustainable small-scale farms that properly integrate cows into the ecosystem are a wholly different story.
By understanding the farm as an organism itself that lives and breathes through the plants, animals, people, and landscapes it entails, you get a bigger picture of interconnected processes that make up a larger ecosystem. The ducks are an important part of this organism, for example because they keep harmful critters in check. The cows play an integral role because they care for the landscape, while providing milk for the humans. The physical and mental wellbeing of the humans living on the farm is just as important, as they are the ones responsible for caring for the different parts of the organism.
I want to highlight here that the landscape is also part of the ecosystem. Having a wide variety of different landscapes on the farm ensures high biodiversity in flora and fauna. It further helps with soil fertility, viability of crop rotation, and ecological health. Last but not least, beautiful landscapes make humans happy.
With this background information on the spiritual foundation of our farm, many of my experiences make much more sense. I have been deeply depressed when I came here, and I have recovered more in the last few weeks than in the last few years of therapy. I think I'm actually healing2. I suspected that this is not only due to being outside a lot, or due to being around lovely people and animals. There must be more to it.
Now I know: I am part of this farm organism now, and I feel the effects of all-round sustainable farming. Fresh air and nice people are only aspects of the bigger picture: an organism that is in itself healthy - and is healing its sickly parts, be they humans, the climate, or nature.
This is true sustainability, and it cannot be expressed in economic terms. In contrast, organic farms are not necessarily sustainable, if they are run without the proper focus in mind. Our world needs sustainable farming.
Some are being eaten but we don't sell them explicitly to be slaughtered. Many people like to keep some ducks in their gardens to eat slugs.↩
I'm still depressed and I'm still figuring out my gender identity, I'm even still doubting if any of my trans feelings are actually “real”, etc. Still, I'm seeing more of a future than I could for a very long time.↩