PDF I was checking Google for some of the keywords I want to rank for and was tickled to find that this blog is on the front page for multiple keywords multiple times. That, as any blogger will tell you, is the sweet smell of success! So I called Mrs. Bill in and we had a good laugh, feeling somewhat giddy about those results. However, while I was at it, I decided to look at one of the blogs that ranked with me.
Wow, did I ever get my eyes opened.
I was stunned to find that the discussion of gardening activism has only two viewpoints: “The Milquetoasts” staying quietly at home while tending a few pansies and “Grub & Snapdragon Alphatrowel” set to change the world overnight: by force, if need be. There didn’t seem to be a middle-ground perspective. In this case, the debate developed around the disputes regarding global climate change. I’ll agree that this is an interesting problem, but I won’t agree that this should be the central focus of gardening activists. The problem with this polarity is that most of us occupy a middle ground, finding it defensible and a firm base from which to extend our reach. One. Garden. At. A. Time.
What good does it do to fight un-winnable battles while neglecting the victories that are actually within our grasp? Global warming is just one of these un-winnable battles. Think for a moment and you will uncover others, such as off-shore oil drilling or the use of chemical fertilizers that has created a vast dead-zone at the mouth of the Mississippi. It takes big resources to fight big enemies.
What about those of us who want food independence for ourselves and to turn our neighbors on to this quiet revolution? We can’t stop the UN … or the WTO … they’ve got more bullets than we have seeds. But we can render their policies as they affect our dinner table moot.
That’s right: we can stop them at the fork and that is a victory that the global-warming mongers and nay-sayers can never win. To the extent their focus has been blunted and deflected into empty debates, their power to cause positive change has been frittered away. Meanwhile, the real movers and shakers continue silently along the paths of their original agendas.
Carbon sequestration? That seems to be the buzz-word du jour with the climate change crowd. The whole argument centers around the question of CO2 … its effects and its sources. No one seems to have a problem with the two molecules of Oxygen, lots of people object to that single liberated molecule of carbon. Well, here’s a fact that can’t be argued: Every gardener who ever turned garden or animal waste back into the soil sequestered carbon; sometimes a surprisingly large amount of it. It isn’t unusual for a single gardener to make a ton or more of compost in one season and to turn it back into the soil at the start of the next. Whether the purpose in so doing is to enrich the soil, reduce the load on garbage dumps or to sequester carbon willy-nilly is irrelevant. The point is that returning nutrients to the soil has always been and will always be a net positive for the humans who inhabit this tiny rock with its microscopic layer of breathable air and its limited habitable zones.
Can’t wrap your head around sequestration? Try this out: “The average conventional produce item travels 1,500 miles, using, if shipped by tractor-trailer, one gallon of fossil fuel per hundred pounds.”
To sequester the stuff means to pull it back out of the atmosphere and tuck it away somewhere safe for a while. But, to grow food locally means not putting the carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to begin with.
That’s my brand of garden activism. Simply learn what the right things to do are … and do them. Over, and over again.
You don’t have to stick your neck out to be a garden activist or engage in full-on food politics to earn some sort of street cred with me. It’s enough if you can plant a few seeds, put back a few jars and tuck some compost back into the soil for next year. Anything beyond that is gravy.
I pass out bonus points like the government passes out tax shelters for the rich if you teach one or more in the current generation of youth why and how to do this. Let them preserve, by whatever means are suitable, some food for their families. It will stop being theory and start being valuable.
So, whatever level you can contribute at is good. Keep those pansies growing (dig some compost or manure in around the roots, eh?), keep the heat on the Department of Agriculture, the FDA, the EPA and all the rest of the alphabet soup of government and quasi-government agencies. Hold their toes to a rip-roaring fire if you can. Or just quietly get things organized for the next nice day in your garden.
It’s all good.
– Bill
