What's Good for the Earth
Hint: It's not fake meat or veganism
Maybe because I grew up during the Cold War and spent way too long believing we were all going to die in a nuclear holocaust, hope never came easily to me [this might also be a Gen X thing]. But there was no shortage of other life-ending scenarios in the 70s. We were going to die from, in no particular order: acid rain, ozone hole, global cooling, overpopulation, and pollution. Not to mention the pictures of starving people from Africa all over the TV screen. They showed images of children, their cheekbones and ribs standing out, living in dry, fly-coated villages, and baby seals being clubbed to death. Animals were dying and people were starving to death and we had to DO SOMETHING! Which generally meant sending money to aid organizations, or maybe politicians.
Christianity didn’t alleviate this hopelessness. As an adult, I now know churches fund various local causes such at food banks and soup kitchens, or they might rally volunteers to do local trash cleanups. Neither of the churches I attended did that. Charitable giving meant giving to the church, and I didn't know where that money went. All of this contributed to my crisis of faith I’ve written about before.
Paganism gave me hope. If Mother Earth was alive then she might take an active role in her healing. Jesus didn’t seem to be interested.
I [with some guilt] put aside concerns about starving children. I couldn’t do anything about that. But the earth was sacred and I’d do what I could to help. When my bestie and I moved to California in 1988, I was super-excited to find that recycling was a thing. I felt so good about separating my garbage. When we moved, California was at the start of a seven-year drought. We got in trouble with our landlady for not watering the lawn, which felt like a huge waste.
But I still couldn’t do much about the big environmental problems either. We did rituals that usually included giving the energy we raised back to the earth, trusting that she would do what was best with it. For decades, That seemed like all I could do. I didn’t have the time or the will to chain myself to fences or camp out in a tree. Ritual was at least something active and satisfying. Nor did it do damage.
Since I returned to the East Coast from California, the states where I live and spend time have instituted various legal measures that are supposed to ‘heal the earth.’ Recycling paper, glass, and metals is practical. Plastics, less so. Plastic burns well, and there is a trash-to-power plant not far from me in Connecticut. Wheelabrader has won awards for how clean they are. But it’s not taking garbage from CT but from neighboring NY and it’s at capacity.
Humans are part of nature. We are Earth’s children and not a stain on her face. I’m not quite the animist now that I was when I was younger. I see the earth as a beautifully designed self-correcting and evolving biological system. I no longer see her as a vengeful goddess, angry with the people who throw away plastic bags. I don’t like pollution or environmental degradation. But these things can be fixed. It is our responsibility. If we made a mess, we should clean it up.
Making my world a better place by cleaning something up is meaningful. But my time here is limited, as is my energy. I want my activities to be as effective as possible: the greatest gain for the least effort. Being required to do something by law removes its spiritual meaning because it’s not being done voluntarily. If I pray on it, I’m always guided in the direction where my actions can be most effective and satisfying, both emotionally and spiritually. [Hint: It’s not recycling.]
I’m not sure when I first saw the short film Greening the Desert.
Geoff Lawson was one of the founders of permaculture, a movement that strove not just to save the environment, but recognized that humans had an integral part in it. They sought to produce food by working with nature. The movement started in New Zealand, but the basic principles translated to even the most difficult of environments.
I’m not asking for paid subscribers, but if you like this would you…
The video tells the story. Lawson and some volunteers went to the Middle East in Palestine. Food production there was all about goats over-grazing, spraying chemicals, and irrigation, which eventually pulls salt up from deeper in the earth and leaves the ground unable to host plants.
Using water harvesting techniques and deep-rooted trees, the team created an oasis.
This felt like magic, as if some goddess of life had reached out and touched him. It wasn’t only spiritually moving. The math shows that permaculture, and its sister techniques, biodynamic farming, polyculture, and holistic grassland management, produce more food per acre than conventional farming while building soil health. [more detail at the end]
What could I have done in the drylands of California if I’d known about this? CA gets a lot more rain than a desert, even during that drought. Commercial agriculture in California routinely produces about 1.5-2.5 pounds per square foot per year across a wide variety of crops. People need to eat about two pounds of mixed food a day if active, or around 750 pounds a year. With a polyculture, yields of 3-10 pounds of food per square foot are easy to come up with in most climates.
Not only is more food produced but it’s more nutritious, better for the environment, and humane. Poly and permaculture farmers rarely use pesticides, even organic ones. When animal inputs are mixed with gardens, the soil fertility increases, and plants grow bigger and healthier. External nitrogen inputs become unnecessary, and healthier plants are less susceptible to insects and diseases.
Or have a look at the books I write under the pen name Sabrina Rosen.
In Asia, combining fish production with livestock and vegetable production increased fish output 2 to 3.9 times.
David Blume in his 2-acre Silicon Valley mini farm, produced 8 times the amount of food per acre than the USDA claimed was possible. Blume lays out the math.
Joel Salatin runs a biodynamic farm in Virginia. He uses experimentation and observation to create layered food inputs. The same space is made to produce as much as possible. After he runs cattle over a particular patch of ground, a few days later, he sends in the chickens to spread out the manure and eat the parasites that would otherwise be a serious problem for the cattle. He produces yearly on his small farm:
30,000 dozen eggs
10,000 broilers
800 stewing hens
25,000 lbs of beef
25,000 lbs of pork
1000 turkeys
500 rabbits
Only a small percentage of land on the planet is suitable for farming via conventional methods, However, there are vast tracks of grassland that could support rotational grazers. Such grazing increases the health of both the land and the animals on it. Allan Savory, an ecologist from southern Africa, discovered that dry and abused grasslands can become healthy and green when consistent and well-timed grazing from large animals practiced. Well-managed grasslands sequester more carbon than forests, reduce or eliminate erosion, hold more water than conventionally farmed fields, and reduce fire danger. All of these things add up to a better life for the entire planet.
These food production techniques could also feed the world, and not just with plants. [Thank gods, because I’m an omnivore and can’t do without meat.]
If we want to be closer to the earth and care for the land as a spiritual principle, then advocating for bans on plastic bags, isn’t effective. The gods can see the big picture. We should attempt the same.
If you’re curious about Paganism/Heathenism/Wicca, please feel free to message me and I’ll be happy to answer questions.
Selina Rifkin, M.S. [Nutrition], LMT, has been Pagan since she was 14 [which was a long time ago] and been to Hades in a handbasket. More than once. This has given her some opinions. She has direct communication with her gods and they’ve always given her answers when she asks. [One does have to ask.] Like most of her generation [X] she’s okay with snark. Most days she tries for good writing. But the snark, and side comments creep in. Be warned.