(This is a compilation of three similar presentations I prepared in October of 2023 for important local governmental entities in my home of Seguin and Guadalupe County, Texas)
Introduction. Thank you, Judge Kyle Kutsher and County Commissioners, Mayor Donna Dodgen and Seguin City Council members, President Alejandro Guerra and Seguin ISD Trustees … and all of you I am addressing during a fall in which we have had some beautiful weather … AND much needed rain.
I am paul bain martin, from a few blocks away at 605 Elm Street, Seguin. I consider myself to be an agrarian … and hope we all “feel somewhat agrarian,” since we eat, most of us wear some cotton, and we do use lumber in much of our construction. I hope that all of you who serve this local community will begin to think of yourself more and more profoundly & holistically agrarian into the future, i.e., ecologically agrarian.
My main message is quite simple. Congress is supposed to be currently working on a Farm Bill which will involve about 1.5 trillion dollars, and which impacts us ALL! My personal concern is always sustainable ecological community … and an important part of that is a sustaining of diversified local agricultural land–a sustaining of production, processing, and delivery of ag products (and, of course, their local consumption).
In addressing school board members, I must emphasize that I believe you are the most important governmental entity. Our schools and the community they serve are in particular impacted by the Farm Bill through the USDA’s Healthy Meals Initiatives and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. But more than this, with public schools, as with other governmental organizations, there should be a robust two-way communication line as to the needs of the schools and the local community for a sustainable agriculture and sustainable agriculture livelihoods. And by the time they graduate from high school, all students should (1) have a knowledge of the current state of our agricultural systems and an appreciation of what a sustainable agriculture would look like and (2) fully realize the vulnerability of our fossil energy-intensive and extremely inefficient agriculture system, … and (3) the school district, with the help of the Farm Bill, should have increased the opportunities of our youth to become sustainable and regenerative farmers and ranchers (ecological agrarians).
Please Ask Your Representatives to Support The Prime & Increasing Land Access, Security, and Opportunities Acts. “Straightforward,” I hope you will study the Prime Act (H.R. 2814/S. 907) and the Increasing Land Access, Security, and Opportunities Act (H.R. 3955/S. 2340) and decide to ask your representatives in Congress to support these bills. If these bills become a part of the upcoming Farm Bill, their part of the appropriations for the overall bill will be a drop in the bucket. However, passage of these bills could be extremely helpful in facilitating local ag production, processing, and delivery of product and the ability of new young farmers to purchase and appropriately manage farmland.
(I haven’t really worked on the Farm Bill in about 30 years, although I did so in earnest when I was Sustainable Agriculture Coordinator for TDA in Austin back in the 1980s and 1990s. A couple of months ago some youngsters asked me to get involved minimally again, and then this weekend I was stimulated by our mayor’s piece in the Gazette, and last eve (10/16/2023) by another great Ken Burns documentary. Therefore, here I am before you local politicians once again this month of October.)
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We Could Do Very Much Better Toward Realizing a Sustainable, Resilient Local Agriculture! At this time, we could locally produce, process and effectively distribute adequate amounts of locally-necessary protein, carbohydrates, and lipids, … IF we wished to do so. However, before long, we won’t have that option if we continue to cover our farm and wildlife lands with urban or “quasi-urban”-, recreational-, industrial-, and automobile necessitated-development. Your food and fiber and shelter materials could be from this regionally local area and the cost for a calorie of food could be closer to a three calorie-investment of inputs, as it was pre-World War !!, rather than the well over 10 calories it now takes to produce that calorie of food. A 10 to 30 calorie-input/investment of energy to get one (1) calorie of food is, from the point of view of this Aggie … “pretty durn” inefficient … and precarious. Moreover, it is very socio-ecologically destructive in many ways.
And in going into this matter just a bit deeper, currently your beef and pork products consumed here in this area (even that from our beloved Granzin’s) are largely from Brazil and Chinese corporations and are processed and shipped from the High Plains and North Carolina. (And I do wish to emphasize that I have nothing against Brazilians or Chinese, but simply against their [and our] large transnational neoliberal-corporations. In fact, early next month my wife and I will be hosting for about a week, my good friend Toti Rosa, the Head of the Brazilian National Beef Cattle Research Center in Campo Grande, Brazil, a person with a global perspective for a more local and sustainably resilient agriculture and ecological community.)
I want to also mention that most of the shrimp we eat here, including what some folk believe are wild Gulf Coast shrimp, are from shrimp farms in Southeast Asia and Central America. Also, we here in this region send most of our grain and beeves out of here to be fed, finished, processed, packaged, and then sent to who knows where. The points about beef, pork, and shrimp (and I could have used examples of many other ag products), is that this delocalized/detached global food production system is not efficient, sustainable, or resilient; it is not good!
(In addition, I must even pick on Girl Scout Cookies a bit. They are made by transnational parent companies, Kellonova and Ferrero International SA. The wheat flour, sugar, palm oil, cornstarch, and cocoa in a “typical” Girl Scout Cookie sold in south central Texas mostly likely will come from the Great Plains, Louisiana, Indonesia, the Midwest, and Africa, respectively.)
Finally, this may be incongruous, but this “great” country has eliminated the passenger pigeon and a couple of other species* and devastated bison and indigenous human populations. It will not be atonement, but in an act of contrition I do hope we will all do a better job of educating ourselves and our children, and other family and our friends about sustainable community and maintenance of farmland and wildlife habitat. What my wife and I have done was to give our three kids our 140-acre farm which I purchased from my parents in 1983. We have encouraged these offspring in various ways to maintain this Land for sustainable agriculture and wildlife habitat, and to help to realize this condition into perpetuity. Also, I have tried to encourage development of community gardens in this area and to volunteer in activities which facilitate citizen-learning of positively ethical applied community ecological principles, processes, and values.
(To our city council I must also mention that a banning of the use of plastic bags to carry products purchased in Seguin, would increase the energetic efficiency a bit for agricultural products in our region. And for the long term, degrowth should increase it substantially, or at a minimum create opportunities for substantially increasing efficiencies.)
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Conclusion. In closing, my reminder is that one small thing, but good thing, you might do toward a more efficient and sustainable agriculture, AND sustainable community, would be to support the Prime Act and the Increasing Land Access, Security, and Opportunities Act and to encourage your representatives in Congress to do so!!!
(Now, I do “occasionally” try to mince words. But not herein. [And I apologize to my young farmer colleagues who have asked me to do my disciplined-best at helping them in getting the Prime & Increasing Land Access, Security, and Opportunities Acts into the 2023 Farm Bill.] …
2023 here on Eaarth! De facto Manifest Destiny of neoliberalism & growth. Buffalo hunters of consumerism and development brainwashed with a greed for more largely through propaganda of transnational corporations. … Or, maybe (hopefully?), an Eaarth of artificialization and inefficiency, … but transforming to a neo-Earth which continues into the distant future with quality life including humans? Maybe??? But … )
And I’ll leave it there.
Thanks for your time!
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*Of course, recently that list has increased.
pbm
7 S’s / VV->^^
