The Future is Abundant
A Guide to Sustainable Agriculture

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Community

No book about sustainable agriculture would be complete without a discussion of people and communities. In the transition to a permanent, stable, self-reliant agriculture, relationships among people and between people and land will be transformed. We open this chapter with some guidelines to one part of the process essential for such a transformation - sharing nature with children. For only if our children share our goals and dreams will substantial change take place.

We then go on to feature groups which share the belief that as long as land is seen as a commodity to be bought and sold, its true value as the source of life and sustenance is forgotten. We highlight several regional, national and international groups who are saving land in ways ranging from forming land trusts to planting forests which will halt spreading deserts. Groups analyzing, evaluating and developing more equitable political systems are also featured. And we close with an introduction to the Tilth community, a network of local chapters which actively promotes and demonstrates the possibility of a sustainable, abundant agriculture for the Pacific Northwest.

Sharing Nature with Children

Children of the Green Earth

In Oregon, a non-profit group called Children of the Green Earth seeks to join an enhanced awareness of nature with a sense of planetary responsibility. Planting and caring for trees is a primary focus of their activities. Founding members of the group include Richard St. Barbe Baker, Dorothy Maclean and Rene Dubos.

Children working with their hands in the earth experience something that is carried with them throughout their lives. Planting a tree can be much more than just digging a hole and placing a seedling in it. It can be a whole experience in understanding tools and their uses, in understanding the particular qualities of the tree being planted and of the site it is being planted on.

The work of Children of the Green Earth helps children develop a new way of interacting with each other and the earth - a new way of integrating their sense of community with their own personal development. What is achieved in our lifetime to further permanent agriculture and a responsible relationship with the earth can only be sustained if we involve children, thus assuring that our work will be continued.

For more information, contact
Children of the Earth
PO Box 751
Portland, OR 97207

Land in Trust

If our future truly is to be abundant, we must have land on which to grow our crops. Land trusts, non-profit organizations established to preserve property for environmental or community purposes, are becoming an increasingly common method of providing people with access to land. Land trusts challenge the basic set of assumptions that shape the use of land in this country, often enabling agricultural land to remain agricultural in the face of seemingly inconquerable economic and social disincentives.

Whether they call themselves "trusts," "conservancies," "foundations," or "reliances," members of the land trust movement share one unifying characteristic: a commitment to the preservation of land resources (natural, aesthetic, cultural, economic or social). They are organized to preserve land for the public good through private efforts.

While a few land trusts date back several decades, the emergence of local private land conservation groups on a widespread basis is a relatively recent phenomenon. Since 1975, local programs have been organized at the rate of 20 per year and now total over 400 nationwide. They have so far secured over 675,000 acres of open space and resource land in all parts of the United States.

Land owned in trust is not for sale. Trust land is taken forever ("in perpetuity," in land trust parlance) from the cycle of speculation. And since it's removed from the marketplace, it no longer is subject to the development pressures that turn marshland into marinas, farmland into parking lots and residential neighborhoods in condominiums.

Anne Maggs, author of the essay below, is a land trust advisor and treasurer of the Oregon Community Land Trust. An expanded version of this essay appeared in the June, 1982 issue of RAIN magazine.

Types of Land Trusts

Anne Maggs

One well known type of land trust restricts land from all human impact. The Nature Conservancy is an example of this type of environmental trust, preserving wilderness areas in their natural states.

Emerging from the environmental land trust movement is the farm trust movement. The American Farmland Trust is an example of a trust established to save prime farm land. They are concerned with public education, land protection, and policy development as well as with providing technical assistance to help save farms from urbanization.

Community land trusts (CLT's) go beyond the preservation of natural resources to the preservation of the cultural, economic and social resources of the land. CLT's are primarily focused on land for housing and productive uses. They work in both rural and urban settings to preserve family farms and revitalize neighborhoods.

Legally, a land trust is a group of people who have joined together in the form of a non-profit corporation, and because the group is formed for purposes that benefit the public interest, it is eligible to apply for tax exempt status under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. This status can serve as a double-edged sword: it breathes life into the organization by allowing tax-deductible donations while at the same time choking it with IRS restrictions and standards.

Once a group is incorporated as a non-profit corporation (done at the state level) it has a wide variety of tools at its disposal to actively seek acquisition of land and its resources. These tools include charitable contributions, conservation easements, bargain sales and limited development rights.

Land Trust Tools

The charitable contribution deduction in the Internal Revenue Code allows taxpayers to donate land, interests in land, cash and other resources to tax exempt organizations and subtract these gifts from their taxable income.

A conservation easement places a use restriction on the title to land. The easement reduces the value of the land from its speculated use to its actual use. The trusting of the easement legally binds the owner or future owner to the restricted use (for example, agriculture) in perpetuity.

In the case of a bargain sale, the owner conveys to the trust the full title at a price below its fair market value. The owner can then claim the difference between the sale price and the fair market value as the charitable contribution. This technique is often used in the pre-acquisition of land for public agencies. Limited development always involves compromises and some loss of open space. The role of the land trust is to persuade the developer to cluster the development in order to preserve the special characteristics of the land (e.g. an ecosystem, or prime agricultural soil).

Association with a land trust, be it a small local group or a regionally-based one, offers homesteaders and communal residents the benefits of shared resources such as technical assistance, news of other land trusts, updates on regulations and laws affecting land use and (most importantly) the support that comes from a shared land ethic. To be part of the land trust movement is to actively address our need to assure the preservation of land and its resources for ourselves and those who will come after us.

The Green Front

Michael Pilarski

Many of the Earth's ecosystems have been degraded by human activities. The Earth's forests have been reduced 60-65% during recorded history, while desert area has doubled. Soil erosion, resource depletion and environmental degradation are found throughout the world. The work of rebuilding our Earth is a challenge to all.

Rehabilitating ecosystems is a complex task even under the best of circumstances. War, oppression, drought and poverty complicate possible solutions. Present patterns of land ownership and governance discourage many people from attempting land reclamation work.

All is not doom and gloom, however. Over the years a gloable movement for earth-healing has been forming. Examples can be found in every country, though few of the people involved think in terms of being part of an international movement.

"The Green Front" is a title particularly appropriate for this earth-healing movement. The term was first coined in 1951 when Richard St. Barbe Baker initiated an international conference to discuss the alarming spread of the Sahara desert. He went on to work with native people, planting a "green front" of trees to halt the desert's spread.

Today the Green Front is given form by the combined activities of thousands of people, planting trees, planting seeds, and relating to nature first hand. There are many ways each person can contribute to the success of the international Green Front and the creation of a sustainable agriculture. Search for ways in which you can help. Chances are you will not have to look far...since the Green Front starts in your backyard.

Father of the Trees

Richard St. Barbe Baker was one of the world's most eloquent and influential defenders of the trees. "You can gauge a country's wealth," he said, "its real wealth, by its tree cover." By that measure, he found much of the world rapidly becoming impoverished.

St. Barbe's efforts to enlist trees in the battle against desertification began in 1922. Working with the Kikuyu people in Kenya, he convinced them to plant trees as a defense against the advancing desert. As a result of his work the Men of the Trees Society was formed, and the people named St. Barbe 'Father of the Trees.' Twahamwe - work together - became their password.

In the spring of 1982 St. Barbe made his last tour on behalf of the trees. He became ill while in northern California and spent his last month in the Grove of Understanding, a magnificent redwood grove that he had helped preserve over forty years before. While there his concern for the future of the earth continued to grow. Don't stop with just saving single trees, he said. Continue until you save whole watersheds and, ultimately, the entire biosphere. In early June St. Barbe was taken to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where he had homesteaded just after the turn of the century. It was there that he died, leaving others to carry on the task of healing the earth.

St. Barbe's Men of the Trees Society (Crawley Down, Sussex, England) publishes a quarterly journal which will continue to be a vital source of information on international reforestation efforts. In North America, St. Barbe's work is being carried on by Children of the Green Earth, PO Box 751, Portland, OR 97207.

Civilian Conservation Corps

Ecosystem impoverishment in the North America was given almost no attention until Hugh Hammond Bennet began writing about soil erosion in the 1920's. In 1928, Bennet and WR Chaplin published the pamphlet Soil Erosion, A National Menace. It was brought before Congress and caused enough of a stir that ten erosion research stations were set up by 1930. The findings of these stations, plus the desperate unemployment situation caused by the Depression, prompted President Franklin D. Roosevelt to establish the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in March of 1933. In its first year the CCC improved 950,000 acres of forest land, built 420,000 erosion control check-dams, and planted 100,000 acres of trees.

In 1934 the first of the Dust Bowl storms swept across the country, alerting people to the impending crisis. To respond to the situation, the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) was formed in early 1935. By the middle of 1936, the SCS was operating 147 demonstration projects, 454 CCC camps, 48 plant and seed nurseries, and 25 experiment stations.

One of the most ambitious projects the SCS initiated was the Great Plains Shelterbelt, 100 miles wide and 1800 miles long. Although this project was never completed much was accomplished, especially in the northern plains states. As an example, in 1980 there were 67,000 miles of windbreaks in North Dakota, as compared to 43,000 miles in the rest of the U.S. combined. Canada also planted large areas to shelterbelts in its portion of the Great Plains during this time.

By the time World War II began, the three million CCC workers had made an important contribution to land rehabilitation. But the business of fighting a war siphoned people off. After the war, land rehabilitation was given little attention. In the 1970's, Federal policies led to increased U.S. agricultural exports, and the quality of the nation's farmland has suffered as a result. The SCS now calculates that national soil erosion losses are once again at Dust Bowl levels.

With unemployment and soil erosion rates approaching those of the Great Depression, the CCC Alumni Association is petitioning congress to restart the CCC.

For more information, contact the National Association of CCC Alumni, 7900 Sudley Road, Suite 413, Manassas, VA 22110.

The Chipko Movement

The first Chipko Movement was born around 250 years ago. A Vishnoi woman named Amrita Devi and several hundred fellow Vishnoi attempted to save their village forest by hugging the trees as the Maharajah's axemen approached. ("Chipko" means "hug" or "cling to".) The axemen killed many people while felling the trees, and when the Maharajah heard of their sacrifice he declared their forest a natural preserve. Today that forest is one of the few green sanctuaries in what has become a desolate desert.

In modern times, the Chipko Movement was reborn in the Alakhnanda valley, a remote mountain region of the Himalayas. In the late 1950's, an organization called the Dasholi Gram Swarajya Sangh (Dasholi Society for Village Self-Rule) was formed to improve the position of the many poor and landless peasants. Cooperative action was stressed, and members formed small cooperative industries using local forest resources. During the 1960's highways were constructed into the region, making possible increased exploitation of local forests by the government and large timber corporations. Many steep slopes were clearcut, leading to increasingly disastrous floods which swept away villages and caused much death and destruction in the valley.

The villagers protested the clearcuttings, but the government's insensitive response was to refuse the village cooperatives the permits needed to cut down the few trees they required for their enterprises. Meanwhile, large corporations were allowed to continue their clearcutting.

In 1973, the villagers began the non-violent disruption of forest cutting by hugging trees in front of the loggers. Press coverage and public rallies eventually forced the government to investigate the forest situation in the Alakhnanda river watershed. As a result, the government put a ten-year ban on all tree cutting in an area of over 450 square miles.

Between 1975 and 1978, the villagers planted over 100,000 trees to reforest 1200 acres, demonstrating what can be done by people working together, without government aid, to improve local conditions.

The Chipko Movement has begun to spread to other parts of India. One of the leaders of the Chipko Movement has written a booklet entitled "Chipko, A Novel Movement For Establishment of Cordial Relationship Between Man and Nature." To obtain a copy, send a dollar, or whatever you can to: Sunderlal Bahuguna, Chipko, PO Silyara Pin 249155, Tehri - Garhwal, UP, India.

Tree People

In 1970, a report issued by the US Forest Service indicated that each year at least 40,000 trees in the forests surrounding Los Angeles were dying from air pollution. The report stimulated 15-year-old Andy Lipkis to found Tree People to replace the dying trees with new seedlings. Since then, over 50,000 people have planted over 200,000 trees in the Los Angeles area. Many environmental education programs have also been carried out. "All our programs," Andy says, "have been oriented to show how we cause environmental problems and how we as individuals can solve them. Many of our daily actions are causing the forests to die. We have to accept that responsibility and do something about it."

In 1981, Andy announced Tree People's new goal "to plant one million trees in Los Angeles before the 1984 Olympics to be held in Los Angeles. We are intending to involve the entire community in planting trees as a way to help improve air quality, conserve energy, and produce food locally. The trees will be both smog- and drought-tolerant, so they won't require the importation of additional water in the LA area."

For more information on the Tree People program, write to Tree People, 12601 N. Mulholland Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90210.

The Future is Abundant A Guide to Sustainable Agriculture