The Future is Abundant
A Guide to Sustainable Agriculture

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The Farm

Jim Bauermeister

The people who homesteaded Franklin County, Washington were latecomers to the Columbia Plateua. They had heard of the rich grain growing region called the Palouse, and were on the tail end of a thirty year land rush. They settled under land laws written for a fictitious west and bought land from the railroads at very reasonable rates. As the Columbia Plain filled in from the north and east, the timbered river bottoms were taken first, then the rolling hills close to the forests.

By 1900 the more recent homesteaders were miles from water and days from trees. But they believed the old adage, "where wheatgrass grows, wheat will grow," and a newer corollary, "where sagebrush grows big, wheat will do well." They brought their sodbuster plows from the Great Plains and turned under the bluebunch wheatgrass and lichens, wildflowers and sage. Many broke their health and destroyed their families trying to farm 160 acres in an area than got less than ten inches of rain a year. Ten years after the land rush ended, half the settlers were gone.

The survivors learned how to grow grain in the arid land. They replaced their moldboard plow with the disc and the chisel plow. They let half the landlie fallow each year to collect two seasons' rains. But they didn't create a sustainable agriculture. One diesel cat replaced thirty-six horses, but allowed farmers to disc up steeper, more erosive slopes. Dust storms still darken the skies, and a sudden cloudburst or spring thaw sends tons of topsoil to the bottom of coulees.

Because the land in the Columbia Basin is too arid to grow cover crops for nitrogen and the fields are too big to spread manure on, the introduction of chemical fertilizers in the 1950's was a godsend to the farmers. Herbicides were welcomed to the sixty year battle with Russian thistle and cheatgrass.

In addition to increased erosion, mechanization, and dependence on chemicals, farms have become larger and more centralized. My family's home near Connell in north Franklin County is a conglomeration of a half-dozen different homesteads. The nearest neighbor is three miles away. Most of the land adjacent to my folks' farm is farmed by people who live as far as twenty miles away. Nearby communities, such as Kahlotus, Washtucna, Hatton and Lind have withered away because there isn't the population to support stores, newspapers, movie theatres or banks.

The lack of diversity and of neighbors has done notheing to encourage young people to stay in the community. There is a certain inbred feeling of inferiority and fatalism from being what one government commission described as "the people left behind."

The wheat growing region of eastern Washignton is linked to a global food and energy system subject to all the whims of international politics and intrigue. In 1978 the price of wheat dropped abruptly, and farmers hoarded gas and diesel and worried whether they would obtain enough fuel to get through harvest-all because of a revolution in Iran. Iran had oil and used it to buy wheat. The downfall of a despotic shah was felt in Connell. If the link to the food and energy trade were broken abruptly, (and farming methods did not adapt) the farming community could not survivie in Franklin County. If there is a gradual transition to a sustainable agriculture, the community will prosper.

Achieving a sustainble agriculture, however, will require a concerted public and private effort. Many decisions will ahve to be made far from Connell. Land laws will need to be amended to encourage the creation of new farms. Government farm programs will need to be reoriented to benefit low and moderate income farmer. Research will have to focus on ways to increase soil fertility without depleting other resources, and on reducing health and environmental risks from agriculture. Technologies that aid in the management and stewardship of land, and do not stifle human resourcefulness, will have to be adopted.

Yet most of the research and work will be done on the individual and community level. The first requisite of a sustainable agriculture is a sense of land. Land, as in Aldo Leopold's definition, is a whole system including climate, vegetation and animal and soil life. there needs to be an attitude that the care of land is a trust, an implicit contract not only between people and the land, but between present and future generations. Land can be used, but should not be abused. With a proper feeling for land, people can shape environments that will provide them with food, shelter, and commerce.

A sustainable agriculture is not a return to the past, though many ideas that worked in the past can be applied to the future. Seventy-some years ago a homesteader built a dike along one of the edges of what became my grandfather's farm. The homesteader hoped that he could impound enough rainfall to grow alfalfa. Even though the dike broke, the concept was sound; if not for alfalfa, then for a planting of trees.

The development of perennial grain varieties would be a major advance for this arid region. In Franklin County most of the rain falls in the winter, and is lost to shallow rooted annual grains. But the roots of perennials can tap moisture deep in the loess soil. Wes Jackson and the Land Institute of Salina, Kansas are working on developing agrotriticum, a perennial wheat-wheatgrass cross which would be ideal for this region. It may also be possible to develop other alternative crops, such as nitrogen fixing grains or legumes (edible lupins, for example) for arid soils.

The revivial of old technologies and the development of new ones will be essential to the farms of the future. Windpower was once a significant source of energy for the isolated ranches of Franklin County. Improved wind generation and photovoltaic systems could produce power more cheaply and more resposibly than the Washignton Public Power Supply System. Today, mulching and drip irrigation make gardens and orchards possible even on farmsteads with low volume wells and windmills. Computers are becoming useful farm tools in communicating information and collecting and analyzing data on crop production, input costs, weather and research.

The methods Franklin County farmers develop to create a sustainable agriculture will, in many cases, be unique to their area, and will change with time. Creating a sustainable agriculture is an ongoing process. Climates change, and plants and animals continue to evolve. Human creativity and our concepts of farm ecosystems must also evolve. Creating a sustainable agriculture is a project for perpetuity.

The Future is Abundant A Guide to Sustainable Agriculture

The Farm

Jim Bauermeister

The Future is Abundant
A Guide to Sustainable Agriculture