Emily Jeffreys

February 7, 2010
ESTU 410 Midterm

1. The End of Food—a frightful title. Are we literally running out of food or
are we running out of good food? In other words, are the arguments
surrounding the future of our food a quality issue, quantity issue, or
both?
I don’t think the quantity of food will be an issue anytime soon, as I’m sure there will be plenty of

genetically engineered soy, canola, corn, wheat, and rice to feed the world for centuries to come. Rather, I

believe the future of our food is definitely a quality issue. As agriculture stands right now, feeding the world

would be a piece of cake in the absence of political issues and economic greed (an unlikely scenario, I admit).

I remember watching The Future of Food and being appalled at the amount of food that is wasted everyday

in developed countries. One image burned in my brain is that of mountains upon mountains of day old bread

from a producer in Austria destined for the landfill because the bread wasn’t “fresh enough for customers” (The

Future of Food 2004). Just last week, Debbie Vanderveen from Veen Huizen Farms told us that Darigold often

has more milk than it can sell so it packages it as powdered milk and pawns it off to China where it is

unnecessarily marketed as a more nutritious alternative to breastfeeding (an unethical practice that Paul Roberts

condemns in The End of Food (pp.48-49)).

Although quantity in and of itself shouldn’t be an issue (it’s the global distribution of these surpluses that’s

problematic), quality becomes increasingly more of a concern as the years go by. Real, quality food is becoming

a scarcity as food manufacturing conglomerates rely more and more on “chemical additives, but also fats, salt

and sweeteners” which they use “often copiously, to boost flagging flavor”(Roberts p.49). As one industry

executive notes, “It’s much cheaper to put fat and salt into food than real expertise” (Roberts p.49). Thus, as our

food becomes less pleasurable and satisfying to consume, it also becomes much unhealthier.

In a further compromise of quality, farmers continue to feed livestock corn, hormones and animal byproducts

and keep animals in highly cramped, filthy conditions where disease is just around the corner and antibiotics are

distributed liberally and often unnecessarily. In fact, it’s estimated that 70% of all antibiotics produced in the

United States are given to livestock (Scientific American 2001). Perhaps even more alarmingly, its recently
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ESTU 410 Midterm

been found that these antibiotics are absorbed into the crops we eat, as 90% of antibiotics administered to

livestock are excreted as urine or feces, which is often used in manure for crop fields (Cimitile 2009). These

same farmers and their buyers continue to assure us that their products are of the highest quality, but how can

that be so when the animals are so freakishly engineered and miserable and the vast majority of our plant and

animal foods are polluted with antibiotics? How can that be so when outbreaks of E. coli, salmonella and avian

flu continue to occur? And that all goes without mentioning the high concentrations of chemical pesticides,

herbicides, and fertilizers used on fields that end up on our plates. Overall, I think the quality of food available

has been low for decades now and as the food crisis mounts there seems to be little in the way of change.

3. More food, cheaper, and safer—this has been the goal of food production
through this past century and has become somewhat of a marker for the larger
human prosperity. Roberts argues that this course is being reversed. Human
populations in the past have faced this kind of crisis with new technologies,
innovations, or business practices. However, current generations are facing
constraints that our predecessors hadn’t -- what are they? (Be sure to include
energy concerns.)

Prior to the industrial revolution, human populations increased at much slower rates and overpopulation

was a non-issue. However, today we have the challenge of feeding exponentially greater numbers of people

while more and more agricultural land is taken over by the urban sprawl necessary to accommodate the tens of

millions of people that are added to the global population annually. In addition to this population/space

constraint, we today also must deal with the fact that, after decades of poor land use practices, our soil and

water have in many places become sterile and polluted, which exacerbates the detrimental effect of urban

sprawl and decreases the amount of arable land available even further.

On top of this, climate change continues to accelerate at an alarming rate, leading to more frequent

and more severe natural disasters such as droughts, monsoons, and hurricanes, and anomalous weather events

(such as the incredibly cold temperatures that devastated Florida’s citrus crop this winter) that destroy farmland

and increase the demand for food and water of people across the globe. In the past, people did not possess the
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February 7, 2010
ESTU 410 Midterm

technology required to significantly impact the climate, but today that technology continues to grow more

varied and effective at warming the planet with dire consequences for us all. Closely tied into climate change is

our continued reliance on fossil fuels for energy. These resources are diminishing rapidly for our use and are

instead polluting our atmosphere (leading, of course, to the aforementioned climate change), making it more

and more expensive for farmers to run their operations.

Additionally, the global food economy is a relatively new phenomenon that entails an entirely new set of

food risks. To keep up in the competitive global market, farmers from all over the world (think coffee and cacao

growers) are forced to produce more and more while getting paid less and less, an issue that farmers of the pre-

industrialized past didn’t have to deal with, or at least not on so nearly a large and threatening scale. Any

technology that will allow farmers to produce less and get paid more seems unlikely, and a revolutionary way of

looking at the ethics and economics of food production must be our solution.

4. What is the way forward to increase food security? First, define food
security, then describe human ingenuity and innovation as a possible solution.

I believe a person is truly food secure when he or she has no fear of starvation or malnourishment in the

short term or the long term. This means that for a person to be food secure he or she must not only have access

to calories, but to quality, nutritious calories that support a healthy, productive life. Unlike what the U.S.

government, many conventional farmers, and international food conglomerates would have you believe, this

precludes heavily processed and low-nutrient foods such as Wendy’s Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers, Top Ramen,

and Hostess snacks. Cheap, low quality “foods” such as these are often staples in the diets of the economically

disadvantaged but access to these foods does NOT constitute food security as malnourishment is sure to result

in the form of health issues such as diabetes, hypertension, and obesity.

On a national level, adhering to this definition of food security would certainly call for withdrawing

from an inherently uncertain global food economy. Imports are unreliable for a host of political and

meteorological reasons (i.e. wars, hurricanes preventing delivery, etc), and exporting our food to other
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nations when it could be used here definitely doesn’t contribute to maintaining a food secure nation.

Rather than relying on precarious, easily broken and disrupted ties to countries thousands of miles away

for our food, in the interest of security we need to grow our own food here.

This idea, of course, flies in the face of the traditionally lauded notion of comparative advantage, in

which nations are encouraged to “specialize in the few products they grow best and trade freely with

other countries for everything else” (Roberts, p.115). It’s because of this notion of comparative

advantage that the U.S. is known as a “corn belt” and produces vastly excessive amounts of corn, soy

and canola—and relatively little else. If we ever want to be a food secure nation, we need to free up

more of our land for producing other crops. Also, we need to lessen the possibility of disease outbreaks

that could lead to food shortages by mandating healthier conditions for livestock and practicing natural,

healthy means of pest and weed control. Rather than pursuing new methods of bioengineering our crops

and animals to make them virtually genetically identical and thus setting ourselves up for widespread

epidemics, we need scientists and farmers to focus on developing natural alternatives that will lead to

greater genetic diversity and hearty crops and animals that aren’t susceptible to disease.

Because food security also depends on having land to grow food on in the first place, we need to

come up with creative alternatives (or use solutions that are already practiced by biodynamic and

organic farmers) for pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, and wasteful irrigation systems. If we pollute the

soil and groundwater, increase soil salinity, or otherwise compromise the health of our soils, there may

not be any healthy, viable soils for future use.

Perhaps the most important way in which human ingenuity is needed to achieve food security is in

re-education. In the late 1800’s, 90% of the U.S. population farmed the land; today, only 2% of our

population are farmers (PBS, 1999). If we want to have high quality, nutritious, and reliable sources of

food, a much larger portion of the population must commit to growing their own food or pursuing

agriculture as a local business and sharing their food with the community. The closer to home food is

grown, and the greater the diversity of sources available, the more food secure everyone will be.
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Yet another way to increase food security is to use our ingenuity and knowledge of natural systems to

find innovative, economically feasible, and environmentally friendly sources of renewable energy.

These creative solutions will reduce (and hopefully one day eliminate) our reliance on the rapidly

disappearing fossil fuels that are causing global warming and massive environmental disturbances.

Henning Sehmsdorf harnesses the sun’s energy with solar power, and I’ve heard of some other farmers

trapping the methane emitted from cows (that would normally make its way into the atmosphere) to be

put to work on the farm.

5. How is biodynamic agriculture different from organic agriculture? List

four or five items -- what do you think is the most distinguishing
characteristic? Is there any research to suggest that the quality of the
food is different?

Biodynamic agriculture differs from organic agriculture most notably in that it incorporates philosophy

and spirituality rather than examining only the physical side of things. Biodynamic agriculture is a worldview, a

way of life, while organic agriculture is simply a chemical-free way of farming. Organic agriculture and

conventional agriculture are often seen as polar opposites, when in actuality they are fundamentally similar at

their core: both organic and conventional agricultural subscribe to reductionist science. This kind of science

believes knowledge is gained by pulling an item to pieces, reducing it to chemical compounds and molecules

and atoms, and examining these pieces in a vacuum as though a flower or a carrot or a cow was merely the sum

of its parts.

In contrast, biodynamic agriculture views the flower, the carrot, and the cow, as well as the entire farm

and the earth itself, as living, breathing, and self sustaining organisms that must be looked at as a whole. While

an organic farmer would certainly agree that healthy soil is vital to a healthy farm, a biodynamic farmer would

argue that there is more to soil health than meets the eye: and that “soil in itself should be considered as a living

organism, with its own equilibrium and processes, its respiratory and digestive systems” (Schilthuis p.66).

Another difference related to the one discussed above is that biodynamic farmers see not only the “outer

world” of an organism, but also its “inner” or “astral world” of “passions and feelings” shaped by celestial
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forces (Schiltuis p. 33). Whereas an organic farmer would (hopefully) acknowledge that pigs, cows, and

chickens are sentient beings, a biodynamic farmer would take it a step further by saying that pigs, cows, and

chickens are sentient beings influenced by the Earth’s orbit in relation to the sun and stars and by the phases of

the moon. When we visited S.S. Homestead, Henning Sehmsdorf told us that a major difference between cows

and pigs is that cows are lunar animals whereas sheep’s behavior (such as going into heat) is dependent on the

sun. An organic farmer would not consult the zodiac calendar or give it a moment’s thought, but a biodynamic

farmer views this calendar as a critical source of information affecting all aspects of the farm, including

phenology and life cycles of plants and animals.

Yet another way in which organic farmers and biodynamic farmers differ is that biodynamic farmers make

use of certain special preparations such as herbal sprays, barrel compost, and horn manure. Although organic

farmers may view these preparations as perplexing and downright nonsensical, as indeed they at first seemed to

me, research has actually shown that these preparations have the ability to increase food quality. The application

of preparations 500 and 501, cow horn packed with manure and cow horn mixed with quartz, respectively, have

been demonstrated in studies in both the United States and Europe to significantly increase yields of several

grain, vegetable and root crops (Schilthuis p.106). Additionally, the nutritional quality of the crops improved in

a number of studies, with crops treated with biodynamic preparations 500 and 501 yielding higher contents of

protein, amino acids, vitamins and an improved keeping quality (Schilthuis p.84). This aspect of biodynamic

farming is related to another one of biodynamic agriculture’s hallmarks: the farmer should strive to import as

few inputs as possible and should only produce as many “wastes” as can be put to use on the farm. Thus, the

horns and manure used in these preparations ideally come from the farmer’s own cows, and the rest of the

compost from decayed hay and other plants, and the farm is one self-sustaining organism. Organic farmers more

often than not don’t think in these terms and create plenty of excess waste that cannot be put to use.

This is in part due to another difference between the two types of farms. Most organic farms are not mixed

farms, but rather specialize in one (or perhaps several) kinds of crops, thus importing vast quantities of manure
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February 7, 2010
ESTU 410 Midterm

they cannot supply themselves, or they import large amounts of hay and forage for the livestock they specialize

in. Biodynamic agriculture views a mixed farm, one that contains a variety of crops and livestock, as essential

to a self-sustaining farm organism because agriculture is cyclical in that the plants rely on animals (for

fertilization via manure) just as much as animals rely on plants (for energy via consumption).

6. What is farm resilience? To help answer this question, visit:

http://www.wwu.edu/resilience/workshop.shtml What do you think are the
three or four most important signs of resilience, post-disaster (remember,
disasters can be high energy prices as well as subduction zone earthquakes).
Then, can you give two or three ways for farms to become more resilient?
I think one of the most important signs of a resilient farm community is that its “natural resources are not

lost through permanent damage or degradation”—requiring farms to take care of their resources such as soil and

water and to take measures protecting these resources to minimize damage done to them in the face of a disaster

(The Resilience Institute 2010). A truly resilient farm community will also continue to produce food-stuffs or

other farm commodities post-disaster—its arable land will not be converted to a housing community or Wal-

Mart parking lot. A third sign of resilience is “adaptive potential”—farmers within the community must have

the ability to adapt and learn how to respond appropriately to natural disasters and economic downturns as well

as less dramatic circumstances such as changing consumer needs, variable climates, and other conditions that

have the potential to stress the system or that call for change (The Resilience Institute 2010).

One way farmers can become more resilient is by practicing environmental stewardship to reduce to the

likelihood of disturbances and their impacts. For example, farmers with property adjacent to streams and rivers

could plant riparian buffers (a stand of native vegetation along either side of the water channel) to increase bank

stability and decrease the amount of surface runoff that makes it to the streambed. Both these functions of

riparian buffers will decrease the likelihood of flooding, a major threat to cropfields. Another way farmers can

be more resilient is to diversify their product, i.e. plant more varieties of plants with greater genetic diversity to

prevent the mass crop failures that have occurred in the past with genetically identical monocrops. From an

economic perspective, farmers can increase their resilience by creating and nurturing relationships with their
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February 7, 2010
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consumers. One way they can do this is through crop shares, where a customer invests in the farm financially or

provides manual labor in the field in exchange for some of what the farm produces. Consumers that feel a sense

of trust for and connection to a local farmer through friendship or spending time on the farm are far more likely

to purchase from that farmer even if similar products sold at a big grocery chain are cheaper.

7. Both Henning Sehmsdorf (S&S Homestead) and Scott Meyer (Sweet Grass
Farm) on Lopez are in some ways similar (both rely heavily on direct
marketing) and different (completely different knowledge systems for the
production of knowledge). Explain.
I believe Henning Sehmsdorf and Scott Meyer are more similar than they are different. For instance,

Henning and Scott are similar in that they both care deeply for the land and their animals and know that the

health of the soil is of utmost importance. Both men recognize the individuality of every farm and each farmer’s

experience, and believe that these unique life histories and experiences are key to each farm’s identity and

success.

During our visit to Scott’s lovely Sweet Grass farm, Scott spoke of knowing one’s “unfair advantages”:

aspects such as climate, topography, location, or consumer base that differ from farm to farm and may work in

one farmer’s favor. He also told us that no two farmers have the same story of how they got into agriculture—

everyone has their own path to take and one person’s individuality contributes to the uniqueness of his or her

farm. Similarly, during our visit to his beautiful S&S Homestead, Henning emphasized that each farm is its

own unique organism and that uniformity has no place in agriculture but rather individuality and personality

must characterize the journey each person embarks upon when they decide to farm or garden in a sustainable

fashion.

Along the same lines, Henning and Scott both stressed the importance of making one’s own mistakes and

learning from one’s own experiences rather than following the standardized, one-size-fits-all manual that

defines conventional agriculture. In fact, Brian Kerkvliet from Inspiration Farms told our class that on one

occasion when he was asking Henning for advice about his own biodynamic farm, Henning simply assured him
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he “would figure it out himself”, not in a lazy or uncaring way but in a way that invited Brian to learn the joys

and difficulties of biodynamic farming for himself.

Another attribute Scott and Henning both share is their desire to make sure their animals live the best, most

healthy lives possible. I was deeply impressed when Henning told us that after working in a meat factory for

one year and being appalled and sickened by the treatment of the animals and the lack of health standards, he

vowed to never eat meat again until he could obtain it from a clean and humane source. Although it took him

ten years, he stuck to his word and now raises chickens, cows, and pigs that can live the lives they were meant

to lead. At Sweet Grass Farms, I was touched by Scott’s fondness for his “girls”, and the way he spoke gently to

his cows and emphasized the importance of “speaking their language” and minimizing stress. It was clear that

he loved his cows and he manifested this love by providing them with healthy, top quality pasture, allowing

them to roam and interact and be cows, and by interacting with them on their terms. I was glad to hear that Scott

has his steers slaughtered on his own property in the most humane way possible, unlike the vast majority of

other cattle and dairy farmers who have their cows shipped away to a slaughtering house so they don’t have to

deal with the reality of killing another sentient being. Both Henning and Scott deeply respected their animals

and rather than desensitizing themselves and distancing themselves from their deaths, they embrace it and

acknowledge the sacrifice the animal makes in having its life taken from it.

Henning and Scott both know that everything about their operations hinges on healthy soil, and both are

committed to promoting biodiversity. Henning wasn’t at all perturbed that rabbits had eaten all his winter kale,

and Scott told us about how the waterfowl living in the ponds on his property had increased dramatically since

he cleaned the land up. They also care about the community in which they farm and both are open to sharing

their land with others and educating them about what they do. Henning offers internships, speaks at many

conferences, and has educated thousands of people of all ages about biodynamic farming. Like Henning, Scott

offers tours of his farm and believes transparency is very important, and he extended an invitation to us to visit

anytime whether to camp out or watch calving.

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Scott and Henning do, however, have different approaches to farming based on very different backgrounds

and acquisitions of knowledge. Scott has had a blue-collar, on-the-ground life in which he made a living via

intensive manual labor in a variety of very resource-extractive jobs such as fishing, logging, and welding.

Therefore he sees farming in a very practical, business-oriented light. Scott relies on his farm for his bread and

butter, and thus must approach it as a business with customers and profit margins and everything else that goes

along with it. His view of his farm as first and foremost a business endeavor is most notably illustrated in that

he specializes in only one product, Kobe beef. While he does believe in adhering as closely as possible to

organic standards, he said he views biodynamic agriculture as more of a “religion” that he personally doesn’t

need. He believes biodynamic practices are great if they keep a person focused on caring for the land and

animals and producing a top quality product, but he doesn’t see it as producing anything superior to regular

organic agriculture.

In contrast, Henning has had largely a white-collar existence, and though he too has worked hard throughout

his life, his work was completed mostly in the liberal, intellectual, university sector. Thus it doesn’t come as a

surprise that Henning has an entirely different way of approaching farming. He read Rudolf Steiner’s

philosophical works on Goethe and was a biodynamic farmer long before he was familiar with the term. His life

is characterized by his anthroposophical outlook and believes harmony with astral forces is key to farming and

that biodynamic agriculture is a way of life. Another important feature distinguishing Henning from Scott is that

Henning acquired plenty of capital from being a university professor prior to farming. This means that he is able

to approach his farm as a lifestyle rather than a business. He doesn’t have to focus on marketing or selling his

food and thus is freer to conduct experiments (such as his trial crop of winter potatoes) and produce a diverse

array of food on a small scale for just his family to consume.

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February 7, 2010
ESTU 410 Midterm

Sources

Cimitile. Matthew. “Crops Absorb Livestock Antibiotics, Science Shows”.

January 6, 2009. Environmental Health News.
< http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/antibiotics-in-crops>

Koons Garcia, Deborah. The Future of Food. Lily Films. 2004.

Leutwyler, Kristin. “Most U.S. Antibiotics Fed to Healthy Livestock”.

January 10, 2001. Scientific American. < http://www.scientificamerican.com/article>

Public Broadcasting Station. “American Experience: Timeline of Farming in the U.S.”.

WGBH Educational Foundation. 2009.
< http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/trouble/timeline/>

Roberts, Paul. The End of Food. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing

Company: New York, NY. 2008.

Schilthuis, Willy. Biodynamic Agriculture. Floris Books: Edinburgh, Scotland. 2003.

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The Resilience Institute. 2010. San Juan Farm Prosperity Workshop. February 8, 2010.
hh<http://courses.wwu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?url=/bin/common/course.pl?
course_id=_1807hh9_1&frame=top>