There are so many ways to turn this phrase, like a child's puzzle that unfolds to a new message with every twist. Food enables sovereignty: having choice over the quality of your food - its basic nature - is a kind of empowerment necessary if we're all to be creatures of free will.
Food still in the ground has a kind of wholeness, autonomy, that radiates sovereignty. When I approach the food in our garden I'm never careless with it. Though everything will either be eaten or become compost, nothing behind the garden gates is disposable. It all speaks to me of the spirit of the land. When I break off a leaf or pull a beet, I know I've disconnected it from something sacred, so I can take that sacredness into me.Food Sovereignty was mentioned at the first meeting to resurrect our local grange this last Friday. The traditional grange halls of yesterday, gathering places for our countries' farmers and ranchers, are enjoying a renaissance as hubs for green activism and community revitalization.
Just about everyone I spoke to, from retired Boomers to young Hispanic activists were aware of the need to take ownership of food production once again. Somehow we all seem to see the same writing on the wall. Local, sustainably grown organic food has to be secured for all of us, or we may lose the future. The children of migrant farm workers sat next to back-to-the-land-hippies and all nodded in agreement.
Food sovereignty, along with national sovereignty has been been a part of progressive politics for many years, if under different names. Third world countries become debt slaves to the IMF, global agri-corporations force people from their food sustaining homes and into the cities so mega-farms can be developed. The debt never goes away and the quality of food begins an inevitable decline.
Is our local effort to reclaim our own food sovereignty just a romantic fantasy? Is it anything like the spiritual sovereignty I've been writing about? How can one hold down a job and raise their own food while the middle class is being swallowed up by Wall Street? Can we ever reclaim this aspect of our national and individual sovereignty?
Recently I watched this video on the impact of a widely used pesticide on soil. It has the unwanted side affect of killing too many organisms, resulting in a vacuum that nature has seen fit to fill with an organism that kills livestock and weakens the ecosystem. Like the over-sterilization of nearly all our food, the use of pesticide tends to remove the helpful along with the harmful.
I recalled a journey I took in which the spirit of the land told me that dirt was the knowledge of the earth. When the soil is rich, filled with knowledge, it brings forth plants. When its diminished it can't bring forth anything - it becomes a blank slate. The soil itself must have its own sovereignty. When we don't respect its nature, don't contribute to that sovereign presence, life begins to fail.
One of America's oldest seed houses is about to fail. Dr. Landreths Seeds has been around since 1784. You can imagine seeds flowing out from there to farms and homes all over our country, generation after generation, each seed giving forth to another. New heirloom varieties were developed season after season. The land learned new seeds, how they grew, what they needed.
We seldom realize how much we rely on things that give by their very nature. I'm reminded of the spirit of the land receiving and giving in a gentle dance. I imagine Dr. Landreths Seeds functioning the same way. Generation after generation, it took in money and ideas and orders and gave out seeds, seeds, seeds. I don't think anyone got rich selling seeds. But they were doing the good work of the world: giving and receiving in an endless dance.
They need a million dollars by the end of this month to survive. Our government will throw billions at banks and new ways to kill people. It will take in millions in campaign contributions and look the other way as we poison the world, but it will likely not lift a finger to help America's oldest seed house. Perhaps this is a necessary loss. Seed swaps are coming back into vogue. Heirloom varieties are stowed away like contraband from one season to the next, traded with rouge delight, at places like our old grange hall. We need to localize, to get to know each other. Maybe we need to build up enough heat and pressure to forge new sovereignty to share amongst us. Loss is part of what feeds a fire of change.
I spent most of the meeting tending to my son as he ran with another boy outside on the farm where it was held. They took the land in leaps and bursts of screaming laughter, knowing there would always be dust to kick up, tomatillos to pick, and big farm dogs to wrestle with. They were soaking up the sovereignty of the land, driving it into their bones, matting their hair with it. They will come to expect that sovereign feeling, maybe even fight for it. In the very least they'll notice when its missing. Its up to each one of us to secure as much as it as we can, before we join Dr. Landreth, wherever he is now.
May peace and the sovereignty of the land be with you and yours.
