Galen's Letter To The Editor

Galen Chadwick--Letter to the editor, News-Leader


Growing together
Producing food main concern on crowded planet.
December 11, 2008


Now for something different. Kids squeal in delight when their hamster can't keep up with its running cage. You know the moment -- when the hapless animal flattens against the spinning mesh, bug-eyed, flying around and around. Thus the world through a child's eyes, but the image hits a little closer to home, for most adults. Does this analogy remind anyone of their working life? Promises of political reform betrayed? (fill in your own blank here).

Our hopes for a sustainable future are looking a little flat, too. We don't seem to be making much headway against geopolitical instability, structural poverty, diminishing resources. The other day, CNN was scrolling "Nuclear detonation on U.S. soil likely within five years?" Say again? And so we look at each other, look at the spinning cage beneath our feet and pump harder.
We know the facts. The net increase in human population is a million every 3.3 days. We are a species in full swarm with no credible plan for a peaceful, sustainable future. We have no leadership at any level of governance. Not one politician has articulated a plan for slowing down the wheel. Instead, the shrill refrain is "Globalization cannot be stopped!" Whether Obama or McCain, their plan for "reform" is finding a better-working definition of insanity. The truth: A perpetual-growth economy imposed upon a finite and fragile planet is nuts.

The single most important human event is the annual harvest. Whatever else we do for a living, whatever creative ways we find to divide ourselves over politics and religion must now come second. It has always come second. Under corporate collectivization, only 2 percent of our population actually knows how to farm. Our food depends upon a transport-based global economy. Our local and regional economies have been undermined to the extent that our towns and cities are no longer wholly or even partially self-sufficient in energy, food supplies, building materials, shoes or clothing.

The economic ties that once underpinned Springfield are largely gone. A shadow government of lawyer-politicians and multinational banks have supplanted local economic autonomy and our capacity to be free. It's not like the last Great Depression, when 70 percent or so of the people lived on farms, and had enough laid by to get through six months of winter. Think about it. The leap between martial law, endless soup lines and your next bowl of Wheaties is two assumptions: the uninterrupted flow of cheap oil (we have no substitute), and the continuation of business-as-usual at every level.

Napolean said this about politics: "When opposing beliefs reach parity (50-50 percent) then power (to rule them) is laying in the streets." In this ongoing spiral of crisis and unmaking, our hot-diggety little distinctions of left, right, victim and oppressor will soon divide us into total helplessness. How interesting that we have managed to run a nearly perfect split in the electorate for some 35 years now, but can't grow the first carrot? And we say hamsters aren't too bright.

How to break the chain? We need to start treating each other as neighbors again. The 1,000 Gardens project (currently in formation) was created to show us how. Scores of volunteers are ready to re-establish our food security by creating an edible urban landscape. Let us garden together and share our food, if we cannot think of anything else. Let us find something to admire in each other. If you have the time, energy, or tools for the 1,000 gardens campaign, please contact info@wellfedneighbor.com

We will get in touch. Give us a few weeks to prepare; learn all you can about sustainability, permaculture, and composting in the meantime. Then we can start putting in beautiful organic, heirloom-true gardens everywhere -- all across this lovely, lovely city we call our home.