Kiss the Ground by Josh Tickell

Author:Josh Tickell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria/Enliven Books

JOHN OF COWS

Dr. Jeff Creque tells me that biocybernetics is a new way of looking at biology where all things are connected. For Creque, a farm is not a farm. Instead it’s a “system” with many interrelating pieces. This is also true with a rangeland “ecosystem,” in which numerous biological processes are constantly interacting. There’s a “flow” of chemical compounds through millions, billions, or even trillions of biological organisms.

This dance of life in service of agriculture was first codified by Rudolf Steiner; then by farmers in Brittany; then by a French biochemist and farmer named André Voisin, who published three books in the 1950s and ’60s; then by the oft-loved (and sometimes hated) Allan Savory; recently by “radical” farmers like Joel Salatin; and now by people like those working in the Marin Carbon Project.

Says Creque, “Our agriculture for many years has been all about manipulating the components of systems and we focus on individual nutrients or the manipulation of individual variables. But from a systems perspective that’s an entirely erroneous way to look at the world. If we begin to look at our farming systems as systems, if we begin to look at our cultural ecology as a system, then a lot of our problems begin to make much more sense.”

Creque contrasts this with our modern industrial agricultural system, which relies on chemical inputs. “What we’re doing today is undermining the very ecology we’re dependent on,” he says. “The long-term prognosis for our survival on this planet given business as usual is very, very poor. The dead zones around our coastlines globally resulting from the discharge of sediments and chemical fertilizers and pesticides and herbicides from our current farming systems cover a huge percentage. We are literally killing ourselves with the food production system we have today. To suggest that we need that system to feed ourselves, I would have to describe as the ravings of a lunatic.”

It doesn’t matter what type of agriculture you do, Dr. Creque says, you will always alter nature. “The only way we can manage an ecosystem is by disturbing it,” he explains. “Even allowing an ecosystem to rest from the historical disturbance constitutes disturbance relative to the previous pattern of management. So the question becomes: What type of disturbance, what frequency of disturbance, what intensity of disturbance, is needed to achieve enhanced carbon capture on that landscape?”

Both John Wick and Jeff Creque agree that humans often misinterpret the visual signals of what kind of “disturbance” is going to move a “system” in the right direction. Wick gives an example from his own misinterpretation. He tells me, “When we started management of this ranch we were a little conflicted. We’d eat meat, but we did not like cattle. We believed the cattle were destructive to the environment and the very first thing we did was evict the young man who had grazing leases to this rangeland.” But removing the cattle had the opposite effect from what he had hoped to achieve. “That actually caused a cascade of collapse to the ecosystem,” says John.

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