How I Have Felt for a While Now

Joshua Johnson

Dr. John Reganold

Soil Science 101

3 April 2014

Why I Want to Farm Organically

For thousands of years, humans grew crops using their own hands, their own livestock, and their own simple tools. In the years following the Great War, statesmen declared that food production needed to increase. Coupled with the Industrial Revolution, the United States government subsequently subsidized big agriculture in order to produce food for millions, both domestically, for Americans, and abroad, for the European nations recovering from the World Wars. At this time, farmers, government officials, and the people traded quality for quantity.

From the vantage point from which we stand today, this decision to industrialize farming seems foolhardy, especially to those of us who value health over hard cash. It is not really the mechanization that represents the problem, but the synthetic materials lavishly applied to our crops nowadays — insecticides, pesticides, fertilizers, and most recently, transgenes.

I want to do organic agriculture for a reason that may be more romantic than realistic — to get back to nature. I want to work with the land to see how this amazing world works. I want to follow the seasons. I want to walk in the path in which our ancestors have walked for millennia. It may be more out of dissatisfaction with the suburbia in which I grew up and a yearning for something more, but it is still something that I want to do. I am tired of sitting cooped up inside, studying. I am going blind due to the computer. I want to be free. I want to be outdoors. I could become a wilderness ranger or I could go Into the Wild, but unless I can forge or hunt, I probably would not be able to procure food. So organic farming presents itself as the next best thing. I can be outside, enjoying nature, while working at the same time, and producing food for the future. Not only would I be feeding myself, but also my family, friends, community, and world. I would also be contributing to the overall health of the world, since I would not be spraying Round-Up, which is inundating the world and taking a long time to break down. I would not be spreading transgenics into the environment. I would be replenishing and building the soil. I would be preserving genetic flora diversity. I would be tending animals and allowing them to run free and roam around in rotations. The livestock would aerate the soil and poop and pee, producing nitrogen and nutrients for the fields. I would move the livestock each day. And I would feel rewarded for doing all this work and receiving a crop at the end.

In short, it may be romantic, but it is one of the few lifestyles I can actually imagine myself doing. And I would be learning daily, and would be living a beautiful life. To summarize, I want to farm organically to provide healthy food for the world, to do satisfying work, and to fill up my senses with God’s good, green world. What more could a man want?