This is part three of a series of articles penned by Jonathan Wright, a Calgary area farmer and co-founder of one of the city’s first community supported agriculture programs. Jon operates a zero-emission farm called Thompson Small Farm near Carbon, Alberta with his partner Andrea.
Thompson Small Farm uses animal power for as many tasks as possible here. This is not an attempt to “turn back the clock” nor a vote of non-confidence in technology. It is rather a reflection of a basic truth: the horse and the ox are, to date, the only “solar-powered tractors” we have. Their fuel comes from the land, from the sun. Their wastes go back into nurturing that land. In this way, they are a “technology” that not only can be entirely supported on-farm, they return this support on a biological, as well as on an economic level. They enable the farm to function as a largely self-contained ecosystem.
There are other advantages of using animal power, too:
- Draft animals tread lightly on the land. Compared to machinery used for farming and woodlot management, they do minuscule damage;
- They cost vastly less than mechanized equipment (both to purchase and to maintain), they don’t depreciate as rapidly, and they don’t break down as often, and are often “self-repairing” when they do;
- The machinery used with draft animals is also far less expensive than mechanized machinery, and in many cases you don’t need to be a technician to fix it;
- They can work soil that’s wet enough to bog down machinery;
- Their slower pace gives you plenty of time to think while you work, making you less likely to get hurt in an accident compared to operating fast, noisy, powerful equipment;
- They offer companionship. No one develops the rapport with a rototiller or a tractor that a teamster inevitably has with a team;
- They don’t create global environmental and social turmoil as does the burning of hydrocarbons. (It is common for an agribusiness operation in Alberta today to burn $50,000 or more worth of diesel fuel in a single growing season at last year’s prices. In fact, it has been estimated that if all the world’s farmers conducted agriculture like we do in North America, we would run out of oil in about another 15 years.)
We train our own draft animals here using primarily natural, gentle, gradual methods. In supporting our farm, people are thus helping preserve notonly rare breeds, but “endangered skills” as well! Skills we are eager to pass on to others.
All is not paradise here, however, climate aside. While our twenty acres is an oasis of native grass, bottom swale and the virgin garden plots where we grew good food, we are surrounded by a vast landscape of inert planting medium that was once rich prairie soil. The empire of the Agri-Industrialists. Living with this presence is not necessarily the rural bliss of yore. Take harvest time for the industrialists. Living right next to our normally very quiet road, this is an awful time of the year for us. Battalions of combines whine all day and well into the night as we try to sleep. Convoys of eighteen-wheelers pass our place at intervals of about every half-hour, sometimes until almost midnight. Everything is dust – our house, our pasture, our animals, our sky even. The atmosphere looks as though we are experiencing a south-eastern level of humidity, but it is not moisture, it is dust, as far as the eye can see, and that’s a long, long way out here. Dust kicked up day and night by this army of machines waging war on the land, huge piglets on the petroleum sow roaring “let’s see how much diesel we can burn this year!!!”
There is nothing about this situation that resembles “farming” as we understand it. This is because it is not. It is agribusiness. Whenever the agribusiness has business in our neighborhood, quality of life plummets. The onslaught is relentless while it lasts, the pace frantic, panicked even, the environment dangerous. I daren’t let the dogs out, and I worry our horses will get the heaves from breathing so much of the pulverized earth into their lungs. I occasionally prevail upon the owner of this particular empire – “Would you please water the road down?”… “Would you mind not running your convoys for all of our long weekend?”… “Would you please not spread your strychnine along my fenceline where my animals are liable to get at it and die a hideous death”… “Tell your men to slow down before….!” … After speaking to me briefly in the tone of a used car salesman trying to give me the business, this ‘farmer’, one of the largest operators in an area of large operators, always has the same answer – “We’ll see what we can do, Jon.” And we see that what he can do never amounts to much, although his drivers have become more respectful, insofar as respect can have anything to do with the operation of eighteen-wheeler convoys on a quiet rural road. What he has proven he can do repeatedly, if not intentionally, is step all over our toes in a fashion I would never dream of doing to him nor anyone else. But this is the problem not just with today’s agribusiness, it is the problem inherent in being “BIG”. Show me a “big man”, show me a big concern, show me a big business, show me a big city and I will show you people and environments being disrespected. It cannot be helped. It’s the law of critical mass beyond which everything goes downhill.
For all of this frenzy, I have heard that Mr. Big’s concern is not always doing well these days. The cows that stand around in their own ordure for weeks on end as they’re “finished” for slaughter are not always paying the bills. This was inevitable, of course. Unsustainable is unsustainable, and as we have seen over the past few months, being BIG – nay – being GI-BLOODY-GANTIC doesn’t change this natural law. I wish my neighbors well, of course, and sincerely hope their operation goes straight down the toilet (as they likely wish I would.) Good riddance, as this would be best for all humanity. When all the massive agribusiness concerns of the world finally hit the wall of their own disgusting reality, perhaps then, and perhaps only then, can we move decisively on to a better way.
In the meantime, we must prepare. Spring is in the air, and with it hope eternal. It’s almost time to hitch the team again!
Jonathan Wright has been a fur-trapper, a farm laborer, a fitness instructor, a songwriter under Nashville contract, a working falconer, and mostly a conservationist. He is the Canadian authority on the bullsnake, our largest, and has published scientific papers on snakes and wolverines, based on his life-long field experience and in the case of the latter animal his pioneering work involving the use of remote cameras to identify individuals in a low-impact way. He believes the future of man depends on a return to simpler, less technologically and industrially dense models, and of course local sufficiency. At the root of this is the mixed family farm. “We will not be saved by more research.”
