"Zucchini flower sans zucchini" by Kenneth Moyle

Anatoth Community Garden’s founder, Fred Bahnson, spent a season starting garden workdays (and our garden network meetings) by reading a poem. You’d be surprised how smoothly a strategic planning meeting goes after everyone in the room has spent a few minutes quietly listening to something beautiful. Fred ended all his emails that year with three lines from Rainier Marie Rilke: “Though he works and worries, the farmer never reaches down to where the seed turns into summer. The earth grants.”  On stressful days, when my inbox was full, those lines of poetry were welcome reminders to, as the bumper sticker says, “Let go and let God.”

I haven’t had too many meetings with Fred these past couple of years, but I try to keep a little poetry in my days to keep me on track. In honor of National Poetry Month, I’d like to share with you three poems that I find myself turning to often.

First is who will be the messenger of this land by North Carolina poet Jackie Shelton Green, a copy of which stays taped to the filing cabinet beside my desk. Green’s poem starts with a call to remember the history of North Carolina’s woods and farms, including the painful history of slavery and dispossession. She asks:

who will help this land to
remember its birthdays, baptisms
weddings, funerals, its rituals
denials, disappointments,
and sacrifices

…

who will remember
to unbury the unborn seeds
that arrived
in captivity
shackled, folded…

And then she reminds us, that despite – and sometimes because of – these histories, we have the power to create beauty and nourishment, for ourselves, our land, and our communities:

we are their messengers
with singing hoes
and dancing plows
with fingers that snap
beans, arms that
raise corn, feet that
cover the dew falling from
okra, beans, tomatoes

Too many North Carolinians, especially those in rural and food insecure communities, still find themselves in hurtful, desperate situations. Green’s poem reminds us that facing those struggles head-on can lead to places of beauty and joy that can sustain us.

The second poem is the very different Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front by Wendell Berry, who is from neighboring Kentucky. Berry’s “mad farmer” reminds the reader that not everything can be boiled down to logic.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
…

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

In community gardens and at community meals around our state, I’ve seen people of faith who live this out, people who are willing to tackle logistics and budgets, but who started their ministries without knowing exactly how things would work. They got started because they felt called to do something, not because they knew how to do it.  It’s not something you’ll hear me suggest at any “how-to” workshop, but this philosophy has resulted in several incredible ministries that touch the lives of thousands of people in our state. Berry reminds us that sometimes doing the foolish thing is the best way to do something lasting, meaningful and holy.

The last poem I want to share with you is Sarah Lindsay’s Zucchini Shofar. Lindsay uses a moment of ritual during a Jewish wedding to illustrate the beauty and blessing that lie in the seasons of a garden and the temporary pleasures of good food:

No animals were harmed in the making of this joyful noise:
A thick, twisted stem from the garden
is the wedding couple’s ceremonial ram’s horn.
Its substance will not survive one thousand years,
nor will the garden, which is today their temple,
nor will their names, nor their union now announced
with ritual blasts upon the zucchini shofar.
Shall we measure blessings by their duration?

This poem usually finds its way onto the wall beside my monitor come conference-planning season. When it comes time to gather people of faith from all over the state to eat a meal together and talk about food, farming, and faith for a day, I like to return to this light-hearted poem and its reminder that passing moments and hour-long meals can be just as holy as things that last. “Do we want butter that endures for ages, or butter that melts into homemade cornbread now?,” Lindsay asks. I’ll take choice number two.

What about you? Do you have any favorite poems about faith, food, gardens, and farms? If so, please share them in the comments!

The Duke Divinity School Center for Reconciliation is now accepting applications for the 2012 Summer Institute, “The Ministry of Reconciliation in a Divided World,” to be held May 28 – June 2 on the campus of Duke University.  The Summer Institute is designed to nourish, renew, and deepen the capacities of Christian leaders in the ministry of reconciliation, justice, and peace. Participants will experience in-depth teaching by world-class theologians and ministry practitioners, prayer and worship, shared meals, vibrant conversations, and opportunities to reflect on their own vocation and setting. In depth seminars are designed for participants with a range of expertise and experience, and include specific seminars for leaders in congregations, denominations, and academic institutions.

Among the seminars offered will be  “Making Peace with the Land: God’s Call to Reconcile with Creation,” taught by Norman Wirzba and Fred Bahnson.  Wirzba serves as Research Professor of Theology, Ecology and Rural Life at Duke Divinity School, while Bahnson is a North Carolina-based writer and scholar of church-based agricultural ministry.  Wirzba and Bahnson believe that reconciliation with the land is fundamental to the biblical vision of Christ’s redemption of the cosmos. Members of their seminar will explore God’s role in scripture as a gardener and how our reconciliation with God is inextricably linked to the soil upon which our lives depend. The seminar will reflect on how the practice of gardening teaches us to be creatures and to participate in God’s ongoing redemption of creation, why recent Christian and Jewish projects in sustainable agriculture are becoming front-runners of reconciliation, and how good eucharistic table manners can redeem the problems of hunger, climate change, and the ill health of land and creatures.

Applications for the Summer Institute will be accepted for rolling admission through April 1, 2012 at dukesummerinstitute.com.

The future site of an "Outgrow Hunger" greenhouse, located near Ashe Outreach Ministries (right) and a community bandstand (left)

The Appalachian mountains of Ashe County are still covered in snow this time of year, but community leaders, churches, and farmers have already met to plan for the 2012 growing and harvesting seasons. This will be the pilot year of an effort called Outgrow Hunger, which aims to source Ashe County food pantries with 90,000 pounds per year of fresh produce from regional gardeners and commercial growers.  The effort is spearheaded by Travis Birsdsell, a local deacon and landscape horticulturalist, and Rob Brooks, a UMC pastor and the director of Ashe Outreach Ministries, which runs a food pantry, a community kitchen, a meals-on-wheels program, and backpack buddies for local school children.

Local Food a “Necessity”, not a Luxury

Supplying food pantries with more local food is not just about increasing nutrition and connecting with regional producers; it’s becoming a necessity in order for food pantries to survive. Rob says that while food pantry demand has increased 53% nationally, government food supply to these programs has been cut by two-thirds.

In Ashe County, this shift is exacerbated by high unemployment and poverty rates.  In the past decade, three major manufacturing facilities have closed, taking 2,500 jobs and leaving residents either unemployed or underemployed. Seventy percent of children receive reduced lunch at school, and healthy meals and exercise are so irregular that, like many places in North Carolina, about a third of young children are overweight or obese.

Ashe Outreach Ministries is one of several emergency food relief agencies in the county that provide support and resources to families, and in the past few years, Ashe Outreach has incorporated local food production into its ministry, from running a demonstration garden called the “Pastors’ Backporch”  to taking donations of sweet potatoes from local growers. Ashe Outreach already receives about 40,00 pounds of produce a year, and 15,000 of this is regionally produced and delivered by Second Harvest. Outgrow Hunger builds upon the lessons and success of these existing initiatives, and despite the challenges of the area, Rob and Travis have faith that with the right partnerships, they will start to transform how Ashe County feeds itself.

Tapping into the County’s Resources

Rob puts it simply: “We want to be able to tap into the best resources in Ashe County, and that’s growing food. We have good land, food people, and good growers.” He calculates that if 50 large-scale growers were to grow slightly more of their crop and tithe 2 produce pallets as a tax-deductible donation to Outgrow Hunger, the program would receive 50,000 pounds of produce per year. Having worked for years in agriculture, Travis knows that farmers rarely have the time or resources for additional work that doesn’t generate income, so he and Rob are developing a volunteer and distribution system that would allow them to pick up produce and drop it off to food pantries or bring it to the Ashe Outreach kitchen for processing.

While commercial growers provide the majority of produce in this model, Outgrow Hunger also hopes to increase backyard and community food production. Travis will work with local gardeners to plant an extra row for the hungry and when necessary, will help them plan a garden that can feed their family and produce an additional 10% for donation back to Outgrow Hunger. Faith groups will hopefully join Travis in helping set up educational garden sites and providing materials to low-income families interested in growing food. As one member of the planning group notes, these efforts feed into the independent spirit of Ashe County: “We have that Appalachian pride, and we want to be [self-sufficient] and feed ourselves”.

Self-suffiency looks different in Ashe County than it does in a more urban setting. With the exception of a few demonstration gardens located at Ashe Outreach Ministries or a church, Outgrow Hunger is not advocating community gardens. It’s impossible to find a centrally located place that families would access regularly without having to spend gas money or coordinate transportation. Instead, Travis and volunteers will go to families’ backyards, help set up gardens, and require participants to make only occasional trips for workshops on harvesting, cooking, and processing. Instead of buying starters from elsewhere, Outgrow Hunger is partnering with the high school greenhouse and building its own greenhouse to raise starters for transplant in backyard gardens.

Extending the Shelf Life of Local Produce: Freezing for the Winter

If Outgrow Hunger receives donations from farmers and gardeners, where will all the produce go? Some of it will supply Ashe Outreach Community Meals and go directly to recipients. However, most food pantries in Ashe County lack the storage space or numbers of weekly recipients to accommodate Outgrow Hunger’s anticipated produce volume. Rob’s solution is to store produce in a donated refrigerated truck near the Ashe Outreach kitchen, and for volunteer teams to make soups and stews from the produce and other donated ingredients, including local venison from Hunters for the Hungry. Volunteer teams will freeze the product in quart-sealed bags that food pantry recipients can take home and store in their own freezers.

At the Outgrow Hunger meeting in early February, it was clear that as much as people plan, organize, and and pray, part of the program’s strength will be in its ability to deal with surprises. Apple trees have started budding because of the warm winter, but a cold snowy front just moved in. Rob says that they had hoped to invite apple growers to join the project, but growers might have a low yield this year: “You can’t quantify agriculture, so the best thing we can do is develop a system that will handle whatever comes.”  Travis notes that patience will also be important. “It might take a few years,” he says, “but I’m very optimistic about this. [...] I have a lot of hope that we can come together as a community and start feeding ourselves.”

You can read an earlier profile of Ashe Outreach Ministries in our 2008 guidebook.  

Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.  And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day…

Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.”

- Genesis 1: 11-13, 29, N.I.V.

God gives people plants and seeds for farming as a gift in the first chapter of Genesis. Genesis tells us God created plants and their seeds, “each according to its kind,” called them good, and gave to humans to eat. For generations, farmers and gardeners have honored this gift, tending and improving their crops.

We, the members of the Rural Life Committee of the North Carolina Council of Churches, celebrate God’s gift of agricultural diversity and the good stewardship of that gift by generations of farmers. We support just and fair options for farmers and a secure food supply for those in need. We recognize that our actions affect people across the globe.

When addressing the concentration of ownership in agriculture and the development of genetically modified seeds, we consider: Who benefits? What are those benefits?  What are the true costs? Who will pay them? Are there more sustainable, appropriate, cost-effective and just alternatives?

The Problem

The science of seed development has documented benefits, but those benefits have come at a cost to our people and our planet. Those costs are too high, for farmers here inNorth Carolinaand around the world. At the root of those costs is the question of ownership.

Corporate concentration

In recent decades, seeds and its genetic material belong to a shrinking number of corporations instead of to farmers themselves. In 2005, the top 10 multinational seed firms controlled half of the world’s commercial seed sales[i]. A single firm, Monsanto, now controls 41% of the global market share in commercial corn seed, and one-fourth of the world market in soybean seeds[ii]. Most of these corporations produce not only traditional seed, but also chemical pesticides and fertilizers and genetically modified (GM) seed. Concentration is even worse in these markets. For example, Monsanto’s seeds and biotech traits were found on 88% of the land planted with GM seed worldwide in 2004.[iii]

The near-monopoly control of multiple aspects of production leads to fewer choices for farmers and consumers. Farmers and workers are losing their ability to negotiate fair contracts, buy and sell for a fair price, and make independent decisions about their farms. The rising prices of seeds show this imbalance. For instance, the average cost of cotton was slightly less than $20 a bag in 1998 and slightly less than $90 a bag in 2008. At the same time, the prices farmers receive for their products dropped.[iv]

Genetically modified seeds are sold to farmers with promises of increased yield and pest resistance and therefore lower costs and higher profit per acre. In reality, these seeds deliver increased yield and pest resistance only when they are treated with the appropriate chemicals, which are also sold by the seed company.[v]

Intellectual property rights

Farmers are becoming the renters of crop varieties instead of the caretakers and owners. The companies own more than the seeds; they own the seeds’ genetic codes. Farmers do not have the right to save seeds from their crops for replanting. The largest of these corporations, Monsanto, has collected an estimated $85 million or more from U.S.farmers for alleged patent infringement – in other words, for growing crops with a genetic code that Monsanto owned, even if farmers had no knowledge that their crop was contaminated with genetically modified material.[vi]

Food security

Genetically modified seeds were also advertised as a solution to international food insecurity. Although companies have talked about developing seeds that supply nutrients or survive drought, their research has focused on seeds that are resistant to herbicides or toxic to pests. No drought-resistant or nutritionally-enhanced seed has ever been made available to farmers. The famous Golden Rice, which made the cover of Time Magazine in 2000, never made it to market.[vii] Hunger is a question of a shortage of justice, not a shortage of food, as political instability, poverty, gender, and social factors determine who has access to safe, nutritious food.[viii]

Loss of biodiversity

God’s gift of biodiversity allows us to adapt our food supply to changing conditions and survive in varied environments. Biodiversity on farms is decreasing fast. Corporately-owned seed varieties displace locally adapted and heirloom varieties of crops.[ix] Biotechnology addresses one challenge at a time, producing crops resistant to a certain pest or herbicide. Uniform hybrid and GMO crops are quickly being outpaced by weeds and pests and have limited ability to adapt to climate change. Biodiversity will be critical as we meet the challenges of the future.

Loss of breeding capacity

Farmers and public institutions are losing their capacity for classical plant and animal breeding. Restrictive patents and license agreements on corporately-owned plant varieties make those seeds off-limits to public breeders. Public seeds and breeds will be needed to meet the challenges of changing climates and new markets.

Conclusion

GMO seeds have not given us the promised benefits: higher profits for family farms, less use of pesticides, and greater food security for hungry people in the developing world. Instead, they have increased farmers’ costs, limited farmers’ choices, and increased dependency on chemical inputs. They have led to the loss and genetic contamination of traditional crops, which are available for free to farmers and which offer the best chance of food security in a changing environment.

The Solutions

Consumers and people of faith can make personal choices that encourage just stewardship of diverse agricultural seeds, including buying GMO-free foods, planting heirloom varieties of seeds in home and community gardens, learning to save those seeds, and supporting farmers who grow and adapt traditional varieties of plants.

We can also ask our elected leaders to take steps to protect seeds and farmers. These include increasing funding for public plant and animal breeding, enforcing anti-trust laws, and encouraging local control over food production.

Public plant and animal breeding develops crop varieties that belong to the public, not to a corporation, and provides choices for farmers. More federal research funds should be dedicated to this kind of breeding.

Breaking up monopolies and enforcing anti-trust laws will provide the competition and choices that are the basis of a healthy capitalist system.

Decentralizing the food system will empower farmers to find solutions suited to their particular land and situation. For example, research into organic and near-organic farming methods involving almost two million farms showed that these methods can increase crop yields dramatically and provide long-lasting benefits in both crop yields and resistance to flood and drought, all without expensive chemical fertilizers and pesticides [x].

These three steps will provide farmers with the range of choices they need, and increase our chances for a stable, diverse, fair food supply. Farmers must have the right to choose the best seeds and methods for their farms. Public ownership of seeds, more competitive seed markets, and the availability of information and research on diverse methods of farming will all increase farmers’ choices.

Call to Faithful Action

As we read in the first chapter of Genesis, agricultural seeds and their diversity are one of God’s first gifts. As we work to be good stewards of God’s gifts, we must honor and protect diverse seeds and the farmers who tend them. The Rural Life Committee of the North Carolina Council of Churches calls people of faith and our elected leaders to take action.

We call for the good stewardship of the bountiful genetic diversity of plants that feed and sustain us.

We call for food that is produced with justice. This includes just and fair options for farmers and a secure food supply for those in need.

We call for strengthening public plant and animal breeding, enforcing anti-trust laws, and decentralizing food ownership and production so that farmers can find local solutions. These steps provide farmers with a greater range of choices and increase our chances for a stable, diverse, fair food supply.

Footnotes

At the February 2011 Come to the Table Conference in Eastern NC, a group of volunteers gathered at the house of Guillermina Garcia to help plant seeds for her garden. The group included conference participants, youth from NC Dream Team and Poder Juvenil Campesino, members of Women Without Borders, and other people from the community. In the summer, Guillermina’s garden produced so many tomatillos and tomatoes that her family could hardly keep up.  She donated boxes of produce to her church and this year hopes that the garden is again abundant enough to make salsa and sell it locally.

This spring, several volunteers who were involved in the Come to the Table work day will be starting a garden of their own.  Members of the farmworker youth group Poder Juvenil Campesino plan to grow vegetables to eat and to sell in nearby Kinston.  They hope the garden will give them a chance to learn more about growing and selling produce, including staples like potatoes and more unusual items like heirloom chiles and the Mexican herb epazote.  Come to the Table, NCField, and members of local churches are in the process of finding materials, donations, and volunteers to support the project.

It’s that time of year when gardeners begin to plan their gardens and order seed for the growing season.  For some folks, the cost and time of starting plants can be prohibitive, and that’s where Grow and Share comes in. Based in Zebulon, Grow and Share donates over 20,000 seeds and starter plants to residents of the Triangle and eastern NC every year. The non-profit provides plants and educational workshops to families, churches, and organizations in exchange for a pledge from participants to share some of their garden’s bounty with their community. Participants can make requests for Grow and Share to raise particular plants in its greenhouses in Zebulon and Wendell, and the starter plants will be available by mid-April. Grow and Share’s mission is to provide support and resources to families and groups that will consume and share the harvest, so plants are not typically available for income-generating projects.

Grow and Share founders Kay and Frank Whately cite Leviticus 19:9-10, which reads, in part, “[D]o not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest…Leave them for the poor and the foreigner,” as part of the inspiration for their work; if each gardener who receives plants from Grow and Share allocates some of the harvest for families in need, there will be more healthy, fresh food available for participants to share with neighbors or bring to local food ministries. Grow and Share’s website has a list of churches and agencies that accept fresh produce from Grow and Share participants to distribute to local residents.

If you would like to learn more about how to request plants, participate in gardening workshops, or receive donations of harvested produce, email info@growandshare.org

You can also learn more on their website and in a story from Eastern Wake News.

CORRECTION: The first version of this story stated that Grow & Share was in Wake County. This is incorrect. Grow & Share is based in Franklin County, N.C.

At each table, a host kept the conversation moving and took notes on flip-chart paper. These notes represent the combined wisdom of hundreds of leaders in farming, food security, and faith from across North Carolina.

There were plenty of concrete ideas. Some came up again and again: Buying CSA (community supported agriculture) shares as a congregation came up 18 times. Community gardens and buying local food for church events each came up more than ten times. The words “education” and “educate” showed up almost 30 times.

Some ideas were more unique: addressing transportation problems that contribute to food insecurity, making church kitchens available for canning, setting up donation stations at farmers’ markets, and creating a locally-grown lunch event around Psalm 24 (“The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it…”)

But the overriding themes made it clear that Come to the Table’s attendees were looking beyond individual projects. Participants said that simply providing food or money was not enough. They suggested focusing on root problems that cause poverty and injustice and finding ways to give people the power to eat as they wished, to feed their communities, and to grow food. One table turned an often-used metaphor on it’s head. We’ve all heard, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” That’s fine, the table wrote, but it’s time to ask the bigger question – who owns the pond?

Living in community in it’s broadest sense was mentioned by almost every table, whether that meant forming unlikely partnerships, getting to know our farmers, being in conversation with families in need, holding networking and idea-sharing events, or plugging in to existing efforts. The word community appears 59 times in the notes. As one table put it, “Food ministry is secondary. The real issue is who we are in community with.”

The full transcribed notes from all three conversations are available here: MS Word PDF

I used Wordle, an online”word doodle” tool, to condense the notes, look for themes, understand the differences between regions, and make them useful for people who may not want to read eight pages of bullet points.  The bigger the word, the more times it was used.

These notes are the result of conversations between some of the most dedicated, creative, grounded, and faithful people in our state. Come to the Table will be using the notes as a guidepost as we shape our work between now and the next conference. I hope they’ll be useful to you and your congregation as well.

Until the conferences come around again, let’s keep the conversation going. Do you have ideas? Stories about congregations that built long-term food security in their communities? Please share them in the comments!

Reposted from June 29, 2011