Why Small Organic Farming Is Indeed Radical (and Beautiful)
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At the 2010 Eco Farm Conference, Chelsea Green’s own Makenna Goodman got to witness firsthand one of the most well-attended and inspiring talks: organic farmer Eliot Coleman on the subversive power of the small farmer.
Coleman adapted his address for AlterNet. Here’s a snippet:
An observer today cannot help noticing the continuation of a trend that started at the beginning of the industrial revolution, a trend away from autonomy and independence for human beings and towards manipulation, consolidation, and control by large corporate entities. The early destruction of small farms in the 18th century drove the dispossessed peasants into the cities and a bleak existence in the “dark, satanic mills” as William Blake so aptly termed them. The propaganda in favor of becoming larger, more industrial and more centralized is so subtly pervasive and so effective that the majority of people have little idea of what has been regimented into their lives. Massive industrial conglomerates that look upon people as anonymous passive serfs, obedient cogs in a mechanistic world, now control far too many aspects of human existence. Circuses and bread, bread and circuses are presented as diversions for the masses today as they were for the masses of Rome. But it is worth noting that according to the historians, it was the Roman consolidation of land into ever-larger farms that ended up destroying Roman agriculture, and resulted in the lack of bread that led to Rome’s eventual demise.
So I’d like to suggest a foe of Rome’s power as the perfect figurehead for the small family farmer holding out indomitably against the economic forces trying to subjugate the whole planet. Our hero’s name is ASTERIX, and he is an immensely popular French comic book character. In France there is a natural connection between the persona of Asterix and the fight against all things corporate.
Asterix and his buddy Obelix live with other members of their self-reliant community in a fictional Gallic village in northwest Brittany. Asterix and Obelix hunt wild boar together and Obelix makes “menhirs”, those prehistoric stone monuments that are scattered all over Brittany. The year is 50 BC. Rome has conquered all of Gaul. Well, not quite all because this one little village of indomitable individuals is still resisting - still holding out against all the soldiers that an ever more frustrated Caesar sends against them in a vain attempt to complete his conquest. The village cannot be defeated because of the super-human strength the villagers get from a magic herbal potion produced by the resident village druid.
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