Starved for Science

Well, the weird weather patterns appear to be continuing on into the spring which has farmers in this area frazzled to say the least. To plant or not to plant? What is the magic insurance date again? How cold can the wheat get? You get the idea.

So with spring preparations happening early and the usual busyness of three kids, pre-school, dance class, soccer and perpetual ear infections, Justin and I have had little time to process this latest trip to Rwanda. Until last night.

A good friend, fellow NewSong groupie and SLU professor invited us to speak to a class she teaches on sustainability which we gladly accepted. This gave us a great opportunity to talk about how far the project has come and things we're excited about for the future of the farm sites.

The students were wonderful, asked great questions and were very gracious with our technical shortcomings. But, inevitably, when we show pictures of clearing trees and start talking about synthetic fertilizers and drought tolerant corn, questions and criticisms arise about the environmental impact of what we're doing and we find ourselves defending modern farming practices and warning against the danger of throwing out the baby with the bath water when it comes to agricultural science.

One of the best books we've ever read on this subject is "Starved for Science by Robert Paarlberg. He blames nonproductive farming for Africa becoming the only region on Earth where human poverty and hunger both continue to increase. He writes, " In Africa, farmers today are not engaged in specialized factory farming. They are planting heirloom varieties in poly-cultures rather than scientifically improved varieties in monoculture. They have a food system that is traditional, local, nonindustrial, and very slow. Using few purchased inputs, they are de facto organic." Sounds dreamy and wholesome right? a lot like the animated picture recently used in a certain Chipotle ad? He finishes this thought by saying, "And as a consequence they remain poor and poorly fed."

We're not saying everyone has to farm like we do in the States to be profitable. Organic farming certainly has a place here and abroad. But shouldn't farmers everywhere be given the choice of how they want to farm? Shouldn't African farmers have access to the same technologies and knowledge base that we do?

So, we were grateful once again for the chance to stretch the minds of people who can sometimes cast farmers as the villains. By the end of our talk we had somehow convinced the group to shift all of the blame for any environmental impact issues they had to golf course managers. Job well done I'd say.

And as an added bonus, we got to Pappy's just in time to snag the very last rack of ribs of the night. Awesome.