Are trends in farming circular or linear? The question teases like barley chaff under the collar.
The catalyst was an old Reader’s Digest from September 1943. It was wartime then, and the content on the front-cover index reflected it. Some article titles: Old Man of Battle (about General George S. Patton.) The Husband Shortage (One out of every seven girls seems headed for spinsterhood!, says the first paragraph.) Hospital Ship Lifeline.
All were interesting, but it was The Rebirth of the American Farm that stood out.
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“Out of 25 years of witnessing revolutions, inflations and the ruin of whole nations, I knew that the nearest thing to security that unstable man could still have was the land. If I could leave my children the things which the earth could teach them, plus a farm and a big house as refuge, I would be satisfied,” the author wrote.
The author was none other than Louis Bromfield, Pulitzer prize winning novelist and American pioneer of sustainable farming concepts.
Bromfield grew up on a farm in Ohio and studied agriculture and journalism. He was a First World War veteran who later worked as a reporter. He and his family lived in France for a time, but in 1939 returned to the United States and bought Malabar Farm, which today operates as a state park.
“We worked out a Plan, thinking as European farmers think – but as American farmers have seldom thought – of our children and our children’s children. We meant to work with Nature, following her laws instead of violating them as our predecessors had done,” Bromfield wrote.
He recounts his philosophies of seeding marginal land back to pasture, restoring soil fertility and eating what can be produced in field, garden, henhouse and pasture.
According to its website, Malabar Farm State Park employs the same principles as its founder:
- A truly sustainable farm system must be sustainable economically, ecologically and socially.
- Farms should generate sufficient returns to support farm families and provide an economic base for the community.
- Agriculture should promote the physical, spiritual, cultural and economic health of farm families and communities.
It tracks almost exactly with developments toward agricultural and rural sustainability in the 21st century.
Are we seeing the progression of Bromfield’s theories 64 years later? Or has agriculture circled around to appear once again at the point where land stewardship and working with nature make the most sense?
