Speaking at University of Missouri last week, scientist, author, and agricultural prophet Wes Jackson spoke of our ignorance in the face of the unfathomable. He roughly quoted novelist Nicole Krauss, who stated that we do not believe in things that we cannot imagine, and then he challenged the audience to imagine them—“If your work can be finished in your lifetime,” he stated, “you’re not working hard enough.”
Wes Jackson is the father of The Land Institute, a non-profit organization doing ground-breaking research into sustainable agriculture–and not just the local problems with how to grow more and better organic crops for the farmer’s market next season, but the “10,000 year problem of agriculture” — how we harvest from the earth while maintaining essential soil structure and fertility over (geologic) time. The Land Institute researches “herbaceous perennial seed-producing polycultures,” a.k.a., staple grain crops that can be inter-planted and harvested without clean-tilling year after year. Their work is a bold and vital agricultural endeavor, and it also offers profound and directive metaphors for student organizing for real food.
As student activists, we are both impaired and empowered by our age. We lack neither energy nor enthusiasm for our work, but we could greatly enrich it by studying up, and creatively planning ahead for issues we think we cannot fathom. Inspired by Wes Jackson’s history, prophecy, and wit, I propose more of this for our movement: informed ignorance.
What are key moments in the history of agricultural mechanization? What about plant breeding? How has food made it to our plates, not just in terms of transportation and distribution, but in historical terms? What are the historical realities and legacies of colonization, slavery, and abolition, and all of its interconnectedness with modern food production? How do our cultural traditions in science and philosophy influence our use of land, seeds, and other natural resources?
Whoa.
Those are all huge questions, but they are also quite important ones. Are we asking them? Are we challenging ourselves to better understand the complexities of this food system concept that we throw around? Most importantly, are we sharing our learning with others, and effectively negotiating a food and agriculture knowledge-for-all?
Working with students along the various stops on this Real Food Road Trip, we have shared eager, informed dialogue regarding the food system, but also met blank stares and misunderstanding. This is no surprise! Beyond the lack of food and agricultural courses in our educational institutions, where in the aisle of an average grocery store does a consumer learn about the origin of her food? How often do children see real food growing? The realities of all that’s found in our fridge and cupboard are packed invisibly into semi-trucks and warehouses, hustled through impossibly complex supply chains, and packaged into often-unidentifiable shapes and shine. Do those of us working towards a better food system not have an obligation to try to understand how it works and how it got this way, so as to most effectively shed light upon its failings and injustices?
Responding to a question from the audience, Wes Jackson commented that currently, we are all too focused of food, when where we need to focus is on the means of producing it—the soil. We do not believe in the loss of topsoil and soil fertility (and therefore production) because we cannot fathom it, and we cannot fathom it because we do not learn about it. We are as vulnerable as the eroding topsoil if we do not enrich ourselves with knowledge about our food system, and then share and support such knowledge with others.
Just as important as increasing our understanding is the acknowledgment of its limitations. We do not and cannot know everything about everything. Quoting a letter from his friend and fellow-prophet Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson reminds us to be equally aware, accepting, and appreciative of this ignorance, stating,
“The modern scientific program has held that we must act on the basis of knowledge, which, because its effects are so manifestly large, we have assumed to be ample. But if we are up against mystery, then knowledge is relatively small, and the ancient program is the right one: Act on the basis of ignorance.”
He continues, remarking that ignorance-aware-action “forces us to remember things, causes us to hope for second chances and provides an incentive to keep the scale small.”
“Acknowledging ignorance might be the secular mind’s only way to humility,” he concludes.
My farming experiences consistently inspire curiosity that leads to self-education, coupled with wonder at mysteries ever-unknowable. I spend a lot of time reading and pondering. I can speak at length about why I believe organic production methods to be better, but have pretty limited understanding of nutrient cycles, soil science, and plant biology. I passionately argue against capitalist exploits, but cannot actually describe the details of a better economic system far beyond “buy local!” I participate in small-scale, community-based agriculture but have no idea how we appropriately scale up (spread out), and really reach oppressed, underserved communities in culturally appropriate, relevant, accessible, transformative ways. I want to know much more, and I also want to be much better at accepting the wondrous mystery of all we can never know or understand.
As we create new agricultural opportunities and build our movement, are we adequately educating ourselves and others? Our institutions do house knowledge and expertise, and do foster critical thinking, but they are also mired in money and bureaucracy and other myriad problems that have been profusely pontificated upon. Until our formal education becomes again rooted in cycles and soil, we need communities of inquiry that extend beyond institutions. I do not want to have to go to graduate school to learn real things about the very real problems we face. I do not want to have to get a PhD to inquire, research, teach, and share. I do not want to have to write seventeen books to be legitimate or powerful.
We need in our movement a collective educational enterprise, where all sorts of students can learn lots and teach and challenge each other to ask difficult, ambitious questions and explore the answers that are larger than our lifetimes. We need teach truth to power, to imagine the unfathomable and work towards it. I don’t want to hem and haw anymore, or blather on without sure footing—why really are commodity subsidies so problematic? How really are our trade regimes so unjust? What really would a real food system look like?
In the Real Food Challenge, we imagine a food system that truly nourishes consumers, produces, communities, and the earth. For many participants in our workshops, a look at our Real Food Wheel is the first time they have conceptualized the problems and opportunities in our food system in such a holistic way. While many marvel at the idea of interconnectedness, I wonder if we’re taking it far enough, reaching deep enough. We need a story for every piece of the wheel, a truth to reveal on every spoke: what is wrong here, and what we think we need to do. We need to seize the opportunity to teach and share our understanding of the failed food system, and truly imagine the details of the new, real, nourishing one. Think students have too much to learn already? I disagree. There is a bright, true spark in every student who has questioned her food– a desire to deeply understand the stuff placed on her plate everyday.
Perhaps I’ve said nothing new here—yesyesyes we need to know more, we could always know more, ever know more. How best can I say that I really mean it? I have been a privileged traveler to many places in the world where this would all seem absurd, where families have farmed the same plots for centuries, where economies are transparent because they are neighbors trading with neighbors, where good food goes without saying. Friends, we are so far from this. We are dangling, with no roots and infinite problems, and we’ve barely begun to ask the right questions that will lead to some answers.
Let’s raise the bar. Let’s enrich the soil, let’s DIG IN. Let’s build the movement by building ourselves, growing our understanding, growing our respect for what we can never understand. Let’s do our own research, and support what results. Let’s get smart and savvy, and hold each other accountable to learning and sharing our huge questions and challenging answers and informed, ignorant, learning-beyond-our-lifetimes.
I’m starting now, with some of the great resources below. Want to join me?
Start with Wes Jackson’s amazing essay, Towards an Ignorance-Based Worldview, quoted above, and then check out the great starting-point resources below. Do you have other favorite resources for self-education, for enriching our soil? Please share!
Real Food Challenge Web Resources
Why Hunger: Food Security Learning Center
Food First
Tags: farming, historical roots, ignorance, inquiry, knowledge, metaphors, mystery, resources, soil, Story, The Land Institute, Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson
The solid base of interested students. “The main purpose of having [the Real Food Road Trip] come was to get a lot of people in the same room and see who wants to work on [getting more real food on campus],” said Monica Everett. Her goal was reached, as almost 50 students participated in both workshops. They came from diverse concentrations and years, from journalism to biology, from undergraduate freshman to PhD. students (to get a taste of some of their stories, see the videos below!). We were extremely impressed by their focus and perseverance; these workshops can seem long or arduous but throughout our time together they were attentive and thoughtful. 
