God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” Genesis 1:28
“In mature materiality it will be useful to trace the crisis of scarcity/abundance all through the process from farm to table. First, we may consider processes of food production around the question of scarcity and abundance. This issue comes down to a contrast between the family farm and industrial agriculture.
It is not romantic to notice that food locally grown on family farms or through local gardening efforts sustained society for a long time. The industrial revolution, however, introduced more advanced technology and larger farm equipment that made it possible (and necessary?) for a single farmer to manage larger farming tracts.
But of course, investment in more costly equipment made it necessary to maximize production, and the maximization of production required the purchase of more acreage that in turn displaced the family farm. Production was further advanced by chemical fertilizers and by food cartels that control farm production through contractual arrangements and that have no interest in the farm, the land, the farmer, or even the quality of the food.
The illusion of industrial agriculture is that such production could feed the world and indeed must feed the world, because the harvest of local efforts is taken to be too modest and therefore ineffective. The outcome is food that is “bechemicaled” (what a marvelous word!).”
Walter Brueggemann in Materiality As Resistance: Five Elements for Moral Action in the Real World (Louisville: WJKP, 2020), 32.
I grew up in Ohio and my family ran Hoag’s Greenhouses for 82 years. We grew tomatoes and cucumbers in a hot house or greenhouse setting. People would drive for miles to come buy our tomatoes and cucumbers for the quality of the flavor and because we used organic growing methods rather than chemicals.
Along with most growers, we previously used chemicals, as experts told us too. But I recall switching to more organic methods to care for the soil and increase quality and yield. We implemented nutrient feeding, drip irrigation, and even released “hit bugs” to eat the white flies rather than spraying dangerous pesticides.
Why write about the bechemicaled nature of food production today in contrast to farm to table production? Our first task as steward relates to creation, and we are killing. World authority in organic plant protection, Dr. Milan Hluchý of Czech Republic has taught me that if we kill it with poisons we destroy ourselves and any hope future generations.
Generosity comes into view as creation care. Pause and ask yourself: What patterns in my purchasing and my stewardship can avoid polluting and poisoning God’s creation?
Work is going well in Nepal. We have sensed many spiritual attacks so please keep our team in your prayers. Today’s an historic day. We host the accountability event with influential Christian workers from every province in the nation. We pray to activate a working group to bring peer accountability to Nepal.