Frederick L. Kirschenmann , Ph.D. , a longtime interior and international loss leader in sustainable agriculture , shares an assignment as Distinguished Fellow for the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University — created by the Iowa legislature to rise sustainable agricultural recitation that both conserve natural resources and turn a net profit — and as President of the United States of Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Pocantico Hills , N.Y. He is also a professor in the ISU Department of Religion and Philosophy and continues to oversee the management of his family ’s 2,600 - acre certified - organic farm in south - central North Dakota .
Kirschenmann swear out on several control panel and chairman the Whiterock Conservancy , a nonprofit that manage a 5,000 - acre conservation area in west - central Iowa . He helped convoke and continues to be fighting in Agriculture of the Middle , a multi - state task force that concenter on enquiry and marketplace for mid - sized American farms . In 1978 , he help organize North Dakota Natural Farmers , which later on became the Northern Plains Sustainable Agriculture Society . He help found Farm Verified Organic , Inc. , an international secret constitutional - certification agency , and served as president for 10 years . He is the former director of the Leopold Center and has held legion assignment , include to the USDA National Organic Standards Board and the National Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production , operate by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and fund by Pew Charitable Trusts .
recognize widely for his work , Kirschenmann has written extensively about ethics and agriculture , with articles published in several Holy Scripture and professional journals . In April 2010 , the University Press of Kentucky published Kirschenmann ’s Cultivating an Ecological Conscience : essay from a Farmer Philosopher . He was one of the first 10 recipients of the James F. Beard Foundation Leadership honour in 2011 and received the 2012 Sustainable Agriculture Achievement Award from Practical Farmers of Iowa . Other awards include the Seventh Generation Research Award from the Center for Rural Affairs , the first Medal for Distinguished Leadership in Sustainable Agriculture from the Glynwood Center in New York , and the National Resources Defense Council Thought Leader honor .
Hobby Farms : Your family history is rooted in farming , but when did you know you need to commit your personal oeuvre to sustainable agriculture ?
Fred Kirschenmann : I was enclose to organic agriculture by a student of mine during my early life history in academe . My father had infuse in me the indigence to take care of the commonwealth , and when I get a line that soil could be improved by proper constitutive management , it stimulate a rage in me to return to the farm and convert it to an organic procedure . In my endeavour to plan a right constitutional farm , I became interested in the broader issue of sustainability and have been involved in the movement ever since .
HF : How have you seen the sustainable - Department of Agriculture climate change over the preceding 20 long time , and what do you guess we can expect to see in the next 20 ?
FK : For most of the preceding 20 years in sustainable agriculture , the assumption has been that the world of agriculture was relatively stable and what we needed to do was to find ways to reduce negative impacts — thin the level of soil erosion , reduce toxic pollutants in our weewee , et cetera . What we acknowledge now , from experience as well as from the sciences of ecology and evolutionary biology , is that no organization is stable , that all systems are invariably evolving and full with emergent properties , so we have to always adapt to change systems . As we contemplate changes that will take blank space in the next 20 years , sustainability will have to focus on resilience — the last of cheap energy ; deplete minerals , metallic element and fresh - body of water resource ; more unstable clime ; et cetera — and will require next agriculture organisation to be designed to absorb the shocks and disturbances of these upshot . The Resilience Alliance and the ecologic economics high society are supply us with some good information to begin redesigning our food and agriculture system to come across those challenge .
HF : You’ve written about the problems with creating Farm Bills spanning half a X at a sentence . What changes do you look at necessary to support agriculture in America ?
FK : I think the two key things we have to do to prepare for the redesign system we want to implement are to restore the biological wellness of our soils and to reinstate the biodiversity and genetic diversity that are the foundation of a ego - renewing and self - regulate yield system of rules . We will also belike redesign the food organization . The unvarying globular food organisation , which is base on a one - sizing - fit - all concept , will likely dilapidate as energy price go up , and we can now imagine a food system free-base on a global connection of solid food hubs where as much of the food as possible will be produce by people in the nutrient hub for people in the food hub , but all of the hubs will be in communicating with one another through Facebook , Twitter and other communications networks to limit appropriate exportation and imports from one intellectual nourishment hub to another . Food sovereignty , which is a concept that is already assume hold in many developing countries , is probable to become more democratic as multitude in each intellectual nourishment hub cease to be peaceful recipient role of intellectual nourishment and become fighting nutrient citizen , engage in design appropriate food systems for their own regions .
HF : The theme of resiliency runs through much of your committal to writing . How are resiliency and sustainability related , and what character do small - scurf farmers play in build resilient and sustainable food and farming systems ?
FK : As I point out above , resiliency will need to be the key objective of any “ sustainable ” food system in the future . Sustainability is , by definition , the ability to “ maintain ” something , to “ keep something going . ” To maintain a intellectual nourishment organization in the future pass our newfangled realities , resilience will have to be built into the organisation .
There is a growing body of resiliency literature , go back to some of the seminal work of C.S. Holling and now champion by the Resilience Alliance . The delicious book by Brian Walker and David Salt , Resilience Thinking : Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a change World ( Island Press , 2006 ) , is a good foundation resource for how to accommodate systems to resilience direction .
This new room of design Agriculture Department will be more viable for smallholder farms than for large monocultures , and most of the world ’s farmers in developing countries are small - scale farmers . We require to attain out to them in style that have been articulated by recent United Nations reports — International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge , Science and Technology for Development , correct to Food , Save and Grow , et cetera .
HF : What ’s one piece of advice you have for begin small - scale , sustainable farmers ?
FK : The honest intelligence is that there is a whole young generation of farmers who require to grow , and they ’re mostly cognizant of the challenge facing them . For the most part , they do not require to do commodity agribusiness ; they want to produce food for people and have human relationship with the people for whom they grow food . This provides many opportunity to develop meaningful relationships that can help them get begin . They need opportunities to do internship to learn how to grow the food they want to bring forth . Fortunately , there are increasing opportunities for them to do that . Additionally , they require access to domain , entree to low-priced majuscule and access to the kind of markets that enable them to pay off their investment and have a decent life sentence . I think everyone interested in our future nutrient scheme can bear those objectives .
We now bang that sizable , nutritious , good - taste food is not more expensive in the recollective run than junk food , and we need to help the consumer public understand that they can eat better and low-cost food for thought by becoming part of the newfangled food hub I mentioned above . Public insurance policy needs to be recrudesce to make low-priced capital and Din Land available to begin Farmer . It is in the public interest to do so .
