Good Grief is an organization that offers "a 10-step process" for dealing with climate-related distress. There are "weekly meetings that culminate with a commitment to 'reinvest in meaningful efforts.'"
Interesting phrase — "old commercial farm." What would a noncommercial farm be? Googling my question, I found a scholarly paper: "Beyond ‘Hobby Farming’: towards a typology of non-commercial farming" (Springer):
In total, 395 (16.6% of the sample) farmers indicated that they do not seek to make a profit on their farms. We estimate that these non-commercial approaches to farming are utilised on at least 13% of agricultural land in Scotland. As such, non-commercial farming (NCF) is not a marginal practice, nor are NCF limited to small-scale ‘hobby’ farms: NCF exist across the scale of agricultural holding sizes and are operated by a wide range of socio-demographic cohorts. We identify 6 types of NCF: agricultural residences, specialist smallholdings, horsiculture holdings, mixed smallholdings, amenity mixed farms, and large farms or estates.... The analysis demonstrates a number of emergent patterns of land management: de facto land abandonment, transition towards ‘horsiculture’, and management differences between retiring and new entrant NCF. We argue that the types identified reflect a number of intersecting issues in contemporary agrarian transitions, particularly the aging farmer population; generational renewal; and gendered implications of agricultural restructuring.
"Horsiculture" is it what it sounds like — the development of the countryside for the pasturing of horses. Is that part of the "gendered implications of agricultural restructuring." According to the article, "The link between female-led farms and horsiculture is well recognised in Nordic countries."
It sounds lovely, but I doubt that it serves the Good Grief agenda. Bradley Pitts has bought a once-commercial farm and committed to returning it to meadows, but it would deviate from the anti-global-warming agenda to populate those meadows with horses. Leave the place to the voles and moles.
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9 comments:
JamesL writes:
"So … Bradley Pitts has decided that the best use for the agricultural land is not to feed the poor and undernourished of the world but to mitigate climate change. Maybe it wasn’t very productive in the first place.
"We live in a prosperous nation."
FunkyPhD writes:
"No organization is better named, for there couldn’t be a more fitting tutelary figure for the climate anxious than Charlie Brown, whose catchphrase was “good grief.” Fretful, painfully self-conscious, guilt-ridden, and at the same time ludicrously credulous, Charlie Brown epitomizes the eco-warrior’s mix of existential dread with blind faith. “Renewables” are Charlie Brown’s kite-eating tree and the desperate hope he has that this time, Lucy won’t pull the football away. Dolorous, self-pitying, stupidly naive, but (for the New York Times and its readers at least), all the more lovable for these qualities—that’s climate change scaredy-cats. Of all the Charlie Browns, they’re the Charlie-Browniest."
Temujin sends a comment titled "Climate related emotional farming":
"I made a comment yesterday asking how we could possibly find psychological help for 100 million people on the Left. This may be an avenue for a chunk of them. Seriously- there's a lot to be concerned about looking at the future, but climate anxiety about wildfires, heat waves, and hurricanes is not it. We have *always* had wildfires, heat waves, and hurricanes. We will continue to have wildfires as long as there is lightning and dry brush, heat waves as long as there are El Ninos and solar periods, and hurricanes as long as there is Florida. That said, I love the idea of farming to restore the land. I just wonder what happens if we take it too far and too many worried environmentalists from Connecticut, Cape Cod, and Washington DC decide to buy up usable farmland to make it pasture.
"Where will they buy their organic fennel and farm to table, gently raised beef?"
Aggie writes:
"Thank goodness emotions leads the title of this story, at last some accurate reporting on Climate Change, excuse me, Climate Crisis, excuse me, Climate Emergency,
"I wonder what particular slice of geologic time Mr. Pitts will select to restore his farm to. Will it be the last glaciation, a few thousand years ago? Perhaps slightly more recent, some terminal moraine glacial plain? Or maybe to some pre-settled old growth forest, with large trees and their groves kept litter-free by regular fires set by the aboriginal population? Or perhaps some cleared fields bearing wheat, as per the early settlers, or sheep maybe? Which of these configurations has Mr. Pitts determined will have the optimal impact on restoring the climate – and what temperatures are we aiming for?
"For God’s sake, everybody do something.
"By the way, 1936 is still the hottest year on record, by a lot."
K writes:
"Whether the farm is commercial or "non-commercial," It was originally farmed by the indigenous people. So, the first act in land purchase, a title search, should also include a search to discover how title was transferred from the indigenous. And this search could be an invaluable guide to how to use the land effectively, though non-commercially. The indigenous, the First Nation in the US, sited villages carefully so as to maximize each village as an economic unit. Each village had good agricultural land, running water, water for fishing, a nearby marsh for wildfowl, a deerfield, and connections by trails to other villages for trade. The fur trade was built on this and the US moved west, building on the fur trade connections. So most US cities and towns are sited on or close by First Nation sites and the old roads connecting them are roads overlying First Nation trails. So if you know how your land lies in relation to the First Nation village with which it is connected by history, you acquire basic information. What The First Nation tribes did was successful, though non-commercial, because they'd had time to work things out and so it's valuable to find out what crops they grew with what seeds and how they organized the totality of their response to their locality. This is what we've been doing all along in the US (not on the plantations and horse farms). It's ahistorical to pretend we have not successfully built our nation on the discoveries of the First Nation. It's the right plan to use acquired knowledge but there's something about it ...
"Of course, we can find out whether the First Nation tribe in our own area has a parcel of land which includes all they need as a tribal economic unit; and make sure our title is not actually preventing the local tribe from having a viable parcel as a reservation. It isn't size, it's siting.
"But where ultimately should we take our understanding? We've gone beyond and we're not going back. We should use our reason even in "noncommercial farming." But there's a feeling that comes when I see my beloved nation - cities and superhighways and space rockets - lying along the ghostly outline of the paths and villages of the First Nation."
Keith writes:
"Hi, Ann. I hope you are well! I just read your Bradley Pitts post. One commenter wrote describing the choices American Indians (sorry to be offensive! I went to elementary school in the 1970s!) - I guess Native Americans may be more appropriate - made in choosing how to design their villages.
"I just read Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond.
"If Bradley wants to go further back, Dr Diamond notes that food production and domesticating animals are the two develops that largely propelled civilizations’ advance. For a small number of reasons, food production began seriously in the Fertile Crescent and probably China and because of the East-West axis of Eurasia was spread far and wide there as the latitude and climate allowed the inventions of agriculture and animal husbandry to spread quickly.
"The Western hemisphere was populated later, probably from travel over the Bering Strait. Because America is oriented North-South with limited space (compared to Eurasia) at the same latitude, food production traveled only very slowly and so societies here were largely small and food gathering rather than food production was the rule for a very very long time. This he suggests is the reason civilization here developed so slowly compared to Eurasia and why Europe was able to dominate the Western hemisphere.
"Point being, everyone in the Americas were largely food gatherers and not food producers until very very late. So if he really wants to return the land to the way it was he should let it lie fallow and not do anything with it, then move from place to place as he finds new food sources. He’ll starve of course. But if he wants more to be faithful to Native Americans and turn his back on modern society because prosperity and food security are evil, that really would be a more faithful way to live.
"For me, given a choice, I’ll choose prosperity over poverty and security over insecurity, all things being equal, every time!"
Leora writes:
"There has been for awhile quite a trend of wealthy people (like Nancy Pelosi) buying vineyards, ranches or other farm properties as places to live. In many places (NY, Virginia, California to my specific knowledge) being classed as agricultural land results in lower property taxes and there’s a whole industry of the placing of conservation easements which result in hefty charitable deductions. I’m not sure how this fits into the Scottish study – but I’d lay odds on a large portion of agricultural holdings in the top 50 zip codes by income being this type of thing....
"I left out the exemptions from zoning rules for agricultural properties that allows the boarding of the help in trailers and over the stables. Major perk in Long Island."
Temujin writes:
"'K' wrote about sourcing First Nations peoples' use of the lands they lived on. And in theory that makes sense. Many of them DID use the land in as commonsensical way as could be. It was literally a matter of life and death. That is until you look at the plains tribes, which famously moved around with their food source: Buffalo. Or, in the case of the Comanche, buffalo and other tribes they could prey upon. In the plains at least, the food source was mobile. And Buffalo was not just dinner, it was everything- tent hide, clothing, moccasins, dried jerky, organ-rich nutrition, wearable accessories. It was their sustenance. So they were mobile tribes, many of them. As the buffalo chewed down the grasses, using up their own food source, or needed a water source, they would move on. Once the tribes ran out of their stock of goods, and winter was done, they would move on in the spring to find the trail of the buffalo and start the cycle over again. But even in this, the First Nation peoples didn't abuse the buffalo tribes. They killed what they used. Only when the buffalo hides became useful to the Americans did the buffalo hidesman start their massive indiscriminate slaughter of millions of buffalo, decimating the herds, leaving the meat to rot, taking the hides only. Thus destroying the main food source for the plains tribes.
"As a nation we've never been very keen on the environment around us. We've been blessed with a natural bounty almost unlike any place in the world. I'm as far away from the far left as you can be, and I do not fear climate change, nor do I see us as a cause of it- it has always changed and will continue to change long after we're gone. But I am absolutely a believer in being stewards of our land and water and the air we breathe. Why wouldn't we? Returning lands to their natural state makes sense- where and when we can. And it would be good to leave the place nicer than how we found it. Lord knows, while I do not long to see another strip center, I do long to see a new green space. They're becoming fewer and fewer."
Lucien writes:
"If only their climate related emotions drove them to evangelize for standardized, small fission reactors to be built in the developing world, in order to provide the standard of living that capitalism has made possible for billions."
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