Food Blog

EcoFarm 2012: Notes from Thursday's Plenary

Apocalyptic visions are on Dave Henson's mind.

Peak oil, biological collapse, widespread water crises, global warming evidenced by a rapidly shrinking California snowpack—Henson, founder and executive director of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, calls it "peak everything" during his Thursday keynote address at the EcoFarm conference at Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove.

"This is the elephant in the room, the alcoholic uncle at Thanksgiving, the approaching asteroid," he said."This is the beginning of the end."

Yet somehow, Henson's presentation was lively and funny and even hopeful. "What a party," he added of this time in history, as graphs of human population and species extinctions and atmospheric carbon become exponentially steep. He points to his nice shoes and sharp jacket, perks of "living like a white man in Northern California" at the end of the "oil slide."

"This is the only time we get to do this."

He talked about where organic farming fits into the picture. Methods like low- or no-till agriculture, avoiding pesticides and using compost rather than fertilizer—practices that clean groundwater and build carbon-sequestering soil—are key to weathering the collapse, he said. The 2012 Farm Bill reauthorization is an opportunity for change on the policy level, he added.

Shifting away from Washington, he spoke of "a withering of the relevance of the nation-state" and the rise of urban-rural alliances: "Urban populations coming to consciousness about food and agriculture…That is a huge opening."

Henson's take-homes: Don't be too optimistic. Don't be too pessimistic. Be humble, fight ignorance, and celebrate diversity.

Katherine Dimatteo, former director of the Organic Trade Association, spoke next. Dimatteo led the Right to Know march to the Capitol about labeling genetically modified crops; her view cast corporate agriculture as driving food insecurity.

Hope, in her eyes, comes with "smallholder" farmers, who produce 70 percent of the world's food yet constitute half the world's hungry.

Attendees must have been cheered by Thursday's appointment of an organic farming leader, Brian Leahy, to lead the California Department of Pesticide Regulation. After all the depressing news about GMO contamination and shrinking farmland, it's sure to add a note of hope to this weekend's wine mixers and bonfire mingling.