A new way to live and farm

During my trip to Minneapolis I wanted to read a book about the Midwest. I ordered several books on my shopping list, one of them PrairyErth by William Least Heat-Moon. It's about Kansas, not Minnesota, but close enough.

I had read and enjoyed the author's first book Blue Highways about his trip around America (38 states?) done on only the back roads, the ones marked in blue on the map. I hadn't realized he had written more until recently, so PrairyErth is 20 years old.

The subject is stories about Chase County in Kansas. It was chosen because the Flint Hills run through it and it is the first true tall-grass prairie when traveling east to west. All this allows him to tell several stories about the place:

A modern cattle ranch owned by a woman and staffed only by women. She does it to prove her father wrong.

A murder of a hired hand at a ranch in 1898. The owner's son was accused, but acquitted. It remains unsolved.

Sam Wood, abolitionist, who moved to Kansas to help prevent it from becoming a slave state.

The crash of a Fokker trimotor plane in 1931 that was carrying Knute Rockne, killing all aboard (which is why Reagan had to win one for the Gipper).

A conversation with students at the county high school about what they want to do when they graduate and the prospect of them doing that in the county.

The importance of both the Osage Orange and Cottonwood trees, of the harrier hawk and wood rat.

The Diamond Spring, the first place to get water beyond Council Grove on the California Trail.

The Flint Hills are above the oldest mountain range in North America, now eroded to a core a few thousand feet below the current land.

The treatment of the native Kaw or Kansa Indians by the whites. During his research he found 140 ways the name of the tribe was spelled. The state could have been named Cauzes or Quonzai. He and a friend follow the trail the Indians took on their walk to the Indian Territory.

An attempt to build a railroad from Kansas City to Baja California to boost trade with China.

An attempt to turn part of the county into a national park to preserve part of the prairie. Oklahoma got the park instead.

And enough stories to fill 600 pages. I enjoyed it all.

One story is about the modern research into sustainable farming. The author had a long discussion with Wes Jackson, who has a farm where he does research into sustainability. Here are some of the topics in that rambling discussion. Alas, my disjointed summary won't do justice to the original.

What is the fuel of the future? Fossil fuels won't remain as cheap as they are. Nuclear? How many Chernobyls are we willing to put up with? Turn grain into fuel? That would take up too much of the crop needed for food. Sun and wind? Alas, our current infrastructure is built on a portable liquid fuel.

Much of modern agriculture is theft -- a removal of nutrients from the soil. How is that theft minimized? Thus we get into agro-ecology.

Capitalism is a pump to extract energy and nutrients from something, eventually depleting it, like living off the principle. Nature relies on barter and recycling to keep going, living off the interest.

We humans evolved in a different time. We don't manage agriculture well, we certainly don't manage all this fossil energy well. Let's go back to our inclinations, the tribe and family, the community. An example is the Amish, who test all technology against a moral standard.

Perhaps Chase County can serve as a prototype of a new way to live and to farm. This new life would be much more labor intensive than is done now, managing crops differently, and maybe even using draft animals. It will be a blend of old and new technologies. Use natural ways to restore the soil. Don't use any chemical our own bodies have no evolutionary experience with. All this implies a resettling of America.