Several years ago, I wrote a series of articles called “The seven bank accounts of a farmer,” and the most valuable bank account was the ground that they work. The least important was money. If the other six were done right, the money would be there. Ground is the most important asset for everyone on Earth. That’s why our First Nations called it Mother Earth. We owe everything to Mother Earth. We cannot live without air, water, or food. Everything we eat comes from the ground, either from grains or vegetation, or from what animals or fish we eat; or what they ate. Even fish receive all their nourishment from other fish they eat, or vegetation growing under water that gets their nourishment from nutrients that washed from the soil into ditches, streams, rivers, and lakes, into the ocean.
For generations, all our clothes or foot gear came from cotton, linen, hemp, wool or hides from animals. Even wooden shoes came from a tree. It was when synthetic fibers infiltrated our world that our most dangerous pollution began. Every time we wash synthetic clothes, very fine plastic fibers come off in the wash and get flushed down into the sewer as microplastics, which never break down. Those microplastics can be picked up with the water by plants, fish, and by animals when they drink or eat grass, grains, and supplements. Those microplastics are so fine that they can be found in the meat of fish or animals and in vegetarian food too. Then there are those forever chemicals which also came from plastic containers, wash soaps, in rain-proof coatings on clothes and tents, and cosmetics. Some organic farms have been polluted to the degree that they have been declared unusable forever, and their owners may have bought that farm after someone had unknowingly spread some polluted sludge before the present owner purchased it. That new owner and family just bought land that shortened their life by several years. Many farmers may have been sold “miracle sprays” and chemicals that years later were declared dangerous to their health, and the health of their family, and animals who consumed crops grown on that or other farms.
We have recently witnessed provinces and countries negotiate and even fight over water, oil, timber, and many minerals from a region or country. I look at those valuable assets like a bank account that countries should save for a rainy day when things are tough. Once those assets are sold, that savings account for a rainy day is gone forever (except wood, which should grow back very slowly).
When a farmer sells animals, milk, or eggs, the manure from those animals still remains with the organic matter and fertilizing valve to be spread on the ground to restore organic matter, some fertilizing value, and different bacteria and other micro life which can rebuild the soil by breaking down both organic matter and minerals into a plant food that can reduce buying more chemical fertilizers.
When we drive around the countryside whenever we have a drought, we can pick out the land that has not received any of that animal waste and biological life that came with it to help hold moisture in drought conditions. The countries that have overcome war or wars put a much greater value on their fertile ground than those of us who still have an abundance of food.
Some countries who are very close to us have tried to control the world by flooding it with cheap food while suppressing their own food supply and cutting off food aid to the poorest of poor. Now some of those countries are trying to punish other countries with tariffs so they can rebuild from their own mistakes. We have recently witnessed China, who was the world’s largest polluter, change to be the leader in renewable energy and use ways to mitigate climate change like reduction in oil consumption. Meanwhile our neighbour to the south, that used to be a world leader in almost everything, has eliminated incentives to reduce climate change and dropped behind China as the leader in agricultural research.
China has recently built a dairy plant in Canada to produce baby formula because new Chinese mothers trust Canadian farmers to produce safe, clean milk. North America has lost many of their car, truck, and machinery manufacturing plants to South Asia because they can hire engineers and workers for less money and produce machinery for less money. More than two decades ago, China purchased millions of acres of farmland in various parts of the world including North America (just in case China might need good clean farmland). Never forget that it’s that top six inches of ground that covers Earth, that feeds the people on this Earth. We are but the keepers of this land for our descendants.We will all return to the ground.
Chris Judd is a farmer in Clarendon on land that has been in his family for generations.
