Repair, Part 3

A healthy forest can recycle over 98% of its calcium indefinitely. As its leaves sprout in spring, a plant slurps up a slurry of minerals from the soil through its roots. Those leaves eat the sun all summer, passing the sugars they make through photosynthesis into their own bodies and then into the bodies of all who eat them. In autumn, the leaves will fall to the ground, mixing with the poop of the many creatures who were nourished by them, feeding the cacophony of soil-dwelling decomposers who in turn prepare the soil to hold that calcium for the next cycle of growth. 

This circular economy of an intact ecosystem lies in stark contrast to the human-contrived economies that use the beings of the earth to build our cities and fill our homes. Modern production and transportation of goods on a global scale has released us from the constraints of what is currently on hand in our communities. In our everyday lives, many of us are privileged to feel “free” from these limits. We can buy tomatoes year round, fill our gas tanks 24/7. We do not need to ensure that what we use can be broken down and used again by other creatures in the ecosystem. In fact, on the conveyor belt of the linear economy of capitalism today, inputs are brought in one end and made into infrastructure and consumer goods with the expectation that they will be thrown “away” when their useful life ends. 

In economist palance, the true costs of this artificial linearity–the mining of faraway resources, the polluting of rivers and aquifers, the piling up of waste offgassing methane into the atmosphere–are called “externalities.” So in the accounting of our present economy, the environmental costs of the processes of making things are literally categorized as external to the process, a sort of inconvenient aside that messes up the math and so is left out. Of course in reality, these consequences are very much an intrinsic part of the production process, thoroughly embedded in the same natural laws that govern all life on this planet. 

Anyone who drinks water flowing near a mine or breathes the air from a factory or can’t sleep because of the hum of a nearby data center understands this intimately.  

“Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold. Call that profit.” -Wendell Berry

Modern industrial capitalism also relies on scarcity. It keeps the supply of money in the system artificially scarce so that it retains its value. But we decide how much money to create in the first place, and we employ a complex system of rules to ensure that the people who currently have the most of it can continue to have the most of it, while anyone with less will always have less, with very few exceptions. 

Seeds take the opposite approach. 

Each one can grow and make dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of itself, exponentially multiplying their abundance with each successive generation. They make their bodies as living beings only from sunlight and water and nutrients they took from the soil in their immediate surroundings, and at many points during their life cycle, they can be shared with others in that same place. Seeds are the opposite of linear, external, and scarce. To plant a seed is to plant a more abundant future. 

The economic system we live under requires growth to survive. Companies must grow, profits must grow. Our measure of success is the growth of our stocks, the growth of our GDP (Gross Domestic Product). In order to achieve this, we human beings must be turned into voracious consumers – bottomless, unfillable wells of wants and desires. We must become, in the words of adrienne maree brown, unsatisfiable.   

But in the backs of our minds, we all know that we live on a planet of finite resources. We know the math doesn’t add up.  

One of the things that draws so many of us toward small-scale organic farming is the possibility of being able to exist in an economy that mimics the actual economy of nature. One where there aren’t hidden costs pushed downstream. One that runs on sunlight and recycles its nutrients indefinitely. In this way, we apprentice ourselves to the real economy of planet earth, the economy of the ecosystems of which we are a part. I think this is why we call it a movement, rather than an industry. We are moving toward a different way of providing for ourselves and our communities, but we have not by any means arrived at the perfect system.

Embracing the reality of living on a planet with a finite amount of land and water can be incredibly liberating. It reorients us toward thinking like and with the ecosystems we live in. There is wild abundance, but also boundaries, banks on the river to guide us. What we need is already at hand. Teachers and guidemaps are everywhere.  

As we accept that we rely completely on the gifts of nature, we can make systems that steward them carefully, as a forest does with its calcium in order to keep it cycling through and creating abundance with every transfer. 

From here, we regain our rightful role as participants in an ecosystem who are capable of giving as well as taking. 

The trinity of disconnection and despair has severed our felt interconnection with someplace. It has convinced us that we are alone and should be able to survive alone. And in the ultimate irony, it has also turned us into powerless consumers who are wholly dependent on a steady drip of consumer goods entering our homes, psyches, and bodies, supplied by the very same system we are supposed to be ruggedly individual within. In short, it has made us feel disempowered, lonely, uninspired, and useless. 

Remembering ourselves as active participants in an interconnected ecosystem of an actual place–one that exists within a watershed, with actual nutrients cycling through actual plants and animals and rocks and fungi who we live alongside–is itself a repair. Any action we take from that place cements the reality that we belong to that ecosystem, with all the rights and responsibilities that any other member has within it. We have meaningful work to do–precious calcium to shepherd, beloved seeds to sow, unique offerings to make in service to the whole. 

“With my fingers sticky with berry juice, I’m reminded that my life is contingent upon the lives of others, without whom, I simply would not exist. Water is life, food is life, soil is life – and they become our lives through the paired miracles of photosynthesis and respiration. All that we need to live flows through the land. It is not an empty metaphor that we call her Mother Earth. Food in our mouths is the thread that connects us in a relationship simultaneously spiritual and physical, as our bodies get fed and our spirits nourished by a sense of belonging, which is the most vital of foods.”  - Robin Wall Kimmerer

Invitations for practices to try: 

• Gratitude practice. Some of us have a ritual of praying over foods and some of us don’t. Find a way to connect with the sources of your food and express gratitude for all of the beings who have had a hand in getting that food to you. How does this practice change the way you experience the act of eating? 

• Compost. Composting is a simple and powerful way to recycle what could be waste into life-giving food for next year’s crops. Everything returns to the earth, including us! Watch a plant or other being decay over the course of a week or more. If you have a yard, start a compost pile. Here’s a primer on the basics. If you don’t have a yard, do you have a friend who has a yard where you could start a compost pile? Is there a vacant lot in your neighborhood where a compost pile could go? Is there somewhere in your city that accepts kitchen waste for composting? If you’re really ambitious, you could start a service collecting compost in your neighborhood and delivering it to a centralized compost pile, like our friend Maura, who does it on her bike! 

• Tend something. Tending reminds us that we can be helpful, that we have important contributions to make. Grow a plant. Take care of a neighbor’s pet when they’re gone or at work, or help them weed their garden. Attend a trash cleanup or restoration event in your area, or organize your own. 

Soil

Kimmerer, Robin Wall. “The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance.” Book just released through Simon & Schuster, 2024. This link goes to a 2022 Emergence Magazine Essay. 

Berry, Wendell. Many books & essays. Link is to an interview with Local Futures. “Beautiful Places: A Conversation with Wendell Berry.”  Sept 25, 2019. 

Benyus, Janine. “Biomimicry, An Operating Manual for Earthlings.” On Being podcast interview, Mar 23, 2023.

brown, adrienne maree. Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good. AK Press, 2019. 

Hemenway, Toby. Gaia’s Garden. Chelsea Green, 2009.

Klein, Catherine. “Why Does Capitalism Require Infinite Growth?!” Video, Jan 12, 2022.

Wycoff Rogers, Eric, and Zarinah Agnew. “The Politics of Pleasure.” Upstream podcast interview, Sept 24, 2024.