System failure can be hard to see because it often
comes cloaked in human failure. Each one of the farms that failed
over the last several generations led us to the system failure, the
spectacular failure where agriculture today is simply too short of
people to be able to properly foster soil health. It has been too
short of people for at least a generation now to properly support the
community, including the vital community formed by a living farming
culture, a culture carrying the knowledge of how to care for soil in
use as well as the people using it.
The
failure of the agricultural system, by the increasing failure of the
people in it, is merely a part of a larger failure. This too is
system wide. Our economy is producing a tide of technological
innovation. But no where that I see is it fostering and honoring
work that is meaningful. Teachers are not honored. Care workers are
very nearly not even paid. Factories, which have always been a human
problem, even when they were busy are increasingly abandoned in our
country. Retail establishments close, breaking another human
connection, to be replaced by delivery drivers, each of them closely
watched and monitored by the on board company computer. Cars are
“fixed” by mechanics following the direction of the scan tool and
simply plugging in new systems. Houses are built by robots in huge
plants and then the panels are fastened together on site by
relatively unskilled labor. The move is afoot everywhere to diminish
people and emphasize machines, sending all wealth to the top of the
society.
