meanings

In a world where people are managed in corporations by HR (human resource) departments, it should not surprise that the Trump administration has referred to people as "Human Capital Stock"  And we should note that the word "resource" when applied to mineable metals, wood products and fertile soil, is generally, contrary to what the prefix "re" should mean, in reference to things that are used up in the effort to make other things; for instance, soil to make food, or people to make corporate  profit.

"Renew", "restore", "rebuild", "replenish"  are all uses of the same prefix that indicate taking some kind of care.  But with "resource" the meaning seems to fall away and I wonder if that does not indicate either a carelessness in language or a deliberate destruction of meaning in pursuit of what we want.
There is more of the advertising lingo here than of careful precise speech.

What if we began to refer to fertile living soil as part of Creation-or creation if religion makes us squeamish.  Soil then becomes a made thing, made by God.  It also takes on the meaning of "gift".  And it involves us in using that which we did not make, with the sense of gratitude and responsibility that entails.

We must somehow become responsible for our impacts upon that which we did not make, certainly including people.  If we have sufficiently ruined the meaning of "resource" it may help to use other words, other language, to remind ourselves of our responsibilities in the world. 


 

work

Good work is usually a combination of the physical and the mental.  It is, in any case, infused with wisdom.  It is wisdom that can orient work toward where it seems the universe is going, toward what we think the Creation needs.  And it is wisdom applied through work by which we humans are best able to approach the spiritual.

So then, my project of pulling up old barbed wire-a full mile of it, all of it five strand usually with the bottom one or two wires buried in the sod-has so far cost numerous scratches on my forearms, two tick bites and shredded beyond use one pair of leather gloves and the sleeves of two work shirts.  I am half done.

This is what is generally thought to be hard labor.  And it is hard and nasty.  And so far, it is done alone, which is a bad way to live a human life.  But it is not hopeless.  I work in the breeze and sunshine, surrounded by birdsong.  The wire is brittle with age and rust.  Most of my rolls are a collection of short broken pieces.  I learn a respect for the capacity of hard work shown by the long ago farmer who installed all this, before he gave it up and entered it into CRP

This is hard labor done for a reason.  This place badly needs grazing animals.  And grazing animals must be protected from barbed wire.  Around me I can see in the grass the swales created by tillage on too steep, highly erodible land.  The cropping system required as a prerequisite to CRP entry sent far too much soil down the creek, beautiful though it is today as it meanders through the grass.

I see where the wire was cut to let the tractor into one after another of the crop fields.  He had a better idea in the first place.  But he was supported in that by neither the agriculture industry or the government.  What is the future for us, a people that find it too hard, or beneath them to think of the care of our land?

University of Chicago economics

The Chicago school of economics, featuring thinkers like Milton Friedman, Ludwig Von Hayek, students like Tim Geithner, Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, to name a few and populisers like Thomas Friedmann have pretty much put the final nail in the coffin of agricultural thought and practice with their monomaniacal focus upon profits.  Witness  Perdue the Secretary of Agriculture echoing Earl Butz once again on how the "big get bigger and the small go out."

And the people clump up in the cities looking for real employment and finding mostly "gigs" while the soil life disappears and the soil itself goes to the Gulf of Mexico.  We will not change any of this until we once again honor the profession of "agriculturalist", that rare person who attaches him/her self to place, who tries to understand this particular soil, this climate and these particular people, who understands that farming calls for physical and mental and emotional work and is among the highest callings for mankind.

"Farming" that focuses exclusively upon profit is not farming at all, but rather the grand old American tradition of enrichment by taking the gifts of Creation and turning them into money, broken people, and junk.  Just like the rest of our economy.

coronavirus

It seems evident that the corona virus likes to spread in slaughterhouses, as these have been the primary vectors for the pandemic here in the Midwest. The racist says that the susceptibility of brown skinned people to the virus is proof they are in some basic way different from us. There is another explanation though, one based in fact rather than prejudice. To see it we have to ask why it is that brown skinned people are slaughtering the hogs.

To know where we are, we must understand where we were. And in 1973 I was working at the University of Minnesota’s Veterinary Hospital where I was responsible for supervising veterinary students in their part time work at the University. I struck up a friendship with one of these and soon understood that this was his first experience working during the school term. He was a senior at the time, soon to graduate.

The usual route to a veterinary license at the University of Minnesota is by taking a four year course of study in animal science. Some are able to gain entry to the veterinary program after two years in animal science, more are allowed in after three years, and some spend the entire four years of the animal science program before they are admitted. Some never are. It is a pretty tough program. I cannot recall whether my friend got in after two, three or all four years. He was a pretty bright fellow, that I remember.

He told me one day that his entire time at University, through whatever number of years in animal science and then the four pretty intense years at Vet Med itself was sponsored by checks written by his father. As a condition he was allowed to work only during summers, not during the school term. Then he was expected to study. His father relented and relaxed the rule for his last few months at the program. His father was a slaughterhouse worker who often worked the evening shift because it paid ten cents an hour more. My friend loved and deeply admired his father. From today’s viewpoint this seems a fantasy. I cannot feature a slaughterhouse worker sponsoring his child at University today.

As always, there are steps between then and now. Powerful people in industry were told in the early eighties that labor laws and rules would no longer be enforced. Soon after, local P 9 of the meat cutters union struck and were locked out by Hormel for about two years, in my memory. My friend’s father’s union. The workers eventually came back, some of them at least, for wages not much more than half of what they had formerly. Smaller slaughter facilities through out the Midwest followed suit. Increasingly immigrants and foreign nationals did the work.

Other changes followed, made possible by the lack of a strong union voice. Line speeds were steadily increased. Both bathroom breaks and speaking to others on the crew were disallowed in some facilities. Workers were crowded. Repetitive motion injuries skyrocketed.

Then, with the libertarian philosophy increasingly dominant in government, the job of meats inspection began to be passed from the government to the large meat companies. Today, if you want to be sure you are getting inspected meat, you really should buy as directly from the farmer as possible. Small plants must still be inspected, either by the USDA or the state’s “Equal To” system.

There are some questions we should ask before we jump to any conclusions about immigrants and foreign nationals. Where did the money go that was “saved” by underpaying workers? Is any of it still in mid America helping our families and communities or is it all on Wall Street? How bad are conditions in the home country that migration to employment in an American meat plant as they currently run looks like a good idea? And importantly now in this time of pandemic, can sickness be blamed on racial difference or is it rather a consequence of bad, stressful, and crowded working conditions and immune systems weakened by stress and high blood pressure related to coping with public hatred, bad housing and bad food? A quick tour of any grocery store will show that, in our country, cheap food is almost always bad food. Weak immune systems open the door for the virus.

The richer we get (some of us) the poorer we are (all of us)!