Today we got to meet with some people from the Leopold Center and Iowa State, including the notable Fred Kirschenmann and Matt Liebman. I was surprised to learn that the Leopold Center was first established as a part of the 1987 Groundwater Act, with the purpose of promoting research and providing tools to farmers to reduce pollution and explore alternative models of agriculture. Kirschenmann made the point that the farm crisis in the 80s was able to bring opportunities for change. He then compared this to the current crisis, which most everyone we have met has mentioned, that the vast majority of farmers will be retiring in the next 20 years. It is the Leopold Center’s hope that, although some sort of crisis is likely, that in the end young farmers will step up and lead to a resettling of America.

In preparation for meeting Kirschenmann we watched the 1995 documentary In My Father’s Garden.  Part of the film’s storyline featured Kirschenmann’s journey from an academic career as a professor of religion and philosophy to returning to his family’s farm in North Dakota to become a cutting-edge organic farmer.  In 1995, Kirschenmann’s ag practice was a ray of hope on the uncertain horizon of the future of farming. While during the film he mainly played the role of the farmer his philosophy and religion background still showed through. In the film, and in our discussion today, he made the argument that the Garden of Eden is not about a perfect world but rather our relationship to the earth. In Genesis, God calls Adam and Eve (translated to “soil” and “life”) to act in a symbiotic relationship with the garden. Kirschenmann mentioned the Bible verse in Genesis that calls us to till and care for the garden, which could also be translated to “serve and preserve”, and that in turn the garden will sustain us. Kirschenmann also made the comparison that eating from the tree of knowledge could refer to not thinking that you, as a human, know more than the garden. This tree of knowledge could today be seen as bio-technologies and various other scientific approaches to agriculture.

This more philosophical viewpoint really resonated with me after weeks of technical information and facts, which while great, do not speak to me as profoundly as Kirschenmann’s more “liberal arts” approach to agriculture. His point about what the true relationship between the earth and the humans who inhabit it should be really summed many of my feelings about what is wrong with our current agricultural system. I think that we should do more to evaluate how we can have a more balanced relationship that focuses on sustaining the earth and not carelessly exploiting it’s resources.