My once and only wheat farm

Posted by Edith Cook on Saturday, January 19, 2013 Under: Reading Life
  When I moved to Wyoming to retire and help look after my granddaughter, I invested my assets in a wheat farm.  At the time, it seemed a good thing. Wall Street had acquired a bad name. To grow wheat was a safer bet, surely, than going with a wildly fluctuating stock market? 

That was seven years ago. Today I know there is no such thing as safety, particularly when it comes to food. As Frederick Kaufman shows, famine is spreading in spite of redoubled effort to get food and money to the hungry. What's needed, Kaufman says, is help farmers in sub-Saharen Africa to farm sustainably. What's needed is education and equality for women. These are not quick-fix goals to be addressed with dollars or bags of beans.

My wheat field, too, has taken a turn for the worse. Paul Roberts says that soil degradation, excess fertilizer ad its run-off, and climate-change related droughts diminishes harvests everywhere, and all of these factors will make things worse in years to come. 

 We may hope the authors of the books above are wrong but I see evidence to the contrary all around me. Not the least on my land and with my son's modest cattle herd. I'm afraid the future doesn't look good, not only here in Wyoming but globally.

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About Me


Edith Cook Though I now live in Wyoming, I make frequent return trips to California with visits to travel club members along the way. At home I play classical guitar, enjoy gardening and cooking, and participate in group yoga. Getting together with family and friends is high on my agenda. I value people who write or make music and love it when my adult children and their offspring play their instruments, sing songs with me, or discuss what they read and write. Such gatherings help me cope with the losses in my life, which have been severe. Next year I hope to visit family in Germany.

 

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