Inner City Farmer

Our garden is just not producing like I hoped it would. The heat wave we’ve been enduring has stunned most of the plants into a catatonic state. I can almost hear them shrieking in pain. Interestingly, all the edible “weeds” I planted and rarely water, like the row of Lamb’s Quarters, are doing great. Which is just one more reason I need to start building my soil and creating a true food forest out of predominately native plants and trees.

Luckily, we still have a freezer full of meat, roughly 25 pounds of sausage from the wild hog I “harvested” last fall. (Sadly, we finished the last of the venison several days ago.) I know, I know—it’s at this point in the conversation where I lose half my audience. For many, permaculture and veganism go hand in hand. In fact, a couple weeks ago a woman on the permaculture listserv out of the Bay Area that I belong to started a lively discussion on this very subject. Her stance was that, basically, if you didn’t practice both you were going straight to hell. I was happy that several members chided her for being so exclusionary.

I understand her position. Yes, we could feed the world’s population many times over if we stopped eating animals and stuck to a vegetarian diet. Yes, the way many animals are raised and slaughtered in today’s industrial food system is cruel and unsanitary. Yes, we don’t need animal manure to fertilize our soil—we can do just as good a job growing nitrogen-fixing plants like beans and peas or planting a “green manure” like clover and tilling it into the soil.

I hear all these points and they’re valid, but I also agreed with the member who responded by saying, in effect, “Permaculture is a fairly exclusionary practice as it is. Do we really want to make it more so by alienating those who eat meat?” This same member went on to tell a story about an eco-village that disbanded because of this very issue, as if practicing permaculture alone wasn’t enough.

I would never argue that veganism is bad in any way, but I would like to leave you with some food for thought (pun obviously intended). We, as a species, survived for thousands of years living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Such a way of life made us not only appreciate animals, but in many cases revere them almost like deities. It was when we discovered agriculture that many of our greatest problems were born. We started buying and selling land. We began trading goods. We started treating animals like chattel. We began fighting over property. Hey, I’m just saying.