Symposium 2000

Justice for People and Planet:

A Case for Community Supported Agriculture

Anne Horst
Senior
Goshen College 2000


In the past few decades, Christians have gradually and increasingly acknowledged that human relationship to the natural world should be included in theology. However, this theology has still enjoyed only limited development and acceptance (Cobb 82). Humanity needs to further its understanding of itself as an integral constituent of creation, rather than seeing itself as above, below or outside creation. According to the prophetic tradition of the Hebrew Bible, humanity is an inextricable part of nature. In the Genesis creation story, God forms humans (adam) from humus (adamah), making them true earth-creatures (Guengerich 15). Because God created all things, all things in the world are in relationship, both human and non-human. When Christians realize their oneness with creation, they need to develop and practice an ethical response to ecology as well as a theological one. Such an ethic of ecojustice grows directly out of a theology that takes the natural world into full consideration. James Martin-Schramm's 1996 essay "Toward an Ethic of EcoJustice" provides a helpful framework for understanding a Christian ethical response to creation.

Martin-Schramm says ecojustice is closely tied to the concepts of equity and distributive justice (209). He identifies four moral norms of ecojustice that have been discussed by the World Council of Churches in its assemblies since 1975: sustainability, sufficiency, participation and solidarity (Martin-Schramm 209). All four principles have roots in Christian theology.

Sustainability is concerned with the long-term and holistic survival of the planet and its populations, including humans. It means that immediate economic growth is less important than developing healthy, interdependent communities and preserving creation in order to benefit both present and future generations (Martin-Schramm 210).

An ethic of sustainability finds its basis in the biblical doctrine of creation. God not only created the world, but sustains all things, as Psalm 104 illustrates: "When you send forth your spirit you renew the face of the ground" (Martin-Schramm 210). Humans are to reflect God's caring through their stewardship and preservation of the natural world, which belongs to God. The Psalmist sings: "The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it; for he has founded it on the seas and established it on the rivers" (Ps. 24:1-2).

The Sinai covenant also sets a biblical precedent for sustainability, involving God's people in a reciprocal relationship with God and the world. God's commandments in the Torah were intended to sustain the life of the people of Israel in harmony with the health of the earth (Martin-Schramm 210). The land belongs to God and must be kept fruitful for all time (Kaufman 23). Keeping a long-term view of sustainability alive requires humility and trust so that each generation subordinates its own economic interests.

Sufficiency, a second part of ecojustice, means that all forms of life are entitled to have their basic needs satisfied and to share in the goods of creation (Martin-Schramm 210). However, enjoying the world and having enough does not mean unlimited consumption. Sufficiency emphasizes fairness, generosity and discretion over wasteful selfish use.

The Bible shows us that God wants all to have life abundantly (Martin-Schramm 211). God promises to bless and provide sufficiently for God's people. In New Testament understanding, abundant life does not mean accumulating material possessions, but finding grace, fulfillment and relationship to God. This relationship called the early Christians to participate in God's providing work by sharing their wealth to meet the needs of all (Martin-Schramm 211). As part of achieving justice and sufficiency, Christians who have more than enough may have to limit their consumption to allow for a measure of sufficiency for others. The saying "live simply that others may simply live" applies here.

Ecojustice also needs to involve all beings in order to be fully realized. The norm of participation seeks to engage the entire human community in decisions that affect it, which often requires dismantling the social, political and economic forces that prevent the full participation of some (Martin-Schramm 211). In the Old Testament, the law served as a model for full participation, making clear that the land's bounty must be used for the welfare of all, including widows, orphans and aliens (Kaufman 22). Jesus' ministry to the outcast and marginalized also made possible increased participation. He gave attention to Samaritans, women, the poor, the despised and the diseased, drawing all people into the Reign of God.
Participation sees all forms of life and parts of creation as relevant to justice. Humans may have a special relationship to God, but the Bible repeatedly describes all creation as intimately affected by the interactions of God and humanity. The Hebrew scriptures are full of imagery like Hosea 4:1b-3:

There is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land. Swearing, lying, and murder, and stealing and adultery break out; bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns, and all who live in it languish; together with the wild animals and the birds of the air, even the fish of the sea are perishing.

Humans and other creatures experience the pain together that comes from alienation from God.
Solidarity is the fourth norm of ecojustice, establishing the interdependence of all life forms and the need for advocacy of the oppressed. In solidarity, relationship overcomes greed and individualism. According to the Torah, God's people inherit the land collectively as a source of life for the community as a whole (Kaufman 22). Our struggle over the land is no longer for our own rights against other external claims on it, but against the greed within us so that the land can be used in ways that please God, serve all people and benefit the natural world itself (Kaufman 27). Compassionate solidarity, as modeled in the Gospels, emphasizes the reciprocal relationship of individual welfare and the common good. Martin-Schramm says it "calls for the powerful to share the plight of the powerless, for the rich to listen to the poor, and for humanity to recognize its fundamental interdependence with the rest of nature" (212).

These four principles of ecojustice can move us toward greater understanding of our relationship to the natural world, but ethical and theological reflection alone are not enough. Because the church has a role in healing the earth as a community of disciples, we need to show how our ecological sensibility can concretely change the structures of society (Martin-Schramm 213). In addition to correcting our theology and ethics, we need a conversion of heart and compassion that will allow us to participate in the suffering of the earth and act out the ecological and community healing that is necessary (Jegen 97). The church should seek a new way of life where care for the earth is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived and shared (Jegen 105.)

A fundamentally important area in which to live out the mystery of earth healing is our participation in agriculture and food production systems. The practice of agriculture is an essential life activity, indispensable for responsible consideration of ecological ethics.

Most Americans now think of themselves as consumers of groceries rather than agricultural participants. Farmer and writer Wendell Berry says that eating has become a specialized, obscured transaction between an individual and nutrient supplies that cannot be identified with anything living (148). He asserts that when eaters no longer associate food with the land, they have developed a dangerous cultural amnesia (Berry 146). We need to understand that eating is an agricultural act that takes place inescapably in the world and determines how the world is used (Berry 149). Becoming oblivious to the causes and effects of our food consumption means turning responsibility and freedom into passivity and neglecting the possibilities and purposes for the life of the body in the world (Berry 146).

Ethical issues of eating are not just questions for farmers, economists and agricultural policy makers, but for every embodied moral agent. Agricultural problems are not abstract planetary issues, but are always connected to harmful private choices. We cannot separate innocent consumers from guilty producers in the agricultural systems that create ecological and community difficulties (Berry 198).

There are indeed many crises arising from the economic assumptions and ecological attitudes of the dominant American food production system. Berry says that modern agriculture has reduced people and creatures almost completely to economic units (130). The "inevitable path of progress" excuses all kinds of destruction from over-developed technology and market competition (Berry 130). Human economics are pitted against nature as a part of daily life when competition knows no limits, resource use is unlimited, and lower prices must be achieved at all costs (131).

Conventional food production in the United States is often conceived more like an industrial process of inputs and production output than a loving commitment to the stewardship of a natural place. Livestock and crop culture are typically separated and most farms grow vast tracts of one or two crops rather than mimicking the biodiversity found in a natural ecosystem. These large monocultures are particularly susceptible to weeds and pests, which are controlled with synthetic petroleum-based herbicides and pesticides. These chemicals pose health hazards and cancer risks to humans, pollute air and waterways and degrade soils (Northwest).

Because soil health is not maintained, annual product output is increased with industrial fertilizers, which also attract non-desirable insects (Northwest). Fertilizers designed to meet the specific nutrient needs of the crop are used continuously so that the land can be planted with the same crops without rest and the soil becomes a mere holding medium rather than a nourishing source. Then after it is grown, food in the United States travels an average of 1,300 miles from the farm to the store, adding incredibly to the petroleum and energy used before the consumers receive a product. This is true in most places, as nearly every state in the country imports between 85 and 90 percent of its food (Van En).

This whole agricultural picture looks like a road to ecological disaster. Food production is dependent on large, expensive machinery and imported petroleum rather than on relationships between humans and other organisms in the natural world. This is far from the biblical concepts of sustainable relationship and loving stewardship of the earth as fellow earth-creatures.

However, many farmers and families practice industrial agriculture as the only viable way they know to make a living in a system of burdensome debt, high interest rates, environmental risks and deeply entrenched assumptions about economics and agricultural. Before we pass judgement on the professional agriculturalists and policy makers, we should remember that the consumer's economic choices are needed to complete the cycle of demand for industrial agricultural products. There is no way to separate innocent parties from a society's damaging food system.

It is true that the church and others have begun to recognize some of the ethical problems inherent in the modern agricultural system and have proposed some solutions. In Hope for the Family Farm: Trust God and Care for the Land, LaVonne Godwin Platt reports that the Kansas Mennonite Farm Crisis Committee issued a statement in 1985 expressing concern about the decline of small family farms. The committee was primarily concerned with small farms in financial trouble because of pressures from large competitors, high interest rates and development encroaching on farmland (Platt 183). The statement called on Mennonites, a people with a strong rural heritage and commitment to faith and ethical practice, to affirm that farming should provide a meaningful livelihood, that land is the common heritage of humankind, and that landowners and public policies should be responsible for conservation and stewardship (Platt 184). The committee recommended educating church members about farm issues, giving respect to farming as a profession, providing relief and support for small family farms, initiating research and programs for sustainable agriculture, and protecting natural resources from further loss and contamination (Platt 185, 186). In 1985 and 1986, the Mennonite Central Committee Farm Task Force, Mennonite Mutual Aid and Mennonite Economic Development Associates all supported such initiatives.

While these visions are noble and pleasant-sounding, more change is needed to build the foundations for a truly ecological and community-based agriculture. As the Kansas committee statement correctly recognized, devaluing of farming as a profession is indeed a problem, one related to the body-mind division in our culture and religious traditions. Society and the church community will not give sufficient attention to food production to develop an ethically sound system while physical work and care for the body and the land continue to be unappreciated and lacking in prestige.

The Kansas committee statement was also beneficial in supporting small-scale and local agriculture. Local production systems use fewer natural resources and more effectively keep human and natural relationships alive in the agricultural process. However, preserving small family farms does not move far enough toward ecological soundness if production is still based on the conventional model of petroleum- and pollution-intensive industrial farming.

In addition, the relief and support that the statement advocated for small farmers will likely not be sufficient to preserve them if they continue within the current fragile economic system. In today's industrial market, farmers bear all the risks of natural loss and face pressure from consumer attitudes, low food prices, high interest rates and non-agricultural uses of land (Platt 186). The Mennonite writers in Hope for the Family Farm advocate stewardship, sustainability and resource conservation, but they do not seem to propose changes wide enough to truly lead to the values they desire.

While there are many ways to search for an ethical solution to the ecological and community problems of agriculture, a good system should put into practice the principles of ecojustice outlined at the beginning of this essay. I propose that Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) using organic methods is the system that most closely embodies these principles, incorporating sustainability, sufficiency, participation and solidarity.

Community Supported Agriculture had its roots in Japan thirty years ago when a group of women began direct growing and purchasing relationships with local farmers because of their concern about the increase in food imports and decrease in the farming population. The Japanese word for CSA means "putting the farmer's face on food" (Northwest). The concept then spread to Europe, and the first American CSA farm appeared in Massachusetts in 1985. By January 1999, there were over 1,000 CSA farms in the United States and Canada (Northwest).

CSA is an arrangement of mutual commitment between a farm and a community of supporters, providing a direct link between food production and consumption. CSA members cover a nearby farm's yearly operating budget by purchasing a share of the season's harvest in advance (Northwest). This direct contact and engagement creates a responsible relationship between consumers and the food they eat, the farmers who grow it and the land on which it is grown (Northwest). Most CSAs concentrate on organic vegetables, but some also include berries, fruits, eggs, meats, dairy products, honey or flowers.

As an alternative, participatory food production strategy, CSA is truly sustainable, both economically and environmentally. Contributing to ecological sustainability, organic farming avoids hazardous and polluting chemicals in the forms of herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers. It strives to reduce off-farm inputs and dependency on petroleum. It seeks to improve the soil and the quality of the plant, animal and human life on the farm. Its ecological methods include building soil with organic material, leaving land fallow, reducing tillage, rotating crops, controlling weeds mechanically and biologically, integrating livestock and increasing farm biodiversity (Bird 47).

Sufficiency, another norm of ecojustice, is concerned with having enough resources for all, which means those who have easy access to limited resources need to use them sparingly and responsibly. Organic CSA supports sufficiency because it conserves resources more readily than energy-intensive traditional agriculture. A direct producer-consumer link on a small scale actually requires fewer resources to maintain than the conventional long-distance "consumer convenience" model. In a local participatory system, the costs and energy required for processing, packaging, transportation, marketing and advertising are greatly reduced (Berry 149). According to Gene Logsdon, if all the costs of food production were counted, it would really be cheaper for society to grow zucchini in a backyard than on a megafarm (107). A CSA can act like a backyard for those in space-restricted urban areas or time consuming jobs.

As a part of ecojustice, participation seeks to involve all people in the decisions that affect them rather than allowing some to become passive and non-engaged in ethical life. By forcing consumers to face the realities of how their food is produced, CSA creates ethical participants rather than apathetic consumers. In addition, if all forms of life are relevant to justice, as participation asserts, an ethical agriculture must strive to deal justly with all aspects of the natural world. Small-scale organic systems are ideal for understanding farms as whole ecosystems and making farming and eating a way of life linked to creation (Hull 197).

Solidarity shows us that all forms of life are interdependent and that the powerful and privileged must build up and include the oppressed in the community of creation. Today's marketplace is driven by self-interest, even for Christians, who are often convinced that good stewardship of money is paying the lowest possible sticker price for everything, regardless of the other consequences of the food production and distribution system. In contrast, CSA membership helps people see beyond individual profit to the health of a community. CSA guarantees farmers a market for their produce and reduces debt tensions by providing them with interest-free capital early in the season. Helping the economically disadvantaged farmer, consumers agree to share in the risks as well as the products of agriculture. Solidarity helps to establish a more sustainable and stable economic base for local farming.

Because it truly engages in ecological sustainability, resource conservation for sufficiency, wide and active participation, and community economic solidarity, organic Community Supported Agriculture is a good solution to many ethical problems in the modern food production system. Just as responsible Christians must incorporate relationship with the natural world into their theology and ethical reflection, they must also put food into their bodies that contributes to ecological justice.

Works Cited

Berry, Wendell. What are People For? San Francisco: North Point Press, 1990.

Bird, Elizabeth Ann R, et. al. ed. Planting the Future: Developing an Agriculture that Sustains Land and Community. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1995.

Cobb, John B., jr. Sustainability: economics, ecology and justice. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1992.

Guengerich, Ronald. "Earth keepers in Eden." LaVonne Godwin Platt, ed. Hope for the Family Farm: trust God and care for the land. Newton, Kansas: Faith and Life Press, 1987.

Hull, Robert. "A Vision for Mennonite Agriculture." LaVonne Godwin Platt, ed. Hope for the Family Farm: trust God and care for the land. Newton, Kansas: Faith and Life Press, 1987.

Jegen, Mary Evelyn. "The Church's Role in Healing the Earth." Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, ed. Tending the Garden:
Essays on the Gospel and the Earth. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1987.

Kaufman, S. Roy. "Trust God and Care for the Land." LaVonne Godwin Platt, ed. Hope for the Family Farm: trust God and care for the land. Newton, Kansas: Faith and Life Press, 1987.

Logsdon, Gene. At Nature's Pace: Farming and the American Dream. New York: Pantheon Books, 1994.

Martin-Schramm, James. "Toward an Ethic of EcoJustice." Paul T. Jersild, et al ed. Moral Issues and Christian Response. 6th ed. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1998.

Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides. Eugene, Ore. Online. Internet. http://www.efn.org/~ncap.

Platt, LaVonne Godwin. "Responding to our Rural Crisis." LaVonne Godwin Platt, ed. Hope for the Family Farm: trust God and care for the land. Newton, Kansas: Faith and Life Press, 1987.

Van En, Robyn, Liz Manes and Cathy Roth. Community Supported Agriculture of North America at the University of Massachusetts Extension. "What is Community Supported Agriculture and How Does It Work?" 29 July, 1997. Online. Internet. http://www.umass.edu/umext/csa/about.html.