It had been 21 years since I (Jason writing this time) had set foot on Polyface Farm's excellently stewarded soil. Things have changed...there was a lot more manure this time!Also, it was under somewhat different auspices. Last time it was on a field trip with Agroecology class at EMU. Hands down, this was my favorite class in all of my educational history, and the Polyface visit was perhaps the most vivid two-hour (or so) stretch of the whole thing. I had always had a fascination with agriculture, particularly animal husbandry, but had never gone whole hog (pardon) for the version of animal husbandry that says, "Play it safe...buy feed in a sack and keep them from touching anything you didn't have to buy, because if you didn't buy it it wasn't regulated and if it wasn't regulated it might not be safe. Trust us. We have studied this, and we promise that this is the best way. With any luck, you will not even realize there is any other way. If it's not profitable, don't blame us...economies of scale, you know. Invisible hands. Things like that."
Sorry if that got a little too snarky and/or obscure; I couldn't resist. It amazes me that we have, as westerners, so forfeited our relationships with our sources of sustenance and allowed corporations to mediate them (actually the history has not been as voluntary as that sounds) that we have even succumbed to the notion that the domesticated animals on which we have depended for sustenance for millennia--without pre-balanced feed from a sack, thank you very much--have no capacity for engaging what Wes Jackson might call "a primary relationship with the universe" on which we might capitalize, but rather function more like independent industrial product-makers: supply the correct raw materials to one end of the process, and if the apparatus functions properly you may expect a series or flow of product at the other end (and see if you can make someone else deal with the waste).
Egg-laying hens are the perfect example of this, of course, since the product is so ready-made, and since hen keeping supplies are readily available (and their purchase and use is always encouraged by the feed company, farm store, or "biosecurity" pamphlet) that make it perfectly possible to raise and keep a reasonably sound flock of chickens without their feet or beaks or digestive tracts ever encountering any real soil. It is often said that they have got it 'down to a science.' Which science, I wonder? It sure isn't ecology.
The science of ecology is the study of roles and relationships in self-organizing systems, particularly biological systems. The prefix 'eco', as I understand it, has its roots in the Greek word 'oikos', meaning 'home'. It is related to the word 'economy'. An ecologist is someone who has taken on the task of trying to understand how each functionary in a given 'ecosystem' acts within their 'niche' (which is to say their role, position, function, or home) in the system. For example, is an animal carnivorous, parasitic, omnivorous, or herbivorous? Or is a plant good at competing in a crowded fertile soil, or is it better at making use of poor soils that other plants can't, and therefore has the sunshine all to itself? I could go on and on...there is no seeming end to the examples, and the complexity of the relationships between and among individual actors in even a fairly simple system boggles the mind.
Applied to agricultural systems, the study becomes 'agroecology'. Let me state right off the bat why you should care: because you, in every bite you ever take, depend utterly on the stability of some agroecosystem, and because the corporation now calling the shots for that agroecosystem is probably undermining that stability with every dollar you give them for their cheap yet surprisingly palatable food, whether they know it or not.
I think this is happening because of the boggled mind thing I referred to two paragraphs above. Ecology is a little paradoxical (as is much of what we call science) in that the attempt is being made to comprehend a seeming mystery, or to follow the thread of curiosity into a fabric of greater understanding, only to realize the utter fallacy of the ambition. In even the most limited ecosystems my impression is that a person can devote their life to pursuing knowledge of the working of the system only to fall painfully short of the goal, understanding only a small percentage of the interactions and dynamics. It is perhaps the most confounding, wondering branch of science.
'Fine, but what's that good for?', industry asks. 'Give me something I can make something from.' Well, there are now many people interested in taking that question seriously in many industries and pursuits, and I assume they will have results of the most stunning nature. But historically industry has been unable to track confounded wonder on its balance sheet, and has therefore felt a strong drive to simplify the whole mess. 'Give me something I can make something from' has a sister demand: 'Give me something I can understand.'
So instead of a laying hen being:
a wonder of nature that spent the vast majority of its presence on this planet as an adaptable and resourceful pheasant in various habitats in southeast Asia which survives by applying to its environment the instinctual blueprint that is its birthright, with learned modifications as necessary, and which only within the past several thousand generations has entered into a mutually beneficial relationship with Homo Sapiens that has exploded its population and flooded nearly every habitable land surface on the globe with its presence,
it has become to the industrial mind:
an organism with specific needs and potential yields which, if properly managed and manipulated, can generate more units of product for less units of input than almost any other animal.
If you were an accountant, which version would appeal more to you?
Joel Salatin of Polyface farm has, over the past three decades or so, been one of the most colorful and successful proponents of a version of farming that remembers what chickens and other farm organisms really are, and for that matter how much we need them to be that. He often refers to "the chickenness of the the chicken and the pigness of the pig" as things we should respect, and as things we would be well served to learn the value of. Maybe the way to say it clearly is that we dearly need, for the sake of those who will come after us, to remember and humbly bear in mind the ultimately mysterious, incomprehensible nature of living systems as we make our plans for gaining our sustenance from them. By allowing organisms in our agroecosystems to form and live out their own relationships without us intervening overmuch, we allow for the integrity and stability of the agroecosystem to continue, and we shield our selves and our descendants from the law of unintended consequences.
Mr. Salatin, in 1995, put it more succinctly, "Don't bring the food to the animal, bring the animal to the food." For example, if you keep a cow in a barn and feed it hay, which is cut and dried grass, then you have to carry its manure away to fertilize the grass so it will grow more and you can make more hay from it. If, however, that cow is on the pasture, which is where it wants to be, then you don't have to carry grass to it, and it puts the manure right on the grass immediately. This is the simplest version of the vision of a domesticated animal returned to its 'niche' in the agroecosystem. The disturbing thing is how little you have to buy at the farm store to make this kind of thing work. Isn't spending too much money at Tractor Supply what farming is all about?
So why was I at Polyface this time? Well, it's because of a little snag in the vision of returning farm organisms to their rightful niches. Genetics. That instinctual blueprint I referred to earlier: genetic. The ability to digest appropriate foodstuffs: mostly genetic (some microbiological). Appropriate physiological response to climate: genetic. Etc, etc, etc. And genetics tends to be an alarmingly fast-acting use-it-or-lose-it proposition. I think this is probably especially true for prey species (such as chickens) which depend genetically on heavy selection by predators to keep the gene pool on its toes.
It doesn't take much thinking on the topic to realize that it won't take long, once an evolving organism is removed from its niche, for that organism to begin to adapt to its new circumstances and degrade with regard to its ability to relate in its former role. New circumstances create, in essence, a new animal, whether this is intended or not.
Things ancestral, pre-industrial chickens did not have that today's chickens do: Balanced chicken feed, fencing, pine shaving litter on a solid floor, artificial lighting, antibiotics, coccidiostats, breeders in white lab coats. Things they did have that modern chicken typically do not: Lice, predators, whole kernel grains, insects, living plants, kitchen refuse, dirty water, dust for dust bathing, access to soil, clean air, sunshine free for the taking.
Put an ancient chicken in a modern coop on modern feed, and it may do o.k. or it may quail (pardon) quickly. Put a modern chicken out to pasture and it may do o.k. or it may watch the hawks for fun and not know how to chase a grasshopper.
The second dynamic is a frustrating one for the producer of eggs and/or meat fowl who is reaching for that ecological vision: the other dance partner has also forgotten the dance. I have written before about my various chicken breeding projects, so for some of you this may ring a distant bell. This problem has stirred my mind for a few years now, and has become the focus of my efforts at breeding chickens. I seek to select genetic expressions in the domestic chicken that promote the fulfillment of its niche in contemporary, ecologically oriented agricultural systems. I believe some breeds exist that can meet these needs in some places and situations, but I also see the need for new breeds and strains, since some of the contemporary systems are novel in certain ways. At the least, it should be recognized that within most if not all the established breeds of chicken some selection has taken place under circumstances that have little to do with integrated agroecosystems, As such, a variety of strains of a particular breed of chicken which all look the same may in reality perform very differently from each other when put to the test in nitty-gritty circumstances, but the producer trying to acquire dependable stock has a dickens of a time knowing which they are getting, and the temptation is always there to shop price, especially when the sellers are so silent on the question of genetic quality for ecological performance (why would they care when most buyers don't?). Hence the need, as I see it, for breeds developed in the circumstances they are needed for and defined by their performance in those circumstances.
One of my projects has been to initiate breeding for open-country birds that are intended as agroecological partners with rotationally grazed cattle. I unabashedly admit that Polyface Farm's "Salad Bar Beef" and "Eggmobile" models stood clearly in my mind as I crafted the population over a few seasons. Therefore, when I felt the time had come to make the project big and relevant or let it die a decent death, I thought the place to start networking was with the Salatins themselves. A friend happened to have email addresses for some of the relevant persons, so I introduced my project to them over email. We had a brief correspondence by email, the upshot of which was that a) they have been feeling the frustration of poor genetics themselves, as producers, b) they have initiated their own breeding program to solve that problem and are pleased with preliminary results, c) they could be open to either friendly collaboration or friendly competition in the endeavor, and d) they were open to meeting to discuss it.
As it turned out, Joel ended up wanting me to come at a time when their interns would be around for the season, such that they could be in on things also. They invited our whole family to join their whole family and work crew for dinner, and to do a little show and tell (I brought chickens) afterwards to introduce them to what I have been doing with chicken breeding and why, and then to open it up for questions. It was fun to finally be talking chickens, breeding, and genetics in a place where people could nod their heads in comprehension and I had deep confidence in those nods. It was more of a presentation than a conversation, I suppose, but the brief conversations at the edges were warm and rewarding, and the questions were good ones. Janelle is having fun quoting Joel when he said I was making his head explode with the genetic stuff. For my part, I felt I did bring something to the table, so to speak, in terms of a more thorough understanding of some of the finer points of breeding and genetics (I feel I still lack so much on those points though), but I resonated deeply with another thing he said, which was that they have their gifts and we have ours. I know I can never hope to be nearly the visionary entrepreneur and market transformer that the Salatins have been over time. What I think is possible, however, is that my particular creativity and gifts may have relevance in enabling and enhancing the work of folks like them. It is work that is so badly needed.
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