Some diversified organic farms for sure, but so many huge bare desolate fields awaiting planting, less-than-welcoming biosecurity signs and gates, and landscapes covered with plastic far into the distance. This area is clearly great for raising cool-season veggies, and also a rich and varied habitat for wildlife \u2013 aerial, terrestrial and aquatic \u2013 but stark monocultures of seemingly unfriendly food production dominated so much of the land. Rather disappointed, I was determined to find some of the \u201cwild farms\u201d I had heard about.<\/p>\n
Wandering along farm roads, I finally started seeing strips of different crops, then hedgerows and an owl box of the sort that the Wild Farm Alliance<\/a> was promoting. I had been following the work of the Alliance for some time and was enamored with their clear purpose, tireless energy and the concise elegance of their definition: \u201cIt is farming in a way that supports and benefits from wild nature.\u201d Raising awareness of the benefits of birds in pest control, and of diversified crops, pollinators and hedgerows is what they do so well.<\/p>\n What about organic, regenerative, sustainable and alternative agriculture? These are all fine descriptors of the ways we are trying to make agriculture better \u2013 and all, including \u201cwild\u201d can be misunderstood, criticized and co-opted. Yet, we can accept all of them as conversation-starters \u2013 all have something to add to our search for improvement. We like including \u201cwild\u201d as a way to focus clearly on the natural biological processes that our agriculture must both depend upon and protect as part of what we promote as \u201crewilding your local food<\/a>shed.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWild farming, ranching and gardening\u201d is what we like to call this effort since ranching is so important in the Intermountain West, and since gardeners are key partners in this effort as innovators, experimenters, customers, community supporters and voters. Including all three modes of food production fits our belief that the whole landscape \u2013 the extended foodshed that we see as including surrounding ecosystems \u2013 needs to be our focus. Pockets of healthy food production are wonderful beginnings but not sufficient to ensure the ecological integrity of the landscape, viable food production into the future, and ultimately, our planet\u2019s future.<\/p>\n Depending on and protecting wild natural processes in our soils, in fertility and wildlife and pest management, and doing this throughout our regional foodsheds is what this is all about. Doing so will require greater respect and greater humility in the face of nature, will be addressing both the climate and biodiversity crises, and will create tangible hope for the future.<\/p>\n Moving forward, whatever term you use to describe our collective efforts toward greater ecological integrity in our food producing and surrounding ecosystems, keeping the \u201cwild\u201d in mind can be a useful filter as you consider where we are and where we want to go in our pursuit of a better world.<\/p>\n Looking for examples of \u201csupporting and benefiting from wild nature\u201d in farms, ranches and gardens around you is a good first step. Becoming familiar with the Wild Farm Alliance\u2019s resources and programs should help you appreciate more of what is possible. Then, looking at your regional foodshed and dreaming<\/a> of what rewilding and wild farming, ranching and gardening could look like on your landscape should help you develop \u201cinformed hope\u201d of what could be \u2013 and ultimately a better idea of our appropriate place on the land.<\/p>\n Jim Dyer directs Healthy Community Food Systems in Durango and welcomes ideas of what this could look like in the Intermountain West and our own Greater San Juan Mountain Ecosystem. Reach him at jimdyer30@gmail.com<\/a> and learn more at www.hcfs.org<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" January 2008, just after a meeting of the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition at Asilomar on the gorgeous mid-California Coast, I set out to explore one of our nation\u2019s breadbaskets \u2013 or better yet \u2013 cool-season vegetable baskets. Having seen whales, sea otters, tidal pools and wintering monarchs coating the trees of their winter refuge over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18461,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[125],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-18460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-newsletter-opinion"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18460"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20601,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18460\/revisions\/20601"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18460"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=18460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}