Cultivating an Ecological Conscience: Essays from a Farmer Philosopher

A Transcendent Vision

A Transcendent Vision I’m a third-generation Russian German farmer; my ancestors have deep ties to the land. In the eighteenth century, following the Seven Years’ War, the Russian czar recruited a group of German farmers to immigrate to the Volga River region of Russia, promising virgin, fertile farmland. This was true, but he failed to tell them the land was inhabited by outlaws that the local authorities couldn’t control. Our family history includes stories of forebears going out with teams of oxen and keeping weapons at their sides to protect themselves. In the late nineteenth century, faced with forced conscription into the Russian army or jail, many Russian Germans immigrated to the United States instead. A settlement headquarters in Lincoln, Nebraska, operated by the German department of the Congregational Church, helped Russian Germans resettle on land available for homesteading. My dad remembered the land where his father first homesteaded as a beautiful quarter section so flat you could see from corner to corner, with nary a rock in sight, and he never forgave his father’s decision to move to North Dakota to farm this hilly, rock-infested land. The reason for the move, so I’m told, is that my grandfather didn’t want his offspring to marry any of those “heathen German Lutherans” in Nebraska. Russian Germans were determined to always remain German and true to the faith they inherited. So my grandfather decided to move his family to a Russian German colony in south-central North Dakota. My father, who is 81, has this fierce determination characteristic of 40 This is an edited version of an essay by Frederick and Janet Kirschenmann, “A Transcendent Vision,” in Caretakers of Creation: Farmers Reflect on Their Faith and Work, ed. Patrick Slattery, 27–38 (Minneapolis: ACTA, 1991). 41 A Transcendent Vision Russian Germans. His lifelong goal has always been to be the best wheat farmer in Stutsman County, no matter what it takes. Two factors have always pushed him: to improve the farm every year, transforming prairie sod into farmland that can yield fifty bushels of wheat to the acre; and to care for the land, leaving it in better condition every season. These two visions have clashed at times, but my father has come to understand and fully support the concepts behind sustainable agriculture. He takes great delight in seeing the earthworm population return and in the noticeably improved soil structure. His desire for progress also has been satisfied by having our grain receive a small premium from the specialized markets we’ve tapped. From Soil Mining to Synthetic Fertilizer Some mistakenly romanticize farming of the past and believe the land was better cared for then. However, my grandfather’s style of farming was to break sod and grow wheat for about six years until the soil’s fertility was depleted. Then he broke new ground. Livestock manure was spread on the closest fields simply to get it out of the barns without much thought to restoring the health of the soil. By the 1940s, this prairie-busting style of farming was running out of new land to “mine.” Following the war, petroleum companies sought new markets and found one in farmers looking to boost slumping yields. They seized upon the nineteenth-century theories of German scientist Justus von Liebig, who maintained that plants needed only nitrogen, phosphorus, and potash to stimulate growth. Nitrogen can be made from petroleum processes ; the other two elements are mined and processed. Farms saw these new inputs as their salvation. County extension agents and top farmers assured others that the synthetic products wouldn’t hurt the land, and many farmers saw positive proof in their own fields. In the early years, the mechanical technology to apply fertilizers wasn’t too advanced, and the fertilizer wasn’t well granulated. Often the drive belt would slip or the fertilizer applicator would plug up, resulting in part of the field not being treated. Visually, it was obvious which part of a field wasn’t fertilized, convincing my father he could never again farm without fertilizer. Shifting from mining new soil to making existing acres more productive by purchasing outside inputs was an easy transition. Use of synthetic fertilizer encouraged farmers to raise specialized crops and abandon crop 42 Cultivating an Ecological Conscience rotation. Farmers began to raise continuous crops of whatever produced the best returns in the marketplace. To attain ever...