Out of Dissolution and Collapse Comes a Chance to Evolve and Regenerate 

by Susan Jennings, Executive Director 

As I write this, we are at the mid-point of 2020. Ohio is entering what appears to be its second peak of COVID cases; political unrest in the streets and in legislatures continues across America; a dust cloud is headed to the Midwest from the Sahara; the Arctic just recorded its highest temperature ever; unemployment and hunger rates are soaring; and massive oil spills are damaging two of the most pristine places left on the planet. It is difficult to imagine what the end of the year will look like, but it is clear that there will not be a pause to help us collect ourselves, and that there is no going back. There is also a growing realization that—uncertain as the path is before us—we don’t want to go back. 

Nowhere is this more apparent than in our international food system. Not only is big ag a likely contributor to the pandemic—read for example, Big Farms Make Big Flu: Dispatches on Influenza, Agribusiness, and the Nature of Science—but the pandemic shutdowns have also exposed the multiple fragilities of a mono-cultural, global, one-size-fits-all agricultural system that privileges financial considerations over ethics and community sovereignty. The pictures of milk being poured down drains, produce being plowed into fields, and thousands of chickens and pigs euthanized while food insecurity in what we tout as the richest country in the history of the planet quadrupled, deeply shook whatever faith we had in the resilience of our food chain. During the past few months, seed sales have skyrocketed and gyrations of commodity prices, illnesses of food workers, erection of trade barriers, and episodic shortages show that the crisis will not be short-lived.

How we grow and share food is a microcosm, progenitor, and result of the broader economic system. Over the last several decades, with the advent of globalization, villagers who previously were food secure within the confines of their communities were moved off the land and into cities to provide cheap labor for manufacturing goods. At the same time, farms became consolidated, and most food subsidies internationally were paid for conventional grains grown in a way that damaged soil, biodiversity, and human health. Now, converging ecological, financial, and health crises are collapsing financial systems, retail and fossil fuel industries, education, national and international governmental structures, health care systems—and our sense of the future.

It’s clear that we are in the throes of the long-predicted Collapse, the “Long Emergency,” the Great Turning, the Great Unraveling, the Great Transition. 

And yet we can see glimmers of possibilities. Like the endless spiral of a Mobius strip, one face of our collective experience is winding down toward dissolution and collapse, and the other toward the rapid evolution that that dissolution allows: 

• Collapsing food systems open the door to re-localized and regionalized systems and community food sovereignty.

• Collapsing economies open the door for reflections on what we truly need and a re-engagement with systems like mutual aid, local currencies, cooperatives, and simplicity.

• Collapsing political structures cause us to ask who needs to be controlled and organized and for what purpose.

• Collapsing educational systems and home schooling everywhere spur discussions of what we are teaching and why—what of the past do we need to bring forward and how do we create space for the emerging structures waiting to be born?

• Collapsing of our belief in the need for violence opens up questions of our violence against other countries and species and the earth itself.

• Collapsing of our belief in American exceptionalism allows us to see possibilities in other countries and social and economic systems

• Collapsing of our frenetic lifestyles causes us to ask the perennial question of what we are working for and what that means about us and our priorities.

• And the collapsing of a materialist, linear, monocultural, mechanistic mindset opens our psyches to the arising of a new paradigm of cooperation, diversity, and interconnectedness.

Our media is replete with stories of individual and community awakenings, from Japanese men becoming more helpful around the house, to parents everywhere deciding to homeschool or cut back work hours.  Communities like Yellow Springs have seen rising leadership from many avenues, and cooperation flourishing through mutual aid and sharing. Cities like Venice used the lockdown time to discuss how to put the future of the city back in the hands of residents; other cities envisioned and created car-free corridors, including Vilnius, Lithuania, which became a giant open air café.  Explorations into state banks, bioregional economics and governance, debt jubilees, and community economics are being discussed locally and on an increasingly imperiled internet that is nonetheless serving as a salon for generating new visions for the future. Bicycles are selling out everywhere on the planet, and glimpses of clean air, blue skies, and flourishing wildlife whisper to us of other paths not taken that could still be open. 

During our own Agraria(n) spring dream state, when the whole world was on retreat, we pulled back from our own forward motion and re-envisioned how we could serve.  One thing was clear—we wanted to continue to work on systemic solutions that are embedded in Community Solutions and Agraria’s missions, including regenerative land use, resilient communities, community economics, and support of the regional food system. Our founder, Arthur Morgan, was prescient about globalization and urbanization, and during our 80-year history we have focused on healthier alternatives to the current system. This deep legacy coupled with the new partnerships enabled by our purchase of Agraria gives us a solid foundation for moving forward.

Our work plan takes into account our aspirations, strengths, and a recognition of regional gaps and international opportunities for cooperative engagement. The three levels of our work include:

• Continuing to model regenerative practices at Agraria; 

• Support for the re-development of a regional food system;

• And education about, and support of, healthy models for the future.

Our local, regional and international partnerships continue to deepen. Here in Yellow Springs we are partnered with Home, Inc on employee housing at Agraria; with Tecumseh Land Trust on several educational ventures; with the Yellow Springs Schools on hybrid education; and with the Yellow Springs Farmers Market. We are also partnering with the Yellow Springs News on webcasts about possible futures for Yellow Springs.

Our regional and state-wide food system work includes an application for an OpenIDEO food prize with several partners from Dayton, support of S.O.U.P.’s work in Springfield, and participation in several working groups on food systems and soil health. Nationally and internationally we are working with The Land Institute, The Bionutrient Food Association, The National Institute for Applied Climate Science, and Mitraniketan in Kerala India. We also have had conversations with Vandana Shiva—after visiting her farm in India, we followed up with an online conversation that will be part of our new podcast series. 

You can read more about these initiatives in the pages to come—you can also read about them on our website or come to Agraria and see for yourself!

All of these burgeoning projects are facilitated by an amazing young and growing staff, dedicated board members, and volunteers and supporters like you! We are grateful to be on the cutting edge yet grounded in an understanding of what needs to be done. We look forward to you sharing with us in the regeneration of our communities and our planet.

Susan Jennings is executive director of Community Solutions.