In the first post about Restoration Nation, I asked, “How can we move restoration into the private sector?”
Today, as part III of my Farmer in Chief series (considering Michael Pollan’s article “Farmer in Chief”), I was wondering whether turning parts of a suburban yard into a small farm qualify as the kind of restoration I’m considering here. Certainly, a vegetable garden will promote diversity more than a suburban lawn treated with chemical fertilizers and herbicides. The chemicals tend to diminish biodiversity by killing beneficial as well as harmful insects. (Though I certainly do appreciate Roundup when I’m trying to get rid of Canada thistle and field bindweed.) But even a conventional garden treated with herbicides and pesticides should have more diversity than a lawn, simply because there are more kinds of plants.
But is a small garden more of a restoration than the part of my yard I’ve seeded in buffalograss, for instance? That grass is native to the Denver area. My little buffalograss 1/8 acre (or however big it is) has a lot of weeds, but it also has some native plants appearing in it, like curly cup gum weed. I was pleased to see that; it made me feel I’d encouraged a little bit of the native community to come back.
Perhaps, as this book indicates, if you garden with dual goals (to produce food and to improve habitat for wildlife), putting in a garden can be called restoration.
But it isn’t necessarily a private sector activity until you’ve actually sold some of the food to someone. If you’re just giving food to your neighbors, that’s more of a gift economy or barter economy. It’s certainly useful for building relationships or even for helping out people who have trouble putting food on their tables, but I don’t see it as commerce. Is that too narrow-minded?
And if you’re doing what I’m doing with my buffalograss restoration area, I don’t see how that’s “an economy that restores” at all.
Perhaps “an economy that restores” will have at least two tiers: one in which some money can actually be made through restoration, and one in which restoration is done just because it’s good to get rid of noxious weeds, for instance. The first would have to pay for much of the second.
Well, I never thought Restoration Nation would be easy to figure out. I do hope, however, that someday soon I’ll feel as if I’ve got onto a path that leads toward “an economy that restores.”
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‘Perhaps “an economy that restores” will have at least two tiers: one in which some money can actually be made through restoration, and one in which restoration is done just because it’s good to get rid of noxious weeds, for instance.’
Anything, short of more concrete, which holds back the creeping weeds is a plus for humanity.
Perhaps “an economy that restores” is itself just one tier of “a society that restores?” While I do think restoration needs to be economically viable to ulimately succeed, the not-directly-economic benefits are equally important.
Tonight they are “lighting the lights” downtown. On the face of it, we’re wasting a big pile of money on a bunch of pretty lights. But if you look a little deeper you start to consider the value of beauty and tradition to a society.
Holding back the creeping weeds is important figuratively as well as literally.
I guess you’re both right, if you define “weeds” as things that make a society unkempt, ugly around the edges, unproductive.
And it is good to focus on indirect benefits. They tend to be neglected because they’re longer-term and less tangible.
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