Fora

1990 Forum: Living Your Life as Vocation

A Proposal from the Au Sable Forum:
Plain Farmer Conservancy

Mission: The resettling of rural America in the form of appropriate-scaled farms which would practice ecologically sustainable techniques and foster Christian values of community.

Organization: A public, not-for-profit interest group and lobby based on the Bible as the sole authority for faith and practice. The Conservancy would not be affiliated with an organized church, but would base its ideals of agriculture and community on the example of the Amish and Mennonite plain farmers. The works of the Conservancy would focus on three barriers to the resettling of rural America: financial, educational, and political.

Target Actions would include:

• establish a database or network of existing farmers willing to support and educate urban or suburban dwellers wishing to relocate to the land by providing opportunities for tenant farming.
• identify and catalogue regions appropriate for resettlement.
• link urban churces with a rural affiliate in order to address mutual needs, including
• providing ecological education for the urban poor and work for the homeless (cf. Fresh Air program in the Philadelphia area.)
• providing economic support for struggling small farmers (in the form of work assistance or grants-in-aid.)
• investigate the use of land trusts and conservation easements in order to preserve land for plain farming (especially as distinct from the current trend of preserving land as undeveloped and therefore uninhabited open space.)
• construct a set of guidelines incorporating sound agricultural principles with the proper Christian Land Ethic (cf. Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry, Robert Rodale, E.F. Schumacher, Loren Wilkenson et al., and others).
• create an endowment to support the programs of the Conservancy and eventually provide interest-free loans to future plain farmers

This proposal was initially suggested in a letter to the Institute Director by John A. Hostetler following a Conference on Land, Ethics and Community Values he organized in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania in July, 1988. It was developed by Chris Blum (Charlottesville, VA), James Wolfe (Houghton, NY), Jerry Herbert (Washington, D.C.), Eric Ashley (Lancaster, PA), Randy Bevis (Wayzata, MN), Richard Erickson (Ferndale, MI), Greg Molner (Hillsboro, WI), and Harry Cook (Edmonton, Alberta) and presented to the Forum in its concluding session, July 14, 1990.

For additional information on Au Sable Forum 1990 contact:
Peter Bakken, Coordinator of Outreach
Au Sable Institute
PO Box 260170
Madison, WI 53726
(608) 663-4610 Phone
(608) 663-4614 FAX
e-mail: outreach@ausable.org

< back to 1990 Fora