It Takes a Village

Yesterday I read an interesting review of an opera based on Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. As part of her conclusion, the reviewer stated the following:

In our harsh economic world of huge, impersonal corporations, and individualist, materialist philosophies, we badly need to hear the messages of "The Grapes of Wrath." Forced economic migrations are taking place on an even greater scale today, in our own country and elsewhere. And, as in New Orleans, we now have environmental refugees as well, recalling the Dust Bowl Joads. It is difficult to portray the spider's web of economic power that catapults people from one place to another, but the book and the opera do it stunningly. They are worth reading, seeing and hearing, and few will leave the experience without thinking hard about what we can do to change the picture.

As horrific as the conditions were for the Joads and other Dust Bowl refugees, the redemption in Steinbeck's work was found in the acts of kindness and compassion found within the community of the near-hopeless. The concept of community, of people acting in concert for the betterment of all, is a powerful one. Unfortunately, it is one that is frequently forgotten during periods of high stress.

Later in the day, in one of the more gratifying moments of serendipity I've had in years, rorschach pointed me to this article in yesterday's NY Times:

Better conservation and improved rainfall have led to at least 7.4 million newly tree-covered acres in Niger, researchers have found, achieved largely without relying on the large-scale planting of trees or other expensive methods often advocated by African politicians and aid groups for halting desertification, the process by which soil loses its fertility.

...Severe drought in the 1970s and ’80s, coupled with a population explosion and destructive farming and livestock practices, was denuding vast swaths of land. The desert seemed determined to swallow everything. So Mr. Danjimo and other farmers in Guidan Bakoye took a small but radical step. No longer would they clear the saplings from their fields before planting, as they had for generations. Instead they would protect and nurture them, carefully plowing around them when sowing millet, sorghum, peanuts and beans.

Today, the success in growing new trees suggests that the harm to much of the Sahel may not have been permanent, but a temporary loss of fertility. The evidence, scientists say, demonstrates how relatively small changes in human behavior can transform the regional ecology, restoring its biodiversity and productivity.

...But over time, farmers began to regard the trees in their fields as their property, and in recent years the government has recognized the benefits of that outlook by allowing individuals to own trees. Farmers make money from the trees by selling branches, pods, fruit and bark. Because those sales are more lucrative over time than simply chopping down the tree for firewood, the farmers preserve them. [Emphasis added]

Those "small changes in human behavior" started with a single farmer, but soon extended to the entire community of small farmers acting in concert to save their own livelihoods for more than a single, precarious growing season.

“It really requires the effort of the whole community,” said Dr. Larwanou. “If farmers don’t take action themselves and the community doesn’t support it, farmer-managed regeneration cannot work.”

Too often we are so reduced to impotent paralysis by the never-ending bad news of perpetual wars and an economy in which the top 5% control 90% of the wealth that we forget that there is indeed powers in numbers, that if we work together as a community, we can make the changes necessary to improve our collective lot. The Joads and the farmers in Niger remind us that much is possible.


[Note: rorschach's take on the Niger story can be found here.]