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COVER STORIES: BACK TO THE LAND...STILL
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A New Generation
Back to Back
to the Land...Still
Odin Zackman, G00, is a self-described “Jewish kid from New York City.” So
he’s used to people asking, How did you wind up in agriculture? “My
dad jokes that it goes back to my ancestors collecting cabbages on the steppes
of the Ukraine,” he says.
In fact, Zackman, who earned a master’s from the Tufts Program in Agriculture,
Food and the Environment, sees agriculture as central to a principled way of
life. It is a path influenced during college by Oberlin professor David Orr,
noted environmentalist. “I had this growing feeling, not that I’m
going to go out and save the Earth,” says Zackman, “but that I could
do something that is in line with my values and at least on one small patch of
the Earth, what I do will be worthwhile.”
Now, as director of the Center for Land-Based Learning in Winters, California,
Zackman says the fit is perfect. “My aim is to work with people to connect
them to a sense of place, and there is really nothing more powerful than actually
having someone get their hands into the soil and learning where our food comes
from. That creates a whole cascade of possibilities, including understanding
that preserving agriculture also protects the environment.”
Zackman’s convictions may resonate with many older graduates who recall
the “back-to-the-land movement” of the 1960s and 1970s. Today, a
new generation of alumni bring their own passions and ideals to the cause; they
are taking advantage of broader opportunities to embellish on a shared empathy
for the Earth.
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Margaret
Lloyd, A02, is a good example.
She spent the summer after her sophomore year working on a Santa
Cruz vineyard, where she first “became interested in the
craft and meditation of working outside and with plants.”
Another summer she worked in Oregon as part of the Northwest
Youth Corps. By senior year, she was studying forestry conservation
projects in Costa Rica, and lined up a grant to study sustainable
farming practices in Hawaii, including seeing a two-acre farm
sustain a family of six and provide a modest income. “It
felt like I was actually living with the earth and using its
resources to the fullest,” says Lloyd. “Very little
was wasted, everything had meaning and history and purpose.”
This year she is apprenticing with Ecology Action, a research and nonprofit organization
in Willits, California, and has the added benefit of living across town on a
5,000-acre intentional community; interns can conduct research in the gardens
while helping with the practical necessity of growing food for the community.
Lloyd says she was strongly attracted to the mission and philosophy of Ecology
Action, founded by John Jeavons roughly 30 years ago. Its quarter-acre garden,
located on a rocky, arid hillside, replicates the conditions available to most
of the world’s population; research on how to optimize food production
even under these adverse conditions has led to innovative biointensive organic
farming methods, now used in 100 countries.
“I believe in Ecology Action’s mission, their international horizon,
and research base,” says
Lloyd. “I definitely feel that it’s central
to my integrity to make use of things to their capacity, to not waste. I have
to live it in my own life and be an example to my family and friends.”
Amy Baron, A02, an environmentalist and “food activist,” feels
compelled by similar convictions to address ecology issues at their root. As
a garden coordinator with Citysprouts, a nonprofit that maintains four schoolyard
gardens in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she integrates outdoor and garden education
into the public school curriculum.
“Ask any kid today where food comes from, and likely the response will
be ‘the supermarket,’ ” says Baron. “Most children eat
processed, packaged foods, sweets, soda, and very few fruits and vegetables on
a daily basis, habits contributing to the growing problem of childhood obesity.
Coordinators can teach children about plants, food, and that eating fresh vegetables
might not be the grossest thing in the entire world, especially when you grow
it yourself.”
This kind of outreach, she says, also helps young people connect themes of environmental
stewardship with their own health. “They’re learning about the natural
world and how food is connected to it, and, hopefully, making better consumer
choices that will last their entire lives.”
For Abby Slosek, A99, the connection to the land
runs in the family—for
four generations, the Sloseks have worked the fields of Moors End Farm on Nantucket
Island, well known for its fresh vegetables and flowers. When Slosek graduated
from Tufts with a degree in English, she realized she had an “original
opportunity” if she returned to help run the family business.
“I found myself at graduation surrounded by classmates who were either
preparing for new careers or, the majority, confounded about what they were supposed
to do with their expensive education and parental pressures,” she says. “Everyone
seemed to be dying to do something different, something with meaning, and here
was something truly different!”
She shares with her peers working in agriculture a deep fondness for the land. “Farming
is a lot of work, a lot of work,” she says. “It is gratifying, though,
in that not only can I literally see the fruits of my labors, but I feel completely
connected to my roots. It is a real way of life that I feel blessed to carry
on.”
Teague
Channing, A01, with his brother
Kosma, bears a striking resemblance in some ways to those who
opted for communal living. But like his peers, he, too, has
created his own niche. He and Kosma manage a seven-acre organic
farm in Las Trampas, New Mexico, an hour north of Santa Fe.
They grow a diversity of vegetables, raise chickens, and milk
a goat herd to make their own yogurt and cheese. “Some
people first asked us when we started, Are you for real, but
it becomes more real as we do it,” says Channing. “The
longer the commitment, like anything else in life, the more
people believe in you. And the longer we stay committed, the
more we’re putting it out there that we need people growing
food locally.”
When they first leased this long-neglected property, including three acres of
irrigated pasture overgrown with desert willow, it was the brothers’ shared
vision that inspired the hard work ahead. Many blisters later, they had cleared
the land, built a barn, and planted their first crops. Like they hoped, the Santa
Fe farmers’ market, with its thriving support network, returned a hearty
profit for their first year. “We can go to the farmers’ market with
nice fresh produce and make $500 a day,” says Channing. “This location
has been a huge asset.” Channing also holds it as a part of his larger
vision to “stay connected with people everywhere”—as the years
go on, he hopes to offer educational programs as well—and encourages emails
at channingbros@hotmail.com.
Channing says his Tufts studies about changing traditional life ways kindled
his desire to live sustainably, to put his convictions to the test. “In
a certain sense, I feel that I’ve been called to make my life a model.
It’s a lot of work and risk—but for some reason, we felt we had to
give it a try.” Asked about his lifestyle’s resemblance, in some
ways, to the communal living projects pioneered in the ’60s and ’70s,
Channing doesn’t miss a beat. “I think we’re the children of
that generation, so what they lived and what went on in their minds is now in
ours,” he says. “We’re kind of an extension of that spirit,
but we also confront it with our own realities. We extend what our parents did,
and we bring a new perspective.”
That’s a sentiment shared by Odin Zackman as
well. His graduate education at Tufts, a program housed at the Friedman School
of Nutrition Science and Policy, he says, is a good example of how the environmental
movement is increasingly drawing on interdisciplinary solutions. And as that
trend continues, he suspects that more and more people, of all ages, will join
in.
“I would say there are certain pockets in the country where we’re
seeing a sort of desire for people to reconnect in some way; they are heading
back to the land because there is something they’ve lost,” he says. “They
want to get their hands in the soil. To understand what’s real. It is about
the process of actually growing things and using that as a metaphor and it’s
also about the process. Jefferson said the people who are capable of being engaged
in a democracy need to be tied to the land. He was hitting upon something that’s
true; you need to be vested in your local place.”
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