by Emiko Corey, Farm Manager of Santa Barbara A Rocha Five Loaves Farm

Rebecca Laughton writes “agriculture is sustainable when it is ecologically sound, economically viable, socially just, humane and adaptable, and is a dynamic concept which allows for the changing needs of an increasing global population.”[i] Sustainable agriculture is the alternative philosophy of farming that considers each member of the food system as well as the environment. The food system is characterized not just by the farmer, but also “researchers, input suppliers, farm workers, unions, farm advisors, processors, retailers, consumers and policymakers.”[ii] Sustainable agriculture is defined beyond methods of farming and looks at the big picture of justice within agriculture, including: consumer food security and safety, environmental health, economic viability of farms and social equity issues surrounding farm labor and processing conditions. As a farmer of the Santa Barbara A Rocha Five Loaves Farm, I seek sustainability because I believe this is how God calls me to be a good steward of the land and resources in which I farm.

The concept of sustainable agriculture has developed out of disappointments in modern industrial agriculture characterized by a centralization of power, control, and wealth, a value of competition and capitalism and an attitude of domination of nature to meet production goals.[iii] This has led to corporations instead of families running farmers, many consumer misunderstandings around the health and safety of food, exploitation of marginalized laborers and environmental degradation. Sustainable agriculture seeks to respond to these changes, bringing back some of the “old farm values” while being innovative it its call to make changes for the future generations of farmers.

Sustainable agriculture seeks to bring justice to the consumer.

Food should be safe, healthy and affordable.  At Five Loaves Farm, we have the opportunity to give all produce grown on site to the hungry poor of Santa Barbara. In a society where the hungry are often given cast-offs or damaged produce it is a privilege to provide the highest quality of produce to those in need. Five Loaves Farm is committed to contributing to food security, defined by the USDA as “a condition in which ‘all people at all times have access to enough food for a healthy, active life. At minimum, food security includes the ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods…’”[iv] We work with the non-profit organizations that receive our produce to promote health through educating community members about new produce and how to use fresh vegetables through recipe sharing. It is our belief that everyone in our community has deserves to eat healthy, fresh, organic produce.

Sustainable agriculture is committed to environmental justice.

At Five Loaves Farm we do not use pesticides, fungicides or synthetic fertilizers. These chemicals create a biological imbalance on the farm and contaminate ecological processes in the local watershed and surrounding wildlife areas. Our agricultural lands are understood as an ecosystem. I plant flowers that increase the amount of beneficial insects and pollinators. I add compost and plant cover crops to increase the microbiological activity and organic matter in the soil which increases soil overall health and fertility. I am careful with the amount of irrigation used so that excess nitrogen does not runoff and enter into local streams and eventually the ocean. We are in the process of planting a native hedgerow that will increase the amount of native pollinators on our site. In the future we would like to also build owl boxes and raptor perches to increase the amount of natural rodent predators we have on the farm. All of these practices are also in accordance with USDA organic farming standards.

Sustainable agriculture emphasizes the need to have economically viable farms.

Economic viability has three sources. First, it comes simply from making sufficient profits from the sale of produce. Next, it comes from a diversified farm that creates resiliency if there is crop loss. And lastly, it comes from the consumer holding a higher value for the work of the grower and the product produced. Many small farmers have begun selling at local Farmer’s Markets or through Community Supported Agriculture programs. The middleman is removed to increase profits and the consumer’s direct connection with the farmer increases the value people place in the profession. Those who are farming should be valued by the wages they are paid and appropriate respect for the job performed.

Sustainable agriculture engages in social justice.

In conventional agriculture, laborers are often treated as second-class citizens; given brutal working conditions with minimal pay. Sustainable agriculture seeks to address the needs of those employed on the farm, through fair wages, higher safety standards, adequate housing and year-round employment. For Five Loaves Farm, the primary way we take part in social justice is through community building. Our farm laborers, those who volunteer and intern at the farm are not simply completing a task, they are participating in the community built around the farm. Weekly we host volunteers and interns who participate in all aspects of the farm, planting, weeding and harvesting. Each volunteer is given a full experience of what farm labor is like. The challenge of the work instills a sense of respect for those who do these tasks all day.

The motivation behind sustainable agriculture is to “find a way to feed ourselves more in keeping with the logic of nature, to build a food system that looked more like an ecosystem that would draw its fertility and energy from the sun. To feed ourselves otherwise was ‘unsustainable,’ a word that’s been so abused that we’re apt to forget that what it very specifically means: Sooner of later it must collapse.”[v] As a sustainable agriculture farmer I seek sustainability for the consumer and those who receive our produce, for the environment, the soil I grow in and the surrounding ecologies, for the longevity of the farm and for all those who come to work on the farm. I believe that as farmers we can feed to world through sustainable farming practices and I ask that you join in the process of seeking sustainability within our food system.

           

By Robert Campbell*, Pastor of Santa Margarita Community Church

I tend to think of my garden as an ecological anti-depressant. With absolutely no substantiation other than my own anecdotal experience, I find that nearly every day soil and growing things save me from hopelessness. As a pastor, I work with people--often people with long ingrained habitual problems. This feels so tremendously large on some days that counseling requires an immediate retreat to the garden just outside my study. In the garden, I find that vegetables grow among the weeds and realize there can be good fruit in human hearts where I have found only weeds. I also find that a little nurture does wonders for plants and the same is true for people. Basically, my garden helps remind me of why I refuse to be a fatalist--either human or ecological. I refuse to live in that kind of despair.

Both Christians and non-Christians suffer from an undiagnosed melancholy in regards to issues of the earth, our ecological home. Some find themselves despairing over the grand and overwhelming task of reversing the direction of the earth. The destruction has gone so far, how could we ever bring it back? Others remain unmoved, either affectionately or persuasively by the goodness of what our world is, has been or could be in the future. But when we take God's story as a starting point (and finishing point) of our ecological involvement, it gives us hope that always leads to action in both small and great ways for the good of the world.

Creation as an act of God calls me to hope in the reality of the planet’s goodness
Our world is good because God is good and He created it. This simple theological reasoning provides the opening scene of God’s story;The creation is “good” because the Creator is good. In fact, He is the only consistent standard of good. The present badness that we experience is because of human choice to disregard God as that standard of goodness. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? We continue with those choices today and the ecological fruit becomes more apparent every day. Once we exercised dominion on behalf of God for the continuing goodness of the world, now brokenness and weeds dominate us. Be hopeful, because it was good once, it can be again.

The Exodus as an act of God affirms my hope in the possibility of a better future
In the story of the Exodus, God delivers his people from human-caused slavery and He can deliver us again. The way it is today does not have to be the way it will be tomorrow.  As living proof, believing men and women are daily transformed from the inside out. Countless millions over the ages have been renewed and redeemed. God removed their cold heart of stone and gave them a compassionate heart of flesh. He made them live again as His very own children. Obedient children of God act in simple, daily ways consistent with that new self and this brings about a better future.

The new creation as a future act of God makes my hope in a better future certain
The story of God ends with the renewal of all things. Not their destruction, but their renewal. The Bible describes it as a new heaven and a new earth, always mentioned together. This will be a place where all the original goodness will be restored. We will walk with God, each other and our ecological world as God originally intended. We will properly relate and will properly dominate so that more goodness is seen when we leave a place than when we arrived. This hope is as sure as God Himself.

But, what about...
I see two potential obstacles to this hope: A God obstacle and a scientific obstacle.

Perhaps you simply do not want to bow to God’s story as a starting point. Giving that authority away sounds entirely anathema to you. God forbid, so to speak. Fine. But do realize a few things. First, hope is consistent with God’s story and I dare say it is not consistent with any other. This would explain why hope is largely absent in most ecological movements, perhaps even your own. Secondly, see that this refusal to bow and insist rather on starting with yourself instead of with God mirrors the devil’s trick on Adam and Eve in the original garden--which has resulted in the present despair. It hasn’t worked so far and perhaps it is time for a change.

Say you do believe in God, but this is not the way you were taught to think of creation. You don't believe in its necessity or necessarily even care about what happens to it. After all, there is plenty of other good, God-ordained work to do. In that case, I remind you to look again at the end of the biblical story with a new heaven and a new earth. The two are always found together in the Bible. All things will one day be made right and for now all of creation groans for the children of God to become mature. I encourage you to return to the garden and find hope for the despair of your poor theological training.

Another obstacle to finding hope in God’s story is science, either an over-belief in the ability of science or an under-belief in the reliability of science. Is your hopelessness supported by the scientific data that shows the problem as insurmountable? Be careful here with making science say more than it could possibly say. Science gives us good and useful data, but it says only what is, not what could be. Hope (and despair) goes far beyond the data. Let the good scientific data motivate you, but do not let it take your hope, it is not that kind of information. That would be an over-belief in science. On the other hand, you may doubt the science that says our environment is in trouble. After all, you may feel, science has led to questioning of the biblical account of life’s origins and other values you hold dear. That may be so; however, whether you trust the science or not, you can certainly see with your own eyes the damage that is growing. You can witness the particular effects of your deliberate choices both in your backyard and around the world. Do not let a an under-belief in science’s ability to reliably explain the way things are steal your energy for hopeful action in the world.

Whichever obstacle may stand in your way, God’s story gives hope in the possibility of change--starting with you and me. Just go out in the garden or sprawl on the lawn and let nature preach to you the story of God who created all things, delivers us from our own rightly deserved consequences and will Himself bring about a new, redeemed creation one day. Allow your new-found hope to change your daily experience. Allow it to motivate your daily action. Allow it to become contagious. Something will happen. Tomorrow will be different, tomorrow will be better than today.

 *Robert Campbell is Pastor of Santa Margarita Community Church, an Evangelical Free Church on the Central Coast of California.

By Robert Campbell*, Pastor of Santa Margarita Community Church

I hope you hear the irony intended in the title. I certainly do care about what is happening to our world. But, climate change is merely a symptom. The cause: a lack of care. To address the symptom, we must address its cause. We must begin again to care.

Gaining a distinctly Christian ecology will enable us to care. It will free us to live more consistently in our world...and it will be good both for us and for our world. And the effects of climate change will be reduced  as you and I are radically transformed in heart, mind and actions.

Beginning with your heart...As you believe that God is distinct from all of creation, bowing to His ownership of all things, you will actually honor the tree as a fellow creature, just for being a tree. As you honor the tree you will honor God whose goodness is reflected in a tree much more than in a cathedral, you will find your place in the world…and you will begin to reduce the effects of climate change (more on this in Part I).

Considering your mind...As you understand your role as a steward of God’s world, your actions will begin to bring good to the Earth…and we will reduce the effects of climate change (more on this in Part II).

Now, considering what kind of actions flow naturally from that heart and mind, the Scriptures teach,

The Lord God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed…Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. Gen. 2:8, 15

God, who our story begins with, had a purpose for us in creation. He intended for us to cultivate and keep the garden that He called “good.”  Our role is to take care of it and bring its good fruit on His behalf. God planned for us to act as He would act toward His world. If we believe that God owns all things and we are His stewards then we will use His world toward His ends. What is His end? That His world would reflect His goodness and that you and I would see that reflection and worship Him.

Towards an ecological life of worship

These beliefs enable a new kind of living that is built one brick at a time. But what kind of life is consistent with belief in God and is working towards God's end? Here are a few thoughts on living in God's world with both people and place for God's end.

Live like you are free

The heart that believes in God's ownership and that takes stewardship seriously is free to live in joy. God created the world out of the overflow of His happiness. Therefore our life in this world can be good and joyous because the Earth is good and joyous. You are free to live for the purpose of God within the boundaries of God in a world He created, in part, for your joy. You can now arrange the details positively without fear.

Starting anywhere other than with God will just leave us with the false religion of guilt and fear: "The world will end if you drive another mile!" As A Rocha's Dave Timmer has written so beautifully, "Environmental legalism is still legalism." He goes on to say,

Creation care is so much more than taking the reusable tote to the grocery store, changing light bulbs, or eating organic produce. It is so much more than even giving everything we own to the poor. It is following Jesus. Creation care is reaching to grasp what God is doing in the places where we live.

Beyond the “Green” Commandments

Worship results when we live in light of God's joyous freedom in our world rather than from the fear and despair that comes from the preaching of imminent doom. Believe God, not the doomsday prophets. The first thing we must do is to relax; we have the right starting point.

Live like this is home

Our community has an annual clean-up day every May. Just after the storms end, we head out to serve our older neighbors, paint the downtown benches and pull weeds in the Santa Margarita Demonstration Forest. As my family I and freed the magnificent native plants from the encroachment of invading grasses, I remembered something true and important. Since the fall of mankind in the original garden, the natural tendency of all things earthly is toward weeds and thorns. If we just let it go, the world would end up covered in Star Thistle and Kudzu. No, we have a part in these things! Humans are not unnatural. You belong here. The word "ecology" simply means the study of home. God's world is our home. Worship results when we live like we belong here, like this is home. First, relax because you have started with God and then commit to the place where you actually live.

Live like you have hope

I am not suggesting that the current state of the environment is not dire and in need of our attention. It is! I am suggesting that the pagan religious action of much of the secular environmental movement is not needed and probably not adequate for solving the problem. All environmental action is religious action. Every action happens within a story, defines a problem, banks its hope on some form of redemption and then establishes a set of actions consistent with that religious belief. A distinctly Christian ecology does so most adequately because it is true to the way things actually are.

When God created all things good, He also put into it a created purpose to bring about good and He intends that it will one day achieve that end in spite of the brokenness that we inflict on our world everyday. Right now, our world is not as it should be!

The manner of that redemption is what Christians call the “good news.” God Himself has entered into His created world in order to take the brokenness and wrong seriously and to put the pieces back together. I am suggesting that Jesus is the only true ecologist. He lived in light of God's story and assessed the problem rightly as being rooted in the heart of mankind. He sacrificed Himself in order to set things right by forgiving our true guilt, carrying away our real shame and removing the need for blame. In calling us to “follow Him,” we not only enable our people to find forgiveness, but live all of life under the Lordship of King Jesus, doing His will in our place.

Worship results when (1) we enjoy the freedom that comes from starting with God, (2) commit to the place we call home and (3) live in the hope that God's redemption in Jesus has restored us and then join Him in restoring the world, its people and its places. I call that a redemptive dominion, ruling as God would rule if He were here doing it Himself.

A call to act as distinctly Christian ecologists

These truths force us to act. We cannot wash our hands of it. We must act in light of God's redemption in Jesus. That is the role of the local church and A Rocha serves as a support in the Church's call to action.

As a local church Pastor, I believe that the local church should care about conservation because it (the church) is God's way of getting his people in the right place for the job of redemptive dominion. The church is a local gathering of believers. It's a gathering of people defined by their faith in Jesus and the dirt they walk on. We are a people that always have a place. We are concerned with the real people and places that we are sent to. Local is always personal. When we act locally, we put ourselves in a position to suffer from our decisions. When we act locally, we act freely and with hope in the place we call home. When we act locally, we love our neighbors.

My local church lives in a place called Santa Margarita, California. Our ecology works out there, with the people that live there with us. We buy breakfast from Carrie. We buy tea from Carol, wine from the Arnold Family, a fine dinner from Jeff and Lindsay Jackson (whose daughter went to school with my son), gas from Chris, Chris and Brandon, and beer from Chris over at Dunbar Brewing. These are particular people in a particular place. This is the kind of impact that a local church can have that no one else can have because God has placed us. (I have developed these thoughts further on another A Rocha USA blog post) My main point here is that, for the average person, to act as a distinctly Christian ecologist involves simply making our daily decisions in a way that results in worship.

A Rocha serves the local church in a unique way by guiding us to remember that people are always placed and to bring those called to the vocation of science, agriculture etc. to serve the rest of us in the local church for the purpose of worship. And just like the local church, the work of A Rocha is placed.

•  A Rocha is working to restore and protect a watershed in northwest Washington.
  
•  A Rocha is working with food distribution programs in Santa Barbara, CA to give food grown at the Five Loaves Farm to low-income families.
•  A Rocha is restoring and protecting headwaters of the Frio river in the hill country of Texas.
•  A Rocha is partnering with the local church and Land Conservancy in San Luis Obispo, California to educate children about the place where they live.

In all of these places, A Rocha is just a gathering of believers like you, who belong to local churches. Those believers have developed a distinctly Christian ecology and are living in the light of God's story in a particular place with a particular people...and that daily, immediate action is limiting the symptoms of climate change.

 

 *Robert Campbell is Pastor of Santa Margarita Community Church, an Evangelical Free Church on the Central Coast of California. Part I, II and III of this series of essays comes from remarks delivered in the SLO A Rocha "Christian Ecology Series", March, April and May 2011 (TBA).

On his recent visit to the United States, A Rocha Founder and President Rev. Peter Harris was interviewed by Santa Barbara Community Church Pastors Steve and Reed Jolley. In this wonderful interview, Peter speaks to the truth of the Bible and the Christian response to the creation we live in. Please share this with your friends and family.

Here is the link to the audio clip:http://sbcommunity.org/audio/eutychus/PeterHarris.mp3