camp: Jackpot, Nevada
context: We spent this week camped on public lands in Nevada learning
more about grazing. Our week included a visit with Jon Marvel, the director of
the Western Watersheds Project. Jon is fiercely anti-grazing on public lands
and has a reputation as a bit of a bully among ranchers in the area. We also
visited Steve and Robin Boise, ranchers in the area who are practicing
rotational grazing and limiting the number of cattle on their allotment to
allow the land to recover.
I
have no idea what I can eat. Well, that’s not strictly true. I know I can go to
farmer’s markets, pay $6 a pound for Thundering Hooves ground beef, ask my food
producers questions and eat relatively sustainably.
Buy
how do we feed the world? If ranching means incised channels and toxic waste
runoff from feedlots and wheat means methyl isocyanate and Monsanto’s patented
genes, what on earth are my customers, coworkers and family members who live on
food stamps supposed to buy? How do we change this system from the ground up?
Because changing it top-down will never work as long as ranchers control
Congress and agribusiness contributes 132.7 million a year to them.
Listening
to ranchers on this trip, I like them. They’re good people, people I’d want to
have as neighbors. Robin and Steve, Todd Nash…it’s so hard to listen to them
and say, “Too bad.” It’s so hard to remember that they’re wrong about some
things. Listening to Jon and Suzanne, I don’t get that feeling of
neighborliness. They’re not the sort how make you feel at ease. They’re not
easy to listen to. But I think more of the truth lies on their side of the
fence. How do I speak what they say and sound like a rancher? I don’t want to
manipulate statistics the way Jon does—2-3% of cow weight is very different
than 2-3% of cows raised on public lands. I don’t want to be frenzied and
upset, but it’s so hard not to when you’re seeing things that are unspeakable
and no one else will listen to you about them. I guess mostly I want to work
with people, not against everything, not with corporations and not from inside
the groups causing the problem or tacitly allowing it to continue. But
compromise with ranchers seems easy. I can’t see myself a ranching activist,
and compromise with the LA Department of Water and Power or Monsanto seems so
much harder. Steve and Robin are people, but Exxon-Mobil might as well be
Satan. Maybe this is where I take a lesson from Mike*, who helped get some lake
back. After all, I still don’t really want to blow up a dam. Maybe compromise
is our best hope. God, that’s a scary thought.
*Mike
Prather, an activist who has worked to restore Owens Lake in California, after
LA’s Department of Water and Power pumped it dry for their municipal water
supply. Now, the lake is a series of square pits filled with water, technically
designated as a construction site (we had to wear vests and hard hats to go
birdwatching). But a lot of migratory birds have come back to the area.
