“Everything's up to date in Kansas City,” marveled cowboy Will Parker in the Rogers and Hammerstein
musical Oklahoma!, set in 1906 and debuting on Broadway in 1943.
“They gone about as fer as they can go
They went an' built a skyscraper seven stories high
About as high as a buildin' orta grow.”
My guess is that audiences found that
prediction as comically nonsensical in 1943 as we do today. With two skyscrapers planned for downtown Des
Moines that rise 30 stories and more, a 7-story “skyscraper” sounds more like a
bungalow. Never mind that the tallest building in the country -- the 104-story One World Trade Center in New York -- is only the 6th tallest in the world.
That’s the problem with the
present tense, of course: we don’t know
what we don’t know. In 1906 a 7-story building really sounded like something. We make judgments
and assumptions based on wisdom accumulated to that point – what else, after
all, do we have? – but only fools presume that that’s all there is.
I found myself humming that classic
piece of musical naiveté while reading the newspaper’s reporting on the Iowa
State Legislature’s budget recommendation that would effectively eliminate the
30-year old Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture housed at Iowa State
University. Named after Iowa native Aldo
Leopold, an internationally revered
conservationist, ecologist, and educator who championed the need for
development of a “land ethic”, the Center’s mission has been “to identify and
develop new ways to farm profitably while conserving natural resources as well
as reducing negative environmental and social impacts.” In its three decades of work, the Center has
sponsored research, trials, educational efforts, and worked with farmers to
enrich both their work and the land they cultivate. Much of the conservation progress in Iowa that has been realized in recent years can be traced to the Center's research and educational efforts -- work that, by the Center's own assessment, is still in its infancy.
In announcing the budget proposal, however, Rep. Cecil
Dolecheck (Mt. Ayr) mused that “…the
center’s mission of researching methods of sustainable agriculture appears to
have been achieved.”
Yep, they gone about as fer as they can go.
“Research on sustainable agriculture,” Dolecheck went on to
observe, “can continue at ISU, but it can be done through the College of
Agriculture.” (Des Moines Register, April 12, 2017)
Given that land grant institutions like Iowa State have
largely become wholly owned subsidiaries of “big ag”, focused more centrally on
corporate profitability than soil sustainability, that option offers thin
encouragement. Meanwhile, the land
continues to erode, the soil continues to deteriorate, waterways are
increasingly unswimmable and toxic to wildlife, and farmers, for all their
available tools and technologies, earn less and less for their labors while spending more and more for the privilege.
But apparently research on sustainability has gone about as
far as it can go. Perhaps next the
Legislature will impose a 7-story cap on new building construction because
everybody knows that’s “About as high as a buildin' orta grow.”
One thing is almost certainly true in this sad saga of
environmental ignorance and disregard.
As we accelerate our disinterest in matters of sustainability, the
Leopold Center’s mission toward that end will indeed grow obsolete. “Sustainability” will no longer be the relevant
need.
“Regenerativity” will, of necessity, have urgently taken its
place.
