Daniel Doyle on “Farming, Race and Equity in the South”

As many of us may know, conventional farming is having terrible impacts on both environmental and human health across the country. However, what you may not know is that traditional farming has an incredibly large impact on minorities, specifically in the southern region of our nation. Throughout our history, minorities have worked the land in disempowering situations, from slavery to sharecropping and then to wage per piece labor.
Williams Graduate of 2006, Daniel Doyle, realized this while taking a tutorial on the South while studying at Williams College. Last week on Friday, September 18 at our weekly Log Lunch, Doyle came to discuss with the community how he has been addressing these issues since his graduation in ’06.

unnamedHe shared with the audience that the American South, specifically the state of Mississippi, faces particular challenges to sustainable living that prove very daunting. Primary access to food, health, education and housing elude many in the South. The South has been overrun with conventional farming, which in no way benefits the locals of the area. Doyle explained that industrial farming is a pattern of resource exploitation and that agriculture and race issues are deeply intertwined. Conventional farming succeeds because of human exploitation. It is based on the desire for surplus, growth expansion, and short-term returns, rather than balance, regeneration, and long-term investment. With that, the economic vulnerability has led to poverty and land loss among minorities. Local farmers cannot compete with national corporations. Daniel Doyle moved to Mississippi shortly after graduating. Upon arrival, he started the first organic farm and CSA in the state of Mississippi. He farmed it for several years, and the CSA had over one hundred members. It is still the largest CSA in the state today. After awhile, Doyle began running into the difficulties one would expect of a new farm owner. He realized that local farms could not be created all over the state because it was very difficult as a young person to just become a farmer.

Photo Above: Dan Doyle with Bob Volpi

With that, it is even harder to become a farmer focused on both economic AND environmental sustainability. As Doyle explained, it is very difficult to compete with industrial farmers who promote cheap food. Cheaper food calls for industrial methods. Specifically mentioned my Doyle: mono-cropping and cheap labor.

Mono-cropping is one of the worst diseases our nation’s farms have become susceptible to. A lack of diversity in the farm fields across the southern region depletes the soil at remarkable rates, draining it of any nutrients it once had while also allowed for a disease to spread rampantly throughout entire crops. Due to both of these issues, chemical fertilizers are used to revitalize the soil and to avoid the spread of disease. These chemicals are then washed away and become run-off into streams, and then rivers, then to the ocean where they have created a massive dead patch in our Gulf. Long story short, according to Doyle and many others who have studied the need for sustainable farming, mono-cropping may create cheap food quickly, but it destroys land and water ecosystems soon as well.

MSAN_Logo-roundIn the attempt to establish a solution to these problems, Doyle took part in starting a non-profit organization that would help new farmers and farmers across Mississippi create a sustainable growing style, while also connecting the people to these local farms in order to support sustainable farming. Doyle is now the Executive Director of his non-profit the Mississippi Sustainable Agriculture Network (MSAN), whose mission is to: “Make sustainable farming and local food production thriving enterprises in Mississippi,” by supporting farming that is both economically viable and environmentally sustainable while benefitting the people and land of the state of Mississippi. In short, according to Daniel Doyle: “MSAN is a way to encourage more support for locally-grown, responsibly-raised food, to foster a new generation of farmers dedicated to regenerative agriculture while supporting their growth, and to bridge the gap from where we are and where we need to be through educational outreach and building community awareness.”

According to Doyle, Mississippi has the highest food insecurity rate in the United States at 17.9%. One in four African American households in the area does not have a secure food source. 90% of the food consumed in Mississippi is imported from other states in the US. Doyle believes that to alleviate these food deserts, Mississippi food sources need to be focused on both LOCAL and ORGANIC options. MSAN focuses on supporting these farms to focus on these important aspects.

At the end of his presentation, Doyle reminded us of a civil rights slogan: “You’re either a victim or a rebel,” which he believes to be true in the current circumstances. We are allowing ourselves to be victims of corporate farming if we do nothing. We must “lend a hand and make a change.”

 

A thought to leave you with:

 

While speaking at the lunch, Doyle read us a quote from a childhood favorite of his, Clabbered Dirt, Sweet Grass by Gary Paulsen.  To remind us that everything that makes us what we are comes from one source:

 

“All the luck in the world has to come every year, in every part of every year, or there is not a harvest and then the luck, the bad luck will come and everything we are, all that we can ever be, all the Einsteins and babies and love and hate, all the joy and sadness and sex and wanting and liking and disliking, all the soft summer breezes on cheeks and first snowflakes, all the Van Goghs and Rembrandts and Mozarts and Mahlers and Thomas Jeffersons and Lincolns and Ghandis and Jesus Christs, Muhammads and Buddhas all the Cleopatras and lovemaking and riches and achievements and progress, all of that, every single damn thing that we are or ever will be is dependent on six inches of topsoil and the fact that the rain comes when it’s needed and does not come when it is not needed; everything, every…single…thing”

— Gary Paulsen,Clabbered Dirt, Sweet Grass

 

For more information on MSAN, check out their website: http://www.mssagnet.net

-Caroline Beckmann, ’17