THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN LIGHT AND SHADE - MEAT: A Benign Extravagance - page 300

of grain, and so propitious for the rearing of animals. If it does neglect grass and grain -
horn and corn as they used to call it - permaculture is likely to remain on the fringes of
agriculture, producing secondary and niche commodities such vegetables, mushrooms and
berries.
Permaculture is a contraction of the words 'permanent' and 'agriculture'. In 1948, the
US Department of Agriculture published as its Yearbook of Agriculture a volume entitled
simply Grass . 30 It is a veritable encyclopaedia, 892 pages long and containing over 120
contributions about grass farming from dozens of authors. It was the outcome of wide-
spread concern at the time to reverse the destructive farming processes resulting from the
'Great Plow-up' of the 1920s that had led to the dustbowls of the 1930s. The first section
of the topic was headed 'Permanent Agriculture', and its opening lines were 'Our goal is
permanency in agriculture'. It continued:
Permanency in agriculture is a goal to be sought always, by all people everywhere.
So, in the wake of war and in the glow of our unprecedented production, this country
looks to the future and considers again the land and its management - this time as
never before in terms of grass. For around grass, farmers can organize general crop
production so as to promote efficient practices that lead to permanence in agriculture.
The opening chapter by P V Cardon, and indeed the entire book, put the case for a sus-
tainable agriculture, founded on mixed farming, with grass providing protection against
erosion and restoring the organic matter and the nitrogen to the soil that had been depleted
by excessive cultivation of demanding crops. Grassland was viewed as 'inseparably linked
to livestock production'. Grasses and legumes, Cardon writes, 'are dominant in a flexible
pattern designed to conserve the land and its productivity, but at the same time keep it ad-
justable to emergency needs'.
Grass, being adaptable, resilient, nutritive - 'the forgiveness of nature' - would heal the
wounds that had been inflicted upon the Mid West by years of extractive agriculture. And
so it did to some extent, until in the early 1970s, when President Nixon's Secretary of State
for Agriculture, Earl Butz, famous for urging farmers to 'get big, or get out', launched the
United States into another fossil fuelled 'plow-up', which still supplies the world with fact-
ory farmed meat and soft drinks. 31 Now, with a need to reduce fossil fuel use and increase
soil carbon, grass farming is emerging from its subterranean fortress and coming back on
the offensive. One day soon, I hope, some bright fellow may pick up a copy of the USDA
Yearbook for 1948, take in its message about permanent agriculture, and feel inspired to
produce the Permaculture Book of Grass . 32
The End of Natural History