As a farmer and naturalist, there is absolutely no landscape I don’t find deeply fascinating. I recently spent four days in a car, alone, crossing half of our vast nation absolutely riveted and captured by what I witnessed on my journey. I started in California and passed through Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Nebraska and Iowa before landing back home in Illinois. There were no dull moments, literally no boring stretches. Not one.
During my solo journey, I witnessed the shocking juxtaposition of verdant, irrigated vegetable fields with arid, dusty, barren hillsides. I saw herds of cattle eating said dust and honestly, little else. As a cattlewoman myself, I was alarmed and mystified by their survival on the most degraded, denuded land. Do their intestines get clogged with dirt? And how does one unclog a dirt-filled cow intestine?
I drove by huge fields of artichokes and potatoes and strawberries in various stages of their life cycle. I didn’t see but definitely smelled newly harvested cabbage and cauliflower. I saw row after row of grape vines. So. Many. Grapevines.
I learned pistachios and almonds are harvested using what look like huge garbage dumpsters- jaws wide open to the heavily encumbered branches above. I realized that acres upon acres of almond and pistachio trees are just as biologically barren as acres upon acres of Midwestern corn or soybeans. I witnessed field after field of almond and pistachio trees being uprooted and burned in huge piles, one after another, mile after mile, due to catastrophic drought in the West because of climate change.
I drove through hundreds and hundreds of miles of true desert and fell in love with its Joshua-tree-speckled openness. I was impressed and unnerved by the unforgiving heat, and became completely entranced by the stark beauty of red rock outcroppings and canyon landscapes. I loved its changes in altitude that are deceivingly hard to perceive, and even its random, shocking green circles of irrigated alfalfa in the middle of the Nevada and Utah sand. The farmer in me gets it…the naturalist in me really doesn’t.
So much was revealed about our nation, our land use, our culture, our priorities, our treatment of farmers with one road trip across the United States. Our consumption has resulted in mile after mile of altered landscapes. Our agricultural ingenuity has created artificial abundance in the middle of a desert. Our preferred adult beverage has replaced entire ecosystems of native grasslands and chaparrals. Our demand for cheap food and our lack of care for farm workers has led to communities of people living in complete and abject poverty interrupted by the occasional and always ostentatious mansion.
We are surrounded by both beauty and devastation, innovation and exploitation. All of it fascinating, some of it invigorating, much of it disturbing. I always knew but my trip reinforced the fact that we have a lot of work to do, friends, to continue building sustainable local food systems that enhance our natural systems while honoring the people who labor within them.
A solo trip is an amazing way to experience the world and recharge; let’s continue on this journey to equity, sustainability and enriching, life-giving community together.
-Jackie de Batista
