Farms and Climate Change, by Margaret Orr

Imagine a landscape of gently rolling hills surrounded by a forest of green trees. Garden plots are scattered all over the open area, bearing flowers, fruits, and vegetables. Just over one of the hills is a fenced-in area that is home to goats, chickens, a fish pond, and a beehive. You’ve just pictured Fair Weather Farm, an organic farm in Cecil County, Maryland. Fair Weather Farm produces fresh, organic fruits, vegetables, eggs, and honey, among other goods. America used to be full of farms like this one. For miles, food-producing fields would stretch under blue skies of clean air, until the end of World War II, when housing developments began to spread like wildfire. Suburban housing developments were important to the industrializing economy of the US, but they came at a steep cost to the environment. I will admit that I love my heated, air-conditioned home in the suburbs of Philadelphia – which, fittingly, used to be located on a farm – and I enjoy my TV and propane stove. What really gets under my skin is the apparent disregard for the environmental impacts of rapid housing development. Solar panels, for example, were brought forward as an alternative source of energy in the early 1950’s, however, newly-elected President Eisenhower advised against listening to “extremists” who suggested using solar panels as an energy source. Funding for solar panel research was limited, causing MIT researchers to give up on their solar cell efforts in 1962. Just imagine the good that could have come from solar cells being more important to President Eisenhower and others like him. We could be in the midst of a transition to solar energy right now, instead of continuing to burn harmful fossil fuels that propagate climate change. Another technology that arose from the housing boom was the septic tank. Septic tanks have been known to cause a number of environmental problems, including groundwater pollution and eutrophication. They were linked to such issues in the 1950’s, but use of them continued to increase despite this. You would think that, with time, builders, citizens, and the government would become more aware of the environmental consequences of turning uninhabited land into homes; however, this is not the case. Consider the story of an Idaho couple, Chantell and Mike Sackett. They were told by the EPA that they were prohibited from building a new home, due to the fact that they lacked the appropriate permit for building, as land they planned to develop on was a protected wetland. This caused an uproar amongst two Supreme Court Justices, Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito, who claimed that the EPA was “high-handed” in dealing with private property, and that “this kind of thing can’t happen in the United States”. Wetlands are vital ecosystems with impeccably high biodiversity. They provide the only habitats for many endangered species of birds, as well as many other plants and animals with unique physiology. Why Justices Scalia and Alito, and the millions of people in America who think similarly, cannot allow the government to have some control of their private lives in the name of protecting important natural systems such as wetlands is beyond me. The apparent indifference that many Americans seem to have towards the environment spreads beyond this, and one of the biggest examples is climate denial. As a Meteorology and Climatology major, my primary interest as far as the environment goes is climate change, but I know that this issue is complex and involves numerous natural systems besides our atmosphere. I am excited to have the opportunity to learn about the how Fair Weather Farm works, because I believe that small organic farms like it will become crucial to us as the effects of climate change become more tangible. Small farmers are, generally, more in tune to the weather and to their crops than those in charge of large-scale farming operations. This is important because many crops will only grow in certain climatic conditions, and I believe that small farms will be more adaptable to changing crops to match a changing climate. My goal for this semester is to take what I learn on Fair Weather Farm and use it to educate whoever I can on the importance of small farms, especially as they relate to climate change, in order to prevent the ignorance and indifference that colored the housing boom at the end of World War 2.

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