OTR—Back To The Land Review
On The Radar explores Alice Friedemann’s review of “Back from the Land: how young Americans went to nature in the 1970s, and why they came back.”
Please read, listen, learn, and enjoy putting Alice’s work on your radar. Upgrade your imagination, prepare for the future, and give the future hope and a plan.
The author examines the back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s, highlighting its failures and suggesting that a similar movement is necessary in light of impending energy shortages. The article explores the reasons for the 1970s movement's demise, including unrealistic expectations, financial challenges, and social difficulties within communes. The author argues that the movement failed because individuals could not separate themselves from the capitalist system and its economic demands. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of a new, more realistic, government-supported back-to-the-land movement focusing on sustainable agriculture and community-based initiatives.
As oil and natural gas decline, many of us will have to go back to the land. There is something to learn from those who have tried this in the past. Although much has been said about why communes and Utopian communities failed, little has been written about the fate of individual homesteaders.
CSA’s and homesteads should be forming now, with a government agency acting as the central agent for connecting people who want to farm, providing agricultural scholarships, training, outreach, buying land and loaning money to farmers, and so on.
It will not be simple to make the transition. The easiest path is to ration the remaining oil to essential services like agriculture and continuing on as usual, not only to maintain social order, but to have food to export in exchange for oil and natural gas based fertilizers. Land will continue to be concentrated in a few hands, pushing society towards feudalism and fascism as people work for minimal wages to survive. Business as usual, until energy shortages cause sudden dislocations, leads to civil wars and collapse.
If the U-turn can start now, there’s a better chance of remaining a strong democratic nation, and to finally do what we always should have done: live within our means — what the ecosystem can provide sustainably.
There’s no point trying to prepare for energy descent and climate change if the current levels of immigration, birth rate, and loss of prime farm land continues.
Everyone needs to get involved, because we’re a social, cooperative species, utterly dependent on each other as much as bees or ants are. Peter Corning’s brilliant book, “Nature’s Magic”, shows that synergy and cooperation at group levels were far more important in the emergence of homo sapiens than competition between individuals. We must all pull together and work towards the best possible future we can imagine, because we’re all in this together.
It would be better if people chose an agricultural future with hope and courage. Farming can be an immensely satisfying and rewarding way of life. It would be best for democracy and preserving our remaining resources if Americans could embrace reality and take appropriate back-to-the-land action.
