JPG: Stories: Photo Essay: On Sustainability

On Sustainability

By Misha Marston Johnson

26 Oct 2009

Maybe...it's not just growing food, it's not just recycling, it's not turning off the lights.

Maybe...it's growing your own organic food, maybe it's using less and reusing more, maybe it's doing it in daylight.

It's a struggle for any species to be sustainable; we humans seem to have complicated the process for ourselves even more. But, we must be sustainable or we will not be sustained.

It have sought sustainability, on ALL levels, for years; I have not yet reached that cherished place. The answer, I think, is in finding the oneness of all plants, all animals, all. When you hurt the environment, you cause pain to yourself, and when you cause pain to yourself, so too does the environment feel it.

In food, for example. If you eat healthful, fresh, organic, local...food, real food then you will be healthier, and thus so will the environment...If we're lucky we will find that balance again.

Sustainably producing food I believe is at the root of our environmental crises. The average piece of food travels 2,000-3,000 miles to your plate, requires petroleum for production and refrigeration, and chemicals to keep it alive. This type of agriculture is one of the leading causes of climate change, even ahead of transportation. If we can solve the food problem, then we can solve the environmental problem. Everyone needs to eat.

This selection of photos comes from many of the crops I have grown over the last several years. Enjoy.

Cherish the wild, and be a little wild.