Cross Pollination Across the Generations: Food Movement Leaders Renew at Esalen

Regeneration, rebirth, resilience, revival, relationship… Elders and youngers of the farming persuasion circled round for a week of connecting and spinning yarns around these themes and more late January at Esalen. These agrarians, like anyone else involved in the burgeoning food movement, fuel their work with a passion for creating positive change that ripples outward and effects virtually every big issue we as a species currently grapple with: climate change, world peace, social justice, biodiversity, physical, spiritual, and mental health… the list goes on.

“The worst mistakes in human history (social and environmental) were created by agriculture,” elder agrarian Tom Willey of T&D Willey Farms in California shared with the group, referencing both Jared Diamond, author of Collapse, and Wendell Berry, author of Our Only World. “Our biggest problems,” he paraphrased, “are our solutions.”

Slow Money representative Woody Tasch, who joined the group from Colorado, professed in his closing remarks: “I spend my time interfacing between the world of fast money and this world. I see this as THE peace movement – entrepreneurship, humility, and a reverence for nature.”

The Agrarian Elders and Youngers conference at Esalen was predicated on the understanding that to sustain any culture (agrarian and otherwise) requires an adequate exchange of knowledge, resources, and stewardship responsibilities across the generations. What better metaphor to be found than that of our pollinators, whom we depend on for the continuation of plant life we call food.

“The Monarchs! It takes three to four generations for them to go from their summer ground to their winter ground, to finish their journey, to reach their destination,” said Clara Coleman, farmer-daughter to a well-known farmer-author from Maine, Elliot Coleman. “Here, in this room, we have three generations of farmers. We all hold memories from the last generation, and we move forward with that knowledge.”

“The foundation of our food system and farming practices are much deeper than our plows,” Esalen Garden Supervisor Dan Phelps acknowledged. “Learning from our elders includes honoring the indigenous people who were on this land before us and the way that they related to the food.” Nodding at the two Native Americans in the room he grinned, “When I think about hope for the future, I think about you.”

Conference participants held space to both celebrate the blessings of their work and to lament and even grieve the losses. “Peak Everything” was one such agenda topic, with both a fruitful exchange of ideas about how to be more impactful parts of the solution and a recognition of the weightiness of the problems. Today’s growers must adapt to producing food in more extreme climates, with declining water availability, on damaged or adulterated soils, for populations that may have little or no connection to or understanding of their food sources.

While technical knowledge, theories, and strategies were useful, many participants felt the most useful tool shared was the deepening of relationships and connections among them. Their imperative in organizing future events like this is to continue to expand the circle to welcome in more diversity. “If humanity will supersede the challenge we have over the next few decades it will be by coming together, not pushing apart,” said Tom Willey in his closing remarks.

Nearly 30 agrarians participated in the conference, representing farms from New York, Maine and Vermont to Oklahoma, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington.