The Church and the Ag-Ec Crisis

Background Context

While working in the Redvers-Manor pastoral Charge , the catastrophic reality of agricultural economics erupted onto my consciousness, with people struggling under an impossible load with precious little resource. I saw how the burden effectively shut down the normal social functions of both town and pastoral Charge, though at the stage I witnessed, they were in denial of that fact.

Once the community had been decoded and the nature of the confronting issue identified, I realized that I was at a loss to know how the rich treasury of the gospel informed any aspects of the situation.

As I looked around, I realized that there was nobody with anything unique, refreshing, and on target to bring to this discourse either, or if there were, it was not particularly accessible. Most denominational agendas were urban agenda driven. In addition, my own Toronto-centered denomination was currently preoccupied with the issues of residential school lawsuits and sexuality in modern life.

The best that was coming out of the church quarter was:

• A chaplaincy-based model of palliative care ("Ahhh, isn't that too bad you lost your farm...there, there, let me share your angst [but not your debt]..."
• A warmed over 1930's CCF-NDP based social gospel relevant to a time when there were ill-informed, farmers on every quarter with large families, and poor communications facilities, confronted by marauding very well informed grain dealers all too ready to pit one farmer off against the next (without factoring in globalization, improvements in transportation and communications, and rural depopulation).
• Noble "Saul Alinski" 1960's style protests for or against what ever target group served as the "designated patient" of the day (fix or remove him and all our troubles will go away [just don't raise the price of my bread].
• Brainless "pie in the sky when we die" tripe which seems to be a perennial theme from those of any denominational stripe who are "so heavenly they are no earthly good".

What I wanted to know was the context specific detail on Christ's invitation, "Come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me for my yoke is easy and my burden is light."( )

I knew what that meant for the marginal and poor farmer, for that is well developed. Plug the gospel into their lives and life starts to work. They start looking after their families, their farms, and their businesses, and things start to fall into place.

But what of the farmers who have made it, but are fighting a losing battle of erosion of their farming enterprises?

• The fourth generation farmers who are holding up a hollow shell of a farm which has no substance beneath that thin exterior appearance of prosperity.
• The farmers who stand to be the generation who lose the family farm, for whom the personal and community shame is so high that they don't drive away during the day when it all collapses but rather, sneak away at night.
• The farmers who are some of the best farmers around both in terms of farming itself and modern agri-management.
• The farmers who have taken all the advice and responded as best they can in a modern context and still find they are falling behind.
• The farmers forced to work off farm for the privilege of providing cheap food to an overstuffed society.

Approach Used

• I returned home to Brandon and checked out the new MRD program at BU, but they were not ready, and neither was I. I was not sure just why I was not ready, but I knew intuitively that there was some sort of missing piece which was needed if I were to be able to profit from such a program as a context of exploration.
• I did a thorough analysis of the situation in which I had encountered the problem
• I did some preliminary investigation, but for the most part put it on the back burner until other things shifted and whatever it was that impeded further work became clarified.
• I discovered the missing link in my thinking in April/00 which enabled me to see out from both the blinders of capitalist and socialist thought enough to begin t hear what scripture (which predates both of these predominant theories) might in fact be saying to us in our predicament.
• I engaged in a series of exploratory activities and entered the MRD program as a context for re-visiting the business-finance-development world with a less intellectual baggage clouding the dynamic.

  Current Status

  I have found the "on-ramp" (as of Dec/01) of Gospel in regards to the farm situation. The issue is now on hold.

  Findings To Date

  I found the piece I needed which gave coherence to a very complex set of contributing factors in the farm crisis. It is not that I understand every piece of the puzzle, and therefore have some sort of omniscience. It is rather that I found the aspect which is embedded in the discourse, is the critical deficiency, to which the Gospel has a great deal to say. It is, in short a legitimate and significant "on-ramp" for the gospel into that larger discourse, which informs both the content of the Church's contribution to the conversation, and the (rural and urban) church's program agenda, or "operational paradigm" in this day and age.

  It also turns out that the many items which I have teased out over the years in a very fragmented form, can very well double as a "rule set" for this new operational paradigm.

  It is perhaps inappropriate to discuss the details of this in this context.

  Lateral Connections

  Required for Completion

  A while back, I realized that I am not a person who is followed, but rather, a person who is copied. The main form of dissemination of information (mostly relating to improved processes) is through being copied.

  Perhaps what is needed now is a field test of the operational paradigm in which the many sub-routines which have been tested in isolation get a chance to be tested in whole, in a specific context. I believe we are now at the bottom of the "B-slope " of Barker's paradigm pioneering diagram.

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