A family cannot prepare its meals independently of the people who grow the ingredients. Yet it is easy to live as though that dependence begins at the supermarket door, where food arrives clean, priced and apparently detached from whatever happened to the land.
A warning about severe weather interrupts that comfortable arrangement. It asks how much responsibility we are willing to take for conditions we usually leave somebody else to manage.
Writing in the Guardian, environmental studies academic Liz Carlisle reports forecasts suggesting that this year’s El Niño could become the strongest on record. That remains a forecast, not an established outcome. Her account warns of possible substantial crop losses in parts of the United States, while identifying Central and South America, the Caribbean and southern Africa as facing greater exposure. She points to cover crops and perennial plants as ways to protect soil against potential flooding, and argues that Congress must protect these practices.
There is a practical proposal here, but also a difficulty with how we use the word “prepared”.
We readily admire a person who plans ahead. We are less eager to consider what makes planning possible. A farmer being asked to protect the soil is also being asked to make decisions now for a benefit that may become apparent only later. If the weather turns out less severe than feared, the effort can look unnecessary. If it turns out badly, everyone wants to know why more was not done.
That is an awkward bargain to offer anyone.
There is a reasonable objection: public support cannot remove every risk, and a weather warning does not settle which policies deserve funding. Carlisle’s argument for congressional action still needs scrutiny. But scrutiny ought to include the cost of leaving preparation to individual farms, rather than treating inaction as the option that requires no justification.
For those of us outside farming, the useful response is not to acquire a sudden expertise in soil management. It is to pay attention to the terms on which our food is produced, and to distinguish a serious proposal for preparation from a reassuring promise that someone has it covered.
The warning may change. The dependence remains. When decisions about protecting farmland come before the public, “that is the farmer’s problem” is a peculiar answer from people who expect to eat.