I just read this book and
I certainly recommend it. What it captures is the ongoing effort by
individual farmers to achieve an holistic protocol for agricultural
production. This is not mainstream as yet and what we understand as
organic practice is very much a work in progress even if it is now
clearly shown to be superior to industrial ways.
This is still a glimpse
of the true future of agriculture.
To fully emerge, holistic
agriculture needs to integrate the people themselves and overcome a
long history of the low grade abuse of the land's servants. This can
be done today with the computerization of inputs and the
internalization of the communal economy. Once done correctly, a
mutually rewarding lifeway can be established that supports both the
land and the people in terms of optimal health.
The author shows us that
the same approach works in medicine as well and now informs her own
practice.
Berkeley doctor and
author tills soil for medical answers
By Lou Fancher
Correspondent
Posted:
04/23/2013
BERKELEY -- In Dr.
Daphne Miller's new book "Farmacology" (2013), sustainable
agriculture and holistic medical practice find each other as soul
mates.
The Berkeley resident,
author and family care physician first addressed food's relationship
to health by sticking to the global plate in "The Jungle Effect"
(2008), an examination of world diets and what they teach us about
our bodies.
"Farmacology"
finds Miller back in the United States on a gastronomic journey as
she travels to seven distinct locations to dig in the earth -- and
the salty, fecund minds of veteran farmers -- for buried medical
treasures.
She will discuss her
experience and findings at 4 p.m. April 27 at Mrs. Dalloway's book
store in Berkeley.
Inspired by authors
Grace Gershuny and Joe Smillie's five-chapter "The Soul of
Soil," and catapulted into action on the agrarian wings of
writer and farmer Wendell Berry's philosophies, Miller set out to
learn from dirt what medical school had never taught.
She visits a bison
ranch in Missouri; two chicken farms in Arkansas; a winery in
California's Sonoma Valley; a community garden in the Bronx; and a
biodynamic farm and an aromatic herb farm in Washington.
At each location,
farmers share wisdom gleaned from years, or even decades, examining
their land, filtering the soil through their fingers, and watching an
animal or plant go through natural birth-to-death cycles.
And while the farmers
tell their stories,
Miller hears the
echoes of stress-induced illnesses, chemotherapeutic and other
pharmaceutical supersizing and unhealthy diets leading to an acre of
maladies.
Recognizing the
commonality of the seemingly-disparate, complex medical and farming
systems, Miller draws correlations between busy Carl and Mike, two of
her patients, and 15,000 "de-beaked," ammonia-stressed
hens.
But the learning
doesn't stop at this simplistic duality. She ventures on, to a second
hen farm where "poultry plasticity" and personal
adaptability mean "good stress" is restorative, even
healthy.
The lessons shift from
patients to personal, after her pierced and multicolor-haired
16-year-old daughter works on a Missouri cattle ranch and returns,
transformed into a "tan woman with popping biceps." The
ranch's holistic system fosters healthy calves and heifers, causing
her to reflect, "Little had I expected when I was on Rockin' H
that my own gangly calf would be a beneficiary."
And bringing the full
weight of her medical background to bear while sharing the story of
Scribe Winery's integrated pest management systems, a common
assumption about cancer treatment receives push-back. The "kill
cancer" message is replaced by a new thought: Instead of cancer
being the pestly enemy, make cancer the teacher.
"In this view ...
cancer is a chronic challenge that must be contained and only
sometimes reversed ... striving for containment rather than
eradication is more likely to control the disease in the long run,"
she writes.\
Ironically, arriving
from the antiseptic land of medicine -- and never completely leaving
it -- is the perfect setup for the connections Miller makes between
healthy agricultural practices and healthy patients. "Farmacology"
could easily have been preachy, but it's not. By relating her
patients' tenderly told pathology to intimate farmer profiles, she
keeps it human. This is a book about people, not politics. Childlike,
hand-drawn maps of each farm add a homey touch.
Which is not to say
"Farmacology" is "green reading light" or that
the political implications aren't enormous. By extension, the issues
raised deal with profound economic, social and cultural dilemmas.
Perhaps the book's
importance resides here: a medical professional dares to climb out of
the mainstream river and stand on the bank's edge in order to gain
perspective on what lies under the surface. And Miller's hearty,
personable writing style makes it a good read for travelers, lovers
of character studies and medical and farming professionals alike.
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