who’s your fiber farmer?
textiles, the next big challenge
This is a long one, with lots of photos of my farm and alpacas. Click on the title to get to the entire article.
Writing about Emily Oster’s deranged article in the Atlantic asking for pandemic amnesty was a possibility for this week. Then I saw Bob’s cartoon and decided he said it all in a pecan shell (or a walnut shell? - he is British).
The midterm election is in a few days. Let’s make sure we get all of those globalists kicked out.
“To be interested in food, but not in food production, is clearly absurd.” Wendell Berry
Because natural fibers are also agricultural products, I would expand on that and say: To be interested in clothing, but not in fiber and textile production, is also clearly absurd.
Adalyne Naka, one of hundreds of farm interns hosted here, holding Cosmo, a two week old cria. The dam is behind.
awakening?
In one important way I’m grateful to those globalists who tried to impose covidcon upon us. Although their sinister agenda has come at a very high cost, the ensuing awakening has been a Godsend.
So far that awakening has centered on the overall toxicity and ineffectiveness of all vaccines and more generally on health care, or rather, the lack thereof in the US (ranks last in health care). But there are still major dark components of our society that continue to operate beneath the radar. These factions remain largely under the influence of some of the same dark international investors that financed various aspects of covidcon. Of course we’re talking about leviathan investment fund managers like BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street and their major shareholders. You can read more about them here.
Because of its cost in lives, its cost in pollution, its cost to our health due to its toxic nature, and because of its world wide scope, perhaps the most important of those is the broad category we know as textiles.
Some of you heretics may have noticed that textiles are mentioned as an area of concern in the description for the Secular Heretic. Some of you may have also noticed that up till now, I’ve never written about textiles.
onward
In the same way that much of the worlds population was conned into taking the toxic/nanobot/gmo covid jabs over the past two years, over the previous 75 years the fashion industry has conned much of the worlds population into using its toxic products to; drape their windows, dry themselves after a shower, carpet their floor, cover their furniture, and of course, to wear as clothing. Unlike the vaccine industry, there is no authority like VAERS to keep track of injuries and deaths from the toxic textile industry. But some estimates place the death toll in the hundreds of thousands. As the following documentary points out, many thousands of textile factory workers alone have been injured and killed in textile factory collapses and fires. But the greater death toll may be occurring among farmers and factory workers in supporting industries due to toxins used to grow the crops and create the artificial fibers the textile industry uses. Then there are the longer term health issues that arise from the masses wearing toxic clothing. When all of those factors are considered, I would not be surprised to learn that the textile death toll is in the millions.
Please watch this two minute trailer.
Ronnie Cummins, Director of the Organic Consumers Association, has also discussed the dubious nature of modern textile production in this newsletter.
Because you readers are well informed about toxins in our environment, I’m not going to dwell on all of the negative consequences to our health and the health of our planet that occurs from the manufacturing and wearing of artificial fibers and fibers from genetically modified cotton crops sprayed with glyphosate (shown above). What I want to focus on here are fibers and textiles that can be regeneratively grown and made into safe, clean textiles. We’ll consider sources another time.
a textile learning curve
Too much water has passed beneath the bridge for me to remember how I initially came to be interested in this issue. But some of you will understand when I say it goes back to the ’70’s during my hippie era.
However, it wasn’t until the late 90’s that I was able to do something about it in my own life. That was when I bought my current farm and began to consider fiber crops.
That earlier interest in natural fiber production led me to consider growing cotton organically, but that was ruled out due to the fact that the rough topography of this farm is more suited to livestock than row crops. Besides, due to its inability to conform to regenerative principles, I’ve always had an aversion to monocropping of any kind.
So I began to research fiber livestock like sheep for wool and goats for cashmere. Some years later that I stumbled across another fiber producing animal, alpacas.
Long story short, I acquired some fine alpaca breeding stock and bred them for many years… until the financial crises of 2008 caused the alpaca market to collapse. That left me with a big investment in fine breeding stock for which there was no appetite in the market. Prior to the 2008 bankster con, my herd of alpacas would have been worth around $500,000. Some years later I sold them all for less than $10,000.
I now chalk up that loss as a life lesson, but like covidcon, it also served as an educational wake-up call.
Here is some of what I learned during that time.
Conventional and organic cotton production are both responsible for consuming much of the water used here in the driest state in the US - Arizona - and both are responsible for the destruction of vast sweeps of riparian habitat, the most imperiled habitat in the Southwest.
When it’s derived from animals that are foraging on intact native ecosystems, the production of alpaca, sheep and goat fiber does not require the destruction of habitat nor does it require any irrigation water. My alpacas were foraging right alongside the native deer, pronghorn and javelina.
94% of the cotton grown in the US is genetically modified which means it’s sprayed with glyphosate, a pesticide that many claim cannot be removed from our bodies.
The production of animal fiber does not require any gmo’s or toxic chemicals.
Because alpacas are 14% more efficient at turning forage into fiber than sheep or goats, alpacas can produce fiber on habitat that sheep and goats would be hard pressed to survive.
Agriculture is not just about food production. The production of natural fibers from farms represents about 30% of agricultural acreage worldwide. If you are someone who strives to eat organic or regeneratively grown food because you care about the health of your family and the health of our planet, then shouldn’t you be giving the same consideration to the growth and production of the textiles you wear on your body and use in your home?
the sordid history of king cotton
Arizona has an agricultural history that stretches back over 5,000 years. For much of that time Pima cotton was grown by the long-gone Hohokam people who brought it here around the time of Christ. Yes, the cottage textile industry in Arizona is ancient.
The Hohokam knew cotton well and grew it about as sustainably as it can be grown. But as you will soon learn, the cultivation of cotton has inherent drawbacks.
At best, sustainable farming practices do nothing more than maintain a given status quo, one that often lacks resilience. For example, when an extended drought impacted the highly evolved - due to close ties with the Aztecs - Hohokam culture, it collapsed. Today we’re seeing a similar situation developing in California as the cost of agriculture products from that state rise dramatically with the drought and the cost of water. I’d venture to say that if the Hohokam had access to alpacas they would have quickly understood the numerous advantages and immediately abandoned cotton in favor of alpacas.
we have far to go
Back in the burgeoning glory days of Arizona’s early foray into industrial, irrigated agriculture, Pima cotton went from being a humble crop to its current status as King Cotton. Not to belittle Pima cotton - it’s some of the finest cotton in the world. The problem lies in the difference between how the tribal peoples of this region grew it and how it’s grown today. Native tribes grew it in small plots irrigated by hand-made diversions from the Gila, Salt, Santa Cruz and Verde rivers. The totality of their fields would have been measured in the hundreds of acres. In 2011 Arizona farmers planted 250,000 acres of cotton. Keep in mind that cotton is a very thirsty crop being grown in the driest state in the US. We know the Hohokam approach was somewhat sustainable because it worked for over a thousand years. However, even this low impact approach was not resilient enough to withstand the drought that brought an end to their culture. This is because the tillage techniques, although minimal, combined with constant cropping, depleted the soil of carbon. The slow degradation of organic material into carbon does many good things in the soil, including building resilience to drought thanks to its ability to retain water. With little carbonaceous material left after a thousand years of cropping, the drought was devastating.
A few hundred years later, an even more devastating force swept through this region - European settlers. They observed the rivers, the cotton and the long growing season and decided they had better ideas. One of those ideas included building big dams on some of the aforementioned rivers. The lakes behind these dams now allow up to 30% of the rivers flow to evaporate in the desert heat before it reaches any point of use. This causes the remaining water to become more saline - salinity being the enemy of all crops in the already overly alkaline aridisols here. But the white man’s most egregious idea involved using unfathomable amounts of energy produced by the largest nuclear power plant in the US, Palo Verde, to pump water uphill from the Colorado River many hundreds of miles through massive irrigation canals across the desert to irrigate cotton (and other crops). Pumping water was the primary reason why this plant was built which, by itself, is one of the largest single source users of water in Arizona - 60,000 gallons per minute.
And folks wonder why the Colorado River is a mere shadow of its former self.
it gets worse
The best place to grow cotton in Arizona is along the bottom land on either side of the previously mentioned, previously gorgeous, previously life giving rivers. These riparian areas are now the most imperiled form of habitat in the southwestern US, with less than 5% of the original now remaining. In Arizona much of that habitat has succumbed to clearing for the cultivation of cotton.
Riparian habitats were incredibly diverse and productive places that generated copious amounts of indigenous foods like; deer, javelina, fish, Gould’s turkey, edible seed pods from Mesquite and Acacia trees, numerous roots, wild asparagus, cattail, numerous species of Opuntia tunas, and the list goes on. All of this bounty was freely provided without the need to lift a hand. Because European settlers failed to understand this bountiful production, it got plowed under in favor of growing a monocrop of cotton.
This was formerly part of the vast riparian habitat along the Gila River near Safford, Arizona, now devoted to growing cotton as a monocrop. In short, it’s a massive dead zone.
Elinor Ostrom was right. The wisdom gleaned by a people who have been living in a given place for many generations should never be usurped by nonnatives who know nothing about how to make best use of the local resources in that place. The history of arrogant Europeans mindlessly taking over large regions of the world has been devastating. And it continues today under the guise of the Nazi led WEF and the EU.
There were a number of factors that came together later to enable this wholesale rape of the landscape here in the US, but the primary forces were fueled by the USDA. Yup, thanks to US taxpayers through various forms of subsidies, the USDA and other government agencies have doled out our money to; subsidize fuel, subsidize farming loans, subsidize pesticides, subsidize irrigation projects, subsidize genetically modified seed, subsidize farm equipment and subsidize labor, while the corporations behind these schemes have made billions. Meanwhile, those who pay for those subsidies, farmers and taxpayers, struggle to make ends meet.
The results of making cotton king are numerous, none of them good. One of them is that none of those rivers now reach the sea. Another is that cotton requires more pesticides and fertilizers than any other crop. This has resulted in vast regions of biologically dead soil that no longer sequesters carbon and will soon no longer support crops of any kind.
In a prime example of how the globalists like to preach about carbon sequestration while at the same time profit from not practicing it, modern cotton production uses fuel guzzling, CO2 belching, leviathan farm equipment made by globalist corporations to do all of the planting and harvesting.
Another cog in King Cotton’s misguided wheel is that most of the cotton grown in the US gets shipped overseas to be made into textiles that are then shipped back to your local Walmart and Gap stores. In other words, the cotton growing in a cotton field next to a Walmart store here in Arizona may have traveled all the way around the world to be sold in that same Walmart store as a t-shirt. And we think 1,500 miles is a long way for our food to travel! All of this means that the cotton industry in the US employs very few people, which translates to minimal economic impact.
Even more disconcerting is the fact that all of these problems also apply to organic cotton production. You do the earth and the Arizona economy little favor by buying organic cotton textiles that were made overseas from cotton grown in former riparian habitats irrigated by dwindling water resources and farmed by globalist fuel guzzling farm equipment.
We are now all of 75 years into the making of King Cotton and its viability is fading fast. Let’s see, 1,000 years for the Hohokhum, 75 years for Europeans. Because the downside of industrial cotton production has left us morally, spiritually, environmentally and economically bereft, it seems that reconsidering how we produce fiber is a topic whose time has come. A good way to do that is to look back at history and relearn what our ancient ancestors knew thousands of years ago: Farming fiber producing animals on native habitat is a much more regenerative model than mono cropping cotton, flax or even hemp.
a closer look at fiber animals
Feeding alpacas, sheep or goats a mono diet of imported hay is analogous to a human eating a mono diet of imported broccoli. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, food is genetic information. Over eons our genes have evolved to recognize and make good use of certain foods. Part of the reason why 60% of Americans now suffer from chronic illness is because we’re eating modern processed food that has no relationship with the ancient genes we inherited from our ancestors. It’s the same for for cattle, chickens, hogs, alpacas - all livestock. They do best when foraging on pasture or intact ecosystems that closely resemble the native habitats their ancestors have been foraging on for tens of thousands of years.
Do you prefer that your meat and fiber comes from this kind of situation? (Part of my alpaca herd on the native habitat here.)
Or this? Pigs being fattened in a warehouse CAFO.
Or this? Center pivot irrigation near Farmington N.M.
Or this? Here we see Colorado river water that has been pumped uphill by the Palo Verde Nuclear power plant to flood irrigate cotton in SW Arizona. And yes, that energy and water intensive cotton could be certified organic.
It has become abundantly clear that man’s hubristic, resource intensive ways of producing food and fiber are not only bad for us and the earth, they are an abomination to Gods creation.
The era of artificially cheap fuel that has allowed us to raise livestock in CAFO’s and pump water uphill using nuclear power, without any consideration for the natural order of things, will run its course. Until then, to regain our health, the health of our livestock and the health of the very planet we depend on, we must go back to the ways of our ancestors - the way God and nature intended. We must raise our livestock on pastures and native ecosystems. This time honored practice has many benefits, not the least of which is the total absence of feed costs for the farmer. From the animals point of view a big benefit is a significant reduction of parasite loads and diseases when compared to animals kept in pens and fed hay or processed feed. For the livestock farmer this means fewer health issues, lower or no vet bills, higher pregnancy rates and easier birthing.
It also means happy animals.
how not to do it
Some of my original alpacas came from a sizable pen-based operation. These folks were very good friends with their vet - she was at their place often. In spite of the fact that they spent a small fortune on vet bills, antibiotics and vitamin shots, they were plagued with breeding and birthing problems and lost numerous animals to disease, probably mostly caused by the numerous vaccinations they were given. The last time I asked they were spending $160,000 per year on hay. Not only is this untenable from a business perspective, it’s flat-out bad animal husbandry.
Although my herd of alpacas never numbered over 20, I never had any reason to call a vet. I never administered any vaccines or antibiotics to any of my livestock nor have I ever given them any other form of medication. How did I pull this off? I provide my livestock what they most desire - plenty of native pasture from which they derive forage that can never be matched nutritionally by any form of hay. It’s a resource their genes recognize and make very good use of.
it’s a misbegotten state of affairs
It’s been estimated that 90% of all available tillable land in the world is now under cultivation. Much of that farm land requires the pumping of ground water at unsustainable rates for irrigation. As aquifers become drained, that farmland will no longer be viable. If that land had been left in its wild state it would continue to remain productive into the foreseeable future.
Hubris is driving this misbegotten folly.
If we did nothing more than return all the land around the world currently devoted to producing cotton to native ecosystems and introduced alpacas to turn that native forage into meat and fiber, the amount of water and fossil fuel saved would be mind boggling. The financial savings alone would make this a viable effort for many communities. But don’t hold your breath. The globalists, their bought-and-paid-for university systems and their corporations all have colossal investments in the status quo, so change will not come overnight. It’ll have to be a grassroots effort that will eventually grow to the point of replacing the current, dark state of affairs.
It gets worse. Perhaps the most egregious example of how misguided the Big Ag corporatocracy has become - one of the biggest agriculture exports from the US is alfalfa, most of which goes to oil-rich horse breeders in the Middle East. Thanks to water pumped uphill from the Colorado river with energy from the Palo Verde nuclear power plant, Arizona is now one of the worlds largest suppliers of alfalfa. Apparently those Arab folks have grown tired of paying high prices for that alfalfa (an Arab word) and are now buying up Arizona farmland to grow their own. We’re literally selling our future down the river for short term gain.
Another thing the Big Ag folks don’t want you to know is that farm land devoted to growing feed for the industrial, agricultural complex - to supply feed for all those cattle, hogs and chickens in those rank cesspools known as CAFO’s (Concentrated Animal Feed Operations, aka - feed lots) where most of our meat, milk and eggs come from - is a terribly inefficient way to produce food for humans. Weaning ourselves from these globalist, toxic, water polluting contributors to global pollution will free up a lot of land that could be returned to native ecosystems supporting alpacas and other locally appropriate livestock.
The list of benefits that come from providing livestock with the opportunity to forage for their preferred food on native ecosystems would be incomplete without mentioning the most obvious rewards; flowing rivers alive with fish other food resources, revived riparian habitats, better income for farmers, superior textile products, renewed local economies, fresher, more nutritious food and most importantly, a landscape that will still be able to provide for the 7th generation.
A new paradigm is needed. One long touted by some Native American tribes: Live so that the seventh generation will have more than the current one. Farmers and consumers who take this long view will help move farming from the mundane realm of short-term profit into the rarefied air of long-term, regenerative agriculture.
Great article. I did not know that about cotton grown in AZ and the pumping of H2O. In fact, Learned a lot about alpacas and will have to buy more yarn from alpacas. Thanks so much! I did share on Gab.
Another facet to this is the demand for 'fast fashion': Semi-disposable clothing meant to be worn for a season then discarded or given away. I'm not saying we need to go back to when people had one set of clothes, maybe two with one for Sundays, but we need to seriously examine why we need to have endless fadddish clothes spun from oil (and often made to imitate items made of real fibers, heck, I can barely find anything in stores made of cotton except occasionally sheets and underwear.).