TEDx Summary:

I watched a TEDX talk given by Dean Carlson about why sustainable farming matters. He is the owner of Wyebrook farm in Honey Brook, Pennsylvania. Carlson went to school to be a businessman and says that he was trained to make rash decisions about heavy economic deals. His education taught him all about how to handle economics, business, and finance, and at the beginning, he mentions that if you would’ve asked his family a few years ago, they would have said he was the least-likely person to be standing, talking about sustainability in farming because he didn’t used to know anything about it. The interesting thing about this particular TED talk, he is able to use the knowledge and education that he has, and he’s able to apply this to the farm. He uses many graphs and statistics and numbers, just the way an economist, businessman-turned-farm-lover would. I think that an important part of sustainable farming is getting the point out to the public that it is available for average Americans.

He uses a metaphor of a bottle filling up with bacteria and a time restraint to show that the world is decaying. There is so much life on the earth that is taking up much of the earth’s resources, and the only solution is to stop growing. Stop creating. Stop contributing. His point is that we need to find a way to grow more food without using up any more of our fossil fuels. Carlson says that people who know how to grow sustainable foods will become very popular in the coming years because they’ll be the only ones who’ll know how to survive. He has the idea that he can grow food on a very personal level, and he tells how he did that. He doesn’t like to use oil and he feels that the earth is, like the bottle of rapidly filling bacteria, running out of room.

I agree with parts of Carlson’s argument, but I don’t agree with the entire thing. I think that it’s important to be mindful of local farming and preserving the resources that we do have, but there’s more to it. We do still have to use the resources because that’s what they’re there for. We should be cautious, sure, but we don’t need to go overboard, the way he suggests.