Response_3

Lauren Korany

In A Sand County Almanac, Leopold states, “there are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery and the other that heat comes from the furnace” (Leopold 6). Even though this was written in 1949, I believe it still remains largely relevant today and can be adapted to how we live in the 21^st century. At the time, he may have suggested owning a farm and maintaining it, producing a greater understanding of how the system works. But as we’ve seen in Michael Pollan’s “This Steer’s life”, other measures can be taken to end our ignorance as consumers. We can witness how they process of creating meat, harvesting food, or obtaining fuel is done. It does not require owning our own farms because frankly, there isn’t the necessity for everyone to tend to the same kind of work.

When Leopold refers to the term “spiritual” in his statement, it seems that he believes that there is an underlying consciousness to how we perceive series of events. In the chapter “Good Oak” (Leopold 6-18), Leopold delves into the vast life of an oak tree. He explores the dates of each ring and how the tree related to the environment during that time period. This reflects that being ignorant has no capacity for understanding and emotion. If you can see and better understand where things come from and their lives, you can pick up emotion on it. When the word spiritual is used, it is referring to our own judgment and our emotions tied to the process.

This is important in relation to the global system in which we live. As consumers, our relation to the system is to obtain our produce through mediums, such as the grocery or the wood store. Gradually, the need to know the way our produce is obtained becomes less and less concerning for us as individuals. Yet, if many of us understood where our produce came from and the way it was produced, we would have largely different perspectives on how we’ve been consuming these items both in quantity and quality. Our spiritual understanding of how we fit into the global system would be heightened.