Drawing Inspiration From Big Sky Country - RevolOceanary Road Diary 7/22/14

This post comes to us from Niaz Dorry, NAMA's coordinating director, who is on the road - actually the train - for the next couple of weeks. These are her RevolOceanary Road Diaries.

We just crossed into Montana, and with that came a bit of Déjà vu. The train is going parallel to Route 2, also known as the Lewis and Clarke Trail. I drove the whole length of Route 2 in 1997 when heading to the Protecting Mother Earth Gathering on the Fort Belknap

Watching Rte 2 in Montana from my window

Reservation in an area known as the Little Rockies. The Gatherings were an annual event organized by the Indigenous Environmental Network. Each year, they served as a pilgrimage for me. Planning for an actually hitting the road for an IEN gathering had become a spiritual event. These gathering were almost always outside and I'd get there way before the rest of the folks, helping to set up  the camp and help prepare the grounds. I often worked to set up the kitchen and would spend the rest of the time of the Gathering working in the kitchen. Feeding everyone was my way of getting to know the faces of all those gathered there, and working with other volunteers in the kitchen exposed me to stories of elders and young ones, and traditions that I would never have heard about otherwise.

So it makes sense to be here in Montana and be talking about food systems and related stories. 

I had planned to write about Dena Hoff, a tireless farmer and food sovereignty advocate. I've gotten to know Dena over the past few years as we both serve on the board of the National Family Farm Coalition. She's also the north American coordinator for La Via Campesina, the movement of the peasants. Her commitment to protecting our food, ensuring food access globally is moving. But then I remembered that Andrianna Natsoulas had already written the piece I would want to write for her book Food Voices. Andrianna and I have a long history together. We met back in the mid-90s when she was hired to work on the 1996 reauthorization of the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Senator Stevens' name was added later). I had already begun doing oceans work at Greenpeace and that was my first foray into the MSA reauthorization. Many years later, Andrianna joined the NAMA team when I was hired as the new director and helped shape what is now our work. For that, we thank her. 

Seremos Kamuturaki, Ugandan fisheries advocate, speaks with National Family Farm Coalition
Vice President, Dena Hoff,at the Community Food Security Coalition in Des Moines last October 2010.
Photo: Joe Hennage

I asked Andrianna for permission, and she was kind enough to grant it. So without further ado, here's the story of Dena Hoff as told by Andrianna:

Dena Hoff, Farmer
Glendive, Montana

Dena grows beans, corn, tomatoes and an array of produce, while also raising lambs, chickens and pigs. She and her husband have been farming in Glendive, Montana since 1981.

Food sovereignty is something I never named. It is something I grew up with and thought that is the way life should be. My grandparents came from eastern North Dakota. We always ate out of Grandma’s organic garden. It was always my intention to feed ourselves as much as possible, the way my Grandma fed us. She is the one who taught me about food preparation, canning, soap making and about being self-sufficient.

All I wanted to be was a farmer. While raising my children, we had at least one garden, and we hunted and fished. I taught my kids and they are pretty self-sufficient. I thought most people lived the way I did from their gardens and the land. And then I found that even my farm neighbours weren’t living that way. The farm agencies told them it was not efficient to grow their own food, milk a cow and it was much better to buy it at the grocery store. That was in the late 70’s and I started to question the whole system.

Now you read reports that nutritionally, food is much poorer today than it used to be. We don’t pay attention to healthy soil, and then we don’t have rich soil full of nutrients. Soil is becoming a medium to hold plants upright, and not a living entity in its own right. If we are looking for the earth to feed us, then we need to take care of it.

Unfortunately, it takes dead bodies and people dying from e coli and listeria to see that the food supply is not as safe as they think it is. Because of convenience, people have given up their responsibility for a safe and nutritious food supply. Now that food nutrition deficiencies, like obesity and diabetes, are an epidemic in this country, people are beginning to pay attention. But the infrastructure is gone, and so are the people – the family farmers and fishermen. The corporate food system has destroyed the small infrastructure. They pay off Congress to pass rules in the guise of food safety, but it is really about getting rid of competition- small producers and small processors.

I teach other generations that they can grow food and take care of the land and learn growing methods and animal husbandry. We teach people on our farm. People are coming from the town to learn and even children from neighbouring farms. We have a farm to table organization, farm to school project and community kitchen. We are also starting a culinary school. 

Mostly, I want people to know that the policies we have in this country are keeping people from making a living. Under the corporate dominated political system, people have to be willing to get involved at the policy level if there is going to be better food for everyone and economically and environmentally sustainable rural communities. I want people in Montana to know that a lot of their same concerns and dreams and hopes are shared by people around the world. I want people to have a focus that goes from local to global and realize that everything is connected. People need to change their own diets and reform will work its way up the political chain and hopefully generations after me things will be better. If we all give up hoping that things are going to be better then things are never going to get better. We have to believe that by standing in solidarity around the world, it can happen. But Americans want instant gratification and we want it easy. That has to change.