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to an urban farm, replete with greenhouses and kitchens and an education center. That this farm be established to provide food and jobs year round to those in need and that it became a model of a local agricultural-based economy on the grounds of what used to be a monument to the global economy. My idea was put forth more as metaphor than with any expectation that it would be seriously considered, but a couple of organizations in New York City picked it up and the proposal was officially submitted. The New York Times ran a piece on the idea and there were hundred of letters in support, but in the end what was approved was 1,492 stories of cold steel, glass, and concrete, and it was business as usual.

Had that proposal been put forth today, it would have received a more positive reception. Awareness around food—its place in our lives and the precarious nature of the system that brings it to us—has exploded. But while there is an overwhelming embrace of local food and agriculture, there is an enormous chasm between those who eat well and locally (and can afford to do so) and those who cannot. There is a far greater gap between the numbers of eaters who are passionate and enthusiastic and inspired by this movement and the numbers of people whose hands are actually in the soil doing the work.

In the end there is not so much a food crisis or an environmental crisis as there is a crisis in participation. We now have a couple of generations of young people who are not only completely de-natured, they no longer know how to use their hands for anything other than pushing keys on a keyboard. The revolution may be talked about online but it cannot take place online.

In 1989, the island of Cuba faced mass starvation, the result of having lost access to food and agricultural supplies from the former Soviet Union. Cuba responded by creating a world-class model of urban and rural agriculture based on low inputs. The Cubans did not green their agricultural system because it was the right thing to do, they did it because they had to.

I don’t believe that the kind of major structural change that will be required to turn things around in industrialized countries will happen until it has to either, until the impacts become personal. But the hopeful part is that humans have an incredible capacity for compassion, ingenuity, creativity, and resourcefulness; qualities that come out especially under duress and crisis. There are many historical examples of this when normal day-to-day reality is suspended; Cuba is but one.

I used to say chefs had received almost mythical rock ‘n’ roll status and that it was time for farmers to receive that same attention. But the real shift we need cannot take place when only 1 percent of us are doing the work to grow the food for the rest, while everyone else is cheering us on. I love the attention, but farming is not a spectator sport.

So I’ve been telling folks to “make friends with a farmer, you’re going to need them.” For I am certain that as the current global industrial experiment continues to unravel, agriculture will once again return to it’s rightful place; to the heart, the center of our society.

So those of us who are re-educating ourselves, re-discovering our place in Nature, must work to refine our skills and diligently work to create the local and regional models. For I am sure that the day will come when we will be sought after, looked to for leadership and guidance, when our farms will be the living models, the repositories that kept this sacred and essential knowledge alive.

Thinking like an island, imagining our world floating like a ship in an infinite sea of space, its soils and water and atmosphere finely tuned, carefully balanced to support life, provides us with some sense of boundaries, and hopefully the humility to recognize the fragile nature of our existence.

Michael Ableman is a farmer, educator, founder, and executive director emeritus of the Center for Urban Agriculture, where he farmed from 1981 to 2001. He is the author and photographer of From the Good Earth (Abrams, 1993),