New farming video available for purchase

By KATIE LEFEBVRE, Globe staff reporter
May 24, 2007

The video "Building a Living and Sustainable Community in Today's World" is now available for purchase.

A conference with the theme of Building a Living and Sustainable Community in Today's World was held in March at Sacred Heart in Early. The speakers at the conference are all featured in the video.

"It was necessary to have the conference," said Father Marvin Boes, executive director of the Diocesan Peace and Justice Commission. "The reason for this was to be able to get the experts, who are recognized in their fields in regard to building local, sustainable communities with the human enterprises, to make presentations."

The four presentations are meant to offer local people assistance in the work of building living and sustainable communities with local sustainable farms and other local business enterprises.

The conference was designed to inform and guide local people in the development and maintenance of the local community and its human enterprises, including family farms and the family farming system, to make them sustainable over time.

According to Father Boes, the video is made up of what the four speakers presented at the conference.

"We wanted to get this on video because this is really the first time that these different groups have been brought together in this type of forum of education," said Father Boes.

The first of the speakers is Dr. Fred Kirschenmann, a distinguished fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Iowa State University in Ames. His portion of the video is 60 minutes.

"Dr. Kirschenmann presented the principles and values that are found within the religious tradition and cultural tradition in the United States and influenced by the Protestant theology," said Father Boes. "He did that by quoting Mr. Barry, who is into the idea of husbandry and wifery in regards to agriculture in local communities."

The priest added that Dr. Kirschenmann brought up the challenges of building local, sustainable and living communities in today's world.

"He included what is happening with energy and climate change with the warming of the earth and what the influences are in regard to working for sustainable farming," said Father Boes. "I think that that is brought out very clearly in the independent family farming size - both in business and farming itself. Those sizes are the best and ideal for building sustainable local communities."

Brother David Andrews, director of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference (NCRLC), connects the positive moral principles and values of Catholic Social Teaching with the endeavors of local people working to achieve sustainable enterprises and communities. This part of the video is also 60 minutes in length.

"He makes a whole presentation of the social justice teaching of the church as it applies to building local, sustainable communities in farming and in other businesses as well," said Father Boes. "It puts the human responsible to work within the social justice principles and to bring it into the particular enterprise that they are working in."

The next hour of the video is split between Carol Richardson-Smith, leader of the DIRECTIONS component of the NCRLC Ligutti Rural Community and support program, and Michael Holton, director of the Rural Opportunities and Support Program at the Center for Rural Affairs in Lyons, Neb.

Richardson-Smith describes resources and tools to help local people transform their individual lives and that of their communities.

"She works directly in helping people to set up the appropriate human institutions - private and public - and businesses," said Father Boes. "She gave the approach that is based on the idea of starting with asset-based communities - what are the gifts that people have, what institutions and organizations are there. Those are all assets to the community."

He added that a church community is an asset in regard to "feeding the culture and helping people know what is right and wrong."

On the video, Holton promotes rural community revitalization.

"The Center for Rural Affairs is developing very much the area of entrepreneurship," said Father Boes. "You need entrepreneurship in all the different human enterprises including the community itself, in order to be able to figure out ways of having the community work together."

Videos may be ordered from Reynolds Video Production, 300 W. Power Drive, Dakota Dunes, SD 57048; e-mail, RVP@cableone.net; telephone, (605) 232-0111. The cost is $10 for DVDs and $13 for VHS including shipping and handling.