I’ve struggled awhile to write a story about a miracle before our eyes
It’s something we rarely ponder but it’s the most important thing in our lives.
You see it each day in the summer as you drive along a road,
You see it each time at the market when your mind’s in shopping mode.
What is this mystery I’m referring to that we can not live without?
It’s the rows of food and fresh produce you see on your shopping route.
Mankind’s history of tending the soil is not one that elicits much hope.
Our habit of exhausting the soils we need leaves us with no way to cope.

On the great plains of North America it took us only 40 years
To create a soil erosion problem that brought us all to tears.
The Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Association was struck to fix the mess
Its motto in a nutshell “Our soils, let’s learn to caress”.
So we planted our fields with shelterbelts, we seeded some down to forage
We started to build new farming tools and put the old ploughs into storage.

As time went along we began to see ag chemicals appear in the store
When we saw how they worked we knew what we liked their effectiveness we did adore.
But now we’ve arrived at a time on the farm where we depend on only one means
To kill all the weeds and manipulate the crop, it’s going to jeopardize our dreams.
Weed resistance is rearing its ugly head, it could mark the end of our run
To conserve soil moisture and stop its blowing, the future may not be much fun.

But if we act now we may find a way to remedy the problems we’ve made
But changing the mindset of the players involved won’t be that easy I’m afraid.
We’ll follow the path that man often does, we’ll ride the old horse to the end
Even though we know she’s got a broken leg, it shouldn’t be that hard to comprehend.

Ken Eshpeter, December 2023