From Rich, Tomsu, Ohio Ecological Food & Farm Association

Readers of View from the Fazenda will be rewarded with not only Ellen Bromfield Geld’s account of her fifty years of experiences living in the wild beauty of the Brazilian heartlands, but a stunning accomplishment of a master prose stylist who delights in the creation of images, the rhythms of language and the sounds and texture of words. View from the Fazenda (a Portuguese word for a ranch, large farm, or plantation) presents us with the farming experiences of Geld and her husband Carson, her condemnation of environmental destruction, and her sympathetic portrayal of a diverse Brazilian population whose fatalistic beliefs enable them to endure the vicissitudes of life without losing their capacity to enjoy life to the fullest extent possible.

In a work that is reminiscent of Out of Africa, what one initially notes about Geld’s book is the sense of adventure. How many of us would gamble our savings to purchase one-way tickets to make our home in a foreign country with an unfamiliar language and customs? Yet Geld and her husband face the challenges of political uncertainty, the absence of adequate educational facilities for their children, and a fluctuating currency that nearly causes them to lose their fazenda.

For Geld, the daughter of Ohio’s Louis Bromfield, the adventure began when she and Carson were visited by a Brazilian who had read Malabar Farm. The description given of Brazil, which was that of a country possessing a climate suitable for growing anything that could be grown anywhere on earth, convinced the Gelds that their agricultural futures lay in Brazil.

After Carson was employed to do agricultural experimentation and demonstrating conservation practices at two fazendas, the Gelds bought Fazenda Pau D’Alto, a rundown coffee plantation. In passages throughout the book, Geld describes the conservation practices that enabled them to restore the fazenda and practice agricultural diversity. These included the planting of nut trees, growing diverse crops, the breeding of Santa Gertrudis cattle, experimentation with various kinds of pasture grasses, and organic methods to restore soil fertility.

Those who are engaged in farming will nod their heads in approval over Geld’s observations about what motivates people to farm. Geld recognizes that “to accept the responsibilities of farming you have to care,” and that “farming is a life of constant renewal.” “For in the end,” writes Geld, “farming is a way of life that you either love or become bitter in enduring.”

The recurring theme of View from the Fazenda is Geld’s concern for the environment, which is increasingly endangered by changes occurring in Brazil. She looks upon the opening up of the vast interior “emptiness” of the Amazon to farming with both horror and awe. She clearly recognizes the threats to the environment that are caused not only by the improper clearing of the land that results in soil erosion, but also the changes in ecosystems that cause irreversible ecological damage as a consequence of deforestation.

While Geld is horrified by “the destruction of a harmony that can never be restored,” she sees in the frontiersmen “the courage and endurance of these people who worked with their hands and the crudest of implements to create farms out of a tropical jungle.” These are individuals who want a better life, notwithstanding the risks involved. One might point out that unlike the environmental degradation that is occurring in the United States as a consequence of industrial-chemical farming practices, harm to the environment in Brazil is largely the unintended consequence of people attempting to escape poverty.

Some of Geld’s harshest words of criticism are leveled against those who seek gold in the Amazon, destroying trees whose roots prevent soil erosion and turning crystalline rivers into poisonous sewers. “For anyone whose life is rooted in the whole concept of harmony and nature,” writes Geld, “it is agony to see such mindless destruction.” And yet one sees that in most cases these are the desperate actions of people whose poverty causes them to do foolish things, more often than not leaving them worse off than they were before.

Geld recognizes that there is a universal human need for “the dignity of good work and a life in decent surroundings” and that the problems that exist in Brazil are not unique to that country, for all over the world we are witnessing a planet that is hemorrhaging from environmental destruction: “For although the Amazon is one of the last great wildernesses on earth, the destruction that happens here is but a reflection of what one sees elsewhere in the world ... . It is human greed and indifference which allow the land to be laid bare where it should not be, that drains the earth and deprives people of the means to make a healthy living where they are so that they need not flock to the cities to live in shanties or migrate to a delicate environment which cannot support them.”

There are no easy answers to global environmental destruction, perhaps because a solution would require major changes in economic activity and human behavior. Greed is obviously one of the causes, but so are ignorance, overpopulation and poverty.

Despite Geld’s despair over the senseless destruction to the environment, she never gave up hope. This can be seen in her 1998 visit to Parana, a province in southern Brazil. Geld had previously visited Parana nearly four decades earlier when the valley was covered with virgin forests. By 1998 virtually none of that forest remained, having been deforested by the first wave of frontiersmen. After the resources of the land had been depleted by a primitive, ignorant agriculture and abandoned by the initial frontiersmen, Parana was repopulated with a second wave of settlers who were determined to use sustainable agricultural methods. After seeing that 80% of the farmers in the Parana Valley were using sustainable methods, she expresses a ?cautious optimism? that farmers elsewhere might adopt similar practices to reestablish the harmony between man and nature.

What a cruel irony it is that before we can appreciate the true value of the environment we must first destroy it. Geld asks: “Are we humans eternally condemned to learn by our own mistakes with all the waste and sorrow involved?”

It would, take much too long to describe all of the colorful individuals she encountered in the last half century, but it should be noted that Geld’s artistry enables her to breathe life into these people in just a page or two. Especially noteworthy, are the women she describes: Dona Yatsuma, “bent double by years of doing everything;” Miralda, who despite her superstitiousness, “is a mother for whom her children are more precious than life;” Dona Zita, a woman who helped to save the Gelds’ farm when they were facing a losing battle with inflation; Dona Zeze, who “appeared out of nowhere with her nine children and a dog;” and Belkiss Rondon Rocha Azevedo, who is likened to a Grecian Indian queen “perched astride her big stallion with a pistol strapped to her belt.”

View from the Fazenda begins with Geld’s confession of her “all-consuming love for the challenge of the wilderness,” and as one finishes reading its last page one sees that this remarkable individual faces the difficult challenges of the future with the same sense of adventure that she did when she was twenty years old.

Rich Tomsu, owner of Rich Gardens Organic Farm is the recipient of a 2002 Ohio Small Farmer Award from the Athens Soil and Water Conservation District for the conservation practices on his farm

Rich Tomsu, Ohio Ecological Food & Farm Assoc.