Years ago I had a firsthand experience with swarming locusts. It was in Namibia and my work required me to drive across the country to load supplies and staff into an airplane when it got to Rundu, a town in northern Namibia on the border with Angola. Every two weeks I was on the road, travelling a great distance (1400 km there and back), and the road north took me through the vast and beautiful Namibian landscape. On one of my trips I drove through at least three kilometers of locusts as they swarmed across the countryside and road. By the time I got through the swarm, the front panels of the van were thickly covered with a mush of locusts, and the windscreen was nearly impossible to see through. I can still hear the cracking and popping sound as I drove over thousands of them on the road. It was an entomological nightmare. 

However, my experience with the locusts was nowhere near as terrible as what the farmers and livestock herders of that region faced. The swarm, as several Old Testament prophets have written, was like “an army.” Leaping, hopping, flying, climbing on trees and crops, and eating everything in their path. The locust swarm I drove through was a plague on the land and unstoppable in its destruction. 

And so, enter Joel, son of Pethuel. Taken as a whole the book of Joel is a warning of impending catastrophe and a promise of restoration and blessing. I read halfway through the first chapter, which is a long “hear this” of doom and foreboding, and then I paused. In the first 12 verses, Joel describes the locust swarms and their invasion with “teeth of a lion” and “fangs of a lioness”. Everyone mourns as they see the vineyards, wheat, barley, fig, pomegranate, palm, and apple devoured by the seething army of insects.

And then he ends verse 12 with something that caught my eye: “Surely the joy of mankind is withered away.” It is revealing that “the joy of mankind” to the Late Iron Age farmers of that time was the crops, fields, trees, vineyards, and fruits. That loss was, in Joel’s words, “the joy of mankind withered away” and in this state of catastrophe he goes so far as to write that "the ground is dried up” or “the ground mourns”. 

Somehow I think we can take from this a message for our modern agricultural production in the year 2026. This is not an easy parallel for me to make because one, I am not a farmer, and two, I have family, and know many people, who are farmers. So I’m responding to a collective voice that I’ve heard from various people who I know and from what I have read, and that collective voice says that not all is well. Soil erosion from wind and water, even with improved methods, removes top soil and nutrients. Reaching an aquifer for irrigated agriculture becomes increasingly difficult as the total volume is reduced more and more. Soil biota—the phytoplankton and zooplankton of the soil, you might say—is often diminished by heavy industrial chemical inputs during the growing cycle. In these conditions, the land too, mourns. 

Returning to Joel, the verses leading up to verse 12 describe the “joy of mankind” and that list does not include palaces, monuments, temples, or magnificent displays of accumulated human wealth. No, not at all. The people Joel was writing to were probably the least interested in “powers that be” who taxed their crops and herds to build yet another monument to their name. Instead, Joel describes the places where they got–and where we still get–our food: the fields where the farmers labor and bring in the harvest. Those pastures, terraces, vineyards, and orchards are the places that give joy to mankind in Joel's prophecy. And I believe it is the same for every field that is farmed today in 2026. The places that are producing food, as hard and difficult as that may be, are a source of joy for the farmer working them. And not only the individual farmer, but the farm households and farm communities, as well. They all find collective satisfaction in the harvest. But I also hear them tell me it’s not all great, it’s not all satisfying. There is, for some in the farming community, a feeling of loss that these modern systems are not treating the land well and that it should change. 

But change to what? Who has the answers to that question? I believe there are many places where we could turn to find solutions for our food production. Moreover, I believe there are characteristics of healthy food production—from farm to table—that we should encourage and expand. Gary Fick writes that all of us, as stewards, are responsible for the service, cultivation, protection, and care for our natural and agricultural resources. “Stewardship makes humans responsible to serve (abad) and protect (shamar) their garden [the land], a garden that now spreads wherever humans go” (Food, Farming and Faith p. 24). 

The locusts do not have the final word in Joel, because in the second chapter he writes that the Lord will be jealous for his land and take pity on the people. The rest of the chapter is another list of enormous blessings by the Lord poured out on the land and his people. The land first, then his people. I am hopeful because time and again I have read and heard of places where food production has moved toward practices that are more sustainable, less harmful, and healthier for both the land and consumers. The Lord blesses his land through our actions and in turn he blesses us and all of his creation. We are closer to that future than we may think, but we still need to consider how, where, and when we can help the land heal.

Photo by Steven Michmerhuizen: Beautiful crops of pigeon pea and sorghum in a Tanzanian farmer's field, both at full strength and soon to harvest.