ジュールス プレティ、 Jules Pretty
Agri-Culture
Publisher: EarthscanFirst published: 2002 (English edition), 2005 (Japanese edition)
ISBN: 978-1-85383-925-2 (English edition)
Something is wrong with our agricultural and food systems. Despite great progress in increasing productivity in recent decades, hundreds of millions of people remain hungry and malnourished, and further millions suffer for eating too much food or the wrong sort.
Agri-Culture envisages the expansion of a new form of food production and consumption founded on more ecological principles and in harmony with the cultures, knowledges and collective capacities of the producers themselves. It draws on many stories of successful agricultural transformation in developing and industrialised countries, but with a warning that true prosperity will depend on the radical reform of the institutions and policies that control global food futures, and fundamental changes in the way we think. The time has come for the next agricultural revolution.
The illustrations in this book, including the cover painting from northern Nigeria, are all painted by John Pretty (father of the author).
===========
Excerpts
Preface
Crossing the Internal Frontiers
Excerpts
Preface
Crossing the Internal Frontiers
Contents
Landscapes Lost and Found
Monoscapes
Reality Cheques
Food for All
Only Reconnect
The Genetics Controversy
Ecological Literacy
Crossing the Internal Frontiers
Endorsements
============
“An excellent exposition of agricultural transformation from about 12,000 years ago to present-day industrial agriculture…. recommended to those who care for the health of mother-earth, especially agricultural institutions, farmers and policy makers.”
Experimental Agriculture
“A manifesto for change – a key text for the next agricultural revolution.”
BBC Wildlife Magazine
“Agri-Culture is optimistic, well-crafted and peppered with alternately interesting and shocking facts, skillfully woven together with a string of stories and metaphors.”
Scientists for Global Responsibility
“The chapter on The Genetics Controversy is the best balanced and most easily understood that I have ever seen and I would recommend the book for this alone”
Bulletin of the British Ecological Society
持続可能な農業とコモンズ再生
．持続可能な農業とコモンズ再生
持続可能な農業とコモンズ再生
キューバの有機革命を見ると、ソ連の崩壊で、キューバのカロリー
摂取の57％がソ連から輸入されたものであり、蛋白質と脂肪では80
％以上を他国に依存していたが、それができなくなる。
この事態は1992年の米国の過酷な「キューバ民主化法」の実施によ
って悪化した。そして、1996年の皮肉に満ちたタイトルがついた「
キューバ自由民主連帯法」(ヘルムズ・バートン法)によって、それ
までの経済封鎖がさらに強化されることになる。
キューバは、農業を再構築することでこの危機を克服しようとする。
その解決策のひとつが都市農業だった。
摂取の57％がソ連から輸入されたものであり、蛋白質と脂肪では80
％以上を他国に依存していたが、それができなくなる。
この事態は1992年の米国の過酷な「キューバ民主化法」の実施によ
って悪化した。そして、1996年の皮肉に満ちたタイトルがついた「
キューバ自由民主連帯法」(ヘルムズ・バートン法)によって、それ
までの経済封鎖がさらに強化されることになる。
キューバは、農業を再構築することでこの危機を克服しようとする。
その解決策のひとつが都市農業だった。
この政策の直接的な結果と
して、1998年にはハバナには8,000を越す公式に認定された菜園があ
り、30,000人以上の人々により耕され、可耕地の30％をカバーする
こととなった。
して、1998年にはハバナには8,000を越す公式に認定された菜園があ
り、30,000人以上の人々により耕され、可耕地の30％をカバーする
こととなった。
また、農業資材が輸入できなくなったことは、国内農業を多様化さ
せた。トラクターの代替として牛が導入され、入手できなくなった
農薬の代替として総合有害病害虫防除(ＩＰＭ)が発展している。殺
虫剤、除草剤の輸入ができなくなったことへの対応だ。
そのほとんどがユニークなものだが、キューバは、寄生昆虫をベー
スとしたエコロジー的な害虫防除プログラムを発展させ始めており
、その取り組みは、天敵・昆虫腐敗菌生産センター(ＣＲＥＥs)の設
立で強化されている。
せた。トラクターの代替として牛が導入され、入手できなくなった
農薬の代替として総合有害病害虫防除(ＩＰＭ)が発展している。殺
虫剤、除草剤の輸入ができなくなったことへの対応だ。
そのほとんどがユニークなものだが、キューバは、寄生昆虫をベー
スとしたエコロジー的な害虫防除プログラムを発展させ始めており
、その取り組みは、天敵・昆虫腐敗菌生産センター(ＣＲＥＥs)の設
立で強化されている。
キューバでは国全域に173ヶ所のミミズ堆肥センターがあり、年間
93,000トンの堆肥を生産している。いまでは、輪作、緑肥、間作、
土壌保全とすべてが、あたりまえのこととなっている。
この農業形態をジュールス・プレティは、世界52カ国の事例をもと
に記述しているので、このキューバ有機農法が世界に広げることが
できる。
このため、キューバ有機農業グループが「オルターナティブ・ノー
ベル賞」を受け、そのプレゼンテーションが1999年の12月にはスウ
ェーデン議会でされるのだ。有機農業グループは工業的な農業から
有機農業に国が転換する際、つねに最前線に居続けのである。
93,000トンの堆肥を生産している。いまでは、輪作、緑肥、間作、
土壌保全とすべてが、あたりまえのこととなっている。
この農業形態をジュールス・プレティは、世界52カ国の事例をもと
に記述しているので、このキューバ有機農法が世界に広げることが
できる。
このため、キューバ有機農業グループが「オルターナティブ・ノー
ベル賞」を受け、そのプレゼンテーションが1999年の12月にはスウ
ェーデン議会でされるのだ。有機農業グループは工業的な農業から
有機農業に国が転換する際、つねに最前線に居続けのである。
＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝
持続可能な農業とコモンズ再生
http://tayatoru.blog62.fc2.com/blog-entry-163.html
Author:田谷 徹の ブログ
ジュールス・プレティ著
ジュールス・プレティ著
吉田太郎訳『百姓仕事で世界は変わる』
：持続可能な農業とコモンズ再生．2006年．築地書館．
：持続可能な農業とコモンズ再生．2006年．築地書館．
エセックス大学環境社会学教授が、世界52カ国の事例をもとに、現
代の農のあり方をグローバルイシュー（特に環境問題）とともに考
察した本。
著者は、世界各地で営まれてきた伝統的な農業は、環境を破壊する
のではなく、それどころか自然を生み出してきた要素でもあるとい
う。
代の農のあり方をグローバルイシュー（特に環境問題）とともに考
察した本。
著者は、世界各地で営まれてきた伝統的な農業は、環境を破壊する
のではなく、それどころか自然を生み出してきた要素でもあるとい
う。
原生自然についての議論においても、なんらかの人的な操作が
介在しているとし、自然と対置して人類を考える愚かしさを説く。
それを踏まえたうえで、近代的農業を鋭く批判する。モノカルチャ
ーと生産重視の農業が、如何に自然に、そして我々の生活環境に大
きな脅威になっていることを指摘する。
大量生産大量破棄のなかでは、農家自身の経営コストと流通価格の
みで、コストについて考えられているが、大量に同じものを生産す
ることで環境に負荷をかけたコストは常に表に出てくることは無い。
奇しくも白菜の大量廃棄の年でもあり、この記述には興味深く読め
た。メディアでは廃棄する農家の悲痛な映像が流れていたが、それ
ら農家がこのコストを考えることは無いのだ。全体の積み重なった
コストを考えれば、空恐ろしい。
介在しているとし、自然と対置して人類を考える愚かしさを説く。
それを踏まえたうえで、近代的農業を鋭く批判する。モノカルチャ
ーと生産重視の農業が、如何に自然に、そして我々の生活環境に大
きな脅威になっていることを指摘する。
大量生産大量破棄のなかでは、農家自身の経営コストと流通価格の
みで、コストについて考えられているが、大量に同じものを生産す
ることで環境に負荷をかけたコストは常に表に出てくることは無い。
奇しくも白菜の大量廃棄の年でもあり、この記述には興味深く読め
た。メディアでは廃棄する農家の悲痛な映像が流れていたが、それ
ら農家がこのコストを考えることは無いのだ。全体の積み重なった
コストを考えれば、空恐ろしい。
本書では、途上国で進む有機農業革命も紹介されている。近代的農
業から有機農業や伝統的農業へのパラダイム転換を促している。特
に、立場の弱い農民（小作・土地なし農民・近代的農業において競
争力の無い農民）などは、このパラダイム転換によって大きな利益
を得るだろうと指摘する。日々の物資にも事欠く農民こそが、有機
農業や伝統的農法によって自らの手で食糧を確保できるのであると。
また地産地消やスローフード、遺伝子組み換え農産物、さらにはソ
ーシャルキャピタルとコモンズの再生まで、幅広く農業に関する問
題を取り扱っている。コンパクトによく1冊にまとめたものだ、と思
うのだが、それが本書を曖昧なものにしてしまっている。
業から有機農業や伝統的農業へのパラダイム転換を促している。特
に、立場の弱い農民（小作・土地なし農民・近代的農業において競
争力の無い農民）などは、このパラダイム転換によって大きな利益
を得るだろうと指摘する。日々の物資にも事欠く農民こそが、有機
農業や伝統的農法によって自らの手で食糧を確保できるのであると。
また地産地消やスローフード、遺伝子組み換え農産物、さらにはソ
ーシャルキャピタルとコモンズの再生まで、幅広く農業に関する問
題を取り扱っている。コンパクトによく1冊にまとめたものだ、と思
うのだが、それが本書を曖昧なものにしてしまっている。
一つ一つ
の事例を検証することは、僕には不可能だが、インドネシアのケー
スにおいては、著者の記述は正しくない。総合病害虫防除（通称IPM
）のプログラムでは、農民のムーブメントがあるかのような記述が
あるが、実際には行政によるトップダウン型の押し付け農法でしか
ない。バリの事例（Jha, Nitish 2002 “Barriers to the Diffusion
of Agricultural Knowledge: A Balinese Case Study”） では、
IPMという外部から権威付けられた農法と現地の伝統的リーダーによ
って支えられた農法との間に確執を生み、その間で苦悩する農民な
どが紹介されている。本ケースでは、普及員がIPMこそ正しいと思い
込みを強めることで、現地の多様な価値に気がつかないまま、現地
の農法を否定していく。このようなケースが、果たして近代的農業
と対置させて語られるに足る農業のあり方なのであろうか。
の事例を検証することは、僕には不可能だが、インドネシアのケー
スにおいては、著者の記述は正しくない。総合病害虫防除（通称IPM
）のプログラムでは、農民のムーブメントがあるかのような記述が
あるが、実際には行政によるトップダウン型の押し付け農法でしか
ない。バリの事例（Jha, Nitish 2002 “Barriers to the Diffusion
of Agricultural Knowledge: A Balinese Case Study”） では、
IPMという外部から権威付けられた農法と現地の伝統的リーダーによ
って支えられた農法との間に確執を生み、その間で苦悩する農民な
どが紹介されている。本ケースでは、普及員がIPMこそ正しいと思い
込みを強めることで、現地の多様な価値に気がつかないまま、現地
の農法を否定していく。このようなケースが、果たして近代的農業
と対置させて語られるに足る農業のあり方なのであろうか。
本書をよく読み勉強すればするほど、実は同じような失敗をする可
能性がある。農業自体に目をむけ、それがどこへ行っても同じ意味
を持つものだと勘違いをし、本書で紹介されている農法が正しいの
だと思ってしまえば、その人と関わる現地の人は不幸だ。
能性がある。農業自体に目をむけ、それがどこへ行っても同じ意味
を持つものだと勘違いをし、本書で紹介されている農法が正しいの
だと思ってしまえば、その人と関わる現地の人は不幸だ。
実はこの
普遍性こそがモダニティなのであって、近代的農業がモダニティで
はないのである。普遍性あるものとして農業を捉え、有機農業や伝
統的農業と呼ばれているものこそ正しいと、逆にそれに普遍性を求
めれば、実はそれこそがまさにモダニティの問題なのである。
普遍性こそがモダニティなのであって、近代的農業がモダニティで
はないのである。普遍性あるものとして農業を捉え、有機農業や伝
統的農業と呼ばれているものこそ正しいと、逆にそれに普遍性を求
めれば、実はそれこそがまさにモダニティの問題なのである。
52カ
国の事例を横断的に考察するという暴挙は、まさにその事例に普遍
性を捜し求める著者の姿勢がうかがえる。それこそ批判されるべき
ではないだろうか。
52カ国の事例は必要ない。その代わり、厚みのある記述で、1つの事
例についてのしっかりとしたケーススタディを求めたい。その視点
と調査方法論こそ、我々に新しい農業の可能性を示してくれるに違
いない。
余談だが、農村開発関連の良書をすべて引用しているが、なぜかチ
ェンバースのみがないのが不可解。仲が悪いのか？
国の事例を横断的に考察するという暴挙は、まさにその事例に普遍
性を捜し求める著者の姿勢がうかがえる。それこそ批判されるべき
ではないだろうか。
52カ国の事例は必要ない。その代わり、厚みのある記述で、1つの事
例についてのしっかりとしたケーススタディを求めたい。その視点
と調査方法論こそ、我々に新しい農業の可能性を示してくれるに違
いない。
余談だが、農村開発関連の良書をすべて引用しているが、なぜかチ
ェンバースのみがないのが不可解。仲が悪いのか？
＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝
【目次】
序章 持続可能な農業への静かなる革命
第１章 世界の自然を守ってきた伝統農業
第２章 コモンズの破壊がもたらした光と陰
第３章 食の安全・安心と農業・農村の多面的機能
第４章 途上国で静かに進む有機農業革命
第５章 地産地消とスローフード
第６章 遺伝子組み換え農産物
第７章 社会関係資本とコモンズの再生
第８章 未来への扉を開く先駆者たち
訳者あとがき 世界の農業の新たなうねりが、日本の農業になげかける意味
訳者あとがき 世界の農業の新たなうねりが、日本の農業になげかける意味
==========
内容（「BOOK」データベースより）
世界の農業の新たな胎動や、自然と調和した暮らしの姿を、52カ国でのフィールドワークをもとに、イギリスを代表する環境社会学者が、あざやかに描き出す。
著者略歴 (「BOOK著者紹介情報」より)
プレティ,ジュールス
1989年から国際環境開発研究所で持続可能な農業プログラムのディレクターを務め、1997年より、エセックス大学(イギリス)生物科学部長、同大学の環境社会センター長。研究領域や関心は、持続可能な農業にとどまらず、グリーンな運動、土壌の健康と炭素隔離、社会関係資本と天然資源、生物多様性とエコロジカルなリテラシー、農業政策と真のコストと多岐にわたる。遺伝子組み換え農産物の健康や環境に対するリスクを政府に提言する環境リリース諮問委員会副委員長のほか、環境食糧省、国際開発省、貿易産業省などで政府諮問委員会の委員を務め、イギリス農業の再生のための国家戦略を提言するなど、政府の知恵袋としても活躍している。また、持続可能な農業の重要性を広く国民に啓発するため、マスコミやメディアにも積極的に登場し、1999年にはBBCラジオの四回シリーズ「エデンを耕す(Ploughing Eden)」、2001年にはBBCテレビの「奇跡の豆」の製作にあたった。2002年からはスローフード賞の国際審査委員も務めている
吉田/太郎
1961年東京生まれ。筑波大学自然学類卒業。同学大学院地球科学研究科中退。東京都産業労働局農林水産部を経て、長野県農政部農政課勤務。
1989年から国際環境開発研究所で持続可能な農業プログラムのディレクターを務め、1997年より、エセックス大学(イギリス)生物科学部長、同大学の環境社会センター長。研究領域や関心は、持続可能な農業にとどまらず、グリーンな運動、土壌の健康と炭素隔離、社会関係資本と天然資源、生物多様性とエコロジカルなリテラシー、農業政策と真のコストと多岐にわたる。遺伝子組み換え農産物の健康や環境に対するリスクを政府に提言する環境リリース諮問委員会副委員長のほか、環境食糧省、国際開発省、貿易産業省などで政府諮問委員会の委員を務め、イギリス農業の再生のための国家戦略を提言するなど、政府の知恵袋としても活躍している。また、持続可能な農業の重要性を広く国民に啓発するため、マスコミやメディアにも積極的に登場し、1999年にはBBCラジオの四回シリーズ「エデンを耕す(Ploughing Eden)」、2001年にはBBCテレビの「奇跡の豆」の製作にあたった。2002年からはスローフード賞の国際審査委員も務めている
吉田/太郎
1961年東京生まれ。筑波大学自然学類卒業。同学大学院地球科学研究科中退。東京都産業労働局農林水産部を経て、長野県農政部農政課勤務。
有機農業や環境問題は学生時代からの関心事。社会制度や経済など広い視野から「業」としての農業ではなく、持続可能な社会を実現しうる「触媒」としての「農」や「里山」のあり方を模索している(本データはこの書籍が刊行された当時に掲載されていたものです)
========
世界の農業の新たな動きや、自然と調和した暮らしの姿を52カ国での200以上のフィールドワークを基に、イギリスの環境社会学者が各地の農業を詳しく紹介した1冊だ。
訳者の指摘通り、降水量が多く夏の気温が熱帯並みの日本は欧米に比べ病害虫の発生率が高く、鯨油でウンカの気門を窒息させる「農薬」が江戸時代から使われてきた。「食の安全・安心」と唱えることより、安定的に生産が可能な技術的裏付けが肝心だ。
マダガスカルから始まった集約稲作法(SRI)は早めに苗を間隔を開けて粗植し、田は水分を保ちつつ湛水しない(湛水は開花期以降)方法で除草さえきちんとすれば、収穫は飛躍的に増大するという。ただし、日本をはじめとするモンスーン地帯では稲作は常に雑草との闘いだった訳で、技術体系の普遍性には疑問を呈せざるをえない。「持続可能な農業」とは、環境への洞察に加え、経営の観点も重要だ。「百姓仕事で世界は変わる」というコミュニティ再生は美しく険しい。(塩原俊)
============
持続可能な農業とは
世界の農業の新たな動きや、自然と調和した暮らしの姿を52カ国での200以上のフィールドワークを基に、イギリスの環境社会学者が各地の農業を詳しく紹介した1冊だ。
訳者の指摘通り、降水量が多く夏の気温が熱帯並みの日本は欧米に比べ病害虫の発生率が高く、鯨油でウンカの気門を窒息させる「農薬」が江戸時代から使われてきた。「食の安全・安心」と唱えることより、安定的に生産が可能な技術的裏付けが肝心だ。
マダガスカルから始まった集約稲作法(SRI)は早めに苗を間隔を開けて粗植し、田は水分を保ちつつ湛水しない(湛水は開花期以降)方法で除草さえきちんとすれば、収穫は飛躍的に増大するという。ただし、日本をはじめとするモンスーン地帯では稲作は常に雑草との闘いだった訳で、技術体系の普遍性には疑問を呈せざるをえない。「持続可能な農業」とは、環境への洞察に加え、経営の観点も重要だ。「百姓仕事で世界は変わる」というコミュニティ再生は美しく険しい。(塩原俊)
============
Preface
Excerpt from: Agri-Culture
Publisher: Earthscan
First published: 2002 (English edition), 2005 (Japanese edition)
ISBN: 978-1-85383-925-2 (English edition)
Something is wrong with our agricultural and food systems. Despite great progress in increasing productivity in the last century, hundreds of millions of people remain hungry and malnourished. Further hundreds of millions eat too much, or the wrong sorts of food, and it is making them ill. The health of the environment suffers too, as degradation seems to accompany many of the agricultural systems we have evolved in recent years. Can nothing be done, or is it time for the expansion of another sort of agriculture, founded more on ecological principles, and in harmony with people, their societies and cultures? This is not a new idea, as many have struggled in the past to come up with both sustainable and productive farm systems, and have had some success. What is novel, though, is that these are now beginning to spread to many new places, and are reaching a scale large enough to make a difference to the lives of millions of people.
My intention in writing this book is to help to popularise this complex and rather hidden area of human endeavour. I live and work in the picturesque landscape of the Suffolk and Essex borders of eastern England, a region of small fields, ancient hedgerows, lazy rivers and Tudor wool towns. I spent my early years growing up amongst the sands and savannahs of the Sahara’s southern edge, landscapes dotted with baobab and acacia, and teeming with wildlife. In my time, I have had the fortune to meet and work with inspiring people in many communities in both developing and industrialised countries. Most have been swimming against a prevailing tide of opinion, often exposing themselves to ridicule or even opprobrium. In writing this book, I want to tell some of their stories, about how individuals and groups have chosen routes to transformation, and how they have succeeded in changing both communities and landscapes.
I also want to present evidence to support the contention that industrialised agricultural systems as currently configured are flawed, despite their great progress in increasing food productivity, and that alternative systems can be efficient and equitable. My intention is to bring these ideas to a wider audience, as food matters to us all. As consumers, we buy it every week, even every day, and the choices we make send strong signals about the systems of agricultural production we prefer. We may not realise these messages are being sent, but they are. Our daily consumption of food fundamentally affects the landscapes, communities and environments from which it originates.
In the earliest surviving texts on European farming, agriculture was interpreted as two connected things, agri and cultura, and food seen as a vital part of the cultures and communities that produced it. Today, however, our experience with industrial farming dominates, with food now seen simply as a commodity, and farming often organised along factory lines. The questions I would like to ask are these. Can we put the culture back into agri-culture without compromising the need to produce enough food? Can we create sustainable systems of farming that are efficient and fair and founded on a detailed understanding of the benefits of agroecology and people’s capacity to cooperate?
As we advance into the early years of the twenty-first century, it seems to me that we have some critical choices. Humans have been farming for some six hundred generations, and for most of that time the production and consumption of food has been intimately connected to cultural and social systems. Foods have a special significance and meaning, as do the fields, grasslands, forests, rivers and seas. Yet over just the last two or three generations, we have developed hugely successful agricultural systems based on industrial principles. They certainly produce more food per hectare and per worker than ever before, but only look so efficient if we ignore the harmful side-effects – the loss of soils, the damage to biodiversity, the pollution of water, the harm to human health.
Over these twelve thousand years of agriculture, there have been long periods of stability, punctuated by short bursts of rapid change. These resulted in fundamental shifts in the way people thought and acted. I believe we are at another such junction. A sustainable agriculture making the best of nature and people’s knowledges and collective capacities has been showing increasingly good promise. But it has been a quiet revolution because many accord it little credence. It is also silent because those in the vanguard are often the poorest and marginalized, whose voices are rarely heard in the grand scheme of things. No one can exactly say where this revolution could lead us. Neither do we know whether sustainable models of production would be appropriate for all farmers worldwide. But what I do know is that the principles do apply widely. Once these come to be accepted, then it will be the ingenuity of local people that shapes these new methods of producing food to their own particular circumstances.
We know that most transitions involve trade-offs. A gain in one area is accompanied by a loss elsewhere. A road built to increase access to markets helps remote communities, but also allows illegal loggers to remove valuable trees more easily. A farm that eschews the use of pesticides benefits biodiversity, but may produce less food. New agroecological methods may mean more labour is required, putting an additional burden on women. But these trade-offs need not always be serious. If we listen carefully, and observe the improvements already being made by communities across the world, we find that it is possible to produce more food whilst protecting and improving nature. It is possible to have diversity in both human and natural systems without undermining economic efficiency.
This book draws on many stories of successful transformation. Sadly, I cannot do them full justice, and so they are inevitably partial. Nor is there the space to provide a careful consideration of all possible drawbacks or contradictions. I do not want to give the impression that just because some communities and societies are designated as `traditional’ or `indigenous’ they are always somehow virtuous, both in their relations with nature and with each other. The actions of some communities have led to ecological destruction. The norms of others have seen socially-divisive and inequitable relations persist for centuries. Nonetheless, my intention here is to show what is possible, on both the ecological and social fronts, and not necessarily to imply that each and every case is perfect. This is also not a book where you will find substantial evidence and analysis. There are no tables or figures in the main text, though the endnotes do contain much primary data. I am convinced, though, that the stories are based on sound methods and trustworthy evidence, and that they represent a significance beyond the specificities of their own circumstances.
I anticipate criticism from those who disbelieve that such progress can be made with agroecological approaches. I also do not want to reject all recent achievements in agriculture by presenting a doctrinaire alternative. Real progress can only come from a synthesis of the best of the past, eliminating practices that cause damage to environments and human health, and using the best of knowledges and technologies available to us today
This sustainable agriculture revolution is now helping to bring forth a new world. But it is not likely to happen easily. Many agricultural policies are unhelpful. Many institutions do not listen to the voices of local people, particularly if they are poor or remote. Many companies still think that maximising profit at a cost to the environment represents responsible behaviour. But changing national or local policies is only one step. Governments may wish for certain things, but having the political will does not necessarily guarantee a desired outcome. Structural distortions in economies, self-interest, unequal trading relations, corruption, debt-burdens, profit-maximisation, environmental degradation, and war and conflict all reduce the likelihood of achieving the systemic change required to nurture this emerging revolution.
But we must not let these deep problems stop us trying. Things change when enough people want them to. The time is surely right to speak loudly and, with a collective will, seek any innovations that will help overcome these problems. I aim to take you on a short journey through some of the communities and farms of both developing and industrialised countries where progress is being made. I hope you will agree that these stories of success deserve careful consideration and some celebration.
=======
Publisher: Earthscan
First published: 2002 (English edition), 2005 (Japanese edition)
ISBN: 978-1-85383-925-2 (English edition)
Something is wrong with our agricultural and food systems. Despite great progress in increasing productivity in the last century, hundreds of millions of people remain hungry and malnourished. Further hundreds of millions eat too much, or the wrong sorts of food, and it is making them ill. The health of the environment suffers too, as degradation seems to accompany many of the agricultural systems we have evolved in recent years. Can nothing be done, or is it time for the expansion of another sort of agriculture, founded more on ecological principles, and in harmony with people, their societies and cultures? This is not a new idea, as many have struggled in the past to come up with both sustainable and productive farm systems, and have had some success. What is novel, though, is that these are now beginning to spread to many new places, and are reaching a scale large enough to make a difference to the lives of millions of people.
My intention in writing this book is to help to popularise this complex and rather hidden area of human endeavour. I live and work in the picturesque landscape of the Suffolk and Essex borders of eastern England, a region of small fields, ancient hedgerows, lazy rivers and Tudor wool towns. I spent my early years growing up amongst the sands and savannahs of the Sahara’s southern edge, landscapes dotted with baobab and acacia, and teeming with wildlife. In my time, I have had the fortune to meet and work with inspiring people in many communities in both developing and industrialised countries. Most have been swimming against a prevailing tide of opinion, often exposing themselves to ridicule or even opprobrium. In writing this book, I want to tell some of their stories, about how individuals and groups have chosen routes to transformation, and how they have succeeded in changing both communities and landscapes.
I also want to present evidence to support the contention that industrialised agricultural systems as currently configured are flawed, despite their great progress in increasing food productivity, and that alternative systems can be efficient and equitable. My intention is to bring these ideas to a wider audience, as food matters to us all. As consumers, we buy it every week, even every day, and the choices we make send strong signals about the systems of agricultural production we prefer. We may not realise these messages are being sent, but they are. Our daily consumption of food fundamentally affects the landscapes, communities and environments from which it originates.In the earliest surviving texts on European farming, agriculture was interpreted as two connected things, agri and cultura, and food seen as a vital part of the cultures and communities that produced it. Today, however, our experience with industrial farming dominates, with food now seen simply as a commodity, and farming often organised along factory lines. The questions I would like to ask are these. Can we put the culture back into agri-culture without compromising the need to produce enough food? Can we create sustainable systems of farming that are efficient and fair and founded on a detailed understanding of the benefits of agroecology and people’s capacity to cooperate?
As we advance into the early years of the twenty-first century, it seems to me that we have some critical choices. Humans have been farming for some six hundred generations, and for most of that time the production and consumption of food has been intimately connected to cultural and social systems. Foods have a special significance and meaning, as do the fields, grasslands, forests, rivers and seas. Yet over just the last two or three generations, we have developed hugely successful agricultural systems based on industrial principles. They certainly produce more food per hectare and per worker than ever before, but only look so efficient if we ignore the harmful side-effects – the loss of soils, the damage to biodiversity, the pollution of water, the harm to human health.
Over these twelve thousand years of agriculture, there have been long periods of stability, punctuated by short bursts of rapid change. These resulted in fundamental shifts in the way people thought and acted. I believe we are at another such junction. A sustainable agriculture making the best of nature and people’s knowledges and collective capacities has been showing increasingly good promise. But it has been a quiet revolution because many accord it little credence. It is also silent because those in the vanguard are often the poorest and marginalized, whose voices are rarely heard in the grand scheme of things. No one can exactly say where this revolution could lead us. Neither do we know whether sustainable models of production would be appropriate for all farmers worldwide. But what I do know is that the principles do apply widely. Once these come to be accepted, then it will be the ingenuity of local people that shapes these new methods of producing food to their own particular circumstances.
We know that most transitions involve trade-offs. A gain in one area is accompanied by a loss elsewhere. A road built to increase access to markets helps remote communities, but also allows illegal loggers to remove valuable trees more easily. A farm that eschews the use of pesticides benefits biodiversity, but may produce less food. New agroecological methods may mean more labour is required, putting an additional burden on women. But these trade-offs need not always be serious. If we listen carefully, and observe the improvements already being made by communities across the world, we find that it is possible to produce more food whilst protecting and improving nature. It is possible to have diversity in both human and natural systems without undermining economic efficiency.
This book draws on many stories of successful transformation. Sadly, I cannot do them full justice, and so they are inevitably partial. Nor is there the space to provide a careful consideration of all possible drawbacks or contradictions. I do not want to give the impression that just because some communities and societies are designated as `traditional’ or `indigenous’ they are always somehow virtuous, both in their relations with nature and with each other. The actions of some communities have led to ecological destruction. The norms of others have seen socially-divisive and inequitable relations persist for centuries. Nonetheless, my intention here is to show what is possible, on both the ecological and social fronts, and not necessarily to imply that each and every case is perfect. This is also not a book where you will find substantial evidence and analysis. There are no tables or figures in the main text, though the endnotes do contain much primary data. I am convinced, though, that the stories are based on sound methods and trustworthy evidence, and that they represent a significance beyond the specificities of their own circumstances.
I anticipate criticism from those who disbelieve that such progress can be made with agroecological approaches. I also do not want to reject all recent achievements in agriculture by presenting a doctrinaire alternative. Real progress can only come from a synthesis of the best of the past, eliminating practices that cause damage to environments and human health, and using the best of knowledges and technologies available to us today
This sustainable agriculture revolution is now helping to bring forth a new world. But it is not likely to happen easily. Many agricultural policies are unhelpful. Many institutions do not listen to the voices of local people, particularly if they are poor or remote. Many companies still think that maximising profit at a cost to the environment represents responsible behaviour. But changing national or local policies is only one step. Governments may wish for certain things, but having the political will does not necessarily guarantee a desired outcome. Structural distortions in economies, self-interest, unequal trading relations, corruption, debt-burdens, profit-maximisation, environmental degradation, and war and conflict all reduce the likelihood of achieving the systemic change required to nurture this emerging revolution.
But we must not let these deep problems stop us trying. Things change when enough people want them to. The time is surely right to speak loudly and, with a collective will, seek any innovations that will help overcome these problems. I aim to take you on a short journey through some of the communities and farms of both developing and industrialised countries where progress is being made. I hope you will agree that these stories of success deserve careful consideration and some celebration.
=======
In Chapter 1 of this book, I set the scene by showing that landscapes, and their attendant agricultural and food systems, are a common heritage to us all. In the pursuit of improved agricultural productivity, we have, though, allowed ourselves to become disconnected from nature, and so tend not to notice when it is damaged or taken away. For all our human history, we have been shaped by nature whilst shaping it in return. But in our industrial age, we are losing the stories, memories and language about land and nature. These disconnections matter, for the way we think about nature and wildernesses fundamentally affects what we do in our agricultural and food systems.
Chapter 2 focuses on the darker side of the landscape, showing how the poor and powerless are commonly excluded from the very resources on which they rely for their livelihoods. Modern dispossessions have extended such actions both in the name of economic growth, and in the name of nature conservation. Strictly protected areas designed to protect biodiversity simply disconnect us once again from the nature we value and need. At the same time, modern agriculture has created monoscapes to enhance efficiency, and the poorest have lost out again. Repossession and regeneration of diverse and culturally-important landscapes is an urgent task.
Chapter 3 takes a deliberately narrow economic perspective on the real costs and benefits of agricultural systems. The real price of food should incorporate the substantial externalities, or negative side-effects, that must be paid for in the harm to environments and human health. Food appears cheap because these costs are hard to identify and measure. Allocating monetary values to nature’s goods and services is only one part of the picture, but it does tell us something of the comparative value of sustainable and non-sustainable systems, as well as indicate the kind of directions national policies should be taking. To date, the fine words of governments have only very rarely been translated into coherent and effective policies to support sustainable systems of food production.
Chapter 4 shows how food poverty can be eliminated with more sustainable agriculture. We know that modern technologies and fossil-fuel derived inputs can increase agricultural productivity – but anything that costs money inevitably puts it out of the reach of the poorest households and countries. Sustainable agriculture seeks to make the best use of nature’s goods and services, of the knowledge and skills of farmers, and of people’s collective capacity to work together to solve common management problems. Such systems are improving soil health, increasing water efficiency and reducing dependency on pesticides. When put together, the emergent systems are both diverse and productive. There are, of course, many threats, which may come to undermine much of the remarkable progress.
Chapter 5 focuses on the need to reconnect whole food systems. Industrialised countries have celebrated their agricultural systems’ production of only commodities, yet family farms have disappeared as rapidly as the rural biodiversity. At the same time, farmers themselves have received a progressively smaller proportion of what consumers spend on food. Putting sustainable systems of production in touch with consumers within bioregions or foodsheds offers opportunities to recreate some of the connections. Farmers’ markets, community-supported agriculture, box schemes, and farmers groups are all helping to point to what is possible. None of these alone will provoke systemic change, though regional policies and movements are helping to create the right conditions.
Chapter 6 addresses the genetic controversy. It is impossible to write of agricultural transformation without also assessing biotechnology and genetic modification. Who produces agricultural technologies, how they can be made available to the poor, and whether they will have adverse environmental effects, are all important questions we should ask of the many different types of genetic modification and different generations of application. The answers will tell us whether these new ideas can make a difference. We must, therefore, treat biotechnologies on a case-by-case basis, carefully assessing the potential benefits as well as the environmental and health risks. It is likely that biotechnology will make some contributions to the sustainability of agricultural systems, but developing the research systems, institutions and policies to make them pro-poor will be much more difficult.
Chapter 7 centres on the need to develop social learning systems to increase ecological literacy. Our knowledges of nature and the land usually accrue slowly over time, and cannot easily be transferred. If an agriculture dependent on detailed ecological understanding is to emerge, then social learning and participatory systems are a necessary pre-requisite. These develop relations of trust, reciprocal mechanisms, common rules and norms, and new forms of connectedness institutionalised in social groups. New commons are now being created for the collective management of watersheds, water, microfinance, forests and pests. These collective systems, involving the emergence of some four hundred thousand groups over just a decade, can also provoke significant personal changes – no advance towards sustainability can occur without us crossing the internal frontiers too.
Chapter 8 focuses on a select number of cases and individuals who have crossed the internal frontiers and then caused large-scale external transformations. Our old thinking has failed the rest of nature, and is in danger of failing us again. Could we help to make a difference if we changed the way we think and act? Can we, as Aldo Leopold suggested, think like the mountain and the wolf? Heroic change is possible, yet we also need to expand from the parochiality of these cases. Everyone is in favour of sustainability, yet few seriously go beyond the fine words. There really is no alternative to the radical reform of national agricultural, rural and food policies and inst
===========
Crossing the Internal Frontiers
Chapter 8 focuses on a select number of cases and individuals who have crossed the internal frontiers and then caused large-scale external transformations. Our old thinking has failed the rest of nature, and is in danger of failing us again. Could we help to make a difference if we changed the way we think and act? Can we, as Aldo Leopold suggested, think like the mountain and the wolf? Heroic change is possible, yet we also need to expand from the parochiality of these cases. Everyone is in favour of sustainability, yet few seriously go beyond the fine words. There really is no alternative to the radical reform of national agricultural, rural and food policies and inst
===========
Crossing the Internal Frontiers
Excerpt from: Agri-Culture
Publisher: Earthscan
First published: 2002 (English edition), 2005 (Japanese edition)
ISBN: 978-1-85383-925-2 (English edition)
Redesign and Aldo Leopold
Human connectedness to nature has deep roots, as for five to seven million years we walked this earth as hunters and gatherers, entirely dependent on our knowledge of wild resources, and on our collective capacity to gather plants and catch animals. About ten to twelve thousand years ago, we began to domesticate plants and animals. For most of the time since then, the culture of food production was intimately bound up in some form of collective action, and in an intimate knowledge of nature. Where city states emerged, as in Greece, Rome, Mesopotamia, China, Maya and mediaeval Europe, then the number of people no longer needing this intimate connection for their livelihoods grew. But it was not until the advent of the agricultural and industrial revolutions, just two hundred years ago, that food production in some countries began its drift away from the majority of the population. It is barely two generations since agricultural became industrial, and modernist agriculture came to dominate, and transferred food into only a commodity. This industrialisation of a basic human connection has undermined many things.
So for three hundred and fifty thousand generations, we care and hunt, use and overuse, harvest and replant, cut and re-seed, and from all this emerges the human condition. Not a type of condition – but how we are. The state of the world is an outcome of this relationship. For generations, our effects were globally benign, though not necessarily locally. Today, though, we are largely disconnected, and because of that we are less likely to notice when the environment is further degraded, or when valued resources are captured and damaged by others. We are satisfied to know, or at least believe we are, that more and more food is being produced. But if we lack the innate connections, we no longer question when environmental and social problems emerge. We do not notice that the extrinsic is damaged at the same time as the intrinsic withers away. Though these breakdowns are symptoms of systemic disarray, there is still hope.
There is a great hero in landscape and community regeneration, and he is the fictional creation of author, Jean Giono, resident of Manosque in France for most of his life. In TheMan Who Planted Trees, Elzéard Bouffier, shepherd and silent roamer of the hills and valleys of Provence, helps to transform a whole rural system. Giono stands alongside all the greats of nature and wilderness writing, perhaps surpassing many as his concerns are centred on the connection between land and its people, and on what each can do for the other. According to translator Norma Goodrich, Giono termed his confidence in the futureespérance, the word describing the condition of living in hopeful tranquillity.
In the fiction, the narrator comes upon Elzéard planting acorns amidst a desertified landscape. There are no trees or rivers, houses are in ruin, and a few solitary people eke out a meagre living. “In 1913, this hamlet of ten or twelve houses had three inhabitants… hating one another… all about the nettles were feeding upon the remains of abandoned houses. Their condition had been beyond hope”. The unnamed narrator returns five years later, then again in twelve years, and finally thirty-two years after the original visit. Over all this time, Elzéard continues to plant acorns, and seedlings of beech and birch, and the landscape is steadily transformed. When the forest emerges, then the wildlife returns, the rivers run freely, and the community is regenerated. “Everything had changed. Even the air. Instead of the harsh dry winds that used to attack me, a gentle breeze was blowing, laden with scents. A sound like water came from the mountains: it was the wind in the forest….Ruins had been cleared away, dilapidated walls torn down… The new houses, freshly plastered, were surrounded by gardens where vegetables and flowers grew in orderly confusion, cabbages and roses, leeks and snapdragons, celery and anemones. It was now a village where one would like to live”. This is the glorious key to whole landscape redesign – the creation of places where we would really like to live in espérance.
Most of the main principles for redesign are present in this story. There is leadership from a hero, someone willing to take a risk, to do something different for the benefit of more than themselves. There is ecological literacy, with knowledge about the particulars of local agroecology helping to shape actions. There is the building of social and natural assets as foundations for life and for sustainability. There is also a sense of how long it takes, but just how good are the rewards. But the shepherd is a loner, and achieves change only on a small scale. This new agricultural sustainability revolution will not happen all at once. It will take time, and require the coordinated efforts millions of communities worldwide. But of one thing we should no longer be in any doubt. This is the way forward, and it offers real hope for our world and its interdependent people and biodiversity.
An Ethic for Land, Nature and Food Systems
Publisher: Earthscan
First published: 2002 (English edition), 2005 (Japanese edition)
ISBN: 978-1-85383-925-2 (English edition)
Redesign and Aldo Leopold
Human connectedness to nature has deep roots, as for five to seven million years we walked this earth as hunters and gatherers, entirely dependent on our knowledge of wild resources, and on our collective capacity to gather plants and catch animals. About ten to twelve thousand years ago, we began to domesticate plants and animals. For most of the time since then, the culture of food production was intimately bound up in some form of collective action, and in an intimate knowledge of nature. Where city states emerged, as in Greece, Rome, Mesopotamia, China, Maya and mediaeval Europe, then the number of people no longer needing this intimate connection for their livelihoods grew. But it was not until the advent of the agricultural and industrial revolutions, just two hundred years ago, that food production in some countries began its drift away from the majority of the population. It is barely two generations since agricultural became industrial, and modernist agriculture came to dominate, and transferred food into only a commodity. This industrialisation of a basic human connection has undermined many things.
So for three hundred and fifty thousand generations, we care and hunt, use and overuse, harvest and replant, cut and re-seed, and from all this emerges the human condition. Not a type of condition – but how we are. The state of the world is an outcome of this relationship. For generations, our effects were globally benign, though not necessarily locally. Today, though, we are largely disconnected, and because of that we are less likely to notice when the environment is further degraded, or when valued resources are captured and damaged by others. We are satisfied to know, or at least believe we are, that more and more food is being produced. But if we lack the innate connections, we no longer question when environmental and social problems emerge. We do not notice that the extrinsic is damaged at the same time as the intrinsic withers away. Though these breakdowns are symptoms of systemic disarray, there is still hope.
There is a great hero in landscape and community regeneration, and he is the fictional creation of author, Jean Giono, resident of Manosque in France for most of his life. In TheMan Who Planted Trees, Elzéard Bouffier, shepherd and silent roamer of the hills and valleys of Provence, helps to transform a whole rural system. Giono stands alongside all the greats of nature and wilderness writing, perhaps surpassing many as his concerns are centred on the connection between land and its people, and on what each can do for the other. According to translator Norma Goodrich, Giono termed his confidence in the futureespérance, the word describing the condition of living in hopeful tranquillity.
In the fiction, the narrator comes upon Elzéard planting acorns amidst a desertified landscape. There are no trees or rivers, houses are in ruin, and a few solitary people eke out a meagre living. “In 1913, this hamlet of ten or twelve houses had three inhabitants… hating one another… all about the nettles were feeding upon the remains of abandoned houses. Their condition had been beyond hope”. The unnamed narrator returns five years later, then again in twelve years, and finally thirty-two years after the original visit. Over all this time, Elzéard continues to plant acorns, and seedlings of beech and birch, and the landscape is steadily transformed. When the forest emerges, then the wildlife returns, the rivers run freely, and the community is regenerated. “Everything had changed. Even the air. Instead of the harsh dry winds that used to attack me, a gentle breeze was blowing, laden with scents. A sound like water came from the mountains: it was the wind in the forest….Ruins had been cleared away, dilapidated walls torn down… The new houses, freshly plastered, were surrounded by gardens where vegetables and flowers grew in orderly confusion, cabbages and roses, leeks and snapdragons, celery and anemones. It was now a village where one would like to live”. This is the glorious key to whole landscape redesign – the creation of places where we would really like to live in espérance.
Most of the main principles for redesign are present in this story. There is leadership from a hero, someone willing to take a risk, to do something different for the benefit of more than themselves. There is ecological literacy, with knowledge about the particulars of local agroecology helping to shape actions. There is the building of social and natural assets as foundations for life and for sustainability. There is also a sense of how long it takes, but just how good are the rewards. But the shepherd is a loner, and achieves change only on a small scale. This new agricultural sustainability revolution will not happen all at once. It will take time, and require the coordinated efforts millions of communities worldwide. But of one thing we should no longer be in any doubt. This is the way forward, and it offers real hope for our world and its interdependent people and biodiversity.
An Ethic for Land, Nature and Food Systems
Aldo Leopold’s masterpiece, Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There, was published in 1949, a year after his death. His greatest contribution to us all was the idea of the land ethic. This is a proposal for an ecological, ethical and aesthetic science to shape human interactions with, and as a part of, nature. Leopold’s land ethic sets out the idea that the beauty and integrity of nature should be protected and preserved from our actions.
Ethics is about limits to freedoms. We are free to destroy nature (and we do), yet we should prescribe and accept certain limits. Leopold sees humans as part of nature, not separated as distant observers or meddlers. In the Sand County Almanac, he says ”We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect… That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.” Such an ethic should be “a differentiation of social and anti-social conduct”.
Aldo Leopold’s shack – then and now
This land ethic implies thinking of land and community as a connected network of parts, which includes us as humans, and in which each element possesses intrinsic rights. There are many different views of this land ethic: some say it is visionary, others that it is dangerous nonsense. But the point remains that most people in industrialised countries still see nature as a bundle of resources separate from us. Thus the land ethic remains radical, more than half a century after it was woven together by Leopold.
In truth, such an ethic is what makes us human – the recognition of and respect for these limits. Freedoms are vital, but we have obligations and responsibilities too. If we accept that we are an intricate part of something, as we are of communities of the world, or that something is a part of us, as are our livers or lungs, it should be absurd to engage in some action that endangers a component, since the whole will suffer. The Amazon is not a part of me, so I may destroy it. Yet if I do so, the consequences for the atmosphere are severe, and in the end I will suffer. Leopold understood the connection between economies and nature: “I realise that every time I turn on an electric light, or ride on a Pullman, or pocket the unearned investment on a stock or a bond, or a piece of real estate, I am `selling out’ to the enemies of conservation… When I pour cream in my coffee, I am helping to drain a marsh to graze, and to exterminate the birds of Brazil. When I go birding or hunting in my Ford, I am devastating an oil field, and re-electing an imperialist to get me rubber”.
These choices matter. They do in today’s food system. Each time we buy some food, our choices make a difference to nature and communities somewhere – though there is perhaps a danger of overstating the power of consumers in the face of structural economic constraints. We are connected within a much larger system, and we can make these connections work to the good – if we wish. Albert Howard was one of the most influential of British scientists to take an holistic view of the connections between nature and people. He spent twenty-six years in India, and developed the Indore Process in which modern scientific knowledge was applied to ancient methods. He called for a restoration of agriculture based on an improvement to the health of the whole system, saying that “the birthright of all living things is health. This law is true for soil, plant, animal and humans: the health of these four is one connected chain. Any weakness or defect in the health of any earlier link in the chain is carried on to the next and succeeding links, until it reaches the last, namely us”.
What do we need to do differently? Perhaps the most compelling of Aldo Leopold’s essays is a short but brilliant piece called Thinking Like a Mountain, in which he details the relationship between the wolf, deer and mountain in Arizona. He first recalls his own shooting of a mother wolf caring for a tumbling pack of cubs: “in those days, we never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf”, and then mourns their loss and his earlier lack of understanding. He goes on to describe the consequences of eliminating the wolves, for, without them, the deer expand too greatly in numbers, and the mountain loses all its vegetation. In the end the whole system collapses. He says “Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf. Those unable to decipher the hidden meaning know nevertheless that it is there, for it is felt in all wolf country, and distinguishes that country from all other land”. These interconnections are true, though, of all lands, and are again something that Leopold saw, echoing Thoreau’s phrase of almost a century earlier: “In wildness is the salvation of the world. Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf, long known among mountains, but seldom perceived among men”.
Ethics is about limits to freedoms. We are free to destroy nature (and we do), yet we should prescribe and accept certain limits. Leopold sees humans as part of nature, not separated as distant observers or meddlers. In the Sand County Almanac, he says ”We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect… That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.” Such an ethic should be “a differentiation of social and anti-social conduct”.
Aldo Leopold’s shack – then and now
This land ethic implies thinking of land and community as a connected network of parts, which includes us as humans, and in which each element possesses intrinsic rights. There are many different views of this land ethic: some say it is visionary, others that it is dangerous nonsense. But the point remains that most people in industrialised countries still see nature as a bundle of resources separate from us. Thus the land ethic remains radical, more than half a century after it was woven together by Leopold.
In truth, such an ethic is what makes us human – the recognition of and respect for these limits. Freedoms are vital, but we have obligations and responsibilities too. If we accept that we are an intricate part of something, as we are of communities of the world, or that something is a part of us, as are our livers or lungs, it should be absurd to engage in some action that endangers a component, since the whole will suffer. The Amazon is not a part of me, so I may destroy it. Yet if I do so, the consequences for the atmosphere are severe, and in the end I will suffer. Leopold understood the connection between economies and nature: “I realise that every time I turn on an electric light, or ride on a Pullman, or pocket the unearned investment on a stock or a bond, or a piece of real estate, I am `selling out’ to the enemies of conservation… When I pour cream in my coffee, I am helping to drain a marsh to graze, and to exterminate the birds of Brazil. When I go birding or hunting in my Ford, I am devastating an oil field, and re-electing an imperialist to get me rubber”.
These choices matter. They do in today’s food system. Each time we buy some food, our choices make a difference to nature and communities somewhere – though there is perhaps a danger of overstating the power of consumers in the face of structural economic constraints. We are connected within a much larger system, and we can make these connections work to the good – if we wish. Albert Howard was one of the most influential of British scientists to take an holistic view of the connections between nature and people. He spent twenty-six years in India, and developed the Indore Process in which modern scientific knowledge was applied to ancient methods. He called for a restoration of agriculture based on an improvement to the health of the whole system, saying that “the birthright of all living things is health. This law is true for soil, plant, animal and humans: the health of these four is one connected chain. Any weakness or defect in the health of any earlier link in the chain is carried on to the next and succeeding links, until it reaches the last, namely us”.
What do we need to do differently? Perhaps the most compelling of Aldo Leopold’s essays is a short but brilliant piece called Thinking Like a Mountain, in which he details the relationship between the wolf, deer and mountain in Arizona. He first recalls his own shooting of a mother wolf caring for a tumbling pack of cubs: “in those days, we never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf”, and then mourns their loss and his earlier lack of understanding. He goes on to describe the consequences of eliminating the wolves, for, without them, the deer expand too greatly in numbers, and the mountain loses all its vegetation. In the end the whole system collapses. He says “Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf. Those unable to decipher the hidden meaning know nevertheless that it is there, for it is felt in all wolf country, and distinguishes that country from all other land”. These interconnections are true, though, of all lands, and are again something that Leopold saw, echoing Thoreau’s phrase of almost a century earlier: “In wildness is the salvation of the world. Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf, long known among mountains, but seldom perceived among men”.
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