2018/12/17

World Vision Korea - coop farm assistance

In the summer of 1995, a storm and flood swept through DPRK and endangered many people. For the first time in its history, DPRK officially requested foreign assistance from international community. In respond to the request, World Vision sent 100 tons of flour to the flood victims in North Hwanghae as well as all additional assistance such as all kinds of medicine, clothes, seeds and food.

Sixty bulls are sent to a ranch in Mt. Bultasan,
South Hwang Hae Province

World Vision's first visit to Kaechun City Hospital was made in August 1998. World Vision was looking for a project that was entirely child-focused and asked the local officials if a visit can be made to the hospital. The county vice-chairman was pleased to show it to a visiting World Vision staff. The existing hospital was built shortly after the Korean War for a population of 120,000; most of its equipment was from the 1950s. The new hospital - begun in 1988, but stopped shortly thereafter due to a shortage of building materials - would serve over 300,000 people in urban and rural areas within a 40km radius. The seven-story, 500-bed hospital was open and patients were assisted in the very basic facilities. World Vision is aiming to link the project with other work that we are doing in a region. One such step has been to deliver flour to the hospital when it is delivered to noodle factories.
In an effort to build confidence and credibility with the hospital and local authorities, much-needed medicines and supplies were donated to the hospital several times during 1999.
The first shipment arrived in June and included a range of widely used medicines and vitamins, along with sheet, blankets, wheelchairs, stethoscopes, syringes and cloth for sheets and hospital gowns.

The second shipment included surgical gloves, hospital linens and surgical kits.
Dr. Che confirmed how useful the items were that had been sent. In November 2000,
Dr. Nergui, WV health specialist, visited the North Korea for an assessment of the health situation in the country and another assessment trip by Dr. Nergui was undertaken in July 2001.

Medical supplies and blankets provided by
World Vision to Kaechun City Hospital, North Korea

This project is the World Vision's response to the food security crisis in North Korea through increased food production capacity. The project is assisting six cooperative farms located in three provinces(South Pyongan, South Hamhung and Pyongyang Administrative District) with 25,537 beneficiaries from a farming area of 8,336 hectares.
The project goal is over two years to help farmers on the six cooperative farms produce more food for their families and off-farm population through

1)strategic intervention such as provision of critical inputs, improved seeds and improved cropping patterns;

2)supporting research efforts to improve seed varieties and farming technology; and

3)capacity building.

In FY 2000, assistance included provision of production inputs(fertilizer, plastic sheeting for seedbeds, backpack sprayers, tractor tires and irrigation equipment); introducing new crops; and supporting winter and spring double cropping.

Word Vision-supported cooperative farm in
Chang Suh-ri, South Ham Gyong Province

Word Vision-supported Eun Sung cooperative
farm in South Pyong An Province

Our Work in NK | World Vision International

Our Work | World Vision International

Our Work

Since the beginning of our DPRK Ministry in 1994, World Vision has expanded its assistance from school feeding programs to re-equipping medical facilities, helping communities achieve sustainable food security, improving access to clean water, and providing emergency relief.

Nutrition

Food for Life is an on-going project that started in 1994 at the height of the food shortage that devastated DPRK’s population. Through the Food for Life project, World Vision is able to provide lunches to children in their kindergartens and nurseries. By providing a steady source of food, World Vision can improve the health of children and prevent many short and long-term health problems associated with malnutrition. In FY 2017, World Vision supplied 620 MT of flour to provide noodles and bread to over 41,000 children in South Pyongan, North Hwanghae, and Ryanggang Provinces.

According to UNICEF’s latest National Nutrition Survey (2013), the situation in the DPRK remains grim despite improvements since the 1990s. One in 4 children suffers from stunting, with 27.9% of children suffering from chronic malnutrition, and 4% from acute malnutrition. The survey also states the critical importance of improving children’s access to diversified foods that are rich in vitamins, minerals, and proteins. While our focus remains on providing wheat flour to our beneficiaries, World Vision has donated soy oil pressing machines and soymilk machines in the past, along with intermittent supplies of soybean. In 2017, World Vision also provided a year's worth of micronutrient supplement powder to over 35,500 children under the age of 5 in our existing target communities.

Agriculture

Provision of flour to feed children is a short-term, but a necessary, solution to DPRK’s on-going food insecurity. Alongside Food for Life, World Vision’s long-term agricultural development projects include seed-potato development, vegetable fertigation, community greenhouses, and an organic fertilizer plant. These programs focus on technology transfer and local empowerment as the main way to equip North Koreans to meet their own food needs. World Vision has helped to develop 5 hydroponic greenhouse farms for growing tomatoes, cucumbers, and potatoes. To find out more about WVK’s work in agricultural development, please visit WVK’s website.

Water for Life Initiative

According to UNICEF, poor sanitation, water scarcity, inferior water quality and inappropriate hygiene behavior are disastrous for infants and young children and are a major cause of mortality for children under five.

Since 2005, World Vision has built approximately 30 clean water systems in 5 rural communities in North Hwanghae and North Pyongan Provinces. These systems include a variety of gravity fed systems as well as solar powered systems, and connect each household in the community to a source of clean water. Community buildings such as schools, nurseries, are clinics are also directly connected to a source of safe drinking water. Hygienic demonstration latrines were also constructed to promote health in the community.

Looking forward, we plan to continue constructing clean water systems and public latrines in additional communities, and promote sanitation, health, and hygiene.

Humanitarian and Emergency Affairs

DPRK is highly vulnerable to disasters, particularly flooding and landslides during the summer monsoon months, a situation that is made worse by deforestation. World Vision has provided emergency relief to tens of thousands of disaster-affected households, including reconstruction of water systems and provision of tarpaulins, medicines and medical supplies, wool blankets, food, and water purification materials.

Between 2008 and 2009, World Vision was one of five American organizations that implemented a large-scale emergency food program, funded by the US government. As a part of a partnership among the 5 NGOs, World Vision delivered 100,000 MT of food to nearly 900,000 beneficiaries in 25 select counties in North Pyongan and Chagang provinces.

In 2017 and 2018, World Vision provided assistance to families affected by Typhoon Lionrock by delivering much needed items such as wheat flour, soy-based foods, building material, blankets, and soaps.

10년 넘게 폐허였던 도시, 유럽의 '유토피아'가 되다 : 네이버 뉴스

10년 넘게 폐허였던 도시, 유럽의 '유토피아'가 되다 : 네이버 뉴스

기사입력 2018-06-03

[사회혁신 길찾기⑥] 지속가능한 사회를 향한 도시 실험, 드 꺼블(de Ceuvel)

[오마이뉴스 윤찬영 기자, 편집:장지혜]

시민이 만드는 혁신적 사회 변화, 우리는 그것을 '사회 혁신(social innovation)'이라고 부릅니다. 시민의 힘으로 더 나은 사회를 만드는 일, 말처럼 쉽지만은 않습니다. 그러나 정부와 시장의 실패를 아프게 경험한 우리에게 더는 미룰 수 없는 과제입니다. 지금부터 그 쉽지 않은 길을 여러분과 함께 찾아보려 합니다. - 기자말

"낡은 사고와 행동방식을 바꾸려면 광범위하고 복잡한 사회적 학습 과정이 필요하고, 이를 위해서는 사회 전체를 사회 기술적 실험이 진행되는 거대한 실험실로 여겨야 한다."
- 사회 혁신 디자이너 에치오 만치니

'드 꺼블(de Ceuvel)'은 네덜란드 암스테르담 북부에 조성된 사회 혁신 공동체이자 지속가능한 도시를 만들려는 거대한 실험실, 즉 리빙랩(Living Lab)이다('리빙랩', 대체 뭐길래?). 유럽에서 가장 독특하고도 혁신적인 도시 진화 프로젝트로 꼽히는 드 꺼블은 어떤 모습일까.

▲ 더 꺼블을 위에서 내려다본 모습
ⓒ deceuvel.nl

영국과 유럽 대륙 사이에 놓인 북해에서 북해운하를 따라 약 30km를 들어가면 네덜란드 북부의 오래된 부두에 닿는다. 1920년 포할딩(Volharding) 조선소가 세워진 뒤로 이곳에선 무려 80년간 배가 만들어졌다. 1972년 조선소가 꺼블 사에 인수되자 사람들은 이곳을 '꺼블-포할딩'으로 부르기 시작했다.

그러나 2000년 조선소가 문을 닫은 뒤로 1250㎡ 너비의 아담한 땅은 10년 넘게 버려지다시피 했다. 암스테르담 시는 고민 끝에 이 땅을 시민에게 내주기로 했다. 그것도 무려 10년 동안. 그리고 2012년 공모를 거쳐 '스페이스&매터스(Space&matter)'를 비롯한 일군의 건축가 그룹이 이 땅을 넘겨받았다.

"우리의 도전은 쓰레기와 에너지 그리고 사람의 흐름을 순환 도시 모델로 연결하는 것이다."

프로젝트 책임을 맡은 피터(Pieter)의 말이다. 이들은 폐허가 되다시피 한 이곳에 패기 넘치는 사회 혁신가들을 불러 모아 더 오래 가는 도시, 생태 친화적 순환 도시를 세우기로 마음먹는다. 자원과 에너지가 허투루 버려지지 않는 미래 도시, 순환적 삶으로의 전환을 향한 개척의 땅이자 상징이 되길 바랐다.

시는 이들에게 25만 유로(약 3억2000만 원)를 대줬고 여기에 더해 은행에서 20만 유로(약 2억6000만 원)를 빌릴 수 있도록 보증도 섰다. 2014년 2년여의 공사 끝에 '드 꺼블'이 문을 열었다. 17개의 하우스 보트를 말끔히 개조해 곳곳으로 옮겨온 사무공간과 공연장, 한 켠에 넓게 지어진 카페 등이 버려진 땅을 되살렸다. 무엇보다 자원과 에너지와 사람이 순환하는 새로운 길이 만들어졌다.

▲ 사람들로 북적이는 드 꺼블
ⓒ deceuvel.nl

같은 해 10월, '드 꺼블'은 "마치 유토피아를 보는 듯한 감동을 주었다"는 찬사와 함께 네덜란드의 공공 디자인 상인 '프레임 퍼블릭 어워드(Frame Public Award)'를 수상했다.

초기 입주자들은 '단 돈 1유로에 마음에 드는 배를 가질 수 있다'는 광고로 모았다. 많은 이들이 몰렸고, 이곳에서 무엇을 하고자 하는지를 꼼꼼히 따져 입주자를 뽑았다. 지금은 공간을 빌리려면 1년에 1㎡ 당 65유로(8만 5000원)가 든다. 암스테르담에서 비슷한 공간을 빌리려면 더 많은 비용을 달마다 내야 하니 10분의 1에도 못 미치는 셈이다.

지속가능한 도시를 만들어가는 리빙랩

이곳에선 흙 한 톨, 물 한 방울, 햇볕 한 줌도 그대로 버려지는 일이 없다. 곳곳에서 지속가능한 도시를 만들려는 아이디어와 기술이 공유되고 실험된다. 이곳을 '클린테크 놀이터(Cleantech Playground)'라고 부르는 이유다.

▲ 식물을 이용한 토양 정화
ⓒ deceuvel.nl

80년간 조선소로 쓰인 탓에 토양이 심하게 오염돼 있었지만 퍼내지 않고 '식물을 이용한 토양 정화(Phytoremediation)'를 시도하기로 했다. 오염된 땅 위로 사람들이 걸어 다닐 수 있는 나무 길을 올리고, 그 아래 오염 정화에 탁월한 효과를 발휘하는 식물들을 빼곡히 심었다. 식물이 잘 자랄 수 있는 흙은 '정화 공원'에서 만들어 공급했다. 약속했던 10년이 지나면 훨씬 더 깨끗한 곳으로 거듭날 것이다.

배설물은 퇴비로 쓴다. 배들마다 '퇴비 화장실'을 갖추도록 했다. 물을 쓰지 않는 화장실로, 마른 퇴비를 만들어낸다. 소변에서 인산염을 뽑아내 비료를 만들기도 한다. 퇴비는 병원균이나 잔류 약품, 금속 성분이 있는지를 검사한 뒤 온실로 보낸다. 온실에선 카페에서 쓸 채소와 허브를 길러낸다.

▲ 퇴비 화장실
ⓒ deceuvel.nl

'수중 생태계 온실(Aquaponics Greenhouse)'도 있다. 물고기 양식과 수경 재배가 결합된 순환 생태계로, 물고기 배설물은 식물 성장에 필요한 영양분으로 쓰이고 식물은 물을 정화하는 자연 필터 기능을 맡는다.

주방에서 쓴 물은 '염생식물 필터(Helophyte filters)'로 정화한다. 모래와 자갈, 조개껍질 등으로 층을 이룬 필터가 고체 오염물을 걸러내고, 특수한 식물들이 질소나 인과 같은 유기물을 먹어치운다. 필터를 거친 깨끗한 물은 그대로 땅으로 흘려보낸다.

필요한 전력은 태양 에너지에서 얻는다. 배 지붕마다 태양광 패널을 올렸다. 150개가 넘는 패널에서 해마다 3만6000KWh의 전력을 얻고 있고, 부족한 에너지는 친환경 에너지 업체로부터 공급받는다. 또 배마다 공기를 덥히는 난방펌프와 열 교환기를 갖추고 배에서 빠져나가는 따뜻한 공기의 60%를 다시 배 안으로 끌어들인다. 이런 기술들로 가스를 연결하지 않고도 난방을 해결하고 있다.

▲ 오래된 배를 잘라 만든 벤치
ⓒ deceuvel.nl

건물은 물론이고 벤치 하나에도 역사가 깃들어 있다. 사람들이 가장 많이 찾는 '카페 드 꺼블'은 오래된 건물과 배의 기둥으로 지었다. '로직 워크(Logic Work)'는 네덜란드 곳곳에서 가져온 건축 자재와 이곳에 버려진 나무판으로 업사이클링 가구를 만들어내고 있다.

이들은 새로운 도시가 기술로만 만들어질 수 없다는 걸 잘 안다. 그래서 매달 세 번째 수요일에 자원봉사자들이 방문객들과 함께 곳곳을 둘러보며 그린테크 기술을 아낌없이 나누고 있다.
네덜란드 최초의 블록체인 가상화폐 실험, 줄리엣

2017년 9월부터는 블록체인(blockchain) 기술을 기반으로 한 '에너지 화폐(energytoken)'를 도입했다. 개인과 공동체가 지역에서 생산한 재생 에너지를 더 쉽게 관리하고 나눌 수 있도록 돕는 가상화폐다. 에너지 단위인 줄(Joule)에서 이름을 따와 '줄리엣(Jouliette)'이라고 이름 붙였다. 여느 가상화폐들이 채굴에 막대한 에너지가 드는 것과 달리 줄리엣은 여분의 태양 에너지로 생성된다.

▲ 태왕광 패널
ⓒ deceuvel.nl

스마트 에너지 기업 스펙트럴(Spectral)과 최대 전기 그리드 운영사 알리안더(Alliander)는 줄리엣을 선보일 첫 번째 무대로 드 꺼블을 골랐다.

"줄리엣과 폭넓은 어플리케이션은 지역적이고 순환적인, 자원에 기반을 둔 경제를 실현하기 위한 의미 있는 발걸음을 상징한다."

스펙트럴 CEO 필립(Philip)의 말이다. 중앙집중화 된 외부 송전망으로부터 독립적인 이곳의 스마트 그리드가 "어떤 제약도 없이, 시장의 걸림돌을 피하면서 에너지를 교환하는" 새로운 실험을 가능하게 한다는 게 이들의 설명이다.

▲ 에너지의 흐름을 실시간으로 볼 수 있는 맵
ⓒ deceuvel.nl

입주자들은 태양광 패널로 얻은 에너지 가운데 쓰고 남은 것들을 P2P(개인 간) 거래로 팔 수 있게 되었다. 부족한 에너지를 사올 수도 있고, 카페 드 꺼블에서 음료나 음식을 살 수도 있다. 남는 에너지를 전기 공급업체에 되파는 대신 지역 안에서 쓰도록 함으로써 재생 에너지 생산을 촉진하고, 지역 경제 활성화와 에너지 전환에 기여하도록 하는 것이다.

앞으로는 타임 뱅킹(Time Banking, 재능이나 복지 서비스를 시간으로 환산해 교환하는 것)이나 차량 공유 서비스를 비롯한 더 많은 곳에 줄리엣을 쓸 수 있도록 할 계획이다. 나아가 머신러닝 기술로 개발한 알고리즘으로 어느 정도의 재생 에너지를 생성할 수 있을지도 예측하고, 이를 네덜란드 전역으로 확대해나갈 계획도 가지고 있다.

우리에게는 아직 멀기만 한 도시 실험

드 꺼블은 지난해인 2017년 네덜란드에서 가장 지속가능하고 혁신적인 아이디어에 주어지는 상인 'Duurzame Dinsdag(지속가능한 화요일)' 상을 수상했다. 이제 겨우 절반을 지나온 이들의 여정은 순항 중이다. 앞으로 5년 뒤 이들이 어떤 미래 도시에 가 닿을지 궁금하다.

이들의 실험은 지금도 계속되고 있다. 2016년부터 오염된 흙에서 스스로 자라난 식물들을 유심히 관찰하면서 이들의 정화 능력을 검증하고 있다. 더 많은 식물이 번성할 수 있도록 올해부터는 유기농 식품 기업인 오딘(Odin)과 손잡고 양봉도 시작했다.

▲ 사람들에게 그린테크를 설명하는 모습
ⓒ deceuvel.nl

2015년 드 꺼블 인근의 이해관계자들은 모든 산업 지역에 순환적 건설의 원칙을 적용할 것을 합의했다. 또 이곳에서 멀지 않은 곳에 순환적 삶의 원칙을 구현한 새로운 공동체가 건설될 예정이고, 이곳에서 새롭게 얻은 자원 재활용 기술로 새로운 건물도 지어지고 있다. 무엇보다도 드 꺼블의 실험으로 암스테르담 시는 다른 도시에 실제로 적용할 수 있는 여러 아이디어와 정보, 기술을 얻게 되었다.

"이것은 도시들이 당장 시작해야 하는 일이다. 또 (정부는) 실험들이 일어나도록 허락해야 한다."

Metabolic(대사 연구소) 대표 글라덱의 말이다. 사실 드 꺼블의 구상엔 불법적인 요소도 많았다. 하수 시스템과 가스를 연결하지 않은 것부터가 법 위반이다. 또 빗물을 받아 식수로 사용하려면 복잡하고 값비싼 절차를 거쳐야 한다. 그래서 지금은 메타볼릭만 실험적으로 쓰고 있다.

▲ 드 꺼블의 모습
ⓒ deceuvel.nl

우리나라라면 어땠을까. 10년씩 자유로운 환경에서 실험을 이어가는 게 가능했을까. 시민의 참여 공간이 넓어졌다고는 하나 겨우 걸음마를 뗐을 뿐이다. 무엇보다 공공과 시민, 서로가 서로를 믿지 못하는 탓이 크다. 그러나 신뢰는 저절로 만들어지지 않는다. 함께 만들어가지 않으면 우리는 앞으로도 제자리를 맴돌 수밖에 없을지 모른다.

에치오 만치니 교수는 앞서 인터뷰에서 "미래에는 이런 실험적 접근이 '일상적' 방식이 될 것"이라는 말을 덧붙였다. 부디 우리도 너무 늦지 않게 그럴 수 있길 바란다.

저작권자(c) 오마이뉴스(시민기자), 무단 전재 및 재배포 금지

덧붙이는 글 | 이 글을 쓴 윤찬영 기자는 새로운사회를여는연구원 현장연구센터장입니다. 이 글은 새사연 홈페이지(https://saesayon.org)와 개인 블로그(https://ycyoung0416.blog.me)에도 게재됩니다. 블로그에 오시면 더 많은 정보를 나눌 수 있습니다.

☞ 오연호의 <우리도 사랑할 수 있을까> [바로가기]
☞ 이 기사가 마음에 드셨다면? [오마이뉴스 응원하기]

2018/12/15

Why should anyone care about Thomas Merton today? | National Catholic Reporter

Why should anyone care about Thomas Merton today?

Dec 10, 2018

by Daniel P. Horan

Opinion

People

20150504cnsbr9347 c.jpg

Trappist Fr. Thomas Merton is pictured with Dalai Lama in 1968, whom Merton met during his Asia trip. (CNS/Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University)

Why should anyone care about Thomas Merton today?

Merton, the famous Trappist monk and best-selling author, has now been dead for almost as long as he had lived. When he died unexpectedly on Dec. 10, 1968, at the age of 53 while in Asia on a speaking tour about the renewal of monastic life, he left behind dozens of books, thousands of journal entries, and tens of thousands of letters from correspondence with people from around the world. He also left behind a legacy, which included a model for modern Christian living that encouraged everyone — religious and lay alike — to pursue a life of prayer, holiness and social justice.

Support independent Catholic journalism. Become an NCR Forward member for $5 a month.

But as we consider the rapid pace of change in our contemporary context, the ever-increasing role technology plays in all aspects of our lives, and the differences too numerous to count between the life and times of a mid-20th-century monk and our own experience, it would seem at first glance that Merton's ideas, writings, vision and example belong set aside, like pieces in a museum.

They might be treated as valuable in their own right, inspiring perhaps from a distance, but not particularly relevant for us in the 21st century. Merton should be considered just another dead white male author like Dickens or Chaucer or Erasmus, to be put on a library shelf and perhaps forgotten. He can be remembered as a once important historical figure, but one not taken seriously today.

And yet I believe, upon closer examination, that Merton provides us with at least three compelling reasons for continuing to learn about him and read his work as much today as when he was living more than half a century ago.

First, there is the obvious area of continued relevance. Merton was one of the first Roman Catholic religious leaders before the Second Vatican Council to emphasize the importance of prayer and contemplation for all people and not just the religious "professionals" (i.e., nuns and priests). He articulated in his popular spiritual writing, such as Seeds of Contemplation, what Vatican II would more than a decade later describe as the "universal call to holiness." All women and men, by virtue of their baptism, have received a vocation and to discover what that is requires prayer and discernment. Each of us also has what Merton called our "true self," who we are in our fullness as known only to God. This means that to discover our truest identity requires seeking and discovering God in prayer. These insights are as timeless as the human quest for authenticity.

Second, there is the less-obvious area of the urgent timeliness of his later writings. Most readers of Merton's work are familiar with his overtly spiritual writings, but far fewer are familiar with his social criticism and writings on justice. In books with titles like Seeds of Destruction and Faith and Violence, Merton's prophetic reflections on structural racism in the United States and the relationship between fear and violence speak as challenging a message today as they did five decades ago.

Take for example his 1965 essay titled: "The Time of the End is the Time of No Room." Here Merton describes the scene of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem that eerily resonates with what is happening at the southern border of the United States today.

Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for Him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because He cannot be at home in it, because He is out of place in it, and yet He must be in it, His place is with those others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world.

This essay, which makes for a powerful Advent and Christmas reflection, challenges Christians to link the too-often-domesticated Gospel with the signs of our time. When we look around our world, nation and local communities today, it is disturbing to recognize the systemic injustices that steadfastly persist all these decades later. It is clear that few listened to Merton then, but perhaps, just maybe, some might listen now.

20150128cnsbr8196 cc.jpg

Trappist Fr. Thomas Merton, pictured in an undated photo (CNS/Merton Legacy Trust and the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University)

Third, there is what I believe is the most significant reason why people should care about Merton today: his unabashed humanity. Like his friend and contemporary, Dorothy Day, Merton is one of the few Christian exemplars we have who are not encumbered by hagiography and selective memory. A truly modern person, Merton's story is one with many turns, surprises, challenges and moments of grace. He had a life before the monastery and he had a life in the monastery: both periods lasted about 27 years. Both halves of his life reveal a complex man whose sanctity and sinfulness, pride and humility, ambition and regret are on wide display, thanks to his prolific writing practices and his willingness not to sugarcoat his joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties.

Even though most young adults today probably have not heard of Merton, his way of serving the church and world as a monk, priest and writer has tremendous potential to speak to the hunger for a more authentic, honest and transparent church, as repeatedly expressed by representative young adults in the pre-synodal meeting document in March of this year. Demographers and sociologists tell us that Millennials and members of the emergent "Generation Z" are incredulous when it comes to words without action, arguments from authority alone, and prioritization of bella figura over honestly admitting mistakes, errors and wrongdoing. They want leaders and mentors who can ask for forgiveness when needed and offer forgiveness when asked.

Young people — and not-so-young people alike — want "real" Christian models, women and men who inspire us not by their perfection in life and faith, but by their committed struggle in life to keep the faith. Day's experience of ongoing conversion and struggles for peace and justice on behalf of the poor, and Mother Teresa's long trial of experiencing God's absence while nevertheless persisting in caring for society's "untouchables" — these are Christians that speak to women and men today. It is their humanity on display that makes them both holy and relevant.

Merton is another such model.

His wrestling with religious censors who sought to mitigate or silence his publishing about violence, racism and the Christian responsibility to put faith into action speaks to experiences of those whose consciences call for more than banal Christian platitudes, and take the risk to work for justice in the church and world.

His ongoing struggle with ego and ambition while also sincerely desiring a more simple, prayerful and eremitical life speaks to the conflicted motivations we all face in decision-making.

His falling in love with a nurse at the age of 50, the genuine affection they had for one another, and the turmoil recorded in his journals and poetry about his discernment — and his ultimate decision to remain a monk — speak to the universal human condition of love and loss, which monks and nuns and laity all experience, if in different ways and at different times.

We should care about Thomas Merton today because in many ways he reveals something to us about who we are: modern women and men, religious and laity, striving to connect the faith of Christianity with the particularity of our lives. Fifty years after his death, Merton not only intercedes for us from within that great cloud of witnesses that has gone before, but he has left us the story of his life and the text of his many writings to guide us on our own journey.

[Franciscan Fr. Daniel P. Horan is a Franciscan friar of Holy Name Province, assistant professor of systematic theology and spirituality at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, and the author of 12 books, including The Franciscan Heart of Thomas Merton: A New Look at the Spiritual Inspiration of His Life, Thought, and Writing.]

2018/12/14

持続可能な農業とコモンズ再生プレティ,ジュールス

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

2006/2/1

ジュールスプレティ、 Jules Pretty

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 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

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。

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。

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。

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。

＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝

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　

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．

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。

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。

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。

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。

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。

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。

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？

＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝

【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

==========

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。

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)

========

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)

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

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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.
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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
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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

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”.

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The Living Land: Agriculture, Food and Community Regeneration in the 21st Century - Kindle edition by Jules Pretty Obe. Politics & Social Sciences Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'A splendid book.' Derek Cooper, The Food Programme, BBC Radio Four 'An important book which combines careful analysis with a positive vision of the future.' Jonathan Dimbleby, journalist and broadcaster

'A helpful antidote to some of the guff that is written about the countryside, well argued and based on hard fact rather than sentiment.' John Humphrys, Today, BBC Radio Four

'This is a good book: it is well researched, strong on analysis and creative in the vision that it portrays for the future.' Experimental Agriculture

'The book has many praiseworthy characteristics, in particular, its copious references to practical examples from around the world, its clarity of exposition and argument, the relentless nature of its analysis and statistical illustration.' Agricultural Science

About the Author

Jules Pretty is Director of the Centre for Environment and Society (CES) at the University of Essex. The CES is a transdisciplinary research centre that draws on the expertise of departments and research centres across the University. From 1989 to 1997, he was Director of the Sustainable Agriculture Programme at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). The Programme was engaged in a wide range of collaborative research, policy, training and outreach programmes, mainly in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It was involved in the methodological development of new participatory approaches for community and social development. He is a founding member of the Agricultural Reform Group and the Neighbourhood Think Tank, a trustee for the Farmers World Network and The Pesticides Trust, editorial adviser to various journals, and member of the Institute of Biology and British Agricultural History Society and the Government's Advisory Committee on Release to the Environment (ACRE).