(efter aftale med forfatteren/with permission by the author)
Participatory
Research and On-Farm Management of Agricultural Biodiversity in Europe
Introduction by Colin
Tudge
It should
be fairly straightforward to feed everyone who is ever liable to be born
on
this
Earth, and to feed them to the highest standards of nutrition and gastronomy.
We should be able to this without wrecking the rest of the world and
driving our fellow creatures to extinction – farming can be wildlife
friendly; for many creatures, farmland is a serious component of their
habitat. Worldwide, agriculture is still by far the world’s greatest
employer, and so it could – and should – remain. The jobs it
supplies should be among the most absorbing and agreeable of all, and of
high prestige. Most of today’s farmers work, as most farmers have over the
past few hundred years, on small, mixed family farms – which still supply
about 70 per cent of all the world’s food; 90 per cent in countries like
Nigeria. Industrial farming that is now called “conventional” is anything
but. It accounts for only 30 per cent of the total world output and has
existed for only about a century – less than one per cent of the
total known history of agriculture.
Of
course, all farming could benefit from good science and appropriate technology
– this is true for all human endeavours. But we could easily do the basics
right now. To a very great extent the necessary knowledge, methods and
skills are what traditional farmers have and practice as a matter of
course.
But we
are not feeding ourselves well. An estimated one billion out of the world’s
seven billion people are chronically undernourished. Another billion
suffer the “diseases of affluence”, of which obesity is the most obvious
and diabetes is probably the most widespread and destructive. Our farming
is not Earth-friendly. We are in the midst of a mass-extinction, for which
agriculture is largely responsible. Half of all our fellow plant and
animal species are estimated to be threatened. All the non-renewable
main ingredients of crop production – soil, fresh water, phosphorus – are
being squandered. Industrial – “conventional” – farming depends absolutely
on oil, which is running out. However, this may be just as well because if
we go on burning it at the present rate, we will wreck the climate, as is
already obvious. There is a horrendous loss of farmers worldwide as family
farms which were traditionally small and complicated, producing mixtures
of crops and livestock, give way to big, ultra-simplified estates and
plantations that are monocultural to the point of absolute uniformity, and
that employ as few people as possible. Even most farmers in rich countries
today are poor, being among the lowest-paid in their respective societies,
almost always stressed, sometimes despised, often in poor health, and
prone to suicide. Yet a handful in Europe and the US are very rich indeed
– heavily supplemented by government or European subsidies.
The
entire global food industry is extremely lucrative – one of the world’s
biggest, as indeed it should be. Food remains the key to human existence
as it always will—but the actual production of it has been virtually
sidelined. Most of the wealth has shifted these past few decades out of
farming and into food processing, distribution and retail. This is mostly
under the heading of “value adding”, largely controlled by a few giant
corporations and very rich individuals who swallow up more and more of
the production and build increasingly bigger and ever more specialised
industrial units, often with direct or indirect help from governments. Overall,
this shift of wealth from the many to the few can, and should, be seen as
a giant, systematised exercise in expropriation.
In
essence, food production is a matter of biology: how much does the human
species really need, and how much can the world produce—not just for the
next few decades, but at least for the next 10,000 years. Food production
is also, of course, a matter of morality: do we actually want to provide
everyone in the world with good food, or are we content that the Devil
should take the hindmost? Some, it seems, feel that while mass hunger is
not exactly desirable, it is at least inevitable. If people are starving
it must be because there are too many people.
However,
agriculture is perceived these days not as an issue of biology and
morality. It is seen, as the chill expression has it, simply as “a
business like any other”. There is nothing wrong with business per se – we
need not be anti-capitalist to abhor what is happening right now to the
world – but it is surely wrong to add “like any other”.
Many
would say that access to good food is a fundamental human right: that to
devise a
system of farming that leaves people out in the cold – let alone a very
fair
proportion
of the human race – is an absolute breach of human rights; an offence
against humanity.
This thought underpins Michel Pimbert’s report, and is endorsed
by
various branches of the United Nations.
Still
worse, the concept of business, which should be agreeable enough, has
been
corrupted.
Nowadays all business is obliged to operate within the economic
framework of “neoliberalism”. In all countries, all businesses of all
kinds—including farms—are conceived as components of one vast “global
market” which is supposedly “free”. Allegedly the market operates on a
“level playing field”, but in reality it is controlled by the biggest
players, and is heavily tilted in their favour. In practice, a few
multinational corporations run the global market virtually as a cartel. In
this they are supported by the world’s most powerful governments, including
Britain’s, who nowadays seem to see themselves as extensions of the
corporate boardroom. Indeed they make a virtue of this; they call it
“realism”.
If the
global, neoliberal market actually delivered the things that are good for
humankind, for our fellow species, and for the fabric of the Earth, then
we – people at large – could reasonably say: “Fair enough!” We could
happily, or fairly happily, go along with the fiction that the glitzy
bright supermarkets with their rows of breakfast cereals and “buy- one-get-one-frees”
really do serve us well, and that they, and the farms that supply them,
really do represent progress, modernity and the future. Legitimately we
could feel sorry for all those people in “poor” countries who do not yet
have a supermarket, but must rely on market stalls where the fruit,
spices, chickens and cuts of lamb and goat are not all exactly the same,
nor vacuum-packed, and are not brought in from the far corners of the
Earth in the interests of customer “choice”. We could accept, too, that
the farmers who find they cannot supply the goods that the supermarkets
need, and so go out of business, are well out of it: that their way of
life belongs to the past; that they were probably unhappy in any case, and
are now free to find more civilised employ in any one of the world’s many
vibrant and ever-growing cities.
All this,
after all, is what we city people are given to understand. It is the
message of the TV ads which for more and more people worldwide are a prime
source of information. But actually, when we look beneath the glitz, we
find that the modern food chain— beginning with the monocultural high-tech
estate and the multi-story pig factory, and ending at the supermarket
after many a contortion—is not serving us well at all. Indeed it is the
main cause of the world’s primary ills: the core reason why the
human species is now in such dire straits – why there is hunger, why there
are food riots, why everyone is wondering whether we can get through the
present century in a tolerable state, never mind the next 10,000 years of
human development. For within the global, corporate-dominated economy, all
farmers are required, above all, to make money. And because the economy is
global and ultra-competitive, all farmers must try to make as much as
possible within the shortest time, or they will lose out to someone else
who can make more. In principle even this could be acceptable. Money ought
to be a measure of something real and worthwhile – of a person’s ability
to do something well, or of general excellence. A little competition,
at least in the form of friendly rivalry, is indeed a good spur. But in
the modern economy, money is not a measure of underlying excellence, but
is an end in itself. Indeed, it is the sole purpose of the whole endeavour;
and the competition is ruthless, no-holds- barred, and to the death.
But what
really matters is that the kind of farming that makes most money in the
shortest
time is absolutely at odds with the kind of farming that could feed us,
and
that could
continue to feed us. Indeed it is diametrically opposed to such farming.
If
today’s industrial, neoliberal farming was providing us all with good food,
and
was
looking after the fabric of the world, it still would not be perfect. We still
might
consider
it unjust, and unpleasant, and seek to reform it on grounds of morality
and
aesthetics.
But the present reality is far worse. Neoliberal farming is threatening
to
kill us
all off. It already accounts for the death of a fair proportion of humanity and
an even
larger proportion of our fellow species, and is wrecking the planet—our
only refuge—wholesale.
This may
seem an extraordinary claim, yet the facts are clear. The corporates,
governments,
banks and their attendant experts who now dominate the world, claim that
their strategies and policies are “evidence-based”. Yet the most
fundamental facts, which are the guts of evidence, are ignored completely.
A fiction, based on abstractions, scientific and economic dogma, is
substituted. All in all, the defence of the present neoliberal food system
is the most astonishing example of what George Orwell in a different
context (although only slightly different, when you look closely) called
“double-think”.
For if we
truly want to feed ourselves, and to go on doing so, we must apply the
principles of biology. Those principles tell us that the most productive
and sustainable farms – the ones that can continue to produce the most
crops and livestock per unit area over the very long term – are mixed,
tightly integrated, and, in general, organic. Many these days call this
“agroecology”: the farm is conceived not as a single-product food factory but
as an ecosystem, with many different animals and plants interacting
synergistically. There is a huge literature worldwide to show that such
synergistic systems are the most productive by far – and are certainly the
most productive over time. Industrial, monocultural farms may outstrip
them in yield from time to time, but only when the inputs are enormous and the
crops are heavily protected with artificial pesticides and herbicides. Yet
somehow,
when
official bodies produce official reports on the future of farming, this
literature on agroecology is ignored in favour of brochures showing some
industrial crop bursting at the seams in the idealised conditions of an
experimental farm.
The
epithet “organic” implies that artificial inputs are kept to a minimum—
nitrogen-
fixing
plants provide the basic fertility, and livestock keep the nutrients cycling.
In
such
systems the organic content of the soil builds up quite rapidly, meaning that
the soil acts as a carbon sink. Organic-rich soils are spongy, too, and so
retain water— irrigation becomes largely unnecessary. Such farms improve
the soil year by year. They are indeed sustainable.
Farming
also needs to be flexible, resilient. The world is changing and we need
to
be able
to change with it. This will be especially necessary in the next few
decades
and
centuries, as the climate continues to fluctuate. The key to resilience, as
Charles Darwin made so clear in On the Origin of Species, is variation.
Above all we need a diversity of crop and livestock species; and within
each breed of crop and livestock we need as much genetic diversity as
possible. Of course, we can’t just grow a random selection of plants and
animals as if they were wild: our crops and animals have to be tailored
into forms that can be managed to produce good food. But it is perfectly
possible to produce crops and animals that are all more or less the
right size, shape and flavour; and that mature at the right sort of rate –
but which, beneath the surface, at the level of the gene, are tremendously
diverse. This possibility has been demonstrated abundantly over the past
10,000 years of agricultural history. Monocultures and clones are not
necessary – and they are extremely vulnerable. A disease or a quirk of
climate that kills any one individual will kill the lot.
But there
is a snag – at least as far as the neoliberal economy is concerned,
geared as it is to the maximisation of profit. Farms that are mixed,
integrated and primarily organic are inevitably complex. So they require a
high level of husbandry by farmers who are experts: day-labourers trucked
in from some disadvantaged economy will not do. When farms are complex and
labour intensive there is little or no advantage in scaling-up – the
appropriate units, the ones that really could feed the world and go
on doing so, should generally be small to medium-sized.
There is
a further biological advantage in the complex and the small-scale. When
you look
closely at a landscape – when you walk the ground, and especially when
you work
the land – you find that each field, each slope is different in terms of
soil,
drainage
or microclimate. Even in today’s economy, growers of crops that
command high prices appreciate this. Wine-growers attend to the smallest
detail, and take advantage of each caprice. Small farmers in traditional
societies (in which farming was appreciated) applied the same level of
care to their beans and potatoes. Multiply this local knowledge a billion
times and we can see how we could raise the quality, the sustainability
and the resilience, of all the world’s food.
But farms
that are intended to maximise wealth must be designed quite differently.
The first
requirement when profit is the motive is to maximise turnover – which in
agriculture
means yield.
Thus,
official report after official report tells us that we must maximise yields –
and as a matter of urgency. Britain’s Chief Government Scientist, Sir John
Beddington, told us in his recent “Foresight” report on The Future of Food
and Farming that we need to raise the global output of food by 50 per cent
by 2050 to take account both of future population increase—to an estimated
9.5 billion—and of increased individual “demand”. Sir John also gives us
to understand that this can only be achieved with new technologies,
including genetic engineering (to create “genetically modified organisms”
or GMOs). In many a report, those who oppose these technologies are deemed
to be “irresponsible”, “Luddite”, “elitist”, “unrealistic” – and so on.
Yet the
basic statistics—what ought to be seen as evidence—present a quite
different picture. The same UN demographers who tell us that the world
population will reach 9.5 billion by 2050 also tell us that numbers should
then level out – not because of catastrophe but because that is the
demographic trend. After a few decades more, or perhaps a few centuries,
numbers should decline. So the problem is finite: we need to feed 9.5
billion, and to go on feeding them.
Is this
really possible? Well, a few basic statistics – including some in the
Foresight
report –
suggest that it should be positively simple. For The Future of Food and
Farming
also tells us that the world includes about 4.5 billion hectares of
agriculture.
With a
world population of around 9.5 billion, we will need to feed two people
per
hectare.
The average wheatfield in Britain, yielding 8 tonnes per hectare,
provides
enough
protein and calories for about 24 people. The mixed, integrated farms of
SE Asia
probably produce enough food per hectare for about 50 people. Even the
sorghum
fields of the Sahel, producing about one tonne per hectare, provide
enough macronutrients for two people—the world’s projected average
requirement.
Furthermore,
Hans Herren of the International Assessment of Agricultural
Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development (IAASTD) tells us that
the world already produces enough food to provide each person alive today
with around 4,800 kcals per day. This is about twice the average need.
Putting this another way: we already produce enough food energy for 14
billion people. “Food energy” does not necessarily imply a good diet. But
if we produce the energy by sensible means—cereals rather than sugar
beet—the rest can follow. Fourteen billion is 50 per cent more people than
we will ever need to feed. So why do we need to increase yields by 50 per
cent over the next few decades? This claim is taken to justify the biotech
industry and the government policies that support it.
But it
looks like pure commercial hype.
To be
sure, there are problems – but they are not, in general, those of
productivity;
and they
do not, in general, require much in the way of more technology. About
50 per
cent of the food that could and should be grown in the world’s fields is
lost
before
and after harvest to pests, including fungi. To a great extent the
necessary
technologies
are simple – silos or better barns – but they require investment of the
kind that
just is not forthcoming. It is clear, too, that if we really did want to
raise
productivity
then we need not turn first to high tech, and certainly not to GMOs. All
who know
Third World agriculture well, including the farmers themselves and those
outsiders
who have truly become involved, insist that small, mixed, family farms
the world over could generally double or triple their output. The means to
do this are not always technological – they include guaranteed prices for
crops so that the farmers know how much to invest. But guaranteed prices
are the anathema of the free market (although the richest countries,
including those of the European Union, make their own rules on
this). None of this means that small, mixed farms would not
benefit from “high”, science-based technologies. Indeed they often stand
to benefit most. But the technologies need to be appropriate: geared to
the real needs of the small farmer. GMOs are certainly not.
In truth,
the real problem for those who would maximise yields is that it is too easy
to feed everybody well. Even the richest people cannot eat much more than
the poorest, so the market becomes “inelastic”. The easiest way round that
problem is to waste most of the food before selling it. The standard
method is to feed staple foods—which could be feeding us all and are the
basis of all the world’s great dishes—to livestock.
Hence we
feed half the world’s cereals and well over 90 per cent of the soya to
animals – including cattle which are not designed by nature to eat such
fare. In truth we could raise all the cattle and sheep we need on grass
and browse without encroaching on the main crops at all, and all the
chickens and pigs we need on leftovers, as we traditionally did. But this
is less profitable (within the present economy). So the fiction is
maintained – and ratified from on high – that there is a global food shortage,
and that only high-tech intervention, organised from on high, can put it
right.
Merely
increasing yields, though, is not enough for those who seek to maximise profit. Value
must be added. Again, in principle, there is nothing wrong with this. Why
not turn cacao seeds into chocolate? But “value adding” in the modern
market has virtually become the prime focus. It manifests in endless
packaging and selling fruit out of season. It manifests too in all the
specious “choice” in the supermarket – which, when you look closely, is
largely composed of endless variations of palm oil and corn syrup, grown
in vast monocultures cheaply, thanks to the artificially low cost of oil.
The third
essential requirement for those who would maximise profit is to reduce
costs –
and this, in the context of agriculture, is the most damaging of all. For
the
most
expensive input in traditional farming is labour – because traditional farming
is labour intensive. So labour and all the expertise that should go with
it are replaced by heavy engineering and industrial chemistry (nowadays
abetted by biotech). In such industrialised systems there are enormous advantages
in scaling-up – the bigger the combine harvester, the better – so the
fields and the estates become bigger and bigger. (There are “farms” of
300,000 hectares in the Ukraine – and some feel they are not yet big
enough). With almost zero labour and vast fields, complexity goes right
out of the window. The name of the game is monoculture. The vast
estates are each dedicated to a single crop – which, in the interests of
predictability are as genetically uniform as possible. Many are clones. Or
we have vast livestock factories for pigs, poultry, and even these days
for cattle. They too are as genetically uniform as possible. There is even
talk (echoed in Beddington’s Future of Food and Farming report) of cloning
livestock. Indeed it is more than talk. It is already happening. All this
is the precise opposite of what common sense, common morality, and
basic biology tell us should be done. Yet it is the norm. It is what is
now called “conventional”.
And there
is worse. The free market is not really “free”, to be sure. It is
manipulated
and in
effect controlled by the big players. But the big players are nonetheless
obliged to slug it out. Each seeks to enhance its own “market share”. Each
in principle would like monopoly—and some of the biggest companies,
despite laws ostensibly to prevent this—have already achieved it.
When all
the big players start fair, then the battle of the giants to gain
supremacy
becomes
rather difficult. This is where high tech really comes into its own, and
the
patenting laws that go with it. For if one of the big players can come up
with
a
technology that the whole market perceives to be essential, then truly they
can
fill
their boots. All those who do not have the new technology are perceived to
be
disadvantaged.
“Perceived” is the key word. This is a game, the market is an
artifice, and perception is all.
This is
the true purpose of GMOs. They do not, except in favoured circumstances,
increase
yields. They do not, overall, reduce reliance on herbicides, pesticides,
or
fertilisers.
Indeed they can increase reliance. One of the world’s leading GM crops,
“Roundup
Ready” rape (also known as canola) is designed expressly to be used
alongside
a herbicide (namely Roundup). But the biotech companies are very good
at public
relations. Moreover, to an increasing extent they finance and, hence,
control agricultural research. It is now quite difficult to find
agricultural research that is not commercially financed, commonly by
biotech companies. Governments go along with this for a whole variety of
reasons, one of which is that high-tech agriculture that veers towards
monoculture is highly profitable. The profits are seen to increase GDP,
which means they contribute to the “economic growth” that has become the
principal goal, and indeed the raison d’être, of the world’s most powerful
governments. It is also far easier for governments to deal with a few
large corporates than with thousands—or, worldwide, with billions—of
individual farmers.
Bureaucracy,
the neoliberal economy, and various forms of high technology, fit together
very well. They are the components of top-down control.
Fortunately,
there are protestors: and some of those protestors present arguments
that are in all ways superior to those that defend the status quo. The
moral and metaphysical base of those arguments is obviously stronger than
those that support the status quo. It is founded in a real desire to
improve the human condition and make the world a better place. These
protestors also take account of the statistics which show, beyond
all reasonable doubt, that there are better ways of doing things – and in
particular that we must build on the knowledge and expertise, not to say
the brilliance, of the traditional, complex, agro-ecological, small
farming that, mercifully, still exists.
Such are
the arguments you will find in this report. Michel Pimbert is an
agroecologist who has worked in both national and international
agricultural research systems. He is now based at IIED where he
facilitates participatory action research on policies and practices for
food sovereignty, agroecology, and citizenship. In particular Michel
tackles two crucial and related themes. First, he looks at the
specific but huge influence of the European Union’s (EU) Common
Agricultural Policy (CAP) – and especially the revisions planned for 2013.
Secondly, and more generally, he asks how the world can and must engage
more directly with the people who really can produce enough food for all
of us, and who know how to do it: the world’s vast battalions of small
farmers.
His
account of the CAP makes for dismal reading. As is well known, the CAP flouts
the rules of the global free market by handing enormous subsidies to
Europe’s farmers. In truth, the “free” market model is deeply flawed,
especially when applied to agriculture, and some kind of control of the
market is highly desirable. But the present system of subsidies is crude
to the point of perversity and well beyond. It does not reward the
small mixed farmers whom the world needs. Instead, at huge public expense,
it rewards the biggest – encouraging them to become even bigger, which
pushes the small farmers out of business. And as I’ve mentioned above,
vastness is the enemy of the complexity and synergy that are vital. As
well as the CAP, current seed laws are increasingly restricting the range
of crops that can be grown. By insisting on uniformity, which is more and
more tightly defined, they are reducing, drastically, the genetic
diversity within each crop. By the same token, the laws of intellectual
property are pushing us towards a world in which no farmer will be able to
grow any crop or raise any animal that does not carry some patent. He or
she will be forced to pay royalties to the company that holds that patent.
This
amounts, in effect, to a handover of farming that should belong to all of us,
to a few big commercial players, working in concert with a few powerful
governments.
Varietal
and genetic diversity is the key to future food security: it is what will
enable us to change direction as the climate continues to change – in ways
that we cannot predict. Today’s GM wonder-crops with their narrow genetic
base are all too likely to be nine- day wonders. To reduce the diversity
of our most fundamental of resources—food—is to place us all in danger,
especially our children and grandchildren. This should surely be seen as a
human rights issue, and be dealt with by human rights law. Even more
grandly, endangering the human race—albeit by this indirect means— should
be seen as a crime against humanity. We – people at large – should be
angrier than we seem to be; and we should be asking deep questions; not
simply about the nature of the economy, but about the nature of
governance. How do we have elected governments that clearly do not act in
our best interest? Truly we need to re-conceive what we mean by
democracy.
Michel’s
second theme relates directly to this. For, he says, the small, traditional
farmers of the world who, if given the chance, really could feed us and
take care of our fellow creatures, are routinely sidelined. No-one listens
to them. At best, they are patronised; but usually they are ignored
completely. Yet (and as the IAASTD report acknowledged) the experience and
local knowledge that small farmers have accumulated are essential to our
future wellbeing. The world’s traditional farmers should be consulted as a
matter of simple justice. But if humanity really cares about its own
future, we should not merely consult the small farmers, we should seek
them out as key participants. For the most part, they should set the
agenda. To a very large extent they already know what we need to know, and
can already do what needs to be done.
In truth,
there has been a recent trend towards consulting farmers when planning
agricultural
research. But as Michel points out, the term “consultation” covers a
spectrum of involvement which at the bottom end is virtually meaningless.
Administrators and visiting experts often claim to have “consulted” the
locals when all they have done is tell them what is about to happen – or
even, what has just been done. Participation must mean far, far more than
this: a true dialogue between modern science and traditional knowledge.
This
report spells out what such dialogue entails, and how it can be brought
about.
We might
ask in passing why it is that the powers-that-be have created a system of
food production and distribution that is so obviously bad for the human
species in a dozen different ways, which is killing people in huge
numbers; and which, for good measure, is wiping out our fellow creatures
and threatening to send the whole world into ecological tailspin. We might
ask why the powers-that-be still insist that we continue with more of the
same. We might especially ask why they systematically ignore the people who
really could do what needs doing. Not just ignore them—insult them and put
them out of work. Why, indeed, do they favour abstract economic and scientific
theory and dogma over real empirical knowledge while claiming, at the same
time, to provide strategies that are “evidence-based”?
Are they
– the powers-that-be – wicked? This is hard to believe.
Are they,
simply, profoundly ignorant? Certainly, people in high places generally
seem far too specialised. Economists rarely understand biology and operate
as if they believe that the Earth and all the creatures within it,
including humans, can be thrust into any economic mould that may be
devised. Even worse: scientists who are now called biologists are
increasingly no such thing. They are technologists, chemists manqué, adept
in the manipulation of DNA. This is not the same thing at all. Very few of
those in power seem to have any robust metaphysical or moral base. They
are not skilled in asking what is good, and why.
What
matters most, however, is false belief. The powers-that-be really do believe,
or have persuaded themselves to believe, that what are now perceived as
the ways of the Western world are the right ways.
The
Western world is not on the whole obsessively “secular”: religion and, more
broadly, spirituality, have played a huge part in its history and in
psyche. But the modern age is certainly hard-nosed. It emphasises what it
calls “rational” thinking at the expense of intuition – human sympathy and
common sense. Science is taken as the exemplar of rationality, and is
perceived as the royal road to truth: if we are not omniscient already we soon
will be if only we do more research; and with omniscience will come
omnipotence. The modern Western view rejects any notion of transcendence:
the philosophy that prevails is materialistic—wedded to stuff. Indeed the
belief is evident in official reports on everything—from the economy to
climate change or health care—that personal enrichment and increasing
physical comfort are the essence of “progress”. Sometimes we are even told
in flights of political and industrial rhetoric that “to conquer nature”
for
our own
comfort is “Man’s destiny”. The Earth and our fellow creatures, in the
absence of any metaphysic, are perceived as “resources”. The point of
human life, apparently, is to turn these “resources” into commodities
which can be sold for money, which (by definition) makes us rich. At
present, to be sure, the wealth stays at the top – the rich are growing
richer while the poor growing poorer. But, we are assured, the wealth will
inevitably “trickle down” to the rest of humanity. All we need to achieve this
very particular version of Nirvana is more science and high tech, set free
by the market.
This
philosophy is crude in the extreme but it’s the view, nonetheless, that
prevails.
Defenders
of the status quo argue that this view prevails because it is true – and
that it
really is good for people. But that is obviously nonsense. The crude defence
of materialism and the brutalised version of science and the dogma of
neoliberalism that are invoked to support it prevail because those who
cling to it really do become rich and powerful, at least in the short
term; and those who are rich and powerful dominate the rest. It’s a simple
tautology.
In August
1650 Oliver Cromwell wrote this plea to the parliamentarians of Scotland:
“I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be
mistaken”. I don’t believe that the people who are now in the most
powerful positions will ever think it possible that they may be mistaken;
and those of us who give a damn about the state of the world, and our
children, and other people’s children, and our fellow creatures, have to
take matters into our own hands and do our own thinking.
This is
what millions of men and women worldwide are already doing, and have been doing
since humanity began. In large part they have shown what we really need to
do to solve our problems, and to create a better life. They are the people
we ought to be engaging with. Michel Pimbert’s excellent report tells us
how. It needs to be read, and acted upon. By all of us.
Colin
Tudge, Wolvercote, March 18 2011
The whole report can be found here: http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/14611IIED.pdf
Colin is
co-founder of the Campaign for Real Farming and the College for
Enlightened Agriculture. www.campaignforrealfarming.org
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