Book Review
Introduction
In Part 2 of Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed we learn that: “Almost all of the next one billion of net global growth will take place in urban slums. What will these conditions breed for the future? Hopelessness, crime, extremism, terrorism? Who will deal with these chickens when they come home to roost on a globalized perch?” “Left to its own devices, globalization will sow seeds of ever-greater poverty, disease, and hunger in the cities and lead to the loss of viable, self-sufficient rural populations.” “If all the money invested in agricultural biotechnology over the last 15 years had been invested in developing genuinely sustainable techniques – those that work with rather than against nature – we would have seen extraordinary and genuinely sustainable progress.” “The problem is that techniques such as intercropping, agroforestry, green manuring, composting and biological pest control offer less prospect of commercial gain to those who have money to invest.” “There is a growing body of evidence that we are creating a nutritionally impoverished underclass – a generation which has grown up on highly processed fast food from intensive agriculture and for whom the future looks particularly bleak, both from a social and a health standpoint.” “The Slow Food Movement is about celebrating the culture of food and about sharing the extraordinary knowledge – developed over millennia – of the traditions involved with quality food production.”
MANIFESTOS ON THE FUTURE OF FOOD AND SEED
EDITED BY VANDANA SHIVA
SOUTH END PRESS 2007
PART II
Chapter 2: Agriculture: The Most Important of Humanity’s Productive Activities by Prince Charles
- The fact that no fewer than 5,000 food producers have gathered in Terra Madre, under the Slow Food banner is a small but significant challenge to the massed forces of globalization, the industrialization of agriculture, and the homogenization of food – which seem somehow to have invaded almost all areas of our life today.
- Agriculture is not only the oldest but also the most important of humanity’s activities. It is the foundation of civilization. Today some 60% of the 4 billion people living in developing countries are still working on the land.
- When I read “visions,” such as that for the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, based on transforming traditional, local agricultural economies into “powerhouses” of technological agriculture, based around monoculture, artificial fertilizers, pesticides, and genetically modified organisms (GMOs), my heart sinks.
- The missing ingredient in these great plans is always sustainable livelihoods. Its absence increases the existing, awful drift towards degraded, dysfunctional, and unmanageable cities.
- The one resource the developing world has in abundance is people, so why are we promoting systems of agriculture that negate this advantage and seem bound to contribute directly to further human misery and indignity?
- Almost all of the next 1 billion of net global growth (over the next 12 to 15 years) will take place in urban slums. What will these conditions breed for the future? Hopelessness, crime, extremism, terrorism? Who will deal with these chickens when they come home to roost on a globalized perch?
- Often the consequence of globalization is greater unsustainability. Left to its own devices, globalization will sow seeds of ever-greater poverty, disease, and hunger in the cities and lead to the loss of viable, self-sufficient rural populations.
- Slum dwellers are not going to head back to the land overnight. The first step to finding solutions is facing up to the causes and scale of the problem and this requires the globalization of responsibility.
- It is both legitimate and important to ask whether people’s faith in the potential of genetically modified food and other new technologies is wishful thinking or the hype generated by vested interests. Are these methods going to solve humankind’s problems or just create new ones?
- There are many examples of well-meaning attempts which have gone drastically wrong. I am not convinced that we have absorbed the lesson that manipulating nature is, at best, an uncertain business.
- Even if we discount the potential for disaster, there is still the question of whether this is the right direction to take. If all the money invested in agricultural biotechnology over the last 15 years had been invested in developing genuinely sustainable techniques – those that work with rather than against nature – we would have seen extraordinary and genuinely sustainable progress.
- The problem is that techniques such as intercropping, agroforestry, green manuring, composting and biological pest control offer less prospect of commercial gain to those who have money to invest.
- One of the arguments used by the agricultural industrialists is that it is only through intensification that we will be able to feed an expanded world population. But even without significant investment, and often in the face of official disapproval, improved organic practices have increased yields and outputs dramatically according to a recent UN-FAO study.
- Imposing industrial farming systems on traditional agricultural economies is actively destroying both biological and social capital and eliminating the cultural identity which has its roots in working on the land.
- It is also fueling the frightening acceleration of urbanization throughout the world and removing large parts of humanity from meaningful contact with nature and the food that they eat.
- Trends toward urbanization are almost inevitable while societies throughout the world continue to put a low valuation on their food, denigrate food to the status of fuel, and abandon any loyalty to their local and indigenous farmers.
- There is a growing body of evidence that we are creating a nutritionally impoverished underclass – a generation which has grown up on highly processed fast food from intensive agriculture and for whom the future looks particularly bleak, both from a social and a health standpoint.
- Fast food, as Eric Schlosser has pointed out in his brilliant book Fast Food Nation, is a recent phenomenon. The extraordinary centralization and industrialization of our food system has occurred over as little as 20 years.
- Fast food appears to be cheap because huge social and environmental costs are being excluded from the calculations. These costs are not reflected in the price of fast food, but that doesn’t mean that our society isn’t paying them.
- At the end of the day, values such as sustainability, community, health, and taste are more important than pure convenience.
- The Slow Food Movement is about celebrating the culture of food and about sharing the extraordinary knowledge – developed over millennia – of the traditions involved with quality food production.
- The coming together, the cross-fertilization, invigoration and sharing ideas at Terra Madre, and joining the Slow Food Movement, will exercise an influence that cannot be easily ignored.
- The other great food movement which I am associated with, the organic movement, has much in common with the Slow Food Movement, and this communality of purpose and direction ought to be a source of co-operation and, also celebration. I hope that we may see ever closer links between these two important movements.
- The importance of this movement cannot be overstated. That is, after all, why I am here – to try and help draw attention to the fact that in certain circumstances “small will always be beautiful,” and to remind people , as John Ruskin in the 19th century did, back in England, that “industry without art is brutality.”
- The food you produce is far more than just food, for it represents an entire culture – the culture of the family farm.
- It represents the ancient tapestry of rural life: the dedicated animal husbandry, the struggle with the natural elements, the love of landscape, the childhood memories, the knowledge and wisdom learnt from parents and grandparents, the intimate understanding of local climate and conditions, and the hopes and fears of succeeding generations.