{"id":157959,"date":"2020-04-13T12:01:11","date_gmt":"2020-04-13T11:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=157959"},"modified":"2020-04-09T07:58:55","modified_gmt":"2020-04-09T06:58:55","slug":"rewilding-food-rewilding-farming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/04\/rewilding-food-rewilding-farming\/","title":{"rendered":"Rewilding Food, Rewilding Farming"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Dr Vandana Shiva argues that agroecology holds the key to solving the climate and ecological crisis in a just and equitable way.<\/em><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

George Monbiot\u2019s recent column, \u201c<\/span>Lab-grown food will soon destroy farming \u2013 and save the planet<\/a>\u201d,<\/span>\u00a0strikes me as\u00a0a dystopian vision of the future, with no people working the land\u00a0and humans eating ‘fake’ food produced in giant industrial\u00a0 factories from microbes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Monbiot concludes in his article: “Farmfree food will allow us to hand back vast areas of land and sea to nature, permitting rewilding and carbon drawdown on a massive scale. Farmfree food offers hope where hope was missing. We will soon be able to feed the world without devouring it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Einstein\u2019s famous quote immediately comes to mind – he warned:\u00a0\u201cWe can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n

Ecological being<\/strong><\/p>\n

The notion that high-tech \u201cfarm free\u201d lab food will save the planet is simply a continuation of the same mechanistic mindset which has brought us to where we are today –\u00a0the idea that we are separate from and outside of nature.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This paradigm evolved with the fossil fuel age of industrial production; it is the basis of industrial agriculture which has destroyed the planet, farmers livelihoods and our health.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, it is also the basis of the author\u2019s vision of the future of food and farming \u2013 the total industrialisation of our food and of our lives, which is, as the aphorism \u2018we are what we eat\u2019 tells us, the ultimate industrialisation of humans – the final step in ending our earth-centeredness and ecological being.<\/span><\/p>\n

Turning \u201cwater into food\u201d is an echo from the times of the second world war, when it was claimed that fossil-fuel-<\/span>based chemical fertilisers would produce \u201cBread from Air\u201d. Instead we have dead zones in the ocean, greenhouse gases –\u00a0including nitrous oxide which is 300 times more damaging to the environment than CO2 –\u00a0and desertified soils and land. <\/span><\/p>\n

We are part of nature, not separate from and outside of nature. Food is what connects us to the earth, its diverse beings, including the forests around us — through the trillions of micro organisms that are in our gut microbiome and which keep our bodies healthy, both inside and out. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Cultural heritage<\/strong><\/p>\n

Eating is an ecological act, not an industrial, mechanical act.<\/span><\/p>\n

The web of life is a food web. We cannot separate food from life. Likewise, we cannot separate ourselves from the earth.<\/span><\/p>\n

The problem is not farming, but industrial agriculture. This commodity-based, fossil\u00a0fuel intensive and chemical intensive industrial food system\u00a0has contributed 50 percent\u00a0of the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate havoc and threatening agriculture.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It has caused 75 percent\u00a0of the destruction of soils,\u00a075 percent\u00a0of the destruction of water resources, and the pollution of our lakes, rivers and oceans; 93 percent\u00a0of crop diversity has been pushed to extinction through industrial agriculture. <\/span><\/p>\n

And 75 percent\u00a0of the chronic diseases that are killing us have their roots in industrial food. <\/span><\/p>\n

Assuming that this particular, distorted and violent method of farming –\u00a0which has been imposed on the world over less than a century –\u00a0is the only way humans have farmed and can farm, reveals a blindness to the diverse cultures and diverse practices of farming,\u00a0and threatens the cultural heritage of every country in the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

This passionate promotion of fake food also threatens our connection with the earth and the joy and satisfaction of eating food produced with care and intelligence by fellow beings. <\/span><\/p>\n

It threatens our wellbeing, our health and the health of the planet by removing small farmers who care for the land and regenerate the earth.\u00a0 Making Lab Food the basis of what we eat brings us closer to a robotic, non-participatory, non-creative and high-tech-based existence which denies the creativity of intelligent life. <\/span><\/p>\n

Agroecology<\/strong><\/p>\n

The English word \u201cagriculture\u201d comes from a combination of the Latin words agrum (form \u201cager\u201d, meaning \u201cfield, farm, land, estate\u201d) and cultura (\u201ccare\u201d, \u201cgrowing\u201d, \u201ccultivation\u201d), which became \u2018agricultura\u2019 (agriculture, farming and, etymologically, care for the land).<\/span><\/p>\n

Real farming is farming with nature, in nature\u2019s ways, which are the laws of ecology. Real food is a by-product of the economy of care for the land. It protects the life of all beings on earth and also nourishes our health and wellbeing. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>Sensible farm policies\u201d not only exist but are today being practiced around the globe.\u00a0 Agroecology, which encompasses common ecological principles –\u00a0organic farming, permaculture, biodynamic farming, natural farming regenerative agriculture, among many others –\u00a0has been recognized as the most effective sustainable and equitable method of farming which also addresses the challenges of feeding the world in an era of climate crises.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Agro-business interests and monopolies along with Government apathy have prevented agroecological farming from becoming the mainstream sustainable system for producing food.<\/span><\/p>\n

At Navdanya we grow healthy food by conserving biodiversity through abundant\u00a0pollinators and thriving soil organic matter which draws down carbon and nitrogen. By taking care of the earth we heal the broken carbon and nitrogen cycles that are driving climate change. <\/span><\/p>\n

Corporate control<\/strong><\/p>\n

We stand at a precipice of a planetary emergency, a health emergency, and a crisis of farmers\u2019 livelihoods. <\/span><\/p>\n

‘Fake food’ will accelerate the rush to collapse by promoting the industrial model of food and life and the illusion that we live outside nature\u2019s ecological processes. It will further destroy food democracy and increase corporate control over food and health.<\/span><\/p>\n

Real food gives us a chance to rejuvenate the earth, our health, our food economies, our food freedom and food cultures through real farming that cares for the Earth and people. <\/span><\/p>\n

Through real food we can decolonise our food cultures and our consciousness. We can remember that food is living and gives us life. Food is the currency of life. <\/span><\/p>\n

Hope lies not in pursuing the skewed and lifeless industrialized and high-tech system of eating lab-produced fake food, but in returning to Earth Citizenship and becoming part of the Earth\u2019s living cycles, and yes, re-wilding the land, our food and our bodies. <\/span><\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>TRANSCEND Member<\/a> Prof. Vandana Shiva is a physicist, ecofeminist, philosopher, activist, and author of more than 20 books and 500 papers. She is the founder of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, and has campaigned for biodiversity, conservation and farmers\u2019 rights, winning the Right Livelihood Award [Alternative Nobel Prize] in 1993. She is executive director of the Navdanya Trust.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – theecologist.org<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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