Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

Feeding people is easy: but we have to re-think the world from first
principles
http://www.mail-rchive.com/sustainablelorgbiofuel@sustainablelists.org/msg71
172.html
Keith Addison
Thu, 04 Oct 2007 03:42:50 -0700

"Feeding People Is Easy" by Colin Tudge
Published in the UK in April 2007, not yet been released in the US.

The book argues that it is possible to feed the world, forever,
without damaging the environment or cruelty to animals. The book
shows how governments and the food industry have created the major
problems so much of the world faces today. It proposes a new global
food chain based on principles of sound biology and justice.

Previous paper by Tudge on the same subject:

PDF:
http://snipurl.com/1rqwj

Feeding people is easy: but we have to re-think the world from first
principles

Colin Tudge

Centre of Philosophy, London School of Economics, London, UK

Public Health Nutrition: 8(6A), 716-723 DOI: 10.1079/PHN2005770

2005

Abstract

Objective: Agriculture designed to make best use of landscape and to
be maximally sustainable would also provide food of the highest
nutritional and gastronomic standards, and would inevitably employ a
great many people. Thus it would solve the world's food problems, and
its principal social problem, at a stroke. But agriculture in
practice is designed for a quite different purpose - to generate
wealth, in the cause of 'economic growth'. The pressing need is not
for more science and technology, but to recognise the true cause of
the problems and to re-think priorities.

Conclusion: We could all be well fed. Indeed, everyone in the world
who is ever likely to be born could be fed to the highest standards
of gastronomy as well as of nutrition until humanity itself comes to
an end. We already have most of the necessary technique - perhaps all
that is needed. We could always do with more excellent science but we
need not depend, as we are often told from on high, on the next
technological fix. The methods that can provide excellent food would
also create a beautiful environment, with plenty of scope for other
creatures, and agreeable and stable agrarian economies with
satisfying jobs for all.

In reality, in absolute contrast, we have created a world in which
almost a billion are chronically undernourished; another billion are
horribly overnourished, so that obesity and diabetes are epidemic,
and rising; a billion live on less than two dollars a day; and a
billion live in urban slums - a figure set to increase and probably
at least to double over the next half century; while other species
are disappearing so fast that biologists speak of mass extinction.

--------

If we get food right, everything else we need to do can fall into place.

Getting food right means good farming - productive and efficient
husbandry that is kind to animals, looks after the environment, and
creates fine rural societies. It means providing sufficient safe and
nutritious food. It means providing food that people like to eat and
which (traditionally) people built their societies around. In short,
gastronomic excellence is essential too. So how do we get from where
we are now, to where we need to be?

-------

Discussion

What might we be doing?

All this raises three obvious questions. First, what might we be
doing, that would provide good food and employment, in an agreeable
world? Secondly, why aren't we doing it? Thirdly, how do we dig
ourselves out of the hole - how do we get from where we are to where
we need to be? These questions are addressed here.

Get food right - the production, the eating - and everything else can
fall into place. There are no guarantees that it will - but at least
the foundations will be there. Get food wrong, and all other
endeavours are irretrievably compromised.

Getting food right means three things. First it means good farming -
good 'husbandry' that is productive and efficient, is kind to
animals, looks after the environment, and creates fine rural
societies. Secondly, it means providing food, in sufficient amounts,
that is safe and nutritious - meeting the basic task of keeping body
and soul together. Thirdly, it means providing food of the kind that
people actually like to eat and which (traditionally) people build
their societies around. In short, gastronomic excellence is essential
too.

It seems now to be widely accepted that these three requirements -
good husbandry, sound nutrition and great gastronomy - are in mutual
opposition. Farm policy seems to reflect the belief that if we are
kind to animals then we cannot produce enough meat and eggs and milk
- which is supposed to justify the factory farm.

It reflects the notion, too, that to produce staple crops efficiently
(notably cereals) then we must create monocultures of the varieties
that yield most heavily, horizon to horizon - even though this is
obviously bad for wildlife and annihilates rural societies.

It is also taken to be self-evident that people at large 'demand'
more and more meat and milk and dairy produce and so - ostensibly in
the cause of satisfying this alleged demand - modern farmers
world-wide are urged to produce more and more. Yet it has been clear
since the 1970 s that too much meat (with its saturated fat) is bad
for us. Modern farming is assumed to be good farming (scientists,
politicians and corporates like to believe that they are making
things better) and so it seems to follow that good farming (as
defined in consumerist terms) is also incompatible with sound
nutrition.

At the same time, in absolute contrast, nutritionists commonly equate
'healthy eating' with austerity, epitomised (or perhaps caricatured)
by the lentil bake. Great cooking is conflated with haute cuisine,
and haute cuisine is taken to be unhealthy: at best, 'naughty but
nice'.

Husbandry, nutrition and gastronomy go together Yet the truth is the
absolute opposite to what people in high places and authors of
earnest tracts seem to believe.

In truth, there is an absolute one-to-one correspondence between good
husbandry, sound nutrition and great gastronomy. The logic is
irreducibly simple, and I reckon is incontrovertible, despite the
best efforts of governments, corporations and experts of all kinds to
argue otherwise. Thus: Wild landscapes and ecosystems are
extraordinarily variable but all march to the same logistic drum. At
the base of all of them are plants, which invariably outweigh the
animals that feed upon them by at least 10 to 1 (in practice nearer
to 100 to 1) - for plants are the 'autotrophs', that feed themselves
by photosynthesising and drawing raw nutrients from the ground. If
farming is to be sustainable, then whatever form it takes it must
conform to the logistics of biology: a huge output of plants; a much
smaller output of livestock. Furthermore, to take best advantage of
the caprices of landscape and climate, and to minimise risk of
infection (it is intrinsically dangerous to keep too many creatures
of the same kind all together), it generally pays to keep the farming
as mixed as possible: a wide variety of animals and plants.

Human beings, as omnivores, are able to eat either plants or animals:
and in general we thrive best with a balance between the two. Also -
as demonstrated by our need for an ever-growing catalogue of
vitamins, minerals and 'nutraceuticals' - we benefit from maximum
variety.

Our omnivory makes us intrinsically economical, and is surely one
cause of our evolutionary success. If we take the concept of
sustainability seriously, then we should be content to eat the things
that sustainable farming produces - the same variety of foods that
sustainable farms would produce, in the proportions that it produces
them. Any other course reduces overall biological efficiency, and
hence reduces sustainability. It follows that the most sustainable
diet is not vegan, and is not dedicated to lentils (excellent though
pulses are). The most sustainable diets of all would contain a high
proportion of plants, and a low proportion of animals, and are
extremely heterogeneous.

All this is precisely what modern nutritionists advocate: high in
fibre and micronutrients; most of the energy from carbohydrate;
modest protein; low saturated fat; a variety of unsaturated fats.
Furthermore, this is what good cooking is about. Except in the
highest latitudes and in deserts, where it is hard or impossible to
grow crops, all the great cuisines of the world are high in staples
(cereals, pulses, tubers); make maximal use of whatever fruits and
vegetables are on hand; are sparing in their use of meat (used as
garnish, stock or for the occasional feast); and are as various as
can be conceived.

When France was at the height of its reputation as the world's centre
of gastronomy, half the diet among the rich as well as the poor was
bread - but it was very good bread.

In Italy, equally great gastronomically, pasta (as well as bread) was
at the core. No cuisine surpasses those of India or China. Both are
heavily based in rice or various breads - and both, too, as you
discover by going there, serve enormous quantities of local leaves.
Traditional Turkish cooks make wondrous feasts from cracked wheat,
mint, olive oil, broad beans, walnuts, pistachios and almonds, honey,
and whatever beast (typically a goat) that happens to have died
recently. (I exaggerate, but not much.)

Haute cuisine can be a nonsense: a gratuitous display of wealth (and
cream and cognac). But in essence and at its best, haute cuisine
merely reflects traditional cooking. I don't believe it is superior:
the very best meals I have had have been traditional qua traditional,
prepared in far-flung kitchens. Neither should we be too hard on
northern cuisines. The Lancashire hot-pot, the traditional Scottish
herrings with oatmeal (and haggis and neeps), the Polish bigos and
even the German Eisbein mit Sauerkraut und Kartoffeln, with mustard,
are fine cooking, and great nutrition, and entirely and absolutely
reflect what the local landscape (and sometimes seascape) most easily
produces.

--------

Box 1 - The road to darkness

The inexorable pressure of game theory

Because of the way systems work themselves out - whether computer
models or human societies, the world is inevitably dominated by
people who expressly seek power. These people may not be innately
evil, but their perceived need to stay in control is often at odds
with strategies required to enhance overall human wellbeing.

We have lost our biological roots

Human beings are a biological species. The Earth is our habitat. But
modern politics, economics, and prevailing morality have long since
lost touch with the underlying biological realities.

The search for algorithms

Human beings seem to have a penchant for once-andfor- all final
solutions - which as history has often shown is extremely dangerous.
The monetarist, globalised free market is simply the latest
fashionable algorithm, potentially as pernicious as any.

'Agriculture is a business like any other'

This is a particular example of the general search for alltime
algorithms, which, among other things, is already wrecking Britain's
agriculture.

The economy geared to GDP

Governments measure their own and each others' success by 'economic
growth', meaning increase of gross domestic product (GDP). But GDP
has nothing directly to do with human well-being.

The corruption of science

Science should be one of the greatest assets of humankind, liberating
our minds and (through its high technologies) sparing us from
drudgery and enabling us (as Joseph Addison put the matter in a
different context) to 'become ourselves'. But it has allowed itself
to become the handmaiden of big industry.

--------

The suppression of traditional cooking

Indeed, when we tease out all its consequences, we see that the
greatest tragedy in the modern world is the suppression of
traditional cooking. The suppressors include the modern food industry
with all its attendant 'experts', who want to replace traditional
craft cooking with their own profitable substitutes; and in Britain
at least they include people in charge of education (God help us).
For in Britain, people who have no worthwhile concept of morality or
of the meaning of 'society', but contrive nonetheless to be
'politically correct', have conscientiously suppressed the teaching
of cooking in schools.

Overall, those responsible for the suppression of cooking include
governments, the modern corporate-based food industry, and experts of
all kinds (including scientists and sociologists). These are the
'leaders' of society. They should all be thoroughly ashamed of
themselves. Instead they are triumphalist, weeping crocodile tears
over the state of the world, and sublimely unable to recognise (or
simply not caring) that the disasters (famine, obesity, diabetes,
unemployment, mass extinction, and misery everywhere) are entirely of
their own making.

The need for enlightened agriculture

In fact, the fundamental reason why modern farming fails to feed
people well is that it simply is not designed to do so.

Its failure, therefore, is not at all surprising. In my book So Shall
We Reap, I suggest that farming that is designed to feed people (and
to look after the environment, and be kind to animals, and create
fine and agreeable rural communities) should be called 'Enlightened
Agriculture'.

Why 'enlightened'? The term has several connotations, which to some
extent seem in opposition. Thus it alludes to the extreme rationalism
of the eighteenth century Enlightenment; and it also has connotations
of Buddhist spiritual wisdom. I think both apply in this context. To
want to create agriculture that feeds people seems to me ultimately
rational - we must surely reject the modern idea that 'rational'
simply means 'most profitable'. But also, the vision of a good world
for everybody and all other living creatures strikes obvious
spiritual chords.

Enlightened Agriculture in essence is no more nor less than
traditional farming - generally mixed (various livestock, various
crops), and labour-intensive. It can and should be helped out by
modern science (for example, biological pest control or mechanised
computer-controlled drop-by-drop doling out of water). But at bottom,
Enlightened Agriculture is peasant farming. The term 'peasant' in the
Western world is horribly misconstrued. In truth, peasants, properly
defined, are the peoplewhoknow the things that are most worth
knowing. Gandhi, who of course was not a Westerner, was prominent
among the modern thinkers who recognised this.

In short, feeding people really is easy. To be sure, traditional
farming is complicated - there's a lot to it - but over the past 10
000 years, helped out to some extent (though only a limited extent)
in recent decades by science, farmers have largely solved most of the
problems.

Traditional cooks world-wide have abundantly solved the problems of
turning what grows into food that people want to eat - food for the
gods, indeed. All we have to do is build on the peasant skills that
still abound, but are being killed off as quickly as can be arranged.

So why don't we?

Why don't we do the things that need doing? The world at present is
dominated by Western governments (these days run mainly by career
politicians), transnational corporations and experts of all kinds -
notably scientists, bankers and professional 'managers'.

Given that they do wield real power, they must largely be held
responsible for the world's present ills, for there should be no
power without responsibility. I do not believe that most of these
leaders are evil. Some of them undoubtedly are - both selfish and
cynical - but most, at least in my experience, are bent on doing good
and believe they are doing good. But our 'leaders' in general have
misconstrued the nature of the problems. Their heads are full of bad
ideas. They exemplify Bernard Shaw's observation, that 'The road to
hell is paved with good intentions'. Box 1 gives some reasons behind
their wrong-headedness.

The inexorable pressure of game theory

Game theorists analyse with mathematical precision the ideas that
Machiavelli floated at the start of the sixteenth century: how and
why it is that some people rise to dominance. In practice (entirely
unsurprisingly) power accrues to those who are interested in being in
charge.

Those who are interested in being in charge pursue policies that
leave them in charge. For the cynics among them, power is
justification enough. The non-cynics (and there are many) seek to
justify their position with the notion that their own leadership is
necessary. Without it, chaos would prevail. This might sometimes be
true. But at least as often, leaders create chaos (including war) in
order to justify their own position. (As Bertolt Brecht said, the
rich need the poor more than the poor need the rich - but the poor do
not realise this; or if they do, they don't or can't act upon it.)

We have lost our biological roots

Plato and the prophets alike can be blamed for the idea that human
beings are not mere animals; indeed, that as spiritual, intellectual
beings, we are hardly animals at all.

Modern science has reinforced the notion that human beings can rise
above and 'conquer' nature: re-design the world simply to make
ourselves more comfortable. These conceits are reflected in all
aspects of modern life. They are most directly and obviously
disastrous in agriculture - for modern farming is increasingly
designed to override the realities of landscape or climate, or the
physiological realities of animals or plants, or of the world's
ecology as a whole.

If we want farming that is sustainable (and without this we are
sunk), then we have to work within the bedrock biological principles.
Not just farming, but all economics and politics must take note of,
and be firmly rooted in, biological reality. Career politicians like
Britain's Tony Blair make environmental noises to suggest some
cognisance of biological reality, but the economic and political
drive of Britain and its principal allies continues to flout those
realities absolutely.

The search for algorithms

All human beings through all of history have sought simple formulae
by which to live their lives, for ever and ever: Christianity; Islam;
Marxism. Today's algorithm is economic: a species of capitalism based
on monetarism (everything is deemed to have a price) and the
allegedly 'free' market that is supposed to operate on a global scale.

The whole market is powered by 'competition', which is perceived to
have some connection with Charles Darwin's concept of natural
selection. The market is set up (in theory) so that anyone at any
time may be undercut by anybody else, perhaps working on the opposite
side of the world. The whole approach is summarised as
'neoliberalism'.

This, in the nature of algorithms, is applied to all endeavours as
the universal solution to all our problems. (Although, incidentally,
exceptions have been made under European law for football. Football
is showbiz and is taken seriously.)

'Agriculture is a business like any other'

In farming, the general economic algorithm has been translated into a
slogan, a mantra that is perhaps the biggest single cause of all the
world's present disasters. It reads: 'Agriculture is a business like
any other'. In truth, all businesses are different, and what may
conceivably work for motor-cars or arms is a disaster for farming and
hence for the world, which depends upon farming.

For the mantra translates into the need to produce the maximum profit
in the shortest possible time - and anyone who does not, in this
maximally competitive world, will lose out to somebody who does. To
maximise profit - whatever the business - there are three prime
requirements. In the case of farming, all are in absolute opposition
to the real needs, or indeed desires, of humanity, and absolutely
antipathetic to the general goals of human well-being sustainability.

Requirement number one is to maximise turnover, meaning output.
Farmers are exhorted to produce as much as possible - maximise yields
on the greatest possible area, venturing well into marginal lands.
Inputs must therefore be maximised and wildlands are compromised for
no good reason at all (vide all those cattle in the Mojave Desert, or
the wheat in Greece and Cornwall). The consumers correspondingly are
urged to eat more and more (which means, since marketing clearly
works, that the epidemic of obesity is inevitable).

The second requirement is to add value. This results in massive
gratuitous waste: all that packaging; an endless catalogue of
additives, largely untested (at least in their infinite
combinations); allegedly 'fresh' and certainly outof- season fruit
and vegetables whisked by jumbo jet across the world - maximally
polluting, yet subsidised by taxfree aircraft fuel; but above all,
meat.

Livestock production is increasing hand over fist and despite some
reforms, it is becoming more and more intensive. Some 'modern' pig
units contain a million pigs.

Received wisdom from on high has it that this is in response to
'public demand', as if we were all out and out carnivores. In truth,
meat is produced in greater and greater amounts because this is the
ideal way to mop up cereals that would otherwise be in surplus. It
removes the ceiling on cereal and pulse production (which would be
far too low if human beings ate the cereals and pulses themselves)
and turns food that could and should be cheap into food that is
maximally expensive.

Modern intensive livestock production is immensely dangerous (in the
USA alone tens of thousands of tonnes of antibiotics are used as
'growth promoters', all of which also generates antibiotic-resistant
bacteria), and cruel, and polluting. It is also obviously
unsustainable.

Traditional livestock feed on grass (cattle and sheep) or on
leftovers (pigs and poultry). Intensively raised livestock eats
staple foods that we could be eating ourselves. By 2050, so the
United Nations tells us, there will be 9 billion people on Earth. The
world's livestock, at the present rate of increase, will consume
enough to feed another 4 billion. Consumption is increasing not
because human beings are frustrated lions but because marketing works.

Worst of all: to maximise profit the producer must minimise costs.
This in general means simplification, and cheaper inputs, and
generally cutting corners. With livestock in particular cut-price
husbandry is immensely dangerous. It was the direct and only cause of
the epidemics of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and
foot-and-mouth disease that began in Britain in recent years (and
BSE, transformed into Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, is still killing
people).

Britain's farming (and Britain is not alone in this) is run on a wing
and a prayer. Britain's much-flaunted Food Standards Agency deals
with details, but not with the underlying structure. It evokes the
metaphor of deckchairs, busily re-shuffled on the Titanic.

But the main way to cut costs is to cut labour. Thomas Jefferson
conceived the emerging United States as 'a nation of small farmers'.
So it was, until well into the twentieth century. Now only around 1%
of the population of the USA works full time on the land (in the USA,
there are more people in prison). Britain is much the same (with
fewer in jail, though we're getting there). The mantra has it that
labour-intensive farming is just too expensive.

This frantic cutting of labour is held to be 'efficient' - since
efficiency is measured only in cash. The biological efficiency is
very low indeed, as all the subtleties of husbandry must go by the
board. It is also a fake: the USA has always propped up its
agriculture with outside labour, first of all African slaves and,
when that became illegal, with Mexicans and Puerto Ricans and others
who are virtually deprived of rights and so can be deported at will.

Britain is now following suit - propping up its threadbare farming
with Brazilians, Romanians and Poles (although the Poles often reject
what Britain has to offer), who again have dubious legal status and
so are virtually without rights.

Thus has 200 years of social reform been undone at a stroke. Indeed,
Britain's whole economy is a fake. It seems to work short-term only
because the British as a whole are richer than most of the world, and
we so can entice battalions of foreigners to do our dirty work for
us, and buy cheap goods from them. We are richer because of our
history - for 400 years we had an Empire, and we were on the winning
side inWorldWar II and the ColdWar. But the imbalance cannot last,
even if it was morally acceptable. It is precarious and it is vile.
Farming has become part of the vileness.

The world at large is being encouraged by the powers that be -
Western governments, corporates and their attendant experts - to
follow theWestern lead in all things.

In the Third World as a whole - which is most of the world - 60% of
the people work on the land. In India, this is 600 million people. If
India followed the British lead, then at least half a billion people
would be out of work. This is far more than the total population of
the newly expanded European Union and almost twice the total
population of the USA. Yet this is perceived as 'progress'.

Advocates of such 'progress' speak of alternative industries. The
alternatives in India are information technology (IT), which employs
only tens of thousands - not hundreds of millions - and most of them
are graduates. Tourism at best offers employment as taxi drivers (80
hours for £8 in Delhi) or hotel cleaners (bussed in from the suburbs
or the slums before dawn). Most disenfranchised farmers and their
families finish up in slums. In Africa, prostitution and mercenary
soldiering are growth industries. The girls in the bars of Bangkok
are the daughters of farmers, and send money home. That's progress.

In truth, the only conceivable option for most of humankind for the
foreseeable future - which probably means forever - is to remain
agrarian. Countries like Britain, which have done their best to
destroy traditional, labour-intensive farming, should be building it
up again with all possible speed. The present Western conception of
'progress' is a disaster.

The economy geared to GDP

'Progress' is now largely equated with 'economic progress' and that
is taken to mean 'growth', which in practice means increase in gross
domestic product (GDP). Yet as John Maynard Keynes and others pointed
out at least half a century ago, there is no simple correlation
between GDP and human well-being. Indeed, the two have very little to
do with each other. Demonstrably, as GDP increases the rich can get
richer and the poor grow poorer.

Demonstrably, too, the methods that increase GDP are precisely those
that may compromise human well-being - notably by removing the
agrarian base on which most of humanity depends.

The corruption of science

Modern agricultural scientists and their political apologists nurse
the conceit that without their endeavours, the world will starve. Of
course good science is always useful. Of course agricultural science
has been in many ways triumphant. Of course we need it. If we take
the long view of history, however (as it has become extremely
unfashionable to do), we see that farming is primarily a craft
industry that generally succeeded brilliantly for at least 10 000
years before formal science came on board at all. Indeed,
agricultural science has succeeded as well as it has only because it
had such a firm foundation to build upon. To seek to replace those
foundations - and to do so with all possible haste - is hubris indeed.

More generally, science seems to have lost its way.

Science should be a guardian of truth - or at least, of particular
kinds of truth; and when it is translated into high technologies, it
should be the friend of humankind. In reality, again beginning in the
1970s, it has increasingly become the handmaiden of governments and
of big business - because big business now pays the scientists'
wages. Science, indeed, is now locked in a feedback loop in which
corporates pay for research that generates high technologies of the
kind (and only of the kind) that will create more wealth for the
companies.

We see the shortcomings of this approach most clearly in medicine,
where research now focuses on the chronic and often minor ailments of
the ageing rich, rather than the life-and-death epidemics of the
poor. But we see it too, in abundance, in farming. Small, mixed farms
need excellent science too - but the lion's share of modern science
is focused on mass production by monoculture. Within the whole sorry
scene, particular technologies are compromised too. Thus genetically
modified organisms could conceivably be of use to small farmers - but
in fact are developed to increase the grip of the major biotech
companies, and of the countries in which they are based.

In short, most of the effort of science this past 30 years has not
been about feeding people. It has been about the transfer of power
from millions of small farmers, to a few corporates. Modern farming
is not designed to feed people. It is designed to make as much money
as possible for increasingly few companies, and to provide a Trojan
horse for major political powers whose imperial ambitions are as
powerful as ever. Since modern farming is not designed or intended to
feed people, it is not surprising that it fails to do so. The idea
that everyone can and will be fed when the pile of money is high
enough is quite simply ludicrous. But apparently it is what many
people in high places believe. Their actions make no sense unless
they believe this.

--------

Box 2 - The road to enlightenment

The nature of democracy and how to make it work 'Ordinary' people can
run their own affairs and most prefer to be agreeable. The prime
task, then, to make democracy work, is to ensure that 'ordinary'
values and skills prevail.

The meaning of 'progress' and 'development'

'Development' should imply greater human fulfilment - but has become
equated with more and more visible, material wealth. 'Progress' has
come to mean ostensible technological progression towards that end.
Thus the concepts have been debased and dumbed down. They need
re-thinking from first (moral) principles.

A new model of capitalism rooted in human well-being

Capitalism can be efficient and is not innately evil. But present
models are not geared to overall human wellbeing.

Radical economists world-wide are working on more appropriate models,
and in this lies cause for hope.

The absolute importance of craft

Skills developed over many thousands of years, especially in farming
and cooking, demonstrably can do all that the world requires. Hope
lies in creating conditions in which evolved, traditional skills can
develop further (which is the precise opposite of present trends).

The absolute importance of agrarian living

'Development' and 'progress' are taken to be synonymous with
urbanisation. Agrarian living is taken to be at best anachronistic.
This view is disastrous. The prime task in rich countries as well as
poor is to make agrarian economies work.

Science rescued

Ways of financing research are needed to ensure that science operates
for humanity and the world as a whole, and not simply for the
enrichment of e´ lites.

Again, history provides some useful models. Often people did things
better in the past.

The absolute importance of cooking

Traditional cooking, rooted in the home, contains the answers to all
the world's prime woes: the need for good nutrition, agreeable social
life, and autonomy. It needs to be encouraged everywhere.

Grassroots in general, and the World Food Club in particular

A 'World Food Club' is conceived as a consortium of farmers and
processors dedicated to good food, and consumers willing and eager to
pay for it. Such a club could soon challenge the power of present-day
corporates and governments, and in the longer term lead to new
approaches to governance of the kind that are desperately needed.

--------

How to get out of the mess

Present strategies, disastrous as they are, spring in the main from
ignorance and misconception rather than from evil - although people
in high places really should not be ignorant. To be unknowing is to
be negligent. Whatever their source, we need to re-think most of our
most fundamental beliefs from first principles. Ideally, humanity at
large should do the thinking - this is what 'democracy' implies - but
in practice, deep thought is led by intellectuals. Intellectuals by
definition are broad thinkers, quite distinct from 'experts'. Experts
simplify, and although simplification can be useful, in the end it is
always inadequate. But the re-thinking must translate into action.
For this we need practical people - farmers, accountants, trades
people, and perhaps above all peasants, where 'peasants' are defined
properly, as people who know how to do things.

So here is a shortlist of things we need to think about and do, which
is summarised in Box 2.

The nature of democracy, and how to make it work Game theory predicts
that most people should be 'doves' - basically peaceable and
co-operative: 'nice', in other words. From this it seems to follow
that if the will of the people truly prevailed - in fact, if
societies were truly democratic - they would work a great deal better
than they do. But the dovish majority does not seek power.

They leave that to the 'hawks' - who tend to run society according to
their own ambitions and desires. Hence the innate contradiction: the
doves' own dovishness leads to rule by hawks. But once we recognise
this logistic problem, it should not be beyond our wit to find ways
to overcome it, and devise systems that really are democratic.

The meaning of 'progress' and 'development' The concepts of progress
and development, highsounding and important as they are, need to be
rethought in social and psychological terms, rather than as
materialist exercises in industrialisation and raising GDP.

They should surely be measured in terms of human wellbeing - personal
fulfilment within agreeable and just societies at peace with one
another, and in stable environments. Progress and development as
currently conceived (in high places) commonly lead to the precise
opposite.

A new capitalist economy rooted in the idea of human well-being

New economic models are needed, specifically geared to well-being.
Such models are currently being developed and a growing cadre of
companies (for example, in renewable energy and IT) are already
putting them into practice. The models are essentially capitalist -
the oldstyle centralised, government-controlled economies are surely
obsolete. The presently prevailing model of capitalism (monetarist,
globalised) is not the only one there is, and indeed is as repellent
to many a good Tory or Republican as it is to all kinds of socialist.
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison specifically warned against the
power of corporates.

The absolute importance of craft

Agriculture is, fundamentally, a craft industry, and the craft must
prevail again, with science relegated to its proper role as helpmeet,
and the devices of modern accountancy employed simply to help keep
score. Indeed, crafts of all kinds need to be restored to their
proper eminence. They are what humanity does. To a significant
extent, the practice of craft defines the human species. (It is, in
Richard Dawkins' expression, our 'extended phenotype'.)

The absolute importance of agrarian living

Only agriculture can employ the vast numbers of people who need
employment. Only agriculture can do so sustainably. Indeed, the more
labour-intensive agriculture becomes, the more sustainable it can be,
since only human beings can operate the intricate systems that are
needed to work in accord with the caprices of particular landscapes
and climates. (And the pending climate change redoubles the need for
farming to be flexible - which requires thinking people to be on the
spot. Machines and monocultures are maximally inflexible.)

But since the birth of industrialisation agrarian living has
increasingly been denigrated, and now is perceived as the world's
number one problem - as a positive drag on 'progress'. Urbanisation
has become a prime index of 'development'. Modern policies now being
urged on the world at large are rooted in the notion that the fewer
people there are on the land, the better. Yet if India, say, emulated
the USA, then half a billion people would be unemployed: far more
than the total population of the entire newly expanded European Union.

As a matter of urgency we need debates (and computer models, and
serious thinking) to get some guidelines on what the proper ratio of
agrarian to urban population should be. The 90% agrarianism of Rwanda
is probably too high, for the 10% who are not agrarian cannot sustain
societies that can aspire to more than simple survival. But the 1% of
Britain and the USA is obviously too low, responsible for many social
and environmental horrors. As a first guess we might suggest that for
the foreseeable future (and probably forever) no country should
employ more than 60% of its workforce on the land, and none less than
20%. On this assessment, Britain and the USA are at least as badly
placed as Rwanda. Rwanda might reasonably reduce its farm labour
force by a third. Britain and the USA need to increase theirs about
20-fold.

As things are, life for most farmers and their families world-wide is
ridiculously hard, and truly deprived. But agrarian living does not
have to be like that. Some rural societies are among the most
agreeable of all. There are technologies galore (including those of
communication) that can solve the main practical problems. Serious
land reform is needed too. Different countries have different ways of
disposing of land, and most are flawed and need re-thinking. But the
priority is clear: to make agrarian living tolerable, and indeed
agreeable and desirable - to raise its status.

Science rescued

Science and scientists have fallen into bad company. They have become
the handmaidens of big business - but their calling is higher than
that. It is in all our interests to ensure that scientists retain
their intellectual freedom, and also develop the kinds of high
technologies that truly contribute to human well-being. The policies
that prevailed before the economic gear-shift of the 1970s and 1980s
were a lot nearer to what is needed than now.

Again we see that the answer to many of our problems lies in our own
history: that the world has been actively driven off course by bad
ideas, precipitately imposed.

The absolute importance of cooking

If people could cook, and if as good cooks they sought out good food,
and if consumerism truly works - which neoliberals claim it does,
then cooks could lead the world into greener pastures. What they
would demand, millions of farmers world-wide would be happy to
produce - and traditional processors too: bakers, brewers, picklers,
all the rest.

Grassroots in general, World Food Club in particular

A sea-change is needed - and for this, we cannot look to governments.
All the most important developments in the history of the world have
been grassroots movements, from the organic farming movement to
Christianity and Islam. To set the ball rolling I envisage a World
Food Club - a consortium of enlightened farmers, excellent processors
and consumers with a true interest in good food. If the consumers
agreed to provide the market, the farms and processors would rush to
join the party. All producers want is markets, and the means to farm
as they know it should be done.

Again, the seeds are already out there: the Slow Food Club, based in
Italy; the organic movement; the various campaigns to improve the
welfare of farm animals, such as Britain's Compassion in World
Farming; the world-wide interest in 'alternative' technologies of all
kinds, geared to the true needs of human beings and to long-term
sustainability; the economists who are working on new economic
models, and the business people (in energy, telephones, what you
will) who are putting them into practice; and the priests and
moralists who ask the deepest questions, like what it is that
humanity should be trying to achieve and why.

Conclusion

It should be easy, or at least technically fairly straightforward, to
feed everyone who is ever liable to be born to a very high standard.
We are disastrously failing to do this because of strategies and
policies of food production that are not necessarily innately evil,
but are based on serious misconceptions and inaccurate analyses.

Deep thinking is needed on all fronts to put things right - economic,
moral, political, and in science. But the central requirement is to
make true democracy work: to do everything possible to ensure that
power lies with the people. There is every reason to suppose that the
abilities and basic morality of 'ordinary' people are far superior to
the simplifications of 'experts'.

The immediate task is simply to bring all these currents together -
all united in the cause of Enlightened Agriculture. That, truly, is
the sine qua non.

References

This is an essay rather than a conventional academic paper, and what
I say here is influenced in general rather than in particular - hence
no citations in the text. Some of the books that have most influenced
my thinking are listed below. I also wish to recommend 'fiction' for
its insights into 'reality': for instance, Thomas Hardy's Far from
the Madding Crowd and The Mayor of Casterbridge; Aldous Huxley's
Island; Sinclair Lewis's Main Street; Upton Sinclair's King Coal and
The Jungle; John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath; and Leo Tolstoy's
Anna Karenina (viz. Levin's agrarianism). And then, in conventional
style:

Burnett J. Plenty and Want. London: Penguin, 1996.

Carson R. Silent Spring. London: Penguin, 1995.

Cobbett W. Cottage Economy. Oxford: University Press, 1979 (first
published 1822).

Crawford M, Crawford S. What We Eat Today. London: Neville Spearman, 1972.

Evans L. Feeding the Ten Billion. Cambridge: University Press, 1998.

Hartley D. Food in England. London: Macdonald, 1954.

Harvey G. The Killing of the Countryside. London: Vintage, 1998.

Illich I. Tools for Conviviality. New York: Harper and Row, 1973.

Lawrence F. Not on the Label. London: Penguin Books, 2002.

Leach G. Energy and Food Production. Guildford: IPC, 1976.

Mellanby K. Can Britain Feed Itself? London: Merlin Press, 1975.

Richards P. Indigenous Agricultural Revloution. London: Hutchinson, 1985.

Sen A. Development as Freedom. Oxford: University Press, 1999.

Seymour J. The Fat of the Land. London: Faber, 1961.

Stapledon G. Human Ecology. London: Faber, 1964.