By conventional wisdom it is excellent news. Researchers from Iowa have
shown that organic farming methods can yield almost as highly
<http://civileats.com/2014/12/10/organic-nearly-as-productive-as-industrial-farming-new-study-says/>
as pesticide-intensive methods. Other researchers, from Berkeley,
California, have reached a similar conclusion
<http://phys.org/news/2014-12-crops-industrial-agriculture.html>. Indeed,
both findings met with a very enthusiastic reception. The enthusiasm is
appropriate, but only if one misses a deep and fundamental point: that even
to participate in such a conversation is to fall into a carefully laid trap
*.*
The strategic centrepiece of Monsanto’s PR, and also that of just about
every major commercial participant in the industrialised food system, is to
focus on the promotion of one single overarching idea. The big idea that
industrial producers in the food system want you to believe is that only
they can produce enough for the future population (Peekhaus 2010
<http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/viewFile/901/468>). Thus
non-industrial systems of farming, such as all those which use
agroecological methods, or SRI
<http://www.independentsciencenews.org/un-sustainable-farming/how-millions-of-farmers-are-advancing-agriculture-for-themselves/>,
or
are localised and family-oriented, or which use organic methods, or non-GMO
seeds, *cannot* feed the world.
Dustbowl and soil erosion USA, 1935
To be sure, agribusiness has other PR strategies. Agribusiness is
“pro-science”, its opponents are “anti-science”, and so on. But the main
plank has for decades been to create a cast-iron moral framing around the
need to produce more food (Stone and Glover
<http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/%7Eanthro/research/stone/Stone_Glover_2011.pdf>
2011).
Likewise, whenever these same organisations compose speeches or press
releases, or videos, or make any pronouncement designed for policymakers or
the populace, they devote precious space to the same urgent problem. It is
even in their job advertisements <http://jobs.syngenta.com>. It is their
Golden Fact and their universal calling card. And as far as neutrals are
concerned it wins the food system debate hands down, because it says, if
any other farming system cannot feed the world, it is irrelevant. Only
agribusiness can do that.
Of all the populous nations, Bangladesh comes closest to not being swamped
in food. Its situation is complex. Its government says it is
self-sufficient. The UN world Food Program says it is not
<http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/ena/wfp078255.pdf>,
but the truth appears to be that Bangladeshi farmers do not produce the
rice they could because prices are too low, because of persistent gluts (1).
Fig 1. Chinese net food exports (Dr. Jikun Huang, Center for Chinese
Agricultural Policy)
*Truth restoration*
So, if the agribusiness PR experts are correct that food crisis fears are
pivotal to their industry, then it follows that those who oppose the
industrialization of food and agriculture should make dismantling that lie
their top priority.
Anyone who wants a sustainable, pesticide-free, or non-GMO food future, or
who wants to swim in a healthy river or lake again, or wants to avoid
climate chaos, needs to know all this. Anyone who would like to rebuild the
rural economy or who appreciates cultural, biological, or agricultural
diversity of any meaningful kind should take every possible opportunity to
point out the evidence that refutes it. Granaries are bulging
<http://fieldquestions.com/2011/06/16/feeding-hungry-indians/>, crops are
being burned as biofuels
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jul/08/biofuels-plant-wheat-vivergo-hull>
or dumped, prices are low, farmers are abandoning farming for slums and
cities, all because of massive oversupply. Anyone could also point out that
probably the least important criterion for growing food, is how much it
yields. Even just to acknowledge crop yield, as an issue for anyone other
than the individual farmer, is to reinforce the framing of the industry
they oppose.
So, if one were to devise a strategy for the food movement, it would be
this. The public already knows (mostly) that pesticides are dangerous. They
also know that organic food is higher quality, and is far more
environmentally friendly. It knows that GMOs should be labeled, are largely
untested
<http://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/seralini-and-science-nk603-rat-study-roundup/>,
and may be harmful. That is why the leaders of most major countries, including
China
<http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/16/world/la-fg-china-elite-farm-20110917>,
dine on organic food. The immense scale of the problems created by
industrial agriculture should, of course, be understood better, but the
main facts are hardly in dispute.
But what industry understands, and the food movement does not, is that what
prevents total rejection of bland, industrialised, pesticide-laden
<http://www.independentsciencenews.org/news/how-extreme-levels-of-roundup-in-food-became-the-industry-norm/>,
GMO food is the standard acceptance, especially in Western countries, of
the overarching agribusiness argument that such food is *necessary*. It is
necessary to feed the world.
But, if the food movement could show that famine is an empty threat then it
would also have shown, by clear implication, that the chemical health risks
and the ecological devastation that these technologies represent are what
is unnecessary. The movement would have shown that pesticides and GMOs
exist solely to extract profit from the food chain. They *have no other
purpose*. Therefore, every project of the food movement should aim to
spread the truth of oversupply, until mention of the Golden Fact invites
ridicule and embarrassment rather than fear.
*Divide and Confuse*
Food campaigners might also consider that a strategy to combat the food
scarcity myth can unite a potent mix of causes. Just as an understanding of
food abundance destroys the argument for pesticide use and GMOs
simultaneously, it also creates the potential for common ground within and
between constituencies that do not currently associate much: health
advocates, food system workers, climate campaigners, wildlife
conservationists and international development campaigners. None of these
constituencies inherently like chemical poisons, and they are hardly
natural allies of agribusiness, but the pressure of the food crisis lie has
driven many of them to ignore what could be the best solution to their
mutual problems: small scale farming and pesticide-free agriculture. This
is exactly what the companies intended.
Vegetables growing. (Credit: Sisters of St Francis, Oldenburg)
On the one side lie family farms and ecological methods. These support
farmer and consumer health, resilience, financial and democratic
independence
<http://earthopensource.org/index.php/news/120-too-few-farms-and-these-too-large>,
community, cultural and biological diversity, and long term sustainability.
Opposing them is control of the food system by corporate agribusiness.
Agribusiness domination leads invariantly to dependence
<http://graphics.latimes.com/product-of-mexico-camps/>, uniformity,
poisoning and ecological degradation, inequality, land grabbing, and, not
so far off, to climate chaos.
*Reverse PR?*
Despite all this, the food and environmental movements have never seriously
contested the reality of a food crisis. Perhaps that is because it is a
narrative with a long history. As early as the 1940s the chemical and oil
industries sent the Rockefeller Foundation to Mexico to “fix” agriculture
there. Despite evidence to the contrary, the Rockefeller scientists derived
a now-familiar narrative: Mexican agriculture was obviously gripped by a
production deficit that could be fixed by “modern” agribusiness products (The
Hungry World <http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674050785>,
2010). This story later became the uncontested “truth” that legitimised the
green revolution and still propels the proliferation of pesticides,
fertilizers, GMOs and other agribusiness methods into every part of the
globe.
Yet in the age of the internet it is no longer necessary to let an industry
decide where the truth resides. It is possible to restore reality to the
global discussion about food so that all potential production methods can
have their merits fairly evaluated (IAASTD
<http://www.panna.org/resources/iaastd-agriculture-crossroads>, 2007).
Until this is done agribusiness and chemical industry solutions will always
be the default winner, alternative agriculture will always be alternative,
if it exists at all.
The evidence with which to contradict the lie is everywhere; but in an
unequal and unjust system truth never speaks for itself. It is a specific
task that requires a refusal to be intimidated by the torrents of official
misinformation and a willingness to unembed oneself from the intellectual
web of industry thinking. (That will often mean ordinary people acting
alone.)
*Power, lies, and consent *The second requirement is a shift in perception.
The shift is to move beyond considering only physical goals, such as saving
individual species, or specific political achievements, and to move towards
considering the significance of the underlying mental state of the
citizenry.
Companies and industries pay huge sums of money for public relations (PR).
PR is predicated on the idea that all human behaviour is governed by belief
systems. PR is therefore the discovery of the structure of those belief
systems, mainly through focus groups, and the subsequent manipulation of
those belief structures with respect to particular products or other goals.
Thus human reasoning, which asks questions like: Is it fair? What will the
neighbours think? can be accessed and diverted to make individuals and
groups act often against their own self-interests. Two important general
rules are that it works best when people don’t know they are being
influenced, and that it comes best from a “friendly” source. PR is
therefore always concealed which creates the widespread misunderstanding
that it is rare or ineffective.
*“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits
and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic
society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society
constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of
our country.”*
The possibility of manipulating habits and opinions, which he also called
“the engineering of consent” was not an idle boast.
<http://vimeo.com/85948693>
Foucault, who was concerned mostly with the power held by governments,
considered that the fabrications he had identified were not conspiracies.
They were emergent properties of power. Power and knowledge grow together
in an intertwined and mutually supportive fashion. He argued that knowledge
creates power but is also deferential to power and so is deformed by it. An
example is when US newspapers decline to use the word “torture” for when
torture is used by the US government. These newspapers and the US
government are together doing what Foucault theorised. The US government
gets to torture and gains power in the process while the public is
simultaneously deceived and disempowered. In this way the preferred
language of the powerful has historically and continuously evolved into the
established public truth, to the disadvantage of the people.
Bernays, however, worked mainly for corporations. He knew, since some of
them were his own ideas, that many of the more recent fabrications were not
emergent properties but were intentionally planted.
The essential point, however, is to appreciate not only that companies and
others deliberately engineer social change; but also that when they do so
it begins with the reordering of the “reality” perceived by the people. The
companies first create a reality (such as Mexican hunger) for which their
desired change seems to the people either obvious, or beneficial, or
natural. When it comes, the people therefore do not resist the solution,
many welcome it.
*The structure of “reality”*
Dictators and revolutionaries provide an interesting lesson in this. The
successful ones have achieved sometimes extraordinary power. As always,
they have done so first by changing the opinions of the people. The
dictator, like any corporation, must make the people want them. As a
general rule, dictators do this by creating new and more compelling false
realities on top of older ones.
Hitler, to take a familiar example, harnessed a newly synthesised idea
(German nationalism) to a baseless scientific theory (of racial genetics)
and welded this to pre-existing “realities” of elitism and impugned manhood
(the loss of WWI). These ideas were instrumental in his rise to power. But
the important lesson for social change is that none of the ideas used by
him possessed (now or then) any objective or empirical reality. They were
all fabrications. It is true Hitler also had secret money,
<http://www.amazon.com/Wall-Street-Hitler-Antony-Sutton/dp/0945001533/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420389351&sr=1-1&keywords=anthony+sutton+hitler>
bodyguards, and so on, but so did others. Only Hitler found the appropriate
combination of concepts able to colonise the minds of enough German people.
But Hitler is not known now for being just another leader of Germany. He is
infamous for two events, the holocaust and World War II. The same lessons
apply. Millions fought and died for almost a decade in a struggle to assert
ideas that could have been destroyed by the intellectual equivalent of a
feather. But that is how powerful ideas are.
The lies told in more democratic societies are not so very different to
those used by Hitler in the sense that the important ones have predictable
properties that can be categorised and sorted. What the food scarcity lie
has in common with Hitler’s use of race, and with myths of nationalism, or
of modern terrorism, and many others, is the *creation of a threat*, in
this case of famine and possible social breakdown. The creation of an
internal or external threat is thus the first category of lies.
The second category recognises the necessity of “efficient government”. No
government can issue direct and separate orders to all the people all the
time. Nor can it possess the resources for physical enforcement of those
orders. It must therefore find ways to cause the people to govern, order,
and regiment themselves, in exquisite detail. Therefore, governments supply
and support guiding principles in the form of artificial unifying
aspirations, such as “progress” or “civilisation”. Typically, they also
strongly encourage the desirability of being “normal”; and especially they
reinforce elitism (follow the leader), and so on.
Another structural category follows from the recognition that the effective
operation of power over others, unless it is based on pure physical force
or intimidation, usually requires an authoritative source of ostensibly
unbiased knowledge. The population must be “convinced” by an unimpeachable
third party. This function is typically fulfilled by either organised
religion or by organised science. Scientific or religious institutions thus
legitimate the ideas (progress, hierarchy, normality, inequality, etc.) of
the rulers. These sources conceal the use of power because they combine the
appearance of authority, independence and disinterestedness. These
qualities are all or partly fictions
<http://www.independentsciencenews.org/science-media/science-and-social-control-political-paralysis-and-the-genetics-agenda/>
.
Another important category, which include the myths of papal infallibility,
or scientific and journalistic objectivity, exist to reinforce the power of
authority itself. These fabrications act to bolster the influence of other
myths.
The above list is not exhaustive, but it serves to introduce the idea that
the organising of detailed control over populations of millions, achieved
mostly without resorting to any physical force, requires the establishing
and perpetual reinforcement of multiple interlocking untruths. This itself
has important implications.
The first and most important implication is that if the lies and
fabrications exist to concentrate and exercise power over others (and then
conceal its use), then it also follows that genuinely beneficial and
humanitarian goals such as harmony, justice, and equity, require retrieval
of the truth *and the goals will follow naturally from that retrieval*.
The task of anyone who wants harmony, justice, peace, etc to prevail
therefore becomes primarily to free the people from believing in lies and
thus allowing them to attain mastery over their own minds. At that point
they will know their own true needs and desires; they will no longer “want”
to be oppressed or exploited.
The second implication of this entwining of knowledge with power is that,
when properly understood, goals of harmony, understanding, health,
diversity, justice, sustainability, opportunity, etc., are not
contradictory or mutually exclusive. Rather, they are necessarily
interconnected.
The third implication is that an empire built on lies is much more
vulnerable than it seems. It can rapidly unravel.
Given that resources are limited, the problems of achieving broad social
justice, of providing for the people, and of restoring environmental harms
consequently become that of discerning which of the lies (since there are
many) are most in need of exposing; and perhaps in what order.
*Conclusion*
Thus the necessary shift in perception is to see that, as in most wars, the
crucial struggle in the food war is the one inside people’s heads. And that
the great food war will be won by the side that understands that and uses
it best.
This food war can be won by either side. The natural advantages of the
grassroots in this realm are many. They include the power of the
internet–which represents a historic opportunity to connect with others;
second, that it takes a lot less effort to assert the truth than it does to
build a lie-many people only need to hear the truth once; and thirdly, that
in this particular battle the non-profit public-interest side doesn’t
necessarily need a bigger megaphone because, unlike the industry, they are
(broadly) trusted by the public.
Consequently, it is perfectly possible that a lie that took several
powerful industries many decades to build up could be dismantled in months.
It is necessary only to unleash the power of the truth and to constantly
remember the hidden power of the people: that all the effort industries put
into misleading them is an accurate acknowledgement of the potential of
that power.
There are many writers and NGOs, such as Pesticides Action Network
<http://www.panna.org>, IATP <http://www.iatp.org>, the EWG
<http://www.ewg.org>, the Organic Consumers Association
<https://www.organicconsumers.org>, the Center for Food Safety
<http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org>, and others, who are aligned with the
grassroots, and who are doing a good and necessary job of explaining the
problems and costs of industrial agriculture. But these arguments have so
far proven inadequate. Agribusiness knows why that is.
But by combining these arguments with a refutation of the food crisis they
can help destroy the industrial model of agriculture forever. And when that
happens many of our worst global problems, from climate change and
rainforest destruction down, will become either manageable or even
negligible.
It is all in the mind.
*Footnotes *(1) Thanks to Prof J Duxbury, Cornell University.