Memorandum submitted by LandShare CIC
(SFS 04)
ENLIGHTENED AGRICULTURE AND THE NEW AGRARIANISM:
COMMON SENSE, SOUND HUSBANDRY, AND SCIENCE-ASSISTED CRAFT
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Britain's overall role is, and always has been,
both to look after its own people and the fabric of its landscape,
and to contribute to the wellbeing of the whole world. These twin
ambitions should not be at odds. This paper shows how we can secure
our own food security over the next century while helping to ensure
that everyone worldwide is well fed.
Simple biological calculation shows that it
should be possible to feed everyone who is ever likely to be born
on to this Earth to the highest standards of nutrition and gastronomy.
To achieve this we need to design farming specifically to feed
people—and to do this without wrecking the rest of the world,
which is what "sustainability" implies. Such farming
must be founded in sound principles both of common morality and
of biology (ecology) and in this paper is called Enlightened
Agriculture, or EA. EA perforce is labour-intensive, meaning
that all countries worldwide need a strong agrarian base. Thus
this paper also envisages The New Agrarianism, achieved
via a process of Renaissance. The New Agrarianism is not an exercise
in nostalgia, a simple return to the past, but a concerted attempt
to make good farming possible and agrarian living attractive.
Good science and some high technologies are needed for this—but
designed to abet good husbandry and not, as now, to replace it.
This leads us to the essential principle of Science-Assisted
Craft.
With EA, Britain and most other countries could
achieve Agricultural Self-Reliance (not to be confused
with total self-sufficiency) and it would be good for humanity
and the world as a whole if they did so.
Since EA is labour-intensive and labour is the
most expensive input in labour-intensive farming, EA and the New
Agrarianism cannot be realized within the present economy, based
on the maximization of wealth in the form of money, with focus
on productivity, comparative advantage, and cash efficiency. Although
farms should be conceived as traditional businesses, with rivalry
between them, the overall economy of agriculture must be primarily
cooperative, and it must be sequestered from the fluctuations
of the global market. We cannot, as in Britain in recent months,
allow the price of oil to compromise our food supply or (as with
the rise and fall of set-aside) to determine the fate of our wildlife.
I. THE GOAL
AND THE
BEDROCK PRINCIPLES
I.1. The moral and practical task before
all humanity is to provide everyone with good food, forever, without
wrecking the rest of the planet. "Good Food" implies
sound nutrition and excellent gastronomy. "Sound nutrition"
is as defined by nutritionists. Excellent gastronomy should be
as defined by each individual culture in accord with its own landscape
and history.
I.2. In addition, all societies worldwide
should have control over their own food supply—i.e. should
not depend for sustenance on the capability or good will of third
parties over which they have no firm control.
I.3. The economy—indeed all human
activity—needs to be rooted in morality and biological reality.
In the present world we have lost sight of this. Capitalism per
se has often been blamed but in truth the fault lies with the
peculiar, abstracted version of capitalism developed since the
1960s. This model treats the economy almost entirely as an exercise
in money, and elevates the market to the role of universal arbiter.
Morality has become a matter of market forces: apart from a few
taboos, whatever people are prepared to pay for is considered
acceptable. Biological realities are all-but abandoned, in the
apparent and sadly mistaken belief that science and high-technology
allow us to shape the world in any way we please.
II. THE STATUS
QUO
II.1. The vogue in agriculture is for more
and more industrialization. Human labour is replaced as far as
possible by machinery, industrial chemistry, and biotechnology.
Industrialization requires simplification ("one size fits
all") and hence encourages and requires monoculture. Hyper-industrialized,
low-labour, monocultural agriculture is still not the norm worldwide
but is nonetheless called "conventional". Its emphasis
is on productivity, value-adding, cutting costs, cash efficiency,
and overall profitability. The whole exercise, with some notable
anomalies, is framed by the global economy which is intended,
at least in principle but only sometimes in practice, to be ultra-competitive,
with the least profitable going to the wall. Ricardo's principle
of comparative advantage applies: countries that can grow high-value
commodity crops are encouraged to focus on export. Britain has
no particular agricultural advantages but has been rich in cash
and politically influential and it has often been suggested in
recent decades that British farming should be allowed to go the
way of its mining. It has been cheaper to buy what we need from
abroad—and so that has been considered to be the right,
the "realistic", thing to do.
II.2. Yet the "conventional" model
is clearly failing. The UN calculates that out of a present world
population of 6.5 billion more than 800 million are
chronically undernourished while around one billion eat too much,
largely of the wrong things—prompting the UK government's
latest health drive. In all, therefore, nearly one third of humanity
is badly served. Another estimated one billion live in urban slums—most
of them ex-farmers and their families driven out by the industrialization
of agriculture, and finding no useful employment in the city.
II.3. At the same time, essential inputs
to the present industrialized systems are under threat, including
fossil fuel, fresh water, and phosphate. Global warming poses
many threats. The loss of some of the world's most fertile, coastal
strips is the most obvious danger, but we should not underestimate
the effects of novel climate on the physiology of existing crops.
(Will it even be possible to grow existing varieties of wheat
in the Canadian wheat belt? Would it be possible to provide replacements
in time? The apparent belief that GM technology can provide new
crops instantly is sadly misguided).
II.4. UN demographers estimate that the
world population will reach 9 billion-plus by 2050. Since
the present system fails to cater even for 6.5 billion it
seems that the problems can only grow more acute. Numbers are
predicted to stabilise by 2050, however—so this is the most
we should ever have to cater for. So long as world agriculture
is shaped by the global market that seems impossible, however
much high technology we throw at the problems. With EA, that seems
eminently manageable. Structure is all—and there can be
no excuse for failure.
III. OPTIONS
AND POSSIBILITIES
III.1. Three possibilities seem to be on
the agenda:
III.1.1. Continue with the present policy
of agricultural industrialization. Common sense and the most sober
statistics suggest that this is not an option if we seriously
want to avoid disaster in the long term.
III.1.2. A "sustainable industrialized"
model. Britain's Lord (John) Krebs has suggested this. This approach
sounds sensible and is not too radical—continuing the present
scientific, economic, and social assumptions, and changing only
the technology. However, such systems are entirely untried—they
remain "blue skies"—and there is good reason to
doubt whether the present scientific, economic, and social assumptions
on which it is based, are sound.
III.1.3. The third possibility is the one
mooted here: To develop "Enlightened Agriculture" within
the context of national economies worldwide that each have a strong
agrarian base. This is "The New Agrarianism".
IV. ENLIGHTENED
AGRICULTURE
IV.1. Enlightened Agriculture is agriculture
that is designed expressly to feed people, now and in the long
term, without wrecking the rest of the planet and destroying our
fellow creatures. If agriculture was so designed, then it should
easily be possible to provide everyone with good food at least
until the next mega-volcano or asteroid, or runaway global warming,
change the rules absolutely. Biologically speaking, given reasonable
luck, a good life for all for the next million years is a reasonable
target. In this context, a century should be seen as a standard
if rather small unit of political time.
IV.2. In essence, Enlightened Agriculture
is straightforward. To maintain long-term productivity, farming
must be founded in principles of sound biology—as, of course,
is nature itself. The farmer must play to the strengths of crops,
livestock, landscape and climate—not seeking to re-design
these essential components in line with some economic or political
ideal.
IV.3. In practice, the focus must be on
stable crops which provide most of humanity's energy and protein;
notably cereals, grown on the arable scale. Vital too is horticulture—vegetables
and fruit. Livestock should then be fitted in as and when: ruminants
(mainly cattle and sheep) kept on land that does not lend itself
to arable (hills or saltmarsh—or in the world as a whole
in semi-desert); omnivores (pigs and poultry) fed on leftovers
and crop surpluses. This is commonsensical, and is the traditional
pattern. In addition, all agriculture should be conceived
as an exercise in agro-forestry: crops and livestock integrated
in many different ways with trees. Thus Enlightened Agriculture
is an advanced exercise in "polyculture"; a complex
interplay of mutually supportive crops and livestock. The overall
effect is to achieve what might be called "biological efficiency":
hard to define precisely (as biological concepts always are) but
easy to envisage intuitively.
IV.4. Here we encounter two wondrous serendipities.
For farming thus conceived produces plenty of plants (both arable
and horticulture), not much meat (the animals take second place
to arable and horticulture) and maximum variety (since biological
efficiency is achieved by the interplay of many different species
and varieties of crops and animals in an infinity of different
topographies and microclimates). "Plenty of plants, not much
meat, and maximum variety"—these nine words summarize
the best of nutritional theory over the past 40 years. They
also summarize the general balance of ingredients in all the world's
greatest cuisines—Italy, Provence, Turkey, India, China,
all of which use meat only for garnish, stock, and occasional
feasts. Hence "Enlightened Agriculture"—designed
to get the most out of the landscape—is also the basis of
sound nutrition and the world's finest cooking.
IV.5. In short, we don't even need to be
austere to thrive in the long term. Indeed, "The future belongs
to the gourmet". But the principle works only if people take
food seriously, as the Italians and Turks still do. Thus it is
extremely important to encourage food culture.
IV.6. As a further bonus—although
critical studies remain to be done -simple calculation suggests
that if every country practiced Enlightened Agriculture then most
(including most of those of Africa that are commonly seen to be
disastrous) could achieve agricultural self-reliance. In other
words, they could produce all the food they need to provide themselves
with a good (in all senses) basic diet. The world trade in food
would still be important, but would be restricted to crops that
exporters can sell for serious profit, in accord with the principles
of fair trade, without huge ecological side-effects (such as felling
rainforest). For example it would be sensible for self-reliant
Britain to import tea from India or coffee from Brazil, but not
to import soya grown in Amazonia and the Cerrado, to feed to cattle
and pigs.
IV.7. In general, since most farms will
be mixed, any one area would produce a wide range of foods. Hence
this implies an immediate shift towards local production and consumption,
which in principle have many advantages of a nutritional, social,
and environmental kind.
IV.8. Enlightened Agriculture is not synonymous
with organic agriculture but since organic farming uses minimal
material inputs and in general contrives to imitate nature it
is innately sustainable and should be regarded as the default
approach. Initial calculations suggest that Britain (and most
countries) could be self-reliant in food even if it was totally
organic (while organic researchers such as Professor Martin Wolfe
of Suffolk point out that the organic farming has been shamefully
under-researched and its possibilities have yet to be realized).
IV.9. Yet there are often times when "non-organic"
techniques and approaches can be extremely helpful, and we certainly
should not close the door on novel technologies as a matter of
principle. Indeed we can envisage many more. For instance, it
would surely be worthwhile to explore ways of producing artificial
nitrogen fertiliser using solar energy. In a similar, pragmatic
vein we should not write off GMOs a priori. Though present
uses are for the most part of very dubious value, it is still
possible to envisage ways in which they could be helpful—for
example to provide super-drought-resistant sorghum for the Sahel:
a proposal mooted in the 1980s but not so far brought anywhere
near to fruition.
IV.10. But we cannot allow agriculture (or
any human endeavour) to be technology-led—buoyed along by
the rhetoric of "progress" and the promise of profit.
In all endeavours—and very obviously in agriculture—the
first requirements are for sound motivation and sound structure.
We should heed for example the comments of Professor E R (Bob)
Orskov of the Macaulay Institute, Aberdeen, who is one of the
world's outstanding animal nutritionists and travels the world
as an agricultural adviser. He does not condemn GMOs a priori
but simply says that in 25 years of travel he has never
come across a problem where GM would have been the best solution.
He maintains that world production could be doubled or tripled
simply by giving appropriate help to existing, traditional farming
systems—and has often demonstrated the principles that would
make this possible.
IV.11. However, because Enlightened Agriculture
depends on the interplay of many species and varieties it is necessarily
complex. Therefore it needs a great deal of expert husbandry.
That is: it must be labour intensive. In addition, because EA
is polycultural, there are no great advantages in scale-up. Hence
the standard farm unit should be small to medium-sized. In structure,
then, Enlightened Agriculture looks very like traditional agriculture,
with its labour-intensive, small (ish) mixed farms. Structurally,
EA would be the complete antithesis of the present-day, vast,
monocultural units that operate with minimal labour (and are entirely
dependent on big machines and industrial chemistry which in turn
require vast inputs of oil). In detail, as already intimated,
EA is not necessarily traditional: in many respects it
could be far more high-tech than the present. Nonetheless, EA
implies a change of mindset. In EA, farming is regarded primarily
as a craft, as again was traditionally the case. In EA the role
of science is to abet that craft. Science would not be deployed,
as now, as a means to industrialize the craft out of existence
in the interests of big business.
IV.12. The shift from high-tech, industrialized
monoculture to high-tech but labour-intensive polyculture obviously
requires a complete shift not simply in technology but in the
economy and social structure. It calls, indeed, for an Agrarian
Renaissance, leading to the New Agrarianism.
V. THE NEW
AGRARIANISM
V.1. Some thinkers—notably Lord Krebs—acknowledge
that the present, industrialised, "conventional" model
is unsustainable, but argue that what the world really needs is
sustainable industrial models. On the face of things this looks
very sensible, being closer to the status quo and therefore (it
seems) easier to achieve. But it is not clear what such a model
would look like, and it is not obvious why it should a priori
be preferred to the agrarian model, which in most of its essential
elements has been tried, tested, and refined over the past 10,000 years.
In general there seems to be a prejudice against agrarian living
and towards urbanization that has not been properly questioned.
V.2. If the norms of the cash market are
allowed to prevail then the high labour requirement of traditional
(and enlightened) agriculture is perceived as a disadvantage,
because it is costly. If we ask, sensibly, how the vast proportion
of the nine billion people who will be with us by 2050 are
to earn a living in an age when rapid expansion of oil-dependent
industry is no longer an option, and acknowledge that unemployment
is the royal road to poverty, then the labour-intensiveness of
EA emerges as a distinct bonus. Humanity needs to ask, "What
proportion of the labour force in any one country should
be working on the land?" The proportion in the present world
ranges from less than 1%, in Britain and the US, to 90% in Rwanda,
with the Third World as a whole averaging 60%. Ninety per cent
is clearly too many—but Britain's less than 1%, though commonly
seen these days as the near-ideal, in truth is on the brink of
disaster. Common sense suggests that no country should have more
than 50% of its people on the land—but also that none should
have fewer than 20%. But—to re-emphasise—critical
studies are vital, and urgent.
V.3. But if Britain really does need 20%
of its workforce on the land then (a) we need to increase the
present workforce—and particularly of skilled farmers—by
around 20 times: and (b) we need to make huge adjustments
to the structure of the countryside and the laws surrounding it.
V.4. It is also clear that Enlightened Agriculture
cannot come into being within the present economic climate. The
present-day, largely laissez-faire market requires traders of
all kinds to maximize output, maximize value-adding, and (above
all) to minimize costs and hence is as antipathetic as can be
conceived towards the principles of Enlightened Agriculture. Agriculture
worldwide has been thrown to the market wolves. In practice, if
we are serious about feeding the world and the long-term future,
we need to do the complete opposite: to create a sequestered economic
environment in which EA can flourish. To be sure, the EU and US
subsidies of the past few decades have worked badly, and reinforced
the view that the free market must be preferred to market control.
But these subsidies failed because they have been almost unbelievably
crude. Properly controlled markets are far more complex.
V.5. In short, the world needs agriculture
that is designed according to the bedrock principles of biology
and is designed expressly to feed people; to achieve this, we
need an agrarian renaissance; and for all this to work we need
a new, sequestered, economic structure. There seems to be work
here for governments. So what in practice should the British government
be doing?
V. ACTION FOR
THE FUTURE
AND THE
ROLE OF
GOVERNMENT
V.1. Clearly the task is twofold: to develop
the concept of Enlightened Agriculture, with all the necessary
research—biological, social, economic; and to bring about
the Agrarian Renaissance, to enable EA to happen. Government has
key roles to play in this—both negative (not inhibiting
existing, helpful initiatives) and positive (encouraging new initiatives).
V.2. A key issue of a positive kind is to
re-establish science as the servant of humanity at large, and
not simply as the domain of big business. As far as is now possible,
the network of government-run agricultural research stations and
experimental husbandry farms that Britain possessed in the early
1970s (and were indeed the envy of the world) should be restored.
V.3. In particular, Britain and the world
would also benefit from a dedicated "College of Enlightened
Agriculture" intended to address all the vital issues that
have been neglected, or to initiate and coordinate studies elsewhere.
These studies are in part scientific (for example into biological
pest control); in part practical (perfecting methods of husbandry);
in part social and economic (for example to establish desirable
ratios of agrarian to urban workers and the economic consequences
of different systems).
V.4. It is the case, however, that most
of the initiatives of the past three decades that are truly helpful,
and could bring benefits in the future, have been carried out
by non-profit organizations and by individuals. Examples include
the Soil Association and the Organic Research Centre; Compassion
in World Farming; the Food Animal Initiative, based in Oxford;
the simple and universally applicable system of agro-forestry
developed by Martin Wolfe in Suffolk; the studies of traditional
agriculture and its possibilities by Professor Orskov; and—encouraging
the essential food culture, without which good farming cannot
flourish—the Slow Food Movement (which is based in Italy
but is becoming established in Britain).
V.5. There have been many initiatives, too,
of a kind that could help to create the new and much expanded
cadre of farmers who are now so urgently required. In the UK these
include Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs) as developed for
example by Martin Large and Greg Pilley of Stroud Commonwealth;
the conception of the farm as a multi-faceted centre of the community,
for example by Tim Waygood in Hertfordshire; and LandShare, established
in 2008 as a means to identify and encourage such initiatives
in general.
V.6. In general, many of the non-government
initiatives are attempts to overcome restrictions on good farming
and on agrarian living that have been imposed by the political
and economic climate of the past 30 years. Few individuals
can now afford to buy worthwhile parcels of land, and hence the
renewed interest in CSAs and co-operatives. Part-time farming
is potentially of huge importance and so should be researched
and encouraged (since Enlightened Agriculture is not intended
primarily to generate wealth and personal fortunes). For those
seeking to work afresh on the land accommodation has become a
huge issue. The government needs to revise or remove many of the
restrictions on building the necessary, eco-friendly, generally
small buildings required. Similarly, health and safety restrictions
are often designed primarily for large-scale industrial units
and are not appropriate to more labour-intensive systems—and
must be reviewed.
V.7. Perhaps most challenging, intellectually
and politically, is to create the sequestered, economic structure
needed to enable EA to be practiced. But again there are pointers,
which the government could encourage. These include the initiatives
in complementary currency, for example by Margrit Kennedy in Germany,
Bernard Leitaer based in Belgium, and Richard Douthwaite in Ireland;
and the more general explorations of the New Economics Foundation
in London. In truth, although the economic transformation required
is radical, the forms envisaged are not unprecedented and are
not innately frightening. Most importantly, the quarrel is not
with capitalism per se, but with the anomalous, abstracted,
simplified form of free-market capitalism that has prevailed since
the 1970s, a form that many conservative business people abhor.
VI. CONCLUSION
It really should be possible to feed everyone
who is ever likely to be born on to this Earth to the very highest
standards of nutrition and gastronomy, forever. Since this is
possible, common morality demands that the attempt should be made.
The key is to conform to the principles of sound biology, that
underpin the Earth as a whole, and to respect the Earth's physical
limitations. The attempt to impose a new set of principles based
on the cash market and in the belief that the Earth and its creatures
can be fashioned at will and ad infinitum, is a disaster. There
are clear and obvious ways in which the UK could take a lead,
both for its own people and for the world as a whole. These possibilities
should be pursued as a matter of urgency.
The author
Colin Tudge is a biologist and writer with a
lifelong interest in food and farming. His latest books include
So Shall We Reap; The Secret Life of Trees; Feeding People
is Easy; and Consider the Birds. In 2008 he helped to establish
LandShare, a Community Interest Company based in Oxford.
Colin Tudge
January 2009
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