Kirschenmann: The dangers of too much certainty

To see the world this way, as a ceaselessly complex and adaptive system, requires a revolution. It involves changing the role we imagine for ourselves, from architects of a system we can control and manage to gardeners in a living, shifting ecosystem.

— Joshua Cooper Ramo, author, The Age of the Unthinkable

In his stimulating and insightful new book, The Age of the Unthinkable, Joshua Ramo reminds us that when the brilliant Austrian economist, Frederick August van Hayek, received the 1974 Nobel Prize (one of the first in economics), he made an interesting observation in his acceptance speech. Quoting from Hayek’s speech, Ramo provides us with important insights that I think are especially relevant to our conversations regarding the sustainability of agriculture in a changing world.

Economists are at this moment called upon to say how to extricate the free world from the serious threat of accelerating inflation, which, it must be admitted, has been brought about by policies which the majority of economists recommended and even urged governments to pursue. We have indeed at the moment little cause for pride: as a profession we have made a mess of things.

The title Hayek gave his speech was “The Pretense of Knowledge,” and what he observed has significance beyond the field of economics. In fact, he intimated as much in his speech.

There is much reason to be apprehensive about the long-run dangers created in a much wider field by the uncritical acceptance of assertions which have the appearance of being scientific.

He concluded by warning the audience that if we aim to do more good than harm in our efforts to improve the world, we will

…have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, [we] cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible.

In agriculture we now often see language that assumes a similar pretense of knowledge. A particular agricultural position or practice often is claimed to be “science-based,” or “state-of-the-art,” which implies that we already “know” all we need to know and therefore our positions need no longer be questioned or explained.

In a predictable world such an attitude may not “make a mess of things’ but it can be disastrous in a rapidly changing, unpredictable world – the kind of world which Ramo correctly claims is confronting us.

Gary Nabhan’s new book, Where Our Food Comes From, provides compelling evidence of the need to rethink sustainability with respect to our current food and agriculture system given the changes we are now experiencing.

Nabhan traces the incredible story of Nikolay Vavilov, the Russian geneticist who devoted his life to finding, cataloguing and preserving the diversity of crop plants that had been nurtured by indigenous farmers for millennia. He provides compelling evidence to demonstrate how that diversity, adapted to local conditions, played a key role in staving off famine in many parts of the world.

Nabhan suggests such an approach can help us meet the food challenges in our own future. Short-circuiting this process with the use of transgenic technologies may be an untenable alternative because such technologies depend on the cultivated biodiversity inherent in traditional agricultural regions and cultures; however, we are rapidly destroying that diversity as an unintended consequence of transgenic technology.

Facing challenges without diversity tool

In the meantime, our universities, apparently seduced by the contemporary culture that leads us to believe we now “know” how to “fix” any failures with new technological breakthroughs, have increasingly abandoned the preservation and development of seeds and breeds that are locally adapted to the ecosystems in which they exist. This means that farmers throughout the world will be faced with meeting the challenges of new famines, increasing populations, rising energy costs, diminishing fresh water resources, depleting soil health and greater climate instability, all without the diversity of seeds and breeds required to adapt to their new circumstances. National Geographic magazine recently published a sobering analysis of “The Global Food Crisis,” which describes some of the complex dilemmas that this new situation presents.

[Read the article at: http://www.nationalgeographic.com; search for global food crisis, June 2009]

As Nabhan points out: “The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that about three-quarters of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops has been lost over the last century, and that out of 6,300 animal breeds, 1,350 are endangered or extinct.”

He contends that the diminished diversity and availability which have taken place in the 90 years since Vavilov’s assessment now seriously threaten humanity’s survival. Nabhan says that the causes of that genetic erosion of biodiversity are many, and include

• the wholesale replacement of many traditional food varieties by a single cash crop;
• the conversion or fragmentation of agricultural landscapes by industrialization and urbanization;
• the usurping of waters formerly used for crop production for other uses;
• the loss of traditional seed-saving knowledge among the rural populace as farmers start buying hybrid seeds and
• the banning of local production of traditional varieties by plant-patenting legislation and free trade agreements.

Perhaps this is why the United Nations now urges us to change course as we prepare to address the global “food crisis.” The president of the United Nations General Assembly is encouraging a shift from technology, trade and aid as the central approaches to meeting our global food challenges, to a new paradigm based on food democracy, food justice and food sovereignty. The UN points out in its recent International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) report that technology, trade and aid will continue to be useful tools, but these alone will not help us meet the complex food and agriculture challenges of the future.

Unless we unleash ourselves from our “pretense to knowledge” and our “uncritical acceptance of assertions which have the appearance of being scientific,” we may find ourselves trying to “extricate” ourselves in the decades ahead from the serious threat of global famine.