Kirschenmann: From commodities to communities

By FRED KIRSCHENMANN, Leopold Center Distinguished Fellow

Lately I have been thinking that the point must be reached when scientists, politicians, artists, philosophers, and men [sic] of religion, and all those who work in the fields should gather here, gaze out over these fields, and talk things over together. I think this is the kind of thing that must happen if people are to see beyond their specialties. – Masanobu Fukuoka, Japanese philosopher and ‘natural farming’ practitioner (1978)

In the Western world we seem to be enmeshed in a culture that values things more than relationships, and that same principle seems to hold true in our food and agriculture enterprises. As a consequence, our agriculture and food systems goals have been reduced to some simplistic objectives. Achieving the maximum yield of a few crops in one part of the world is more important than enabling people to feed themselves in their own communities. The problem of feeding nine billion people in a climate-changing world often is reduced to inventing a few new technologies. Producing more of our agricultural commodities with fewer farmers is considered more important than sustaining resilient rural communities where the farmers live. Maximizing profits in the short term is deemed more important than passing on biologically healthy soil to future generations.

Viewing food as a commodity also leads us to favor specialization over integrity. We tend to reduce complex systems to single tactic functions, complex problems to simple solutions. We adopt what economist Paul Thompson called a “productionist ethic,” that is, maximizing short-term profit for a small segment of the food system while largely ignoring the health and resilience of the whole. Each player in the food system tends to focus on one component. Input suppliers tend to believe that unlimited new technological solutions can solve any problem. Politicians tend to think that a few policy changes can enable us to meet future challenges. Economists tend to believe that the market eventually will solve all problems.

Ultimately perceiving food as a commodity causes us to ignore the complex, interdependent biological community of which we and our food are an integral part. Canadian ecologist and author Stan Rowe explains the relationship this way:

We have been taught that we are separate living things, surrounded by other living things, but not so. The realities of the world are ecological systems of which organisms are components and without which no creatures of any kind could exist. The biggest ecological system, the planet or Ecosphere, is composed of regional and local landscape and waterscape ecosystems of which life is one property. Living on the land, under the sky, we people are inside the prairie landscapes, inside the continental ecosystem, inside the Ecosphere. The health of each and all is our health. (Rowe, 2002)

In other words, the food we produce and eat is not just a commodity, it is an integral part of our ecological community.

These insights, of course, are essential to the development of any kind of sustainable agriculture. As long as we regard food and food production as a commodity we are unlikely to develop the social capital necessary to evolve the kind of “ecological conscience” required to make the necessary commitments to sustain the system.

As Aldo Leopold put it, “We abuse land because we see it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” (Leopold, 1949)

So perhaps it is time for us to heed the invitation of Masanobu Fukuoka and come together as a community of scientists, politicians, artists, philosophers, theologians, farmers and food citizens, gaze out on the landscape in the communities in which we live, and begin the conversations about how we can make this important cultural transition. As Rowe reminds us, standing on the land in this manner, “humans should clearly see their roots in the land, understanding that they are from the land and belong to it in a way that it can never belong to them.”

References

Masanobu Fukuoka, 1978. The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming. (ed. Larry Korn), Emmaus, Pa: Rodale Press.

Stan Rowe, 2002. Home Place: Essays on Ecology. (Rev. ed). Edmonton, Alberta: NeWest Press.

Aldo Leopold, 1949. A Sand County Almanac. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Kirschenmann: From commodities to communities