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Agriculture needs a new ethic
We have all heard the refrain, “If it is not
profitable it’s not sustainable,” a sad reflection on our
priorities. True conservation means caring for things other than
ourselves. — Stan Rowe, Home Place: Essays on Ecology
In The Spirit of the Soil, Paul Thompson
suggests that we have now created a culture which has
conditioned farmers to believe in only one ethical principle:
produce as much as possible, regardless of the cost. And every
attempt to call attention to the need for a different ethic for
agriculture, from Aldo Leopold to Wendell Berry, seems to run
counter to the industrial economy, which operates on the
principle that short-term profitability is the singular
objective we must pursue, and that all else will somehow serve
the common good.
But it hasn’t worked out that way. There is now considerable
evidence that this unchallenged economic principle has failed to
deliver. It can be seen in the ruined soil, compromised water
quality, changing climate, depleted natural resources, loss of
biodiversity, desperate farm families and faltering rural
communities.
A new ethic is needed.
In her intriguing book, The Nature of Economics, the late
Jane Jacobs describes why this industrial production ethic may
be causing all this ruination. She points out that our
agricultural economy is designed to create “semi-barren”
settlements instead of “lush ecosystems.” It seems that a farm
ethic based solely on producing as much as possible invites an
economy wherein very little “sticks” to the community in which
the farm exists, and it rarely produces a farming system in
which the community’s ecological wealth is restored rather than
exploited.
Here is how Jacobs describes what happens:
…in an American or Canadian rural settlement
that concentrates on cash crops, imports can be enormous in
proportion to the numbers of workers producing the crops. There
is plenty of energy being received from outside; plenty of
variety too: expensive farm machines and their repair parts and
fuel, trucks, seeds, fertilizer, fencing, maybe irrigation
equipment, pesticides, weed killers, construction components for
storage bins and barns, and of course consumer goods.
Almost all of the imports are incorporated directly into the
work of tilling, planting, tending, harvesting, storing, and
transporting the crops to be exported and into feeding,
clothing, and sheltering the farmers and their families.
Therefore, the passage of almost all the settlement’s imports
through its conduit is economically direct and simple – straight
through from one end to the other.
In other words, given our “produce as much as
possible” ethic, we end up producing only cheap raw materials
for export out of our communities and value is added elsewhere.
Consequently, very little value remains in the community in
which the farming takes place, and there is little incentive to
maintain the ecological health of the community.
Jacobs goes on to describe the effect that this “produce at all
costs” ethic has on our communities.
Naturally, imports used like this leave behind
only a pittance of other economic activity as evidence of their
passage: a few routine retail establishments and entertainment
or other gathering places, along with basic public services –
which may require subsidies from tax yields of more diverse
economies. And naturally, most young people who don’t inherit a
farm or aren’t attracted to farming have to hunt for work
somewhere else.
When we operate from an ethic that leaves little
wealth in our communities, and nurtures hardly any incentive to
care for the ecological health of our communities, then
ruination is the predictable result.
A new ethic is needed.
The late Stan Rowe, a Canadian ecologist whose writings are
reminiscent of Aldo Leopold, has poignantly described what is
missing in our current agricultural ethic and prescribes an
alternative.
The missing concept is the ecological one of
landscapes-as-ecosystems, literally “home systems,” within which
organisms, including people, exist. 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 ever exist.
The missing attitude is sympathy with and care for the land and
water ecosystems that support life. It will come when we make
the concept of a planetary home part of our daily thought, part
of our hearts and imaginations…
Some may dismiss such an ethical proposal as
unrealistic and hopelessly naďve in a world of economic
domination and winner-take-all capitalism. And perhaps it is.
But it also is unrealistic and hopelessly naďve to assume that
we can continue to ruin our ecological and social communities
and expect to survive much longer as a species.
A new ethic is needed.
Infusing our culture with a new ethic is, of course, never easy.
Cultures create institutions and institutions serve the
interests of people in power and generally people in power don’t
support change since the current institutions serve their
interests. And it is difficult for the powerless – such as
farmers and rural communities – to break into that
self-perpetuating system. So maybe we shouldn’t waste a lot of
our precious time trying.
But we may have another opportunity. Significant changes are
taking place in the market that may provide us with new
opportunities that are based on new values. The Hartmann Group
reports that 62 percent of the consuming public now wants to buy
food that is “consistent with their values,” and leading chefs
throughout the United States are telling us that success in the
restaurant business is now “all about the story.”
This emerging new market is based on what business design
specialist John Thackara calls “relationship value” (In the
Bubble: Designing in a Complex World, MIT 2006). It provides
a unique opportunity to unite ethics and agriculture in a new
food paradigm, one that gives a growing number of food customers
what they want:
-
quality food offering superior taste;
-
health and nutrition;
-
a good food story, which also tells how
environmental stewardship, appropriate animal husbandry, and
adequate compensation to farmers and farm workers were used;
and
-
an opportunity for food customers to be
active participants rather than passive recipients in the
food chain.
These new food chains, based on value, may be
the opportunity that we have been looking for to nurture a new
ethic in agriculture.
Fred Kirschenmann |
