Cropped Out

This week I have chosen to focus on the work of Richard Manning. Manning has produced several works grounded on many environmental and social issues of our era. Since we explored  permaculture last week, this week I would like to focus on Richard Manning’s work on the topic of agriculture. 

In his book, titled Against the Grain, subtitled How Agriculture has Hijacked Civilization, Manning offers an in-depth and pragmatic view of the so called “progress in food production”. Manning poses the idea that wheat has domesticated man - in contrast to the opposite - and exposes the truth about the very unsustainable practices of agriculture. 

Manning delves on the idea of how agriculture stripped man’s of his “genetic heritage and freedom to wander and hunt and gather”. Humanity became dependent and highly addicted to grains, thus prisoners of the agricultural systems that severely changed societies. Because of agriculture, humans no longer had to live like nomads, man could live in one place and gather riches and form larger and more, so called, enduring societies. 

What about the environment? How has agriculture changed it? In Against the Grain Manning explains how annual plants, such as soy, wheat and corn are not ‘natural’ in nature. They have a purpose in the natural environment which is to rehabilitate the soil to its natural biological state - such as after a natural disaster per se. The issue with agriculture is that its practices essentially imitate the damages of natural disasters year after year in the soil in which it is planted, which in turn requires the use of ever more chemical fertilizes in order to provide positive yields. 

The negative effects of agriculture goes far beyond social and the environmental issues. In the modern world the negative effects of agriculture has additionally expanded to the economic and cultural realms, such as the displacement of many small farming operations due to the ever-growing monopolization of the practice by giant corporations. Ironically I have personally worked with someone, in one of the giant corporations I’ve worked at, who used to operate a small farm in the southern part of the United States but was struggling to maintaining his operation and providing for his family - much less making a profit - and had to eventually 'sell out'. 

In an interview Manning describes Ethics as “being true to [our] genetic heritage” as to offer the solution for the current food security problems humanity faces. I believe this means seeing “progress” from a new perspective, measuring the same by how we are able to revert back to our genetic roots opposed to how far we can move away from it. Progress should be assessed on how well we are able to revert back to our hunter and gatherer ways and how we allow nature to dominate instead of attempting to dominate it. Unfortunately we have been so swayed by the distorted ideas and ideals of progress sold to us daily through mainstream channels - such as the recent wave of vegan and vegetarianism ideologies as a way of saving the planet. I’m not mocking these ideals, they do have their place but we must be cautious to think or sell these as widespread solutions to every corner of the world as the solution for our current environmental issues. Eating meat is not bad, on the other hand accepting and contributing to the way our society currently practices mass animal farming is certainly bound to damn humanity. 

I’ll fall back on our previous topic of permaculture and its methods. Permaculture methods certainly compliments Manning's ideas of harvesting and consuming foods from perennial plants and on small scale local or home farming to solve our food shortage and food security challenges. But what can we do now? We can certainly continue to change our personal behaviors, spread knowledge and continue to advocate and work toward a major social-cultural change but what ACTIONS can we take now to promote those goals (besides talking and writing about it)? What if… we reach the ones who are in most need of help in our country - the less fortunate. What if we reach out to our community food banks? What if instead of just food for the next week or two each of those food banks also distribute perennial seeds, pots and soil? What if at each of those food bank sites we also offer classes on permaculture methods? What if we educate the less fortunate first? What if we stop providing the poor with food for just the next week but teach them how to harvest their own food for a year? What if we stop “giving man a fish and start teaching them how to fish”? What if….?