“Slow food” in Terra Madre: the industrial paradigm is the problem
October 27th, 2008This piece by Gristmill’s Tom Philpott, reporting on a presentation by Vandana Shiva at an international “slow food” conference in Terra Madre, Italy, shouldn’t be missed.
Shiva’s message was that the “solutions” to global warming put forth so far are nothing but desperate attempts to rejigger industrial economies, to make them “carbon-free.”
Philpott reports:
“She said climate treaties and discussions take place in the stratosphere – in congressional committees, exclusive global confabs peopled by CEOs of vast business empires, etc. She said these people operate under an industrial paradigm, and the solutions they concoct to climate change – cap-and-trade mechanisms, GMO seeds, etc. – mimic and don’t challenge that paradigm. But in the end, these attempts get nowhere. Real reform, Shiva insisted, will happen when discussions move from the stratosphere to the soil, and when we find new, non-industrial ways of thinking.”
Philpott contrasts Shiva’s position with that of our most “progressive” thinkers:
“Where Gore dreams of a “low-carbon” or even “carbon-free” world, Shiva pines for a “carbon-rich” future — one in which agriculture systematically builds organic matter into the soil, capturing it from the atmosphere.”
Shiva pointed out that small-scale agriculture is actually more productive than industrial agriculture.
“Shiva forcefully made the point that mixed-crop agriculture that relies on compost is actually many times more productive on a per-acre basis than industrial monoculture. She also noted that locally adapted agriculture is not a fixed, static thing – it evolves and responds to changes in the land and climate.”
Philpott adds that only by blithely ignoring agriculture’s role in climate change can people present abominable ideas like government-mandated ethanol and biodiesel as “solutions” to the climate crisis.
The industrial paradigm is the cause of both our energy and climate problems. More of the same cannot be the solution.