5
Re-Enchanting Agriculture
vulnerability after the collapse of the Soviet Union, yet they revealed themselves to be unfounded
when evaluated against the scientific and practitioner evidence available, and rather were based
on myths or misperceptions around the performance of ecologically based farming ( 2009: 209,
237). For example, for every farmer who was adamant that the only way to control the maize
corn stalk borer was through the application of a chemical control, another farmer down the
road would be successfully using a biological control method for the same problem, and this
backed up by research data. Fear rather than evidence, the study concluded, was a major driver of
Cuba’s agricultural strategy, and this in a country with no private sector or corporate interests to
champion the industrialised farming approach that prevailed. What the country did have, enduring from its pre-Revolutionary, colonial period and later imported from its Soviet comrades in
the 1960s to 1980s, was a heavily industrialised conceptualisation or worldview of agriculture,
based on a belief in technological expertise which manifested through the design of large-scale
monocultures, high levels of specialisation and mechanisation, and reliance on chemical inputs
( Mesa-Lago, 1998; Sinclair and Thompson, 2001; Wright, 2009).
In non-socialist regimes, similar fear-based insecurities around a perceived lack of control or of
survival necessities are identified as contributing to the relentless drive of agribusiness ( Clunies-Ross
and Hildyard, 2013). Whether restocking food reserves in post-Second World War Europe ( Conford,
2001) or averting food insecurity in the Global South by rolling out Green Revolution technological
packages ( Sonnenfeld, 1992), this form of agriculture, with its top-down approach, obsessive focus
on narrow goals, quick results and lack of consideration of broader impacts, could at best be seen as
a short-term, emergency strategy. 1 So, 70 years on, why are we still farming as if in an emergency?
Vorley ( 2003) and others ( e.g. Elder and Dauvergne, 2015; IPES-Food, 2016; Lang, 2004) attribute
this stagnation or stranglehold to the persisting political power of agribusiness to maintain industrialised production systems in order to continue expanding sales, lowering production costs and
increasing profits. Yet the previously described experience of Cuba indicates that we need to look
beyond or behind agribusiness and to the industrialised worldview from whence these behaviours
manifest. For it is out of this worldview that we are frequently reminded of the overriding material urgency of ‘ feeding the world’ at the expense of mainstreaming more sustainable, ecologically
based farming approaches ( e.g., by AGRA ( 2016), Goulding et al. ( 2011) and Rickard ( 2019)). This
perspective continues to be propounded in the face of clear and growing evidence that agroecological farming systems can better achieve the more egalitarian objective of ‘ enabling the peoples of
the world to feed themselves’, as well as ensuring the health of our life support systems ( Ponisio
and Erlich, 2016). As the pioneering environmental philosopher Callicott ( 1990: 270) succinctly
explains with regard to the industrial-scientific worldview:
Notoriously it is not working, at least not sustainably and it is based on a bankrupt metaphysics, a worldview that has not sustained critical scrutiny and that is in fact, dead in pure science even though it lives on
in applied science…soil compaction, erosion and the loss of fertility, the unforeseen exhaustion of fossil
fuels and fossil waters, agrochemical pollution of air, surface and ground waters; and food itself; cyclic
outbreaks of pests and the ensuing dialectic of ever more toxic and intensively applied pesticides; the loss
of genetic diversity and the loss of wild ancestors and relatives of our cultivars; rural depopulation and
disruption of rural patterns of life; the corollary loss of centuries of transmitted agricultural experience
and knowledge, the dessication, in short, of the culture of agriculture; concentration of land ownership
and the proletarisation of farm labor…all bode ill for the sustainability of modern agriculture.
1 Underlying these altruistic motives were political and economic drivers. In Europe, ammonium nitrate was lucratively
repurposed as a fertiliser after WW2 ( Conford, 2020), and the rolling out of Green Revolution technologies was seen as a
means to quell political unrest during the Cold War period as well as being another lucrative venture for the pharmaceutical industry ( Cotter, 2003).
Re-Enchanting Agriculture
vulnerability after the collapse of the Soviet Union, yet they revealed themselves to be unfounded
when evaluated against the scientific and practitioner evidence available, and rather were based
on myths or misperceptions around the performance of ecologically based farming ( 2009: 209,
237). For example, for every farmer who was adamant that the only way to control the maize
corn stalk borer was through the application of a chemical control, another farmer down the
road would be successfully using a biological control method for the same problem, and this
backed up by research data. Fear rather than evidence, the study concluded, was a major driver of
Cuba’s agricultural strategy, and this in a country with no private sector or corporate interests to
champion the industrialised farming approach that prevailed. What the country did have, enduring from its pre-Revolutionary, colonial period and later imported from its Soviet comrades in
the 1960s to 1980s, was a heavily industrialised conceptualisation or worldview of agriculture,
based on a belief in technological expertise which manifested through the design of large-scale
monocultures, high levels of specialisation and mechanisation, and reliance on chemical inputs
( Mesa-Lago, 1998; Sinclair and Thompson, 2001; Wright, 2009).
In non-socialist regimes, similar fear-based insecurities around a perceived lack of control or of
survival necessities are identified as contributing to the relentless drive of agribusiness ( Clunies-Ross
and Hildyard, 2013). Whether restocking food reserves in post-Second World War Europe ( Conford,
2001) or averting food insecurity in the Global South by rolling out Green Revolution technological
packages ( Sonnenfeld, 1992), this form of agriculture, with its top-down approach, obsessive focus
on narrow goals, quick results and lack of consideration of broader impacts, could at best be seen as
a short-term, emergency strategy. 1 So, 70 years on, why are we still farming as if in an emergency?
Vorley ( 2003) and others ( e.g. Elder and Dauvergne, 2015; IPES-Food, 2016; Lang, 2004) attribute
this stagnation or stranglehold to the persisting political power of agribusiness to maintain industrialised production systems in order to continue expanding sales, lowering production costs and
increasing profits. Yet the previously described experience of Cuba indicates that we need to look
beyond or behind agribusiness and to the industrialised worldview from whence these behaviours
manifest. For it is out of this worldview that we are frequently reminded of the overriding material urgency of ‘ feeding the world’ at the expense of mainstreaming more sustainable, ecologically
based farming approaches ( e.g., by AGRA ( 2016), Goulding et al. ( 2011) and Rickard ( 2019)). This
perspective continues to be propounded in the face of clear and growing evidence that agroecological farming systems can better achieve the more egalitarian objective of ‘ enabling the peoples of
the world to feed themselves’, as well as ensuring the health of our life support systems ( Ponisio
and Erlich, 2016). As the pioneering environmental philosopher Callicott ( 1990: 270) succinctly
explains with regard to the industrial-scientific worldview:
Notoriously it is not working, at least not sustainably and it is based on a bankrupt metaphysics, a worldview that has not sustained critical scrutiny and that is in fact, dead in pure science even though it lives on
in applied science…soil compaction, erosion and the loss of fertility, the unforeseen exhaustion of fossil
fuels and fossil waters, agrochemical pollution of air, surface and ground waters; and food itself; cyclic
outbreaks of pests and the ensuing dialectic of ever more toxic and intensively applied pesticides; the loss
of genetic diversity and the loss of wild ancestors and relatives of our cultivars; rural depopulation and
disruption of rural patterns of life; the corollary loss of centuries of transmitted agricultural experience
and knowledge, the dessication, in short, of the culture of agriculture; concentration of land ownership
and the proletarisation of farm labor…all bode ill for the sustainability of modern agriculture.
1 Underlying these altruistic motives were political and economic drivers. In Europe, ammonium nitrate was lucratively
repurposed as a fertiliser after WW2 ( Conford, 2020), and the rolling out of Green Revolution technologies was seen as a
means to quell political unrest during the Cold War period as well as being another lucrative venture for the pharmaceutical industry ( Cotter, 2003).