Here’s an interview with the makers of the documentary King Corn, which is partly about how maize “covers the food landscape,” as well as the actual landscape, in the US.
The original sabbatical
Taking the easy way out, let’s just say that God was a good farmer. Every seven years, he told his chosen people, they must let the land of Israel rest and lie fallow. No sowing, no reaping, no working the vines. Just take it easy and give the land a chance. And a fallow year, called a schmita, began at the Jewish New Year last month.
“Six years you shall sow your land and gather in its produce, but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave, the beasts of the field may eat. In like manner you shall do with your vineyard and your olive grove.”
I don’t actualy understand that; how are the poor and the stock to eat if noone is growing anything? But no matter. The weird part is, God told all Jews to take their sabbatical in the same year. So how are they supposed to feed themselves? Some take a sophisticated approach, selling their land to an accommodating gentile for a nominal sum. Thus it is no longer “their” land, they continue to work it (and to profit, if profits there be) and at the end of the sabbatical, they buy it back again. Some use science: fruit and vegetables are grown hydroponically, or on raised platforms, not in the land of Israel. I visited a research centre that was working on systems to delay the germination of wheat, so it could be sown in the previous year, grow steadily through the schmita, and be harvested the following year. They were also researching effective ways to miss a year of pruning grapevines.
But ultra-orthodox Jews are determined to close these loopholes. They think the government should subsidize farmers who do indeed let their fields lie fallow, in fact as well as in law. And they are creating opportunities for their neighbours. Farmers in Palestine, Turkey and elsewhere are now selling into the Israeli market, and business is better for them.
It’d be nice to think that a year of trading produce would help peace to grow between Israelis and their neighbours, but given the entrenched attitudes and conservative views that seem to have given rise to the very strict interpretation, that seems unlikely from the Israeli side. I wonder whether the Palestinian farmers, who will probably enjoy a better income this year, would see it as in their interests to promote peace.
One village at a time
The Guardian Group in the UK has got together with Amref and Barclays to try “to enlist your help in improving the lives of the people of Katine sub-county, in north-east Uganda.” They call the initiative It Starts with a Village. And they say its aim is to lift Katine out of the Middle Ages, a time of “civil war, plague and ignorance.”
What do we hope to achieve over the three years of the plan? Quite a lot, we hope. In consultation with the people of Katine, Amref has drawn up an overview of local needs and a comprehensive plan (PDF file) for how it hopes to meet them.
That’s a lot of hope. In the agriculture sector, the workplan includes, among other things, organizing farmers’ groups, introducing and testing new crops and varieties, doing marketing studies and improving local marketing skills. You can get an idea of the challenges ahead by reading about Esau Edonu, a local farmer, and watching a short video. There does seem to be an awareness of the importance of agrobiodiversity, for example to adapt to climate change. Maybe the emphasis is a little too much on bringing in new things for the market. Anyway, the strong focus on adding value locally to agricultural biodiversity is surely a good idea.
I’m not sure what to think of this effort to privatize aid. Is it just another example of well-intentioned but ill-conceived European do-gooding in Africa? Or does it stand a chance of making a difference? I’ll be following its progress on the project blog. Maybe I’ll even make a donation…
Religion and conservation
Leslie E. Sponsel, a professor of anthropology at Cornell, has an interesting article at Earth Portal ((Sponsel, Leslie (Lead Author); David Casagrande (Topic Editor). 2007. “Sacred places and biodiversity conservation.” In: Encyclopedia of Earth. Eds. Cutler J. Cleveland (Washington, D.C.: Environmental Information Coalition, National Council for Science and the Environment). [First published September 22, 2007; Last revised October 18, 2007; Retrieved October 20, 2007].)) on “Sacred places and biodiversity conservation.”
Since the 1990s, sacred places have emerged as a new frontier for interdisciplinary research on their own merits and also for their actual or potential relevance for biodiversity conservation. This reflects the emerging recognition in many sectors of the important role that religion and spirituality can play in environmentalism. In some ways attention to these phenomena is a natural development. Even secular approaches to environmental protection often become a kind of sacralization of a space, such as pursuing wilderness as an ideal. This is exemplified by John Muir (1838-1914), who experienced the forested mountains of the Western United States as a sacred place, and who was especially influential in the creation of the national park system.
Well, we saw something very similar in the previous post, with the “natural agriculture” of the adherents of the Shumei cult in Japan. Pity that Prof. Sponsel doesn’t deal with agricultural biodiversity at all in his article, it would have added an interesting dimension. The “sacralization of a space” doesn’t only apply to wilderness. Think of the certification of organic farms, or the agricultural landscapes inscribed in the list of World Heritage Sites.
Natural agriculture
Orion Magazine has a short article about shizen nouhou, or “natural agriculture,” as practiced by a Japanese spiritual group called Shumei. This was founded by a certain Mokichi Okada, who after living through two world wars decided that agriculture could be one of the ways we can learn how to respect life, and thus heal the world. But a special kind of agriculture, involving no inputs at all, lest the land think we no longer trust it. It sounds crazy, I know, but the story of sophisticated Tokyo urbanites reconnecting with the land is rather affecting.