The National Research Council’s “Toward Sustainable Agriculture Systems in the 21st Century” is an impressive, 599 page document about every imaginable part of the modern sustainable agriculture practices. Here are a few points I thought were interesting, from the first part of the document:
- The discussion about the “philosophy of agriculture” (p. 30) explains philosopher Paul Thompson’s views of two opposing rationales for agriculture. One is an instrumentalist view (industrial) -- that it supplies a demand -- while the other argues that agriculture may have a broader importance to society (agrarian). This reminds me of environmental ethic philosophies, which seek to answer the question: “why should we protect the environment?” Some advocate anthropocentric reasons (it benefits humans), others use economic reasoning (cost-benefit), while some take a holism or ecocentrism approach. There are many different environmental rationales that could be applied to sustainable agriculture. It’s important to acknowledge these, because these philosophies directly shape policy and attitudinal beliefs about environmental preservation.
- Are there other rationales for sustainable agriculture, beyond the capitalist/uni-functional (industrial) and societal/multi-functional (agrarian) views? What about spiritual? Farming is intertwined with religion and/or spiritual belief in many cultures around the world.
- The report mentioned indigenous knowledge a few times (<6), particularly African indigenous knowledge. I’m curious to find out how much of the existing sustainable agriculture, permaculture, and other “alternative” ag practices have some roots in indigenous knowledge. For example, planting according to the lunar cycle (not to be confused with biodynamic agriculture, which is a newer practice - 1900’s), agroforestry, and soil amendment practices. I remember visiting a “biochar” research center in Lamas, Peru that was trying to reproduce pre-Columbian “black earth” from the Amazon. Like biomimicry, which models new technology after natural processes that have evolved over millennia; and traditional medicine, which now constitutes much of the modern pharmaceutical research; researchers are now looking to indigenous farming for insights into better, more sustainable and time-tested agricultural practices.
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In the Hodgson, Campbell, and Bailkey article, it was also interesting reading about the history of community gardens. I’d heard about Victory Gardens as a Girl Scout -- there was a major scout gardening movement during the war -- but I'd never made the connection to modern urban gardens. According to the authors, “Community gardens were responses to deindustrialization, depopulation, increases in acreage of vacant land, and failures in urban renewal but also to immigration” (p. 12). These factors may come into play in some cities today -- Detroit comes to mind -- but what about in cities where the opposite effect is happening? That is, cities that are becoming increasingly industrialized, overpopulated, with shrinking space, etc.? It seems that urban gardens are popping up in many of these cities as well. Although the reasons are different now than a century ago, food security is still an urgent and impending issue, which may be the cause of the current wave in urban agriculture.
ReplyDeleteIn the future, I aspire to combine my knowledge and experiences in urban development, global health, and naturopathy medicine to enrich and sustain indigenous cultures in the Caribbean and Latin American regions. I believe it's important to preserve the knowledge of traditional farming and herbal medicine of the indigenous and minority cultures. As these developing countries start to play a role in the globalized market they tend to lose sight of their heritage by conforming to a monocultural society. For example, when I visited Cusco, Peru I was introduced to the indigenous Inca language of Quechua. The regions where I heard Quechua spoken the most were in the rural areas of Cusco. My tour guide who was native to Cusco barely knew how to speak Quechua, because he said it was too hard to learn. However, he spoke Spanish and English very well. I found it odd because Cusco was home to the Inca Empire and nowadays the locals speak more Spanish than Quechua in that city.
That sounds like an awesome experience! What were you doing in Cusco? I passed through there (on the Peru-Bolivia-Brazil "gringo trail"), but didn't stay long enough to see much outside of the city and the hike to Machu Picchu. Before that, though, I went to an indigenous conference (encuentro) in Lamas, Peru that a professor had invited me to. I ended up becoming friends with a woman from Cusco who spoke Quechua. During the conference, it was neat listening to her compare the Cusco dialect to the different variations that some of the other conference attendees spoke.
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting (and sad) about the linguistic decline...It seems like that's happening in many places as a byproduct of tourism, outmigration, globalization, etc. I'm glad that the mention of indigenous agriculture was made in the NRA reading (though brief), and even more glad that you're planning on incorporating it into your future work!