Archive | December 2011

What is worth investing in?

by Ute Kelly

‘Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold. And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves. Some of them hated the mathematics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshipped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling. If a bank or a finance company owned the land, the owner man said, The Bank – or the Company – needs-wants-insists-must have – as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them. These last would take no responsibility for the banks or the companies because they were men and slaves, while the banks were machines and masters all at the same time. Some of the owner men were a little proud to be slaves to such cold and powerful masters. The owner men sat in the cars and explained. You know the land is poor. You’ve scrabbed at it long enough, God knows.

The squatting tenant men nodded and wondered and drew figures in the dust, and yes, they knew, God knows. If the dust only wouldn’t fly. If the top would only stay on the soil, it might not be so bad.’

(John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939))

This year – over 70 years after the publication of The Grapes of Wrath -, ‘the mathematics’, or what ‘the Bank – or the Company – needs-wants-insists-must have’ has been high on the agendas of governments, businesses and institutions. Huge sums of money have been invested in keeping banks afloat, and much of the cost is being borne by people who can least afford it.

Meanwhile, a UN report published last week describes a quarter of the planet’s land as ‘highly degraded’ and flagged up loss of soil quality as the area for greatest concern. A number of food production systems across the globe, the report says, ‘face the risk of progressive breakdown of their productive capacity under a combination of excessive demographic pressure and unsustainable agriculture use and practices’. The issue of soil erosion and degradation is not new: estimates suggest that around 6 million hectares of land are lost to soil erosion every year – whether this appears in the headlines or not.

In the American Dustbowl of the 1930s, soil erosion and its consequences became visible – the dust storms were hard to ignore, and along with the displacement of people they caused, they found popular expression not only in Steinbeck’s best-seller and its filmed version, but also in Woody Guthrie’s Dustbowl Ballads. Today, for many of us, the loss and degradation of soil does not – yet – feature strongly on our agendas or lists of concerns.

What I would like to suggest here, though, is that soil is much more worthy of our investments, of our concern and care, than banks. Interestingly, this seems to be a conclusion that increasing numbers of people in Greece are coming to as well, as the search for responses to the economic, social and political crisis is stimulating rising migration from cities to rural areas. Others are reaching a similar conclusion in response to looming energy and ecological crisis (the Soil Association, for example, has been raising awareness of the need for a transition in farming, including the need for many more people to become involved in agriculture). In urban situations, too – notable examples include Detroit and Havana, and, much closer to home, Todmorden – people have been regenerating soil, in attempts to respond to crisis, increase food sovereignty, and promote both social justice and the sustainability of food growing.

Other, perhaps less obvious, drivers behind recent interest in soil – and/or in the gardens that it makes possible – include increasing recognition of the political and therapeutic and dimensions of gardening. Particularly interesting expressions of the latter are ‘defiant gardens’ – human efforts to create gardens in extreme and hostile conditions. Examples include gardening in the trenches in World War 1 and in Jewish ghettos during World War 2, and the efforts of people held at Guantamo Bay to create a garden with plastic spoons, mop handles, and seeds saved from their food. The potential of ecologically sensitive gardening and farming practices, and of the understandings that develop with them, to contribute to peace- and resilience-building also comes across in the work of inspiring organisations, such as the Permaculture Institute of El Salvador and the IDEP Foundation in Indonesia. The sense that attention to soil is a valid and important concern for anyone interested in peace (studies) also comes across in peace thinker Satish Kumar’s recent calls for a ‘new trinity’ of ‘Soil, Soul & Society’.

Not least, an understanding of soil encourages humility. As Wendell Berry – poet, essayist, novelist and farmer – has put it,

‘We cannot speak of topsoil, indeed we cannot know what it is without acknowledging at the outset that we cannot make it. We can care for it (or not), we can even, as we say, ‘build’ it, but we can do so only by assenting to, preserving, and perhaps collaborating in its own processes. … We cannot make topsoil, and we cannot make any substitute for it; we cannot do what it does. … It is making life out of death.’

(Wendell Berry, ‘Two Economies’ (1988))

The kind of humility that might come from a relationship with soil seems an important antidote to the logic of short-term profit, to the certainties implied in ‘the mathematics’, and to the pursuit of dominating power. That, too, seems worth cultivating and investing in.

Berry has defined sustainable agriculture as an agriculture that ‘does not deplete soils or people’. As Berry also suggests, the same definition probably also applies to sustainable culture more broadly. (Agri)culture driven by the demands of banks risks depleting both, undermining people’s dignity and health alongside the degradation of the very basis of life. We cannot, then, afford to ignore banks, companies, and the structural conditions that support their power, but nor can we afford to neglect investing in the patient, practical work that contributes to conserving and building soil – regardless of the headlines.

December 6, 2011

Comfort in my old age

Two years ago this weekend I travelled to London with my wife and two children to take part in ‘The Wave‘, what was supposed to be a massive public demonstration ahead of the Copenhagen negotiations on climate change. I don’t enjoy being in large crowds, especially with small children to look after, but at that time we felt a responsibility to go and take part. Many people were arguing that Copenhagen represented a last opportunity to achieve a framework for meaningful and timely action to prevent the worst scenarios for global temperature increases. The Wave was supposed to send a clear message to our political leaders that there was a growing national movement eager for a meaningful political response to climate change.

The demonstration was, in reality, quite modest. About 50,000 people came to London, and there were smaller demonstrations in other cities. The talks at Copenhagen were viewed by many as a disappointment, essentially pushing back the process for securing binding agreements to reduce carbon emissions. This delaying tactic appears to characterise the current climate negotiations in Durban, while we also learn this week of an unprecedented increase in carbon emissions. Delay perhaps also describes what most of us are doing in response to this issue – getting on with life as usual, focusing on present concerns, and waiting for the effects of climate change to be really apparent before really doing anything. There are, of course, people working hard to promote Transition Towns, or joining the latest round of protests (Occupy), but for the majority, the present seems to have the strongest grip on our imaginations.

This is most evident in the current scramble to save the financial system and restore the world to a path of Growth, whatever the costs. It is also evident, somewhat paradoxically, in the industrial action over public sector pensions in the UK last week. While at first glance this looks like people worrying about the future (as people were two years ago during The Wave), the influence of the present is in fact quite clear. Present expectations of financial security, material comfort and retirement lifestyle – and the fear that these may not be met – play an important role in motivating people to take action.

Lest I sound too critical (or hypocritical), let me come clean: I took part in the industrial action last week too, partly out of solidarity and because there are issues of principle at stake in this dispute. But I did so with a feeling of ambivalence. I find it hard to think of the future in terms of an unbroken continuity from the present, a continuity implied in the demands of public sector workers and the unions. I don’t believe the means by which a comfortable pension might be achieved – continued economic growth, involving investment in industries that are often environmentally and ethically questionable – are either viable or simply desirable (thus I am also not sympathetic to the government’s line). Indeed, my strongest sense is that if we (and here I mean We) want to have future hopes of comfort and security, then the best thing we could do is begin constructing a different kind of economy and society, by addressing the systemic and cultural causes of ecological damage and climate change, and by addressing the causes of global inequality and instability. For otherwise, if the emerging evidence about various future trends (water and food security, peak resources, conflict, and other risks) is broadly reliable, the world in 2035 (the year I might retire, if I am lucky enough to reach retirement) will be far more unstable, dangerous, and insecure than it is now, whether or not we have money to retire on.

I imagine a good number of the 50,000 people who took part in The Wave were public sector workers – teachers, nurses, and the like. I imagine that many of these people also took part in industrial action last week. I wonder how many felt ambivalent or conflicted, as I did, about their participation. Did they feel or see any contradictions? Perhaps we can take these contradictions (and they are common enough) as a fruitful starting point for conversations about what we expect from the future, and about whether our expectations are realistic or indeed justifiable. They might enable us to explore the unavoidable tension between present demands and future priorities. But let us be clear – we urgently need this conversation because whatever we do, we are making futures for ourselves right now, and not necessarily ones we would choose if we thought enough about it.

December 1, 2011