www.ecologicalcitizen.net LONG ARTICLE

Transforming human life on our home planet, perennially

The development of agriculture is one of the key fault lines in human history, the starting Wes Jackson, point for the human project of dominating the planet. As the catastrophic consequences of that domination become undeniable, an ecospheric framework that recognizes the Aubrey Streit problem of agriculture should be at the centre of an analysis and critique of the ecological Krug, Bill Vitek and social failures of the industrial worldview that shapes today’s world. Ecosphere and Robert Studies, a new education programme being developed out of the perennial vision of The Land Institute, offers such a framework. By ‘driving knowledge out of its categories’ and Jensen adopting an ‘ignorance-based worldview’, scholars, teachers and activists can collaborate About the authors in experimental and experiential workshops that aim to create a perennial culture, challenging the short-term, unsustainable vision of the dominant culture, especially in See following page. affluent societies such as the US. Citation Jackson W, Streit Krug A, or those who are willing to face agriculture: Natural Systems Agriculture, Vitek B and Jensen R (2018) the multiple, cascading crises that which is based around perennial grains Transforming human life on Fhumans have created, one task is grown in mixtures, rather than annuals our home planet, perennially. analysis – how did we get here? In the grown in monocultures. A new Ecosphere The Ecological Citizen 2: 43–6. 200,000 years of Homo sapiens, what have Studies programme nurtures and explores been key thresholds of systemic change? this perennial thinking through research Keywords A good case can be made for agriculture, and education – all based in an ecocentric Agriculture; anthropocentrism; which the polymath scientist Jared worldview that challenges the dominant human–nature dualism; Diamond (1987) called “the worst mistake industrial model that currently defines societal change; in the history of the human race.” Three ways of feeding both bodies and minds. sustainability decades later, historian Yuval Noah Harari This article outlines our approach, (2015: 77) called the Agricultural Revolution including a diagnosis of the human “history’s biggest fraud.” When we started agricultural past and present in a broader taking control of other animals’ lives and ecospheric context which resonates with breaking the soil to produce energy-rich other ecocentric projects, while building on grain, we intervened in ecosystems in the lessons learned on the Kansas prairies ways we could not predict or control, to the that are home to The Land Institute. detriment of many organisms – including humans. The history: The 10,000-year With more than 7 billion people on the problem of agriculture planet, we are not going to return to hunting When humans began to generate surpluses and gathering. But around the world, often by domesticating plants and animals about under the banner of ‘agroecology’, people 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, a conceptual are using modern science and traditional split between ‘culture’ and ‘nature’ knowledge to develop ways of farming emerged, with human culture assumed that are less ecologically and socially to be separate from, and privileged over, destructive. non-human nature. This domination– Further information Over the past four decades, The Land subordination relationship, with humans For more information on the Institute (https://landinstitute.org/) has claiming dominion over the world, also Ecosphere Studies programme developed what we hold to be one of the came to define relationships within the at The Land Institute, visit: most promising projects in sustainable human family and human society. Social https://is.gd/ecostudies.

The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 1 2018 43 Transforming human life on our home planet, perennially www.ecologicalcitizen.net

hierarchies, organized around such statuses of the ecosphere over humans (in time, as sex or gender, class, race or ethnicity, inclusiveness, complexity, evolutionary and national citizenship, structure most creativity and diversity), the ecosphere is societies today and influence the control of a proper ‘boundary of causation’ (naming surpluses; deep disparities in wealth and the forces that create our world) within power are the norm within and between the cosmos. At the next level down in the contemporary human societies. hierarchy of structure, ecosystems become The depletion of soil and other the primary focus for human investigations, resources by humans intensified with as the ‘boundaries of consideration’ (the industrialization. Ongoing imperial and scope of what humans reasonably can, and settler–colonial structures, ideologically should, pay attention to). justified as advancing ‘civilization’, have What knowledge and practices are been particularly dependent upon material needed to create and maintain stable scaffolding from the five relatively non- and just communities that can remain renewable sources of carbon: soil, trees, in a sustainable relationship with coal, oil and natural gas. Highly dense our ecosphere? The Land Institute’s fossil-carbon energy, and the advanced mission statement emphasizes, “When technology used to extract and process people, land, and community are resources, have destroyed local wisdom as one, all three members prosper” by treating whole ecosystems as if they (https://is.gd/TLImission). We hold this to were mere collections of inanimate parts, be a truth that must become self-evident: leading to crises that affect essentially all Our shared human responsibility is to live ecosystems. on, not dominate, our home planet. To address the social–ecological trauma The conceptual shift: Earth alive! of agriculture and the industrial world, we Moving from a human-centric to an must voluntarily live within biophysical ecocentric perspective begins with a limits to make possible a post-growth, critique of the living–dead dualism. Stan sunshine-powered future. We must Rowe (2003) suggested we imagine the evaluate human systems and projects perspective from inside a cell: from such not by their short-term productivity for a viewpoint it might appear that there are humans alone, but rather by the long- some moving or living parts and other term flourishing of ecosystems, including non-moving or non-living parts. But from humans. an outside view, the whole cell is seen as living, with that life being the result of the The process: Driving knowledge About the authors participation of all its components. out of its categories Wes Jackson is President Emeritus of The Land Viewing life only as a property of This requires that we integrate insights Institute, Salina, KS, organisms has led some humans to treat from all academic disciplines – core USA, where he founded the planet as a mine from which to extract sciences, applied sciences, engineering, the institute’s Ecosphere resources and a dump into which to discard social sciences, humanities, the arts – Studies programme. wastes, rather than as a home to care and recognize the value of disparate ways Aubrey Streit Krug, Bill for. Viewing humans as supreme among of knowing, from modern to indigenous Vitek and Robert Jensen collaborate with Wes in creatures has led to the instrumental or traditional perspectives. that programme. treatment of fellow organisms. What is We do not reject reductionist science

Aubrey is a postdoctoral considered ‘dead’, ‘inanimate’ or ‘not- completely, but promote caution and fellow at The Land human’ is deemed relevant only to the greater awareness of the emergent Institute. Bill is a extent it can be exploited for human use. properties of complex systems. A graceful philosophy professor Earth’s atmosphere, lithosphere and backing out of our messes – created from at Clarkson University, hydrosphere are not separate from the the inevitable unintended consequences Potsdam, NY, USA. Robert is a journalism professor at biosphere but essential parts of a living of our actions – is more likely to be the University of Texas at whole – the ecosphere, our foundational possible if the scale of human activity Austin, TX, USA. unit of analysis. Because of the priority is kept small enough. The scientific

44 The Ecological Citizen Vol 2 No 1 2018 www.ecologicalcitizen.net Transforming human life on our home planet, perennially

method remains our best hope to turn where difference will generate tension away from unsustainable practices and conflict but ultimately build strength if we think rigorously and act with and resilience. humility. The analytical expression of knowledge produced by science must be The practice: The human both challenged and complemented with estate of grief and joy artistic and spiritual inquiry, always with Minor modifications to the existing history as a guide. trajectory of the human species are Given the damage humans have done inadequate; what is needed is revolutionary to ecosystems, we cannot assume human change in theory and practice. If there is knowledge is adequate to control the world to be an on-going, large-scale human and should adopt an “ignorance-based presence on Earth, the energy and worldview” (Jack son, 2005). Because resource consumption that most affluent we are always far more ignorant than humans take for granted – and which knowledgeable (a truth well captured in many non-affluent humans aspire to – Growing plants the saying ‘The more you know, the more cannot continue. We thus reject fantasies “ you know you don’t know’), we must of unlimited growth. with deep roots become better students of exits, looking Conventional thinking naively asserts in a diverse for the soft landings necessary when that we can solve our problems with community suggests knowledge-based plans go awry. increasingly sophisticated technology a model for human Eco-social knowledge will be attentive powered by renewable energy, but such communities. to the ecological realities that shape technological fundamentalism is a dead ” culture, politics and economics. Human end (Cox, 2017). Rather than pretending creativity, expansive as it has been, cannot to solve the problem of maintaining transcend biophysical limits for long and the current population or affluent is always subordinate to the creativity consumption patterns, Ecosphere Studies of the ecosphere. Arrogance in the short imagines a different world, without term reduces options in the future. guarantees but with foundational ideas Driving knowledge out of its categories for an ecologically tuned future. – learning from, but transcending the Since agriculture began, humans have boundaries of, academic disciplines – become a species out of context, with happens by bringing together scholars, many of us living in arrangements far activists, teachers and students to pursue beyond the scale in which we evolved, collaborative research and to learn requiring us to work far beyond the scope through experimental and experiential of our competence. We cannot return to workshops. To address how young the pre-agricultural past, and we can no people are socialized into an extractive longer pretend that technological miracles worldview in ideas and resources, we will secure our future. We must reconsider seek a transformation of education and our quest for surplus and the domination– economy – of ways of thinking and subordination dynamic that arises out making a living. of grain agriculture’s generation of such Natural Systems Agriculture is a model surplus. for moving forward deliberately, rather People are imagining such satisfying than waiting for collapsing ecosystems futures, but it is naive to ignore the grief and social chaos. Growing plants with that we will experience. Humans have deep roots in a diverse community always lived, as Wendell Berry (1996: 106) suggests a model for human communities. puts it, on “the human estate of grief and Instead of rootless modern life with its joy,” but the accumulated harm of the incessant striving for upward mobility, past 10,000 years means we face a grief a perennial culture would encourage that will be unprecedented in human communities rooted in a place but capable history. Our best course embraces the joy of dealing with inevitable change – places and refuses to turn away from the grief. n

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References

Berry W (1996) The Unsettling of America: Culture and Harari YN (2015) Sapiens: A brief history of humankind. agriculture (3rd edition). Sierra Club Books, San Harper Collins, New York, NY, USA. Francisco, CA, USA. Jackson W (2005) Toward an ignorance-based Cox S (2017) Renewables alone won’t save us. Dissent, world view. The Land Report 81. Available at 9 November. Available at https://is.gd/uRJzap (accessed https://is.gd/YNhUve (accessed March 2018). March 2018). Diamond J (1987) The worst mistake in the history of Rowe S (2003) The living Earth and its ethical priority. the human race. Discover Magazine, May. Available at The Trumpeter 19(2). Available at https://is.gd/ZylDsh https://is.gd/95ENpl (accessed March 2018). (accessed March 2018).

Incandescent

Painting series by Jake Grewal

About the artist: Jake is a 22-year- old painter based in London, UK. His current body of work arose love for the landscape. Visiting Borneo last summer he observed the effects of deforestation, especially in the cases of palm oil farms and human-caused fires.

About the artworks: All oil on canvas.

Higher-resolution versions: https://is.gd/ecoartwork

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