DOWN to EARTH UITNODIGING We Zijn Bijzonder Blij U Te Mogen Uitnodigen Voor De
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DOWN TO EARTH TO DOWN UITNODIGING We zijn bijzonder blij u te mogen uitnodigen voor de PROMOTIE van Joost Visser op dinsdag, 13 april 2010 16.00 uur in de Aula van de Wageningen DOWN TO EARTH Universiteit gebouw 362, Gen. Foulkesweg 1, Wageningen Aansluitend RECEPTIE vanaf 17.30 uur Tevens bent u van harte welkom op het PROMOTIEFEEST op zaterdag, 24 april vanaf 20.00 uur in de Lichtboog Kruisboog 22 , Houten Ceremoniemeesters: Sergej Visser [email protected], Roeland Smith [email protected] Jozef Visser Jozef Cadeautip: een bijdrage voor Stichting A Rocha, een internationale beweging van christenen die geboeid zijn door Gods schepping en zich inzetten voor het behoud ervan. Jozef Visser Visser_Omslag.indd 1 15-03-10 12:57 ! $"-$-$- --(!$" $"%%"$"$!%&"!$"%%%!'$"#, !!!!($%&* $"-$--"'+)$ $"%%"$""!" %!"!" "* !$"%%"$""%"#*"'&'$ $!($%&*" %&$ $"-$--$'!"$,!($%&*"% $"-$- - --- "$&%,!($%&*"!!! $"--$-- $%!,!($%&*"$ $"-$- -!$%,!($%&*" %&$ Down to earth A historical-sociological analysis of the rise and fall of ‘industrial’ agriculture and of the prospects for the re-rooting of agriculture from the factory to the local farmer and ecology Jozef Visser Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of doctor at Wageningen University by authority of the Rector Magnificus prof.dr. M.J.Kropff, in the presence of the Thesis Committee appointed by the Academic Board to be defended in public on Tuesday 13 April 2010 at 4 PM in the Aula "+%%$ ")!&"$& 6:3;(##- %%,!!!!($%&*,!!! /31210 24#&$%,)&$$!%- ' $%!!%!!'& :89.:1.9696.75:.9 1 Preface On my desk I have a text from the ancient ‘wisdom literature’. Some three millennia old, its proverbs are as fresh as ever. With an important focus on stewardship, they are solidly geared to ordinary people. As to their thrust, just ponder the following one: ‘Better a plate of vegetables where love rules, than a fattened ox with hatred’. In a way post-war, all-out modernization focussed on the fattened ox, loudly declaring that all the rest would follow. For it was decidedly not only the communists who believed in an economic base, that then decides about all the rest as its super-structure. When the learned van der Leeuw, in the first post-war Dutch cabinet, made a serious effort to approach the arts as a truly communal endeavour, mainliners indignantly dismissed him. That signalized the end of a remarkable episode, in the Netherlands, in which culture was stimulated with modest means, geared to common people at the local level. In the decades leading up to this remarkable episode quite a few of the best minds from the youth movement and from the Open University’s precursor invested more of their time and energy than was good for them. Independent minds like van Eijk and Kohnstamm were among them. But after the war the tides soon turned against their efforts. Similar decisions to let ‘the economy’ prevail were made everywhere. Impressed by the ‘powerful’ solutions of the great victor, the USA, both the old and the new nations decided for an all-out modernization after its presumed example. In older nations, local life-styles in combination with more traditional systems of governance temporarily constituted a counter weight to the modernization drive of the government. But all this could only slow down the consequences of this totalitarian drive, which eroded the economy’s embeddedness in the local ecological and socio-cultural realm. Where traditional systems of government were under more pressure still, and local life-styles more vulnerable still than in the West, the modernization craze proved its eroding qualities most openly. After half a century much of Africa is in ruins, a prey to dictators from within and to powers from without, more often than not in puzzling combinations. But then, priority was granted to a ‘production plan’ at the expense of the local socio-cultural and ecological realms. Yet, at the start it was difficult to discern this dark end of the way. After the war there was widespread deprivation, and strong measures were required. Soon a secularized version of the Salvation Army’s ‘Soup, soap and salvation’ had its day. For who would quarrel with this sequence of priorities: food - health - education? But, of course, the real issue was the disregard of the local level, where the Salvation Army and similar organisations had always focussed its efforts. After half a century, we are back at exactly that level, and not only for Africa. We now emphasize the need to improve the local social justice systems and the use of local resources. The importance of the ability of people to live in harmony with their neighbours and the local ecology is being rediscovered. In a painful way we learned an old lesson: it is ‘wisdom’ that alone lays sustainable foundations for economic life. The ‘strong’ economy envisaged by the post-war modernization craze is an illusion, and leaves demol- ished local resources and communities behind. Re-focussing on the ground-level of human life, where people interact, also implies re- embedding the economy in the local socio-cultural and ecological realms. Though it is still common to hear the verdict ‘impossible!’, that verdict ought to be reserved for the urban- ization and deruralization that is at the core of post-war modernization. There is no socio- ecological future for our megacities and their devastated hinterlands. Yet, for half a century we were all so obsessed by modernization, that we were actually erasing the traces of other ways of life. We may no longer have the great faith of those post-war decades, but its consequences fill our horizons, so that it has become difficult to link up with tradition. 2 Yet, some of its modes of existence have proved their sustainability for ages already. Aspects of that viability emanate from the words of wisdom expressed in the ancient text in front of me. The central target of the destructive thrust of modernization was (and is) the peasant and traditional agriculture. The massive government involvement with the agriculture/food sector in the industrial countries is illustrated by their production- and export-subventions, totaling some 350 billion dollars for 2004 alone. Peasants everywhere are exposed to such powerful pressure from the rich countries that they are being annihilated. But note this pressure is exerted by the government and by big agro-concerns, with their ‘industrial agriculture’ an artifact, its existence completely dependent on past and present government power. Even a cursory look at its ecological and social credentials teaches us that sustainability is out of the question here. Quite to the contrary, this ‘industrial agriculture’ has a devastating effect on the industrial countries themselves. Its concept of ‘productivity’ is debilitating, and paralyzes timely processes of re-evaluation and policy making. It is urgent to dispel the sense of fatum that is connected with the ‘industrialization’ of agriculture and its supposed inevitability. That notion of urgency came to me when, in the late spring of 2000, Bob Goudzwaard and I had the privilege to speak with the council members of the CCA, a recently formed organisation of mostly small farmers in the Netherlands. The ability of those people was evidently as big as their mountain of problems. These farmers were able enough, but they faced a mountain of problems because of the government’s grim policies of ‘industrialization’ of agriculture, that since long had degenerated into an escape from reality. In less disabling circumstances these were resourceful farmers. Yet, how to live and labour when government and agro-concerns erode your very way of life and production process? Still the resourcefulness of those farmers is a core element disproving the notion of fatum. Although the living reality of farmer and farming is in constant danger because of our all-out modernization policies, here before our eyes there was the core of this living reality: people surviving decades of policy making aimed at their eradication. Without any doubt this testifies to their solidity and viability. Jan Douwe’s ‘De virtuele boer’, as well as Bob’s explanations of the economic side of it all, were a great help to me to get a better idea of the many aspects of this viability. I could now refer already to two traditions that in some way had resisted half a century of all-out modernization policies: the tradition of the small farmers, and part of the academic tradition. Resistance offered by academia was remarkable indeed, considering the popular opinion that ‘science’ was at the heart of the modernization drive. But I had exper- ience enough with the reality of tradition in e.g. chemistry to know that, ultimately, it would escape re-definition by either government or big industry (its tradition predated those present powers for centuries). On close analysis, the traditions of science would also be valuable in evaluating the massive ‘modernization project’. When the research scheme was agreed upon with Jan Douwe and Bob, we realised it would be quite complex. Agriculture itself is complex indeed and has its connections with a lot of other fields. Yet the need to get the peasant/small farmer in focus again helped to retain a unity in the research projects that were to follow. As to their wide scope there was no escape: time and again previous research on specific questions proved to be fragmentary only. And so, always having been an avid reader, I yet had to shift to a higher gear to explore the vast amount of literature. Putting it all into historical perspective was the ‘thread of Ariadne’ in (re)ordering the huge amount of literature that became available in the course of the projects. Gradually it turned out how strongly the modernization paradigm influenced us all. Its exclusive tendency to concentrate on the present had dissolved historical memory.