Click hereLast week’s ruling by an American court, that the world’s leading herbicide, Roundup, had contributed to the terminal illness of a school groundskeeper, brought into focus the role of agricultural technology in the provision of our food. Whether carcinogenic or not, herbicides such as Roundup and their genetically modified dance partners point to a much greater suite of threats to our planet and to humanity. This blog isn’t about Roundup. It’s about much deeper issues. It’s about accountability, connectivity and empowerment. It’s about the solution space that’s sold to us as the only way ahead, a doctrine steeped in Enlightenment thinking, and it’s about a need to re-awaken that inner voice that actually does know a lot better. It’s about technology, not as an enemy of the planet but as a co-worker. And it’s about agriculture, the most ancient and significant portal between us and the life support system that enables us.
Of crops and men
On 10th August, 2018, in a court in San Francisco, a jury found that the world’s must utilized weed killer, Roundup, and its sidekick, Ranger Pro, had contributed “substantially” to the terminal illness of a school groundskeeper, Dewayne Johnson. These herbicides were produced by the pharmaceutical giant, Monsanto, now part of the pharmaceutical super-giant, Bayer (whose employees founded the Bundesliga club, Bayer Leverkusen, in 1904). The court further deemed that Monsanto had failed to “adequately warn” of the danger. The fine, of £226 million, could spell significant problems, even for a firm of the scale of Bayer, with estimates of a further 5000 similar plaintiffs across the US. If similar fines were applied in these cases, this would amount to over one thousand trillion pounds, enough to sink Bayer itself. Bayer are appealing the verdict.
This is not the first time that the agri-chemical industry has had questions asked of it in terms of environmental impacts. On 27th April, 2018, the EU agreed on a total ban of neonicotinoid pesticides, the most widely used pesticides on the planet. Two of the three leading brands are also made by Bayer (Thiomethoxin and Imidacloprid, both of which are implicated in bumblebee population collapse and the latter in a 50% decline in invertebrates more generally and in insect-eating birds (Hallman et al., 2014, Nature 511 (7509): 341–3)). In 2013, a Bayer representative claimed that “Bayer remains convinced neonicotinoids are safe for bees, when used responsibly” (https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/bee-harming-pesticides-banned-in-europe ). The birds and the bees can’t sue, otherwise our courts would be extremely overcrowded with agri-chemical representatives and their lawyers.
The use of genetically engineered herbicide- and pesticide- resistant crops has been viewed as a technological revolution, allowing greater use of powerful pesticides and herbicides (especially when the weeds and bugs have increased immunity). Yet we have not learned from the antibiotics crisis facing us at present, where resistance has developed and now undermines the efficacy of these wonder drugs. Three hundred studies have identified more than forty major species of weed now known to by glyphosate-resistant. Similarly, large numbers of invertebrates are resistant to pesticides used with genetically modified crops.
We have failed to learn the lessons of antibiotics, where now we are carefully limiting use and varying types of drugs in order to prevent resistance building, even if a little late. But in agriculture we have poured on the herbicides and pesticides, planting our agricultural landscapes with genetically modified crops, without any thought of resistance building. The outcome is that we have produced superbugs and superweeds, not super plants.
Yet we really shouldn’t be surprised at such negative consequences for our planet. These technologies have been sold to us as part of a greater framework, the Enlightenment philosophy of technology and science, reductionist in nature and promising to liberate our true potential from the inertia of a natural world that seeks to hold us back. As Condorcet, the leading French Enlightenment philosopher, trumpeted, “Nature has fixed no limits to our hopes”. We will free ourselves from the forces of nature that eat and outcompete our crops. Weeds and insects will not stand in our way as we attempt to live far beyond our carrying capacity. Insecticides and herbicides will eradicate these irritants. Even the very product names, Roundup and Ranger Pro, evoke thoughts of cowboys at the frontier, with the theme music of Rawhide rising in the background.
“Keep movin', movin', movin'
Though they're disapprovin'
Keep them dogies movin', rawhide
Don't try to understand 'em
Just rope an' throw an' brand 'em
Soon we'll be living high and wide.”
Living high and wide, but at what cost? In Silent Spring, the ground-breaking book by Rachel Carson, published in 1962, the consequences of this reductionist thinking were laid out in stark, sharp clarity. We’ve seen chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) refrigerants and insulators destroy the ozone layer, leading to dramatic damage to coral reefs and human skin cells alike. Leaded fuel, industrial fertilizers, the expanding beef industry in tropical rainforest belts, all have made life easier and more comfortable, but at what cost to our oceans, forests and humanity?
The history of humankind has been the history of our relationship with food. From hunter-gatherers, the onset of farming, the industrialization of farming and the rapidly increasing agricultural technology sector, our relationship with the flow of energy from sun to crop to animal and humanity has understandably obsessed us. And it makes good business. Even as early as 30AD, in the writings of the Apostle Luke in the Bible, we read of an expansionist yearning within a farmer’s heart, when it is written that a rich agriculturalist reflected thus: “I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, you have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” Two thousand years later, it is much the same, at least for the shareholders.
The four horsemen of the agricultural apocalypse
With reference to the headline issue of recent days, we can ask if herbicides, pesticides, and herbicide- and pesticide-resistant crops are the best way to ensure a sufficient flow of energy into the trophic level that is the human race? It is claimed that banning glyphosate herbicides would reduce harvests by up to ten percent. But this needs to be seen in a much wider context. I would argue that our focus on interventionist strategies, based on a faulty, reductionist philosophy, has led us down a broad path towards destruction.
For hors d’oeuvres, over forty percent of agricultural productivity ends up as waste between the field and the table. This far outweighs the potential losses if herbicides were not used. It also focuses our minds on the incredible flaws in human thinking. We damage the planet significantly through steps to increase the efficiency of agricultural productivity, yet we waste almost half of this productivity.
The main course of agricultural angst lies beneath. Industrial agriculture has had massive impacts on soil. Forced irrigation, particularly in semi-arid regions, such as Australia, large swathes of China and Africa, have led to a huge disaster – soil salinization. Even the purest irrigation water contains tiny amounts of salt. Over years, especially in hot, dry regions, this salt builds up rapidly as water evaporates, leading to soil that can no longer be used. It is estimated that one third of irrigated agricultural land is affected by soil salinity. By 2050, this will rise to 50%.
Salt kills crops, devastating harvest potential. Deforestation further exacerbates the situation. Much of our agricultural land was once covered in oceans, and the salty remnant of this past lies deep in the ground. Without the trees, water is not released from the deeper soil into the atmosphere. As water tables rise, the deep-buried salts from the past oceanic history rise to the surface soil, where crop roots are poisoned. Clearing forests for greater land area use in agriculture therefore accelerates the impact, putting soil beyond agricultural use for decades. Deforestation also contributes to the other great horseman of the agricultural apocalypse heading our way, soil erosion.
As Lester W. Brown put it, “Civilization can survive the loss of its oil reserves…but it cannot survive the loss of its soil reserves”. Soil is the fragile skin through which almost all of the energy (sugar) we require for survival is captured. No soil, no plants, no sugar. This life support system is, on average, just fifteen centimetres deep. Yet over the last one hundred and fifty years, we have lost about half of the topsoil on the planet. This one hundred and fifty years has been the era of industrialized agriculture. Ninety percent of this soil erosion has been due to agriculture, land clearance (for agriculture) and overgrazing. In China, soil is being lost fifty-four times more quickly than it is being produced.
Added to this, the eroded soil usually ends up in our fresh- and salt-water ecosystems, destabilizing them, triggering toxic algal blooms and devastating fishing stocks and coral reefs. Increasing use of fertilizers, another key market for the agri-foods companies, the majority of which end up in aquatic ecosystems with devastating effects, further exacerbate the problems.
These four horsemen of the agricultural apocalypse, salt, soil, biocides and fertilizers, form a very dark shadow over our very future.
The dominance of Enlightenment thinking has led us to a belief that we are not limited by nature, but rather we take on the role of the Shakespearean Colossus, as conjured up by Cassius in the play, Julius Caesar:
“Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.”
As Caesar and many Caesars before and after him have learned, the subjugated have a habit of fighting back. Our treatment of the fragile ecosystem that is the soil, a myriad of complexity and interactivity, assaulted and raped by modern agricultural practice, is brewing up a colossal storm of its own, but of our making. Dead soil means dead humans, for we are Homo vulnerabilis, the most vulnerable and dependent of all.
So what can we do?
So what can we do? Well it’s really quite simple. We need to give up on human intelligence and embrace ecosystem intelligence. Ecosystems have survived and coped for billions of years, passing on the torch of life from generation to generation, through mass extinctions, extremes in conditions and an ever-changing set of actors. Any actor stepping out of place tends to be replaced. Central to this intelligence are three simple principles:
real-time feedback,
system-thinking
and sub-optimality.
Fundamental to ecosystem functioning are listening skills. Connectivity is a core property of life in all its myriad expressions. By continuous adjustment and response, the multiplicity of life forms, each with their multiplicity of physiological processes, adjusts to the greater context, sometimes growing, sometimes contracting. Big ears are vital pre-requisites, as is a willingness to change. Dictators don’t listen, but just demand. Let them eat cake! Humility and respect lie at the heart of a functioning ecosystem – playing your part in the greater whole.
And that brings us to systems thinking – the greater whole. Ecosystem empowerment stems not from individual power, but from a sharing and understanding rooted in the complexity of trade-offs. You can’t always get what you want, as the Rolling Stones once sang, but if you try sometimes you might find you get what you need. In other words, we must separate the wants from the needs, which are given, not taken, and settle for what empowers the ecosystem. Such empowerment taps into our individual actuation, allowing us to enjoy the power of connectivity, not only within our society but within our ecology more broadly. Our vision should not be limited by humanist Enlightenment dogma, but, rather, a deep ecology, wherein we are re-connected to our true context, the biosphere as a whole.
An inherent part of system thinking is sub-optimality. Where many demands are pressing for resolution, no single demand can be optimally met. Imagine if squirrels had not apps, which allowed them to find all the nuts they buried. There would be no new trees, no new nuts and no new squirrels. The greater the complexity, the greater the trade-off. We must turn from optimizing the human condition. Nature is sub-optimal at every level. It’s how it works. Otherwise, the entire house of cards would fall.
A place for technology
So often, arguments over sustainability have split into two camps: proponents of weak sustainability, wherein technology replaces nature by maintaining life-supporting processes, and strong sustainability, where the emphasis is on the protection of natural capital, often eschewing technology. Yet technology need not be the enemy of a sustainable planet. Indeed, it can play a central role. I argue that in order for us to re-discover the real-time feedback that lies at the heart of ecosystem intelligence, remote sensing, where satellites measure key physiological characteristics of our planet, can provide an insight never before available. By constantly monitoring the “big” picture in terms of climate, atmospheric gases, photosynthesis and nutrient content of aquatic habitats, we can educate ourselves as to the impact of our behaviour. At a local scale, intelligent design can allow our buildings and vehicles to inform us, in real-time, of our resource use, providing data on energy use and supply chain implications. Anything crossing the threshold of our homes can be bar-tagged with supply chain history and impact. Furthermore, as artificial intelligence becomes more significant in our lives, if we underpin it with ecosystem intelligence rather than with human intelligence, we will have a much better solution space within which to tackle issues. Provided that technology helps us adopt ecological intelligence, rather than merely mimicking nature out of context, then it can only be for the good. Returning to Rawhide, we can slightly re-work the lyrics to provide more appropriate background music for this era of re-integration:
“Start listenin’, listenin’, listenin’
Is Nature disapprovin'?
Stop your constant moving, rawhide
Please try to understand 'em
Don’t rope an' throw an' brand 'em
Or soon you'll be dying, high and dry.”
to edit.
Of crops and men
On 10th August, 2018, in a court in San Francisco, a jury found that the world’s must utilized weed killer, Roundup, and its sidekick, Ranger Pro, had contributed “substantially” to the terminal illness of a school groundskeeper, Dewayne Johnson. These herbicides were produced by the pharmaceutical giant, Monsanto, now part of the pharmaceutical super-giant, Bayer (whose employees founded the Bundesliga club, Bayer Leverkusen, in 1904). The court further deemed that Monsanto had failed to “adequately warn” of the danger. The fine, of £226 million, could spell significant problems, even for a firm of the scale of Bayer, with estimates of a further 5000 similar plaintiffs across the US. If similar fines were applied in these cases, this would amount to over one thousand trillion pounds, enough to sink Bayer itself. Bayer are appealing the verdict.
This is not the first time that the agri-chemical industry has had questions asked of it in terms of environmental impacts. On 27th April, 2018, the EU agreed on a total ban of neonicotinoid pesticides, the most widely used pesticides on the planet. Two of the three leading brands are also made by Bayer (Thiomethoxin and Imidacloprid, both of which are implicated in bumblebee population collapse and the latter in a 50% decline in invertebrates more generally and in insect-eating birds (Hallman et al., 2014, Nature 511 (7509): 341–3)). In 2013, a Bayer representative claimed that “Bayer remains convinced neonicotinoids are safe for bees, when used responsibly” (https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/bee-harming-pesticides-banned-in-europe ). The birds and the bees can’t sue, otherwise our courts would be extremely overcrowded with agri-chemical representatives and their lawyers.
The use of genetically engineered herbicide- and pesticide- resistant crops has been viewed as a technological revolution, allowing greater use of powerful pesticides and herbicides (especially when the weeds and bugs have increased immunity). Yet we have not learned from the antibiotics crisis facing us at present, where resistance has developed and now undermines the efficacy of these wonder drugs. Three hundred studies have identified more than forty major species of weed now known to by glyphosate-resistant. Similarly, large numbers of invertebrates are resistant to pesticides used with genetically modified crops.
We have failed to learn the lessons of antibiotics, where now we are carefully limiting use and varying types of drugs in order to prevent resistance building, even if a little late. But in agriculture we have poured on the herbicides and pesticides, planting our agricultural landscapes with genetically modified crops, without any thought of resistance building. The outcome is that we have produced superbugs and superweeds, not super plants.
Yet we really shouldn’t be surprised at such negative consequences for our planet. These technologies have been sold to us as part of a greater framework, the Enlightenment philosophy of technology and science, reductionist in nature and promising to liberate our true potential from the inertia of a natural world that seeks to hold us back. As Condorcet, the leading French Enlightenment philosopher, trumpeted, “Nature has fixed no limits to our hopes”. We will free ourselves from the forces of nature that eat and outcompete our crops. Weeds and insects will not stand in our way as we attempt to live far beyond our carrying capacity. Insecticides and herbicides will eradicate these irritants. Even the very product names, Roundup and Ranger Pro, evoke thoughts of cowboys at the frontier, with the theme music of Rawhide rising in the background.
“Keep movin', movin', movin'
Though they're disapprovin'
Keep them dogies movin', rawhide
Don't try to understand 'em
Just rope an' throw an' brand 'em
Soon we'll be living high and wide.”
Living high and wide, but at what cost? In Silent Spring, the ground-breaking book by Rachel Carson, published in 1962, the consequences of this reductionist thinking were laid out in stark, sharp clarity. We’ve seen chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) refrigerants and insulators destroy the ozone layer, leading to dramatic damage to coral reefs and human skin cells alike. Leaded fuel, industrial fertilizers, the expanding beef industry in tropical rainforest belts, all have made life easier and more comfortable, but at what cost to our oceans, forests and humanity?
The history of humankind has been the history of our relationship with food. From hunter-gatherers, the onset of farming, the industrialization of farming and the rapidly increasing agricultural technology sector, our relationship with the flow of energy from sun to crop to animal and humanity has understandably obsessed us. And it makes good business. Even as early as 30AD, in the writings of the Apostle Luke in the Bible, we read of an expansionist yearning within a farmer’s heart, when it is written that a rich agriculturalist reflected thus: “I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, you have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” Two thousand years later, it is much the same, at least for the shareholders.
The four horsemen of the agricultural apocalypse
With reference to the headline issue of recent days, we can ask if herbicides, pesticides, and herbicide- and pesticide-resistant crops are the best way to ensure a sufficient flow of energy into the trophic level that is the human race? It is claimed that banning glyphosate herbicides would reduce harvests by up to ten percent. But this needs to be seen in a much wider context. I would argue that our focus on interventionist strategies, based on a faulty, reductionist philosophy, has led us down a broad path towards destruction.
For hors d’oeuvres, over forty percent of agricultural productivity ends up as waste between the field and the table. This far outweighs the potential losses if herbicides were not used. It also focuses our minds on the incredible flaws in human thinking. We damage the planet significantly through steps to increase the efficiency of agricultural productivity, yet we waste almost half of this productivity.
The main course of agricultural angst lies beneath. Industrial agriculture has had massive impacts on soil. Forced irrigation, particularly in semi-arid regions, such as Australia, large swathes of China and Africa, have led to a huge disaster – soil salinization. Even the purest irrigation water contains tiny amounts of salt. Over years, especially in hot, dry regions, this salt builds up rapidly as water evaporates, leading to soil that can no longer be used. It is estimated that one third of irrigated agricultural land is affected by soil salinity. By 2050, this will rise to 50%.
Salt kills crops, devastating harvest potential. Deforestation further exacerbates the situation. Much of our agricultural land was once covered in oceans, and the salty remnant of this past lies deep in the ground. Without the trees, water is not released from the deeper soil into the atmosphere. As water tables rise, the deep-buried salts from the past oceanic history rise to the surface soil, where crop roots are poisoned. Clearing forests for greater land area use in agriculture therefore accelerates the impact, putting soil beyond agricultural use for decades. Deforestation also contributes to the other great horseman of the agricultural apocalypse heading our way, soil erosion.
As Lester W. Brown put it, “Civilization can survive the loss of its oil reserves…but it cannot survive the loss of its soil reserves”. Soil is the fragile skin through which almost all of the energy (sugar) we require for survival is captured. No soil, no plants, no sugar. This life support system is, on average, just fifteen centimetres deep. Yet over the last one hundred and fifty years, we have lost about half of the topsoil on the planet. This one hundred and fifty years has been the era of industrialized agriculture. Ninety percent of this soil erosion has been due to agriculture, land clearance (for agriculture) and overgrazing. In China, soil is being lost fifty-four times more quickly than it is being produced.
Added to this, the eroded soil usually ends up in our fresh- and salt-water ecosystems, destabilizing them, triggering toxic algal blooms and devastating fishing stocks and coral reefs. Increasing use of fertilizers, another key market for the agri-foods companies, the majority of which end up in aquatic ecosystems with devastating effects, further exacerbate the problems.
These four horsemen of the agricultural apocalypse, salt, soil, biocides and fertilizers, form a very dark shadow over our very future.
The dominance of Enlightenment thinking has led us to a belief that we are not limited by nature, but rather we take on the role of the Shakespearean Colossus, as conjured up by Cassius in the play, Julius Caesar:
“Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.”
As Caesar and many Caesars before and after him have learned, the subjugated have a habit of fighting back. Our treatment of the fragile ecosystem that is the soil, a myriad of complexity and interactivity, assaulted and raped by modern agricultural practice, is brewing up a colossal storm of its own, but of our making. Dead soil means dead humans, for we are Homo vulnerabilis, the most vulnerable and dependent of all.
So what can we do?
So what can we do? Well it’s really quite simple. We need to give up on human intelligence and embrace ecosystem intelligence. Ecosystems have survived and coped for billions of years, passing on the torch of life from generation to generation, through mass extinctions, extremes in conditions and an ever-changing set of actors. Any actor stepping out of place tends to be replaced. Central to this intelligence are three simple principles:
real-time feedback,
system-thinking
and sub-optimality.
Fundamental to ecosystem functioning are listening skills. Connectivity is a core property of life in all its myriad expressions. By continuous adjustment and response, the multiplicity of life forms, each with their multiplicity of physiological processes, adjusts to the greater context, sometimes growing, sometimes contracting. Big ears are vital pre-requisites, as is a willingness to change. Dictators don’t listen, but just demand. Let them eat cake! Humility and respect lie at the heart of a functioning ecosystem – playing your part in the greater whole.
And that brings us to systems thinking – the greater whole. Ecosystem empowerment stems not from individual power, but from a sharing and understanding rooted in the complexity of trade-offs. You can’t always get what you want, as the Rolling Stones once sang, but if you try sometimes you might find you get what you need. In other words, we must separate the wants from the needs, which are given, not taken, and settle for what empowers the ecosystem. Such empowerment taps into our individual actuation, allowing us to enjoy the power of connectivity, not only within our society but within our ecology more broadly. Our vision should not be limited by humanist Enlightenment dogma, but, rather, a deep ecology, wherein we are re-connected to our true context, the biosphere as a whole.
An inherent part of system thinking is sub-optimality. Where many demands are pressing for resolution, no single demand can be optimally met. Imagine if squirrels had not apps, which allowed them to find all the nuts they buried. There would be no new trees, no new nuts and no new squirrels. The greater the complexity, the greater the trade-off. We must turn from optimizing the human condition. Nature is sub-optimal at every level. It’s how it works. Otherwise, the entire house of cards would fall.
A place for technology
So often, arguments over sustainability have split into two camps: proponents of weak sustainability, wherein technology replaces nature by maintaining life-supporting processes, and strong sustainability, where the emphasis is on the protection of natural capital, often eschewing technology. Yet technology need not be the enemy of a sustainable planet. Indeed, it can play a central role. I argue that in order for us to re-discover the real-time feedback that lies at the heart of ecosystem intelligence, remote sensing, where satellites measure key physiological characteristics of our planet, can provide an insight never before available. By constantly monitoring the “big” picture in terms of climate, atmospheric gases, photosynthesis and nutrient content of aquatic habitats, we can educate ourselves as to the impact of our behaviour. At a local scale, intelligent design can allow our buildings and vehicles to inform us, in real-time, of our resource use, providing data on energy use and supply chain implications. Anything crossing the threshold of our homes can be bar-tagged with supply chain history and impact. Furthermore, as artificial intelligence becomes more significant in our lives, if we underpin it with ecosystem intelligence rather than with human intelligence, we will have a much better solution space within which to tackle issues. Provided that technology helps us adopt ecological intelligence, rather than merely mimicking nature out of context, then it can only be for the good. Returning to Rawhide, we can slightly re-work the lyrics to provide more appropriate background music for this era of re-integration:
“Start listenin’, listenin’, listenin’
Is Nature disapprovin'?
Stop your constant moving, rawhide
Please try to understand 'em
Don’t rope an' throw an' brand 'em
Or soon you'll be dying, high and dry.”
to edit.
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