Farms Without Farmers And Other Really Bad Ideas
Dear human: Your only job now is to eat more, get fat, get sick and die slowly
This week I had the pleasure of being in a workshop where two powerhouse women shared their views on the future of farming. One is Dr. Elaine Ingham who founded the Soil Food Web School in Oregon, US. The other is Dr. Vandana Shiva who is a physicist, ecologist, author and activist who founded Navdanya, a movement for biodiversity conservation and farmers' rights (with a learning center in Doon Valley, Uttarakhand, North India).
There were no fancy PowerPoints. No scripted messages.
Just two highly experienced women answering questions and sharing their thoughts on the importance of living soil in creating healthy food (their version of the future of farming!)
Their take home message is not a new one.
For humans to be healthy, we need healthy food. For food to be healthy, plants need living soil. Living soil is the microbiome generating access to nutrients for the plant in the same way that your gut microbiome creates access to nutrients from the food you eat. Healthy soil, healthy humans.
You can listen and watch the exchange for yourself HERE on YouTube.
The thing is, what’s happening today on industrial farms is not creating healthy food and it’s not creating living soil.
Dr. Shiva only briefly mentioned the “farms without farmers” push happening right now around the globe when she spoke this week. It’s a concept that clobbered me over the head when I later thought about the long-term ramifications of what this phrase means.
It’s a rather dystopian tale of corporate takeover. While we may not be turning into human batteries for machines like in The Matrix, we have a strange life-imitating-art thing taking shape.
The industrial food system is working hard to turn you into a sick, fat and slow-dying cash cow.
And farmers are getting in the way.
So fair warning – this is a rant wrapped in story-telling clothes. But it ends well, because we get to decide how the final chapters get written.
What is meant by farms without farmers?
At face value, farms without farmers is being sold as the next technological advancement necessary for global food production and feeding the world. No longer tied to the hard work and long hours of life on the farm, these high-tech solutions are being sold as a panacea for creating “cheaper” food while “liberating” farmers.
But seriously, who are they kidding? I think their story reads something like a Dear John letter to farmers:
Imagine dear farmer, as you look out at your fields, all the light touches is owned by Monsanto and John Deere. Your services are no longer really required. You are now, at best an icon, a caricature that we will draw on the packaging to appeal to folks who still remember who you once were. All is not lost, we still need you (for now) to check the monitors and turn an occasional knob.
Because there are vast computer-driven systems that control the lights, feed, water, and humidity inside your ginormous bank-owned hen and hog houses. And outside your tractor is now satellite-guided to ensure that every seed is optimally placed according to our model of how the world works for maximum production. Make sure you step out of the way of the self-driven models so you don’t get run over. That would look bad for us.
And please pay your subscription fees on time. Just remember that the fine print ensures that if you do something we don’t like (or speak out), we can just turn your tractors off from space. I’m sure it is comforting to know that we are always watching you.
Please don’t sweat over your risks while spraying the crops. We have drones in the works that will drown those GMO seeds with enough toxic chemicals to make sure not a single insect can move out there or useless weed cannot grow. Space in the field is money after all, worth enough to warrant our over-priced laser guided systems we are making you buy if you want any hope of paying your mortgage this month.
Don’t worry about the bees either. We are working on sprays to trick plants into producing crops without them. Nothing to go wrong here. Everything is replaceable with technology. And if there are no bees outside of our (your) fields, oh well then, because that just means more customers to buy our foods instead. We see this as a win-win.
So dear farmer, just open that bag of enriched, cheese-like flavored potato-like chips, sit back, and enjoy the ride. Watch how we maximize yield per acre. Eyes on the screen.
- - - - This story line was brought to you by the false narrative of maximum yield per acre - farmers are only included for demonstration purposes
This is our future without farmers? No one left to witness how food is grown. No one in the way of doing whatever it takes.
Maximum yield per acre.
Not nutrition per acre. Not hungry people fed per acre.
Just profit per acre.
Dr. Shiva talks about how heirloom plants may be “less productive”, but have higher nutritional value in very real terms like the percentage of calcium or iron they contain. Whereas more and more modern crops have to be enriched during processing to restore lost nutrient content.
We are seeing the results of technological fixes to food in the sky-rocketing health care costs. But the corporate lobbyists are certain there can’t possibly be a link to food, even if all the bees are dying.
And the plot thickens
Turns out we are at a VERY interesting point in our food narrative. While there is this new push for everyone to become vegetarian, corporations will go broke selling broccoli to the converted.
That just can’t happen.
Instead people need to be convinced that processed vegetables hold the key to health.
Cue the veggie protein powders, nut milks, and deep-fake plant-based foods. These are the new ticket to profits. Because anything plant-based is totally healthy for you, right? Wink-wink.
And it doesn’t stop there.
There’s more in store!
No wait – not IN THE STORE – because shopping for groceries online is the answer for such a boring chore like buying your food. Let someone else do that for you.
Then we can all stop pretending that you actually have food choice while you wander down the aisles.
Some food-like items will just arrive at your door, maybe with a few leaves of parsley thrown in, just like the way restaurants used to garnish plates back in the 70’s.
Oh don’t you look so modern, having those groceries delivered to your door!
I’m having flashbacks to the 70’s TV dinner commercials working hard to sell “cheap and convenient” to the masses. We’ve been fooled before.
And the storyline to consumers starts to sound like this:
No dear consumer, don’t worry your pretty little head when your body starts to complain about the lack of real food. There’s a pill for that.
And we’ll make sure you feel just enough better so that you have to keep taking those medications for the rest of your life.
Please just forget that in 2018 we were caught asking the question: Is curing patients a sustainable business model. Shhhhh. Just let that one slide and keep looking over here. Here’s a new pretty food label to confuse you.
Yup, we are climbing into those plastic battery trays from the Matrix ourselves right about now. Except ours look more like box stalls for mindless sheeple chewing their tastes-like-real-meat-plant-based-so-it-must-be-healthy-food-like alternatives.
Don’t misunderstand me. I have nothing against vegans, vegetarians, omnivores or carnivores. Eat whatever makes you happy! Just don’t pretend that ultra-processed foods in any format are going to make you healthy, end world hunger, or save the planet. And farms without farmers is a one-way ticket to higher food prices and a few more billionaires sucking on your wallet.
We are on track to lose control of the entire food system. Field to table is on its way to being globally controlled for profit-driven yield maximization. World policy will not get in the way because these same corporations are busy helping to write the trade agreements to make sure they have the upper hand. That policy piece was a missing link for me that Dr. Shiva brought up. It’s getting harder and harder to do things differently when the big guys write the rules.
Just check out what’s happening in France with farmers so far in January 2024.
This story I am spinning isn’t exactly science fiction set in a time far, far into the future. It’s playing out in real time like a slow motion gun shot. You know the scene? Where Keanu Reeves bends backward to avoid the gunfire. The question is, can we dodge those bullets?
We can write a new ending
Because:
There are still people in the world who know how to grow food themselves.
There are still people in the world holding onto diverse seeds for heirloom plants.
There are still places with living soil that can be enhanced and multiplied.
You don’t have to quit your job and go live on the back 40 to be part of a food revolution.
This storyline changes:
When you choose to eat whole foods that support your health.
When you plant a few seeds and grow even a mouthful of your own food.
When you shop at a Farmer’s Market, or buy from a local farmer who is using regenerative farm practices and caring for the soil.
When you educate yourself about the effects of food additives and ultra-processing on your health.
When you find diets that let you reverse the impacts of disease, instead of diets that let you live with those diseases (Here is a great Ted Talk on reversing Type II diabetes).
So hats off to the people of Maine, USA who voted in November 2021 to create a constitutional right to food! We need more of that.
Cheers to all the folks in Canada who complained LOUDLY when Loblaws tried to end their 50% discount on food that’s about to expire. They were so loud that the company had to reverse course and try to spin this as a feel-good story about how they listened to their customers, instead of the smarmy move to hit income-challenged Canadians by making them pay full price for food that would be thrown out the next day.
We are the seeds
Dr. Shiva talks about how seeds are the tiniest things on the plant and yet without them we would not be alive. She reminds us to never underestimate the power of doing one small thing, of the power of planting seeds.
Just don’t fall for the corporate greenwash about healthier and cheaper food ahead. Farms without farmers is a move to take over the food supply and make sure profits on food never falter. Don’t step into that box stall. Head out into a garden instead.
This year at The Naturalized Human, I am completing the Mind-Body-Food Connection series and developing a Seed Saving Program for paid subscribers. These will start rolling out in weekly installments, along with some gardening posts for free subscribers, in the next few weeks. It’s going to be a great growing season. Your support is deeply appreciated.
This is a great article - I agree with eveything you said.