Agrarian Thought

Let us consider briefly the role of agriculture in environmental thought because, until recently, environmental ethics and environmental thought have tended to ignore agriculture. As above, agriculture is inherently relational, that is, we work with the earth and intervene in her processes to produce food. Most environmental thought, though not all, has focused on preserving wilderness and iconic species, such as elephants and polar bears. Farmland and pigs just haven't had the same appeal, and perhaps the idea that agricultural lands are “used” or somehow tainted has led many environmentalists to focus on more aesthetically appealing sites. However, Dana and Laura Jackson note that the North American Midwest has become an “ecological sacrifice zone” in which problems of soil erosion, loss of water, and contamination of soil and groundwater are perceived as compromises necessary to “feed the world” (2002, 14). Today many environmental organizations including the Sierra Club and Conservation International address agriculture and sustainable livelihoods in addition to wilderness preservation.

Considering our agricultural practices—or our interventions into the land—offers a tremendous opportunity to choose how we want to interact with the land. Conservation or preservation can mean simply leaving land alone, or using it lightly as exemplified in the “leave no trace” ethos of many backpackers. However, agriculture—or gardening—requires a certain intimacy or responsiveness to the demands of the partner; as a gardener, I can't simply impose my will on my garden. (Think of our language of tending or cultivating a garden.) I do want my garden to produce food, but I also need to think about what sort of gardener I want to be. My relationships with my garden, or, more broadly, my relationships with food, are embedded in a series of relationships, including relationships with other people, near and far. How we produce our food and our choices about the foods we consume reflect the quality of our relationships with others.

Religious and faith‐based perspectives provide models to consider our relations with other being in a holistic manner. In one sense, a holistic approach would mean recognizing the broader effects of our food production systems on people and animals. Agrarian thinkers such as Wendell Berry, Fred Kirschenmann, and, more recently, Norman Wirzba have made us aware of the social consequences of contemporary food production, such as rural depopulation in the American Midwest. In response, they have asked us to think about our agricultural relations holistically, to move beyond profit and yields, questioning if higher yields result in less hunger. Where does all the food go, and who receives the food? Theologian John Cobb suggests that we focus on “planetism” or reverence for the earth rather than economism, our current obsession with productivity and consumption (Cobb ; Zuzworsky , 187–88).

These Christian‐oriented agrarians are echoed by voices from multiple traditions. Winona LaDuke, an Ojibwe activist from the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota, argues that corporate control of food production and seed has severed the religious, nutritional, and agricultural relations associate with harvesting wild rice (). Similarly, Vandana Shiva warns us of the devastating consequences when farmers lose the cultural capital and indigenous knowledge associated with small‐scale agriculture (). All of these writers claim that the industrial model of agriculture is broken and leads to increased hunger and environmental devastation. Despite representing multiple religious traditions, they are united in their call for a holistic approach to food production and renewed efforts to repair our agricultural relations.

I want to explore this concept of agricultural relationality a bit more deeply to see how it might help us approach the global food crisis. Although we can easily see a number of commonalities between different religious traditions, compassion toward animals for example, there is also considerable variation in how different religious traditions conceptualize relationships between humans, the earth, and the divine. To explore this concept a bit more deeply, I'll look specifically at Christianity and Buddhism as examples to see how they might suggest different models or practices.

Abrahamic Traditions

Historically, Christians—as well as Jews and Muslims—have drawn on concepts of stewardship to determine how best humans should act upon the earth. In these traditions, a divine being who has created all beings has tasked humans with stewardship, the responsibility of caring for the earth and the beings of the earth. The Biblical tradition establishes a hierarchy, from God down to the lowliest of creatures, and over time theologians, scholars, and practitioners have debated how humans should fulfill this role. Christian thought has vacillated between interpretations of stewardship ranging from domination to forms of benevolent tyranny to gentle nudges (Santmire ).

Lynn White's article “The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis,” published in , argued that historically stewardship has been interpreted, or at least enacted, as a form of domination, with little regard for the well‐being of other created beings. In a subsequent article, “Christianity and the Survival of Creation,” Wendell Berry excoriated Christians for abusing the earth and stated that “Christian organizations, to this day, remain largely indifferent to the rape and plunder of the world and of its traditional cultures” (Berry ). But he also added that anti‐Christian environmentalists (and some Christians) should, perhaps, actually read the Bible because it contains a multitude of passages affirming both the value of creation and our responsibility to maintain God's gifts. Today, many evangelicals have embraced Creation Care, recognizing that humans have a responsibility to care for all of God's creation, that to wantonly harm the earth is disrespectful to God, or sinful.

More recently, scholars and theologians, including Whitney Bauman, Forrest Clingerman, and Laurel Kearns, have explored human relations with the earth from the perspective of process theology, where the divine continues to be active in earthly processes (Kearns and Keller ). In his recent book Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating, Norman Wirzba describes gardens as microcosms of “the complex array of relationships that join us to the soil and water and to creatures and God, relationships that have nurture and feeding at their root” (2011, 36). His extended meditation places humans, food, and gardens as “members in creation and community,” and declares that to draw life from the garden, we must also serve it—and others (Wirzba , 68). Service, humility, and responsibility lead to self‐sacrifice, putting the needs of others ahead of our own (Wirzba , 69). I will return to these concepts, but language and practices of self‐sacrifice and self‐discipline help us respond to challenges of limits and self‐denial. These practices offer us structures to say no to food choices that unnecessarily harm animals or deprive others of food.

Buddhism

Now let's look at the Buddhist tradition both because many North Americans are familiar with basic Buddhist concepts and also because Buddhist concepts about relations between humans, divine beings, and animals differ greatly from Christian views. Buddhist practice also provides resources to help us deal with desire and the frustration of limits. Unlike Christian theology which postulates a hierarchical structure both between creator and creation and within created beings, Buddhist thought depicts a cosmology in which all existence—deities included—are interdependent and existentially not different from each other. The qualities that comprise who I am at any given moment—my body, my thoughts, my personhood, for example—are transitory. Impermanence and change is the fundamental state of all existence, and our desire for permanence is one cause of suffering. Knowledge of this existential condition is the first step to liberation and comprises one wing of the Buddhist tradition. Compassion for ourselves and for the suffering of all beings comprises the other wing. As the Dalai Lama states, “The whole purpose of religion is to facilitate love and compassion, patience, tolerance, humility, and forgiveness” (2001, 230). So, how do impermanence, interdependence, and compassion lead us toward a food ethic?

Compassion for all beings seems obvious; our human capabilities—that have given us the capacity for harm and destruction—also demand that we act to relieve the suffering of others. In addition, Buddhist concepts of impermanence and interdependence erase meaningful distinctions between beings, or myself and others. David Suzuki, geneticist, environmental activist, and Buddhist, likens interdependence (or interdependent co‐arising, a Buddhist philosophical term) to physical cycles of decomposition and regeneration. Quoting his now‐deceased father, Suzuki says, “I will return to nature where I came from. I will be part of the fish, the trees, the birds; that's my reincarnation” (Suzuki and McConnell , 198). Buddhist concepts of interdependence illustrate how our physical existence is intimately bound with ecological processes, and that clinging to our narrowly constructed selves causes suffering to ourselves and others. As Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön states, “somehow, in the process of trying to deny that things are always changing, we lose our sense of the sacredness of life. We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things” (, 74). Recognizing our connections, and showing compassion to others is a form of self‐defense; we depend on healthy ecosystems just as three sticks need all three in order to stand (Hanh , 221–49).

Vietnamese monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh illustrates our interconnections and interdependence in the social and economic realms in his poem “Please Call Me By My True Names” (1999, 72). I will just quote a few lines:

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,

my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.

And I am the arms merchant,

selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve‐year‐old girl,

refugee on a small boat,

who throws herself into the ocean

after being raped by a sea pirate.

And I am the pirate,

my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

…

Please call me by my true names,

so I can wake up

and the door of my heart

can be left open,

the door of compassion.

His poem illustrates the chains of complicity that make all of us both victims and oppressors and mutually complicit in the earth's tragedies. Recognizing the blurred boundaries and interconnections between all of us, Hanh's poem suggests, should help us develop humility and compassion.

I highlighted these aspects of Christian and Buddhist thought to show paradigms that might foster new ecological imaginary realms. Both these Christian and Buddhist paradigms highlight compassion and responsibility for others, but use different conceptual frameworks. Now I would like to consider how these holistic paradigms lead us to new questions about our agricultural technologies and practices.

GMOs

These new frames also help us wade through the muddy and contentious debates about agricultural technologies such as genetically modified organisms or transgenics. Battles over GMOs are waged in metaphoric language that evoke the paradigmatic realms in which these arguments are embedded; while some proponents invoke salvific language of “feeding the world,” detractors warn of “playing god” or “runaway genes”—all of which do point to very real concerns, but this language does not lead to meaningful discussion about potential benefits or their potential social, economic, and ecological consequences. For example, farmers in groups such as Via Campesina, an international peasants’ rights organization, as well as farmers in India I have worked with, question the benefits and consequences of GMOs, citing concerns about ownership of germplasm, loss of landraces, costs of technological packets that accompany transgenic seeds, and loss of control of their food supply. If these seeds are not drought‐resistant, for example, and require intensive inputs, then these seeds replicate the problems of monocultures in addition to the adding new problems of ownership and patents. (One persistent critique is that such seeds have not been designed to adapt to specific conditions and locations, mostly because it is too expensive for companies to do so.) While these concerns about control, exploitation, and entitlement to resources affect anyone who eats, they have the greatest effect on marginalized peoples who pay the greatest social costs and reap the fewest benefits from expensive technologies.

These criteria reflect anthropologist Ruth Meinzen‐Dick's (CGIAR, Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) assertion that until recently agricultural research has focused on increasing yields of staple foods rather than poverty alleviation. In assessing agricultural technologies and practices, she advocates the “livelihood” approach that includes dimensions such as vulnerability, risk, social status, and gender that go beyond quantitative economic measures (Adato and Meinzen‐Dick , 20–55). These evaluative frameworks include disaggregating regional and household access to food, technology, and money, asking, for example, if men gain sole access to new technologies and cash at the expense of women who have retained local knowledge about species and inter‐cropping methods. Food democracy and social justice—asking who benefits, who loses—provides criteria to guide use and development of such technologies that do not either cede judgment to a narrative of inevitability and technological progress or, on the other hand, surrender to dystopic scenarios of monsters and “wild genes” that render consideration of new technologies almost impossible.

Buddhist Economics

Let me return to the Buddhist tradition to discuss consumption, desire, and happiness, drawing on economist E. F. Schumacher's Buddhist economics introduced in his collection of essays Small Is Beautiful, first published in . The purpose of modern economics, he claims, is consumption, and higher consumption leads to greater happiness. Buddhist economics, on the other hand, is based on simplicity and nonviolence. Why simplicity? Endless variation and novelty, for example, lead us to crave more and more, and these foods and goods don't make us happy because we can never have enough. The New York Times Magazine recently ran an article that described how scientists at food companies design flavors and products so that we will become addicted to junk food (Moss ). Products such as Gogurt have transformed the generally healthy yogurt into a dessert product, with twice as much sugar as the children's cereal Lucky Charms. So, in a time of rampant obesity, we have added sugar to a food that should need minimal processing. And, further, most sugar production, at least in the United States and the Caribbean, is done under extremely oppressive conditions, so we've added a dose of violence to yogurt. Can we learn to be satisfied by plainer and simpler foods, perhaps seasonal produce or foods lower on the food chain?

Should We Eat Meat? For many in the United States, eating meat, especially beef, is part of being an American. Suggestions to eat no meat or even less meat are an affront to cultural identity. Meat production, though—meaning primarily factory‐farmed meat production—carries enormous environmental, health, and social costs and is responsible for unspeakable animal suffering. Thich Nhat Hanh writes that “by eating meat we share the responsibility of climate change, the destruction of our forests, and the poisoning of our air and water. The simple act of becoming a vegetarian will make a difference in the health of our planet” (Hanh ). On the other hand, “of the 880 million rural poor people living on less than $1 per day, 70 percent are partially or completely dependent on livestock for their livelihoods and food security” (World Watch Institute ). Changing how we eat meat (if we choose to eat meat), less meat or switching to organic pasture‐raised meats, would significantly impact multiple arenas, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions, supporting pastoral livelihoods, and improved animal care. How do we impose limits, voluntary simplicity, on ourselves when so many see eating meat as a God‐given right?

Rose Zuzworsky, in “From the Marketplace to the Dinner Plate,” draws upon Christian theological resources to consider how we eat meat and asks how we might apply concepts of justice, care, and mercy to the treatment of food animals (2001, 184–85). As she notes, applying these abstract ideas to practice regarding food animals is difficult and complex; so, for example, how should we consider feral hogs, a tasty menace in Florida? This invasive and destructive species roams wild until they are hunted—unlike animals in CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations). She quotes John Cobb on the concept of justice: “It is time to call for a justice that is better expressed in the Hebrew term shalom, a right relation to the land and all that dwell therein,” again recognizing that all beings are ultimately connected and interdependent (Cobb , 184–85; Zuzworsky , 184–87).

The contentious issue of meat will continue to challenge us on limits. Americans’ overconsumption of meat contributes to environmental devastation, hunger, and animal suffering. All religious traditions address greed and violence—consider the Bhagavad‐Gita and the Sermon on the Mount, and they provide practices and disciplines to help us deal with the reality that we can't have everything we want. Instead, practicing restraint can move us toward re‐establishing right relations with the earth and other beings, human and nonhuman.