Much of today's troubles stem from a dislocation from the land, a displacement from one's greater self. A landless people are a troubled people, and even though we may live in supposed democracies, the land is not allotted equally.
Reading through the natural farmer Masanobu Fukuoka's One-Straw Revolution I am pleased to see that I am not the only one who believes the land should be divvied up equally amongst the people and animals, and not, as in Scotland's case amongst 81 or so human individuals.
On the subject of working the land, not intensively or industrially but sensitively and intelligently, Fukuoka has this to say:
In general, commercial agriculture is an unstable proposition. The farmer would do much better by growing the food he needs without thinking about making money. If you plant one grain of rice, it becomes more than one thousand grains. One row of turnips makes enough pickles for the entire winter. If you follow this line of thought, you will have enough to eat, more than enough, without struggling. But if you try to make money instead, you get on board the profit wagon, and it runs away with you.
The message is clear: grow your own food, on your lot.
When I lived in Warsaw, I was amazed to see how much of the city had been given over to allotments, and not just any allotments, but plots of land that accommodated little huts and sheds that would have made the likes of Thoreau and other shed-dwellers jealous. I was amazed at not just the blaze of vegetables, flowers and fruit, flowing forth from each of these little plots, but from the very aesthetic of these plots themselves with their little wooden daschas, their colourfully painted fences, water features and a general countenance that demonstrated a deep love for these small urban gardens. Within a few kilometres of my humble flat in Mokotow, there were several large spaces that had been given over to this practice of growing your own.
The allotments (Ogrodki dzialkowe) of
Warsaw have a long and colourful history, and are one of the city’s more
redeeming features. Almost 5% (1,700 hectares) of Warsaw's city surface
is given over to allotments. The first ‘dzialki’ were set up before the
war when the Polish Socialist Party put forward an initiative to form
‘special workers’ oases of peace’. Where the likes of London gradually
lost hers to property developers (inner city London was covered with allotments following WWII) Warsaw has retained hers,
governed by an allotment cooperative to protect and conserve them. During the Communist era, and as part of a remit to have people ‘grow
their own’, most of the dzialki were allocated to professional groups
such as teachers, railway workers or miners. An allotment ‘parcel’ was a
symbol of a certain status. More importantly, it was a gurantee of a
regular food supply since buying certain foods at stores was not always
possible. In effect, it was a form of collective and responsible living
which is still vigorously continued to this day.
In Glasgow, the situation regarding allotments, however, is rather lamentable, and in spite of their existence here and there, they inhabit nowhere near the same space as they do in Warsaw. Then of course you have the trouble of getting to your allotment if they are so sporadically placed. In Warsaw, you walked to it, because they were everywhere.
Here's Fukuoka again:
In olden times there were warriors, farmers, craftsmen, and merchants. Agriculture was said to be closer to the source of things than trade or manufacturing, and the farmer was said to be the 'cupbearer of the gods'. He was always able to get by somehow or other and have enough to eat.
And The Upanishads:
First, know food.
Towards food all things move.
By food all things live.
Into food all things return.
In other words, treat food frivolously at your peril.
Which is difficult, because we live in a frivolous society that does not take these things seriously until we have invariably passed the point of no return. We live in a world of luxury restaurants and nouvelle cuisine, where the Heston Blumenthals and Gordon Ramsays of the world dictate what is good for you.
Then there are the elitist outlets like Roots & Fruits and Waitrose where organic produce (in spite of it costing less to produce, think of all those pesticides and chemicals you don't have to buy as an organic farmer), costs more than the treated stuff.
If a high price is charged for natural food, it means that the merchant is taking excessive profits. Furthermore, if natural foods are expensive, they become luxury foods and only rich people are able to afford them.
Being removed from food, whether physically from the land and from the growing process or from the fancy nonsense foods that distract us from real food, is at the root of our troubles today. If people ate (and drank) correctly - a plant-based diet with wholegrains and little alcohol - then the world would soon come to its senses. As Fukuoka states:
If the Ministry's (of Agriculture) staff were to go to the mountains and meadows, gather the seven herbs of spring, and the seven herbs of autumn, and taste them, they would learn what the source of human nourishment is...
He then continues:
... if 100% of the people were farming it would be ideal. There is just a quarter acre of arable land for each person in Japan. If each single person were given one quarter acre, that is one and a quarter acres for a family of five, that would be more than enough land to support the family for the whole year. If natural farming were practiced, a farmer would also have plenty of time for leisure and social activities within the village community. I think this is the most direct path toward making this country a happy, pleasant land.
Pleasant, and peasant!
Yet, the word peasant, from the Old French paisent meaning inhabitant of the land (one who works the land), has garnered a distinctly pejorative tone within our luxury-minded modern age. It is interesting to note that the word luxury itself derives from the Latin luxuria meaning excess, extravagance, and ultimately from luxus meaning dislocated.
Remove a people from its land and you can convince them of anything !
Like normalizing and industrializing the eating of meat.
Which is possibly, when you look at this holistically and not blindly as we are apt to do in the profit-led West, the silliest thing you could ever do on a plant-based planet and to a plant-based lifeform, on an energy-finite planet.
But don't take my word for it:
If 22 bushels (1,300 pounds) of rice and 22 bushels of winter grain are harvested from a quarter acre field such as one of these, then the field will support five to ten people each investing an average of less than one hour of labor per day. But if the field were turned over to pasturage, or if the grain were fed to cattle, only one person could be supported per quarter acre. Meat becomes a luxury food when its production requires land which could provide food directly for human consumption. This has been shown clearly and definitely. Each person should ponder how much hardship he is causing by indulging in food so expensively produced.
Meat and other imported foods are luxuries because they require more energy and resources than the traditional vegetables and grains produced locally. It follows that people who limit themselves to a simple local diet need do less work and use less land than those with an appetite for luxury.
...Brown rice and vegetables may seem to some like coarse fare, but this is the very finest diet nutritionally, and enables human beings to live simply and directly.
If we do have a food crisis it will not be caused by the insufficiency of nature's productive power, but by the extravagance of human desire.
What can you say, other than perhaps:
Get an allotment!
Grow your own food!
Think and move critically!
Modernity is a state of War... Dig for Victory!
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