There is a lot of potential in biological diversity. How can we utilise it?
Both producers and consumers ought to be aware that the present state of affairs is not the final word. Developments and discoveries are still taking place. Plant biologists have spoken of 50,000 plants and trees that could be domesticated to create foodstuffs. The situation is similar with insects and animals. There is this enormous potential that we have, but it is unfortunately partly blocked due to our fear of genetically modified products. On top of that there is this economic lunacy that everything a certain company cultivates or refines has to be patented. When it comes to foodstuffs, all patents ought to be banned in the contemporary ethical sense: no natural product belongs to any one company.
Self-sufficiency or open borders: what’s a good balance?
As long as the old concept of nations is interpreted narrowly, the demand for self-sufficiency is going to result in some sort of stupid nationalism. If every single nation on this planet were to insist on it, we would have “fenced-in famines”, because we can only overcome hunger in the world if we have open borders, trade and an open exchange of comestible goods.
You mean global free trade in line with the WTO guidelines?
No, my demand has nothing to do with free trade as currently defined by the WTO. My concept has to do with decolonisation and not with the rampant trade of multinational food manufacturers who have suddenly started joining the ranks of farmers and agriculturalists. In other words, we must learn in theory and practice to distinguish between the traditional small-scale farmer and the decolonised or emancipated farmer. Or to distinguish exchanges of goods from a type of trade that disregards traditions. Globalised trade has destroyed the entire agricultural sector in Africa, because “cheaper” can also mean poisons and destruction.
There are those who claim that humankind would starve without industrial agriculture.
That’s nonsense! Let’s be honest: industry wants to make money with agriculture and food. And it is industry’s right to do so as long as it doesn’t apply concealed colonial methods. Patenting seeds and forcing farmers to use them is a colonial method. Despite this, I am not denying industry its right to exist as long as it encourages human and socio-human cooperation, as well as greater openness and objectivity. Nowadays, agribusiness is too well represented in all of the UN organisations (FAO, WTO), development organisations (IMF) and even at the universities. With its power, it is destroying agrarian cultures and farming.
Shouldn’t we then be focusing far more on other forms of agriculture – such as organic farming?
I am sometimes disturbed by the fact that other forms of agriculture – probably resulting from frustration – act in an almost fundamentalist way towards agribusiness and react with nothing but denunciations. Bio or organic farming is just another type of agriculture. To my way of thinking, organic farming fails to sufficiently include the social element.
What do you mean?
Genuine and good organic farming is impossible within the framework of traditional small-scale family systems, because the personal freedoms of those concerned would suffer considerably under the workload and from being permanently tied down.
It will therefore be necessary to include cooperative models, because today everyone also has the right to leisure time, travel and wellness. As early as the 1960s, some twenty farmers, economists, ecologists and sociologists laid the foundations for the eco-farming movement. They tried out this holistic approach, which stimulates interaction between eco- and social systems, on Mount Kilimanjaro and later in Rwanda. In the meantime, the movement has spread across the globe and its ideas are now being implemented in Japan, India, Brazil, the United States and, to some degree, in Europe, too. Eco-farming establishes networks between agricultural and social systems, and attaches great importance to sustainability. It applies the art of crop mixing.