Oxford Real Farming Conference: power, lies, and the need for agrarian resistance | openDemocracy.
The sad state of Britain’s dairying has the same root cause as the billion worldwide who are undernourished, the billion who are overweight and/or diabetic or in danger of heart disease, global warming, the mass extinction of our fellow creatures: global agriculture, and indeed a global economy, that is geared not to the wellbeing of humankind and of the planet but to short-term wealth, in the simplistic belief that money per se is good and can solve all our problems no matter how it is produced or what it is used for.
To put things right we have to think deeply – in fact re-think from first principles – and act radically.
The lies
The world’s global strategy of food and farming is founded on three great untruths – lies, in effect — which between them are threatening to kill us all, and in practice are well on the way to doing so.
Lie no. 1 is that the world needs 50% more food by 2050, and will need 100% more by 2100. This provides the excuse for the agrochemical/ biotech companies to focus ever more energetically on productivity.
