Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope

Today from Margaret Swedish:

One of the issues I follow closely these days is that of agricultural production, one of the most important aspects of our ecological crisis and focal point of some very serious choices we need to make.  As noted in the earlier post today with the quote from James Lovelock’s new book, agriculture, the way we do it now, most especially industrial agriculture, is one of the leading causes of the depletion of the Earth’s life-giving capacity, a leading source of greenhouse gas emissions, and a major cause of the despoilation of the land.

I have not posted much on this, but will in the future.  Meanwhile, a colleague just emailed this article to me, and I want to share it with my visitors.  It is about the bogus model of the ‘green revolution’ being foisted upon Africa by corporate philanthropists, like the Bill Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.

For more information on industrial agriculture, its dependence on fossil fuels, its environmental harm, and a good analysis of the global maldevelopment model of industrial agriculture, go here.  A long but excellent article, well worth the read.  Keep in mind that nearly every aspect of this model of agriculture depends on oil, from machinery like tractors, from transport of seed and product, to the making of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and on and on.  Our food right now, our access to food, our global model of food production and distribution, is completely dependent on oil, that resource that will begin to be tapped out over the next few decades, that leading source of our global warming crisis.

And of course the article regarding Africa points out that genetically modified seeds are part of the equation in this large-scale corporate model.  The threat this poses to the diversity of the world’s food crops is dire, indeed.  Just in case you didn’t know, GMOs have worked their way right into the packaged food you buy in your grocery stores.

For more on the threat of GMOs in Africa, click here.  For more on the international controversy about GMOs, click here.  As for the question, ‘what’s wrong with indutrial agriculture?’ - when I googled that question, I found this –everything you need to know to answer that question.

Ecological hope and how we eat, how we produce our food and get it to our tables — the two are inextricably linked.  So are industrial agriculture and the production of poverty in Africa.