We call our food system a “system” because it is supposed to contain cycles and loops. Everything that starts within the system should remain within the system. There should be no waste. There should be no excessive inputs. Modern agriculture uses a great amount of artificial inputs—pesticides and synthetic fertilizers—and creates large amounts of waste—unused animal manure or uneaten parts of foods.
I have often heard the phrase, “our food system is broken.” This means a lot of different things, from the dependence of our agriculture on fossil fuels to the rising rates of obesity in America. Listening to Vandana Shiva’s talk, however, made me focus on the broken cycles of our food system.
Shiva brings up a very basic but crucial rupture in the recycling of nutrients in the food system in India: humans harvest and eat crops, but when they go to the bathroom, the released nutrients end up polluting the rivers rather than returning to the soils. Soils lose nutrients and farmers must purchase expensive fertilizers to replenish them. The break in this nutrient cycle causes two problems: river pollution and excessive fertilizer use. Shiva says that humans have to start thinking in terms of cycles and get rid of “mechanistic” thought that encourages technological fixes to agriculture.
This discussion of cycles reminded me of Polyface Farm, a cow farm discussed by Michael Pollan in the Omnivore’s Dilemma. The farmer at Polyface lets his cows roam on his wide-open pastures. The cows eat the grass and their manure acts as fertilizer to help replenish the soils and grow the grass again. This farm demonstrates how agriculture can work with rather than against natural cycles. The farmer does not add inputs like fertilizer, which cost money and damage the environment, and nothing is wasted. The cows are grass fed, free ranging, and probably very happy. (The cows are not confined in small pens, living in a pile of their own manure, which, instead of acting as fertilizer, pollutes nearby bodies of water.)
I want to keep reading about sustainable farming methods that focus on closing natural loops, eliminating both inputs and waste!
I like the connection you draw between Shiva and Polyface Farm. On one level, she seems to be offering a critique of the “first-world” food narrative presented in Pollan’s book. One that has much less to do with preferences and satisfaction than with the life and death of individuals and their rural communities. But from another perspective she and Joel Salatin are both interested in closing broken loops with food systems. To put this another way, the traditional systems she espouses and the “alternative” approach to agriculture he represents have much more to do with each other than either does with the corn-based, CAFO world that dominates food in America. India meets Virginia.