The democratic and sacred nature of agriculture

Abstract

Sustainable' agriculture is a relative recent invention. It is a salvage operation designed to undo some of the harm of agribusiness, which nearly wiped out farming as a way of life. Sustainable agriculture tries to restore methods of farming and values that satisfy present needs for food without compromising the food for future generations. Sustainable farming, however, remains experimental and on the fringes of society and science. It includes all kinds of farming practiced by peasants, small-scale family farmers, organic farmers as well as large farmers. In what follows, I am showing, first, farming is or becomes sustainable when two things prevail: First, it is democratic, spread throughout the land in the form of family farming while the difference in size among farms is modest at best. Second, farming is sustainable when it draws its inspiration and methods not merely from the most advanced ecological science but from ancient agrarian cultures. I briefly highlight the case of ancient Greek farming as having the virtues of sustainability: that of equity and democracy. In our times, however, agribusiness and animal farming fail the criteria of sustainability.

What Is Sustainable Agriculture? A Systematic Review

“…Additionally, there are explicit demands in the literature that both approaches be combined for the sake of sustainable agriculture. For instance, there is a number of publications that suggest that modern and innovative knowledge and approaches (which are promoted in the techno-economic position) be combined with local and traditional knowledge and practices (which are promoted in the agroecological-ruralist position) [23,33,[50][51][52][53].…”