Is farming the root of all evil?

[TylerDurden]

Here's an article from the Daily Telegraph condemning agriculture, more or less:-

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/5604296/Is-farming-the-root-of-all-evil.html

It's interesting that Richard Wrangham, the retarded pro-cooked-food-advocate, comes immediately on the side of the Neolithic foods derived from agriculture as there have been serious concerns that his writings re cooked-food or whatever are mostly motivated by vegetarianism.  In other words, most of his claims re cooking supposedly "improving" raw foods, falls completely flat when one takes into account a palaeo diet rather than a vegan one.

[goodsamaritan]

Farming was born out of necessity.
The conditions of life on earth most probably CHANGED for the worse, humans were FORCED to farm or die from starvation.
We can always improve on farming.
They can make us Raw Paleo people their permanent health advisors.

[JaredBond]

Lierre Keith, author of the recent "The Vegetarian Myth", certainly thinks so.  She goes so far as to claim that plants like grains have us "hooked" with their opioid like compounds, so that we spread them around the world and eliminate their competition, although I wouldn't necessarily go that far.  What I do believe is that when people rely on agriculture, oftentimes they lose control of their own food supply.  If the population is large, crops become monocrops, and no one person can take care of themselves.  Therefore, it becomes a matter of who's at the top of the business chain.  Whoever controls the food supply controls the people.  This is how people become "poor".  When everyone had the knowledge of how to feed themselves, there was no poverty, and consequently, no moral degeneration either.  I've often wondered how all of these "poor" nations we see today got to be that way.  I mean, had they been living that way for hundreds of generations?  No, it was when the civilized nations took over (somehow- I don't know how), hooked them on our food, put them in debt, and now basically have them working as slaves on subsidized crops that mostly get exported.  (I didn't read the book yet but I think that's the gist of it.)

[SkinnyDevil]

most of his claims re cooking supposedly "improving" raw foods, falls completely flat when one takes into account a palaeo diet rather than a vegan one.

For the record, most of his claims asserting that cooking vegan foods also falls completely flat.

Raw, in my experience, is superior to cooked whether one is vegan, paleo, or omni.

That said, "clean" cooked (primarily whole, unprocessed foods) are superior to SAD whether one is vegan, paleo, or omni. If you're gonna cook, cook whole unprocessed foods.

[TylerDurden]

For the record, most of his claims asserting that cooking vegan foods also falls completely flat.

Raw, in my experience, is superior to cooked whether one is vegan, paleo, or omni.

That said, "clean" cooked (primarily whole, unprocessed foods) are superior to SAD whether one is vegan, paleo, or omni. If you're gonna cook, cook whole unprocessed foods.

Well, they do have a point in stating that cooking reduces the levels of antinutrients found in raw vegetables. Of course, cooking also creates some heat-created toxins such as AGEs, but these aren't in as high a dose as AGEs found in cooked animal foods.

[PaleoPhil]

Is farming the root of all evil?

Well, it's the main source of overpopulation, epidemic disease, chronic disease, slavery, totalitarian governments, genocide, mass species extinction, environmental degradation, superbugs, fanatical religion (ex: Wahabism), suicide bombers, psychopathic killers, STDs, having to work for someone else to eat, widescale crime, prisons, and on and on. Does that qualify?

[SkinnyDevil]

Is farming the root of all evil?

Well, it's the main source of overpopulation, epidemic disease, chronic disease, slavery, totalitarian governments, genocide, mass species extinction, environmental degradation, superbugs, fanatical religion (ex: Wahabism), suicide bombers, psychopathic killers, STDs, having to work for someone else to eat, widescale crime, prisons, and on and on. Does that qualify?

How exactly is farming the main source of fanatical religion, suicide bombers, psychopathic killers, STDs, crime, & prisons? For that matter, how is farming the main source of having to work for someone else, slavery, & genocide?

Since we're on it, in what way is farming the cause of ANY thing on your list?

I can easily see a strong argument being made for industrial-level farming of grains as a major factor in many of the items on your list, but the question didn't distinguish between large-scale corporate farming and small family vegetable farms, and neither did your answer.

I don't see how a backyard farm (or early hunter-gatherers who made the first timid steps into farming by clearing out more aggressive plants [grasses, etc.]) could in any way be linked to labor, genocide, governments & gov corruption, disease, fanatical religions, and the like.

[PaleoPhil]

Since we're on it, in what way is farming the cause of ANY thing on your list?

I can easily see a strong argument being made for industrial-level farming of grains as a major factor in many of the items on your list, but the question didn't distinguish between large-scale corporate farming and small family vegetable farms, and neither did your answer.

I don't see how a backyard farm (or early hunter-gatherers who made the first timid steps into farming by clearing out more aggressive plants [grasses, etc.]) could in any way be linked to labor, genocide, governments & gov corruption, disease, fanatical religions, and the like.

Ah, thanks for the opportunity to blabber on in one of my areas of interest, SkinnyDevil. I call the sort of backyard farming you're talking about "horticulture" and "permaculture," not "agriculture." Horticulture and permaculture were the common way of dealing with plants before agriculture. The article that the thread was motivated by was talking about agriculture, not horticulture or permaculture (I recommend reading it if you want to understand better where I'm coming from). This subject was discussed much at another Paleo Diet forum I participated in. There is even a mini revival of horticulture and permaculture. One town in North Carolina is even paying homeowners to rip up their water-hogging, nonnative, monoculture grass lawns and replace them with native and wild plants.

Plus, the problems of agriculture began LONG before industrial agriculture (if by that you mean the use of mechanized machinery and chemical pesticides and fertilizers). The vegheads spread claim that organic agriculture is all sweetness and goodness, but just like the 100% veggie diet, it's a lie. Don't believe the hype. It's a small step in the right direction, but it has major problems of its own.

There are a bazillion books on these subjects if you're interested. Ishmael by Daniel Quinn is a good starting point. Jared Diamond's writings are a tougher read, but contain lots of good info. There are many books on pre-agricultural cultures (I found the writings of paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey to be quite readable, for example) and modern hunter-gatherer and horticultural cultures, as well as many books on doing your own horticulture/permaculture, hunting, wild food gathering and eating, etc.

Unfortunately, as Quinn, Diamond and numerous others have pointed out, the genie is out of the bottle. We are stuck with totalitarian monoculture agriculture in our lifetimes. Even though organic agriculture is only a small step back in the right direction, the dark secret is that a major reduction in output would likely result from a complete rollback to it (and there are already millions of severely malnourished and starving people in some areas). Even if it could feed the world, it wouldn't come close to being a real solution.

So yes, if by farming we mean agriculture (not horticulture or permaculture), which is what the article was discussing, then farming is the root of much of the world's evil (nothing is the root of ALL evil, of course--these sorts of exaggerations are just meant to shock and stir up conversation and debate and garner readership, of course).

BTW, I don't consider farmers themselves to be evil. My own grandfather did some small-scale farming. People have to make a living in this evil world and there aren't many ways to do it that don't involve some evil, unfortunately. No one's hands are clean in this dirty world that humanity has re-created to serve what it thought were its own interests, but turned out to be much less in humanity's long-term interests than the creation that existed at the dawn of humanity.

So I just focus on doing the best I can in a practical way and learn and share. Are these views controversial? Yes. Are they unheard of or disregarded and disrespected in all prestigious circles? No. Quinn, Diamond and others have won awards, accolades, sold millions of books, and are highly respected even by many academics who disagree with them. Do they inspire the hatred of people like the Wahabists, Archer Daniels Midland bigwigs and slick politicians? Sure. So they can't be all bad. 

The raw Paleo diet is really just one small part of the picture. It's not the only thing from the ancient past that turns out to be better for people than the modern diet that replaced it. Some time ago it occurred to me, "If modern people got diet and exercise so terribly wrong, what else did we get wrong?" It turns out there's a lot! Way more than I have time to delve into, unfortunately. So I recommend doing your own investigations into this question yourself, if you haven't already. You may be amazed at what you learn.

[SkinnyDevil]

Thanx for the reply, Phil!

Quinn is not someone I've read (though I've recently read about him), but is on my reading list. Jared Diamond is someone I've read. I especially liked "Guns, Germs, & Steel", but need to re-read his other stuff.

I like the breakdown between horticulture & agriculture. Nice cleaving.

I disagree that our world is evil, though.

That said, I think you're correct: we may see a snap-back fro organic due to population. Too bad. We keep on trying to find new ways to feed more people and hold it up as "saving lives" on one hand, but then we bitch about over-population on the other. I don;t think finding clever ways to feed more people is such a good thing. It just perpetuates the problem(s).

[TylerDurden]

I know, the one thing that should be given to the 3rd world isn't food but birth-control pills.

[PaleoPhil]

Thanx for the reply, Phil!

...

I disagree that our world is evil, though.

Thanks, and yeah, I hear ya. I'm not big on using extreme, absolute terms like "evil," either. Such verbal bombs do work to increase readership and debate, but I do wish there was less of them in the world and more of reasoned discussion. Every revolution in thinking seems to require such passionate language, unfortunately--so maybe a certain amount of it is a necessary "evil." 

[qupte]...I don;t think finding clever ways to feed more people is such a good thing. It just perpetuates the problem(s).
[/quote]
Quite correct, and exactly what Quinn said. Humanity is stuck in an unfortunate box of a quandary.

TylerDurden wrote:

I know, the one thing that should be given to the 3rd world isn't food but birth-control pills.

Perhaps, but keep in mind that the current population of the United States, Canada and Europe also greatly exceed their estimated carrying capacity for subsistence on hunting, gathering, horticulture and permaculture. So if birth control pills or some other means of birth control is the solution, then we should be using it more ourselves too.

The problem is, it only takes one empire that decides it doesn't want to control its population, and instead use it to conquer the declining populations, to ruin the whole solution. Currently, radical Islamic groups and governments, like that of Iran, condemn population control and openly attest that they will conquer the world by out-procreating their enemies (see "Ahmadinejad Urges Iranian Couples to Procreate More").

[TylerDurden]

While 1 or 2 islamic radical groups in Europe have claimed that Muslims will overrun Europe due to outbreeding everyone else, I should make clear that Iran is a model success story within the 3rd world. Despite vast sanctions by an uncaring US, Iran now has extensive birth-control planning, and the birth-rate has dropped very significantly indeed in the last decade or so(about time as the population was by then c.70,000,000 with most people being aged below 25). Bangladesh is a similiar surprising success story in recent times. It's only Africa and some Muslim states like Saudi Arabia and India that are still problems. And there are claims that the world population will fall once it reaches 9 billion or so(all the current population have to die first, after all). The only trouble is that many industrial countries such as Japan or Italy now have birth-rates which are, IMO, far too low( - Islam, for all its faults, has an absolute fixation on family values(which Christians used to have too), thus resulting in a higher birth-rate.

There's a controversial theory made by 1 author that feminism has resulted directly in a lower birth-rate, so that any country that espouses equal rights for women will eventuqally go under due to population implosion while countries opposing women's rights will eventually supercede the latter via a higher birth-rate, thus resulting in deprivation of women's rights worldwide.

[PaleoPhil]

While 1 or 2 islamic radical groups in Europe have claimed that Muslims will overrun Europe due to outbreeding everyone else, I should make clear that Iran is a model success story within the 3rd world.

Yes, thanks for adding that, Tyler. I actually have Iranian friends and while they are far more conservative than me in some respects, they are not really that different from Americans. Iran is influenced not only by radical Islam, but also by the history and culture of a cosmopolitan Persian empire. I think that in the long run, their Persian and other ethnic cultures will moderate and overwhelm the radical Islamic tendencies, as I believe we are beginning to see in the current uprising. There are downsides even to this, however, for as they modernize and become more like us, they will experience the same problems of increased chronic disease and environmental degradation.

Despite vast sanctions by an uncaring US,

I think this goes too far the other way toward anti-Americanism.

Iran now has extensive birth-control planning, and the birth-rate has dropped very significantly indeed

Yes, but the extreme radical Islamists wish to reverse this, as they proudly state. I do think that the moderates will win out in the end, as profit motives tend to overwhelm all other tendencies, including conservative religious ones, for better and for worse.

The only trouble is that many industrial countries such as Japan or Italy now have birth-rates which are, IMO, far too low[/quote]
And yet, even those low birth rates will bring them no where near a population level that can be supported by small, organic, free-range family farms. It's a quandary.

( - Islam, for all its faults, has an absolute fixation on family values(which Christians used to have too)

Yes, and there is some good in that, which will unfortunately be lost with modernization. Profit wins out over all in the long run, with both good and bad consequences.

[SkinnyDevil]

...profit motives tend to overwhelm all other tendencies, including conservative religious ones, for better and for worse.

For better or for worse. INteresting.

I am fully aware that there is along history of bashing individuals to large corporations for profit motive, but I remain unconvinced that profit motive necessarily leads to "worse" or that profit motive is inherently a bad thing...or that it somehow exists in a vacuum.

[TylerDurden]

I wasn't bashing America, I was attacking the silly notion that sanctions achieve anything realistic.

As regards the Islamic government, I'm pretty sure they were in favour of birth-control(after all, last thing they want is vast hordes of rebellious (and jobless) young people threatening the regime).

[PaleoPhil]

For better or for worse. INteresting.

I am fully aware that there is along history of bashing individuals to large corporations for profit motive, but I remain unconvinced that profit motive necessarily leads to "worse" or that profit motive is inherently a bad thing...or that it somehow exists in a vacuum.

Huh? I said both for better AND for worse. Do you really mean to suggest that profit motives always produce perfect outcomes?

I wasn't bashing America, I was attacking the silly notion that sanctions achieve anything realistic.

Oh, sorry. You're probably right, but what about the South African apartheid sanctions? They seemed to help on the face of it.

As regards the Islamic government, I'm pretty sure they were in favour of birth-control(after all, last thing they want is vast hordes of rebellious (and jobless) young people threatening the regime).

The Rafsanjani government was, but not Ahmadinejad, according to his own speech above (see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_planning_in_Iran#President_Ahmadinejad).  At any rate, getting into the details of Iranian politics may be straying too far off topic. My point was that it only takes one sizeable group of people who continue to procreate at agrarian rates to wreck any efforts at voluntary population control by world nations. The leaders of every large population group have to want population control for it to work, which would be extremely difficult to accomplish.

[TylerDurden]

The south african apartheid sanctions were a disgrace. Sport is meant to be an international phenomenon , free of any bias  or creed, and yet here were people forbidding sportsmen(and women like zola budd) from competing outside South Africa, people who anyway, had nothing to do with the regime. I seriously doubt the sanctions against South Africa had anything per se to do with curbing the apartheid regime as there were so many other factors present such as the fall of communism(which made the ANC less of a demon re its communist past etc.).

http://www.slate.com/id/2147058/

I remember another atrocious series of sanctions against Austria at the time of Waldheim. Because the Austrian people had democractically voted Waldheim into office(partly because of various anti-Waldheim documents then discovered to be forgeries), Austrian passport holders like myself were forced to obtain visas to enter or leave the UK(I'd misplaced my British one at the time). The newspapers abroad never once mentioned a rather crucial fact, that the Austrians had voted in a Jewish President(Bruno Kreisky) twice over a couple of terms before Waldheim.

Basically, sanctions never work by themselves and are often of highly dubious moral value(for example the misery inflicted on Cubans by US sanctions).

[SkinnyDevil]

Huh? I said both for better AND for worse. Do you really mean to suggest that profit motives always produce perfect outcomes?

I don't mean to suggest that at all. I wasn't commenting directly to your words (my apologies - it certainly did seem that way, didn't it?), just using them as a springboard. Mostly because every time i turn around, people are bashing "profit motive".

Oh, sorry. You're probably right, but what about the South African apartheid sanctions? They seemed to help on the face of it.

You are both right. The reality is that GOVERNMENT sanctions typically achieve nothing but ill-effects (except for those votes back home), but "sanctions' imposed by free-agents upon themselves (all the musicians, for example, who refused to accept the huge cash to play in South Africa hot spots or all the businesses who voluntarily severed ties with South Africa) very often DO achieve desired results.

The difference is top-down elite imposing sanctions vs a bottom-up movement.

The UN formally came out against Apartheid in 1960, employing sanctions (including their 1963 arms embargo), diplomatic negotiations, and even an armed response - all to no avail. It was the economic & cultural isolation (never mandated by the UN because they don't have those kind of teeth), constant internal resistance, and, most importantly, the wide public awareness that ultimately crushed the regime.

That is, of course, a gross over-simplification, but...

[PaleoPhil]

I don't mean to suggest that at all. I wasn't commenting directly to your words (my apologies - it certainly did seem that way, didn't it?), just using them as a springboard. Mostly because every time i turn around, people are bashing "profit motive".

OK, I am actually a former card-carrying member of the Libertarian party. So I can sympathize with your views, though my own views have changed somewhat, and my motive is not to promote Marxism-Leninism. I don't really want to sidetrack this topic too much with discussion of economics or politics, so I'll leave it at that.

[PaleoPhil]

More reasons why monocrop farming is the closest thing to the root of all evil:

Lierre Keith on The Vegetarian Myth and the Catastrophe of Monocrop Agriculture
After the Youtube url (www.youtube.com) add the following address to see this video: watch?v=4oOsLOotrRw, or just search on "Lierre Keith" at Youtube.

Keith talks about how agriculture is at war with nature. Some quotes:

"The human race is now dependent on an activity that is killing the planet."

"...98% of the prairies have been destroyed and 99% of the topsoil in the grain growing regions."

Correction: William R. Catton first published Overshoot in 1980