THE NATURE OF NATURE

Vandana Shiva always goes to the heart of the matter rooted in our ways of thinking and how we apply them to the world, giving rise to corresponding challenges. This book is subtitled ‘the metabolic disorder of climate change’ and as such represents a reframe of the debate around this issue. The health and food crises are intrinsically connected, and this indivisibility was proclaimed by Sir Albert Howard as far back as 1940 and restated here: ‘Health and disease begin in food, and food begins in agriculture and the soil. Traditional civilisations understood the intimate connection between agriculture, food, nutrition, and health. Indigenous systems of science and agroecology evolved as sciences of life for healthy living and were anchored in propagating biodiverse, seasonal and local food.’ (p. 66)

Since the Second World War, agriculture has become agribusiness, informed by industrial extractivism and linear thinking. We have gone from organic to chemical, from artisanal to industrial, from natural to highly processed, and from local shops and bazaars to supermarkets – whose monopoly power exerts downward pressure on farm prices. The result has been an overall decline in health due to what Vandana calls metabolic foodstyle – rather than lifestyle – diseases; these include metabolic disorders like obesity and diabetes, cancer, infertility and intestinal problems. The book begins with an analysis of the planetary crisis by connecting biodiversity, climate and food. It moves on to consider two fundamentally different approaches, ‘mechanophilia’ versus Nature’s technology. Then there are chapters on industrial farming and the illusion of food security, dead food corresponding to dead metabolism, and the fake food ultra-processed dystopia, brought to you by the same monopolistic players who dominate the existing system. Another underlying factor is financial. It is fashionable to insist that innovation is the key to the future of food, with corresponding investment in new ‘precision’ technologies, digital and ‘climate-smart’ agriculture that loomed large at the recent COP conference.

Vandana argues from exactly the opposite end of the spectrum, hence the title and the implicit need to understand and work in harmony with Nature. At the previous COP conference, there was a declaration on sustainable agriculture, resilient food systems, and climate action sponsored by the principal agribusiness companies ‘which have systematically destroyed biodiversity in the soil and the environment.’ Now, they launch this initiative ‘to mislead people into thinking that it will contribute to what it calls regenerative agriculture.’ Many of the leading forums and action groups are sponsored by the same group of companies (The Poison Cartel according to Vandana – viz The Dairy Methane Action Alliance or the EAT Forum. These companies are always looking for new ways of making money – hence the rise of fake food – while Net Zero and carbon offsets reflect the mechanical mind focusing on one function rather than the whole system while also financialising the whole process – achieving the SDGs will involve the creation of further governmental indebtedness to the banking system (see Iain Davis’ blog on this topic.)

We have to realise that ‘the biodiversity crisis, the climate crisis and the food and health crisis are a single planetary crisis, because the biosphere and atmosphere are intimately coupled systems of the living earth’ underpinned by carbon and nutrient cycles. Vandana argues that ‘the same fossil fuel-based, chemical intensive, resource intensive, ultra-processed food systems that cause metabolic disorders for humans are leading to the metabolic disorder of the earth, whose symptom is climate change. At the root of the polycrisis is a mechanical, militaristic mind, a monoculture of the mind, which reduces the biodiverse, self-organised, living earth to raw material for the money machine.’ (p. 17)

The second chapter is the philosophical heart of the book that clarifies the contrast between mechanistic and systemic approaches, where the latter are based on non-separability, interbeing, and interconnectedness through diversity. Historically, the mechanistic view has been founded on the subjugation of nature, women, diverse cultures and ordinary human beings. The corresponding agriculture is based on external inputs to maximise yield and extraction, accompanied by external control and regulation. However, ‘the Earth is a living system. Food is a living system. Our bodies are living systems.’ In these systems, ‘causality is systems causality, process causality and contextual causality’ – rather than linear causality of input and output. Nature is cyclical.

Another basic philosophical error is to confuse dead fossil carbon with living carbon, which is life. We need to realise how we have disrupted natural systems with our systematic ecocide and our reduction of complex climate systems to a single parameter, as Charles Eisenstein has also noted. Climate and food are interconnected, ‘because ecologically, all life is plant-based.’ Interestingly, 80% of biodiversity is on 20% of the land where indigenous peoples live, while industrial agriculture produces only 30% of the food we eat from 75% of the land – ‘small, biodiverse farms using 25% of the land provide the rest, 70%.’

The chapters on industrial farming, globalised food systems and regulation are thoroughly researched, with systematic analysis of the interconnected issues. An underlying trend is the replacement of the family farm by chemical intensive agribusiness, while ultra-processed fake food is an extension of the existing business model with its chemical rather than biological ways of thinking. Moreover, different kinds of food need different kinds of regulation – one size does not fit all. As Vandana comments, ‘cooking fresh dal and roti does not need testing for toxic chemicals and transgenes.’ (p. 79) Then we find that ‘the same handful of corporations sell both toxic agrochemicals as input in industrial agriculture and pharmaceutical products as inputs in industrial medicine. Disease is a market opportunity for this agro-medical-industrial complex.’ (p. 87)

Vandana argues strongly against George Monbiot, who espouses the view that lab-grown food will destroy farming and save the planet. She deconstructs these arguments, pointing out, for instance, that plant based ‘meat’ requires more soya than conventional beef, and that it will continue to be resource intensive and extractive. If one asks who benefits from these developments, it is the same large players with the synthetic food patenting logic, at the expense of small farmers representing Nature’s regenerative circular economy – ‘plants feed animals, animals feed plants. Cows eat plants; plants are nourished by the manure the cows provide.’ (p. 129) Moreover, ‘farmers are not an input, they are members of society’ who are at the heart of food sovereignty in both communities and countries – here we can vote with our own purchasing power for agri-culture rather than agri-business. This book is an essential counterpoint to mainstream narratives on the future of food and will help readers realise that we need a whole new holistic and ecological way of thinking about health, food and agriculture, recovering many indigenous principles in the process.