Asian peasant farmers
The natural world has long been conceived in Chinese thought as a self-sustaining, complex arrangement of interacting forces. Taoism instilled in Chinese people a deep respect for Nature, as did Shinto culture in Japan, and Sansin Nature worship in Korea.
Farming, by definition, is an artificial activity – establishing the human presence on specific plots of land, often to the detriment of other living species. But well-thought-out farming systems can exhibit a considerable degree of environmental stability.
In many parts of the world, small-scale farming has long been a dominant, sustainable way of life if not disrupted by population growth or loss of land to development. Traditional peasant farmers tend to have well-established concepts of trans-generational continuity, and their cultures reflect this.
The American agronomist Franklin Hiram King was keen to find out how, after thirty or even forty centuries of cultivation, the soil of farms across Asia could produce sufficient food supplies for large populations.
In his book Farmers of 40 Centuries, published in 1911, he writes: “We have now had this opportunity and almost every day we were instructed, surprised and amazed at the conditions and practices which confronted us whichever way we turned; instructed in the ways and extent to which these nations for centuries have been and are conserving and utilizing their natural resources, surprised at the magnitude of the returns they are getting from their fields, and amazed at the amount of efficient human labor cheerfully given for a daily wage.”[19]
King goes on to describe organic farming practices in China, Korea and Japan, and how they were based on sustainable give and take between farming families and the land they utilised.
Traditional practices included legume crops for nitrogen fixation, crop rotations and intercropping, terracing and the use of diverse, locally adapted crop varieties. Human, animal and crop wastes were systematically recycled to maintain soil fertility.
In his introduction, King summarises the key systemic principles: “Almost every foot of land is made to contribute material for food, fuel or fabric. Everything which can be made edible serves as food for man or domestic animals.
“Whatever cannot be eaten or worn is used for fuel. The wastes of the body, of fuel and of fabric worn beyond other use are taken back to the field; before doing so they are housed against waste from weather, compounded with intelligence and forethought and patiently labored with through one, three or even six months, to bring them into the most efficient form to serve as manure for the soil or as feed for the crop.
“It seems to be a golden rule … that whenever an extra hour or day of labor can promise even a little larger return then that shall be given, and neither a rainy day nor the hottest sunshine shall be permitted to cancel the obligation or defer its execution.”
As King points out, this meticulous system of farming based on nutrient and carbon cycling has maintained soil fertility and structure over forty centuries or more. The farmers grow small quantities of food, mainly rice and vegetables, for their family’s needs on a few acres of land.
They also usually have a surplus for sale. They only use human and animal muscle power, maintained by the food grown on their land. This circular metabolism enables them to keep their land fertile, generation after generation, assuring continuity of family and community life.
In a world increasingly dominated by large-scale farming systems based on artificial inputs of agri-chemicals and modern machinery, such traditional farming systems are of the greatest relevance today. This applies as much to agroforestry cultivators as to Asian peasant farmers like those described by King.
Human settlements and their hinterland
Across the world, the wellbeing of people is closely linked to sustainable land use. This is also true regarding the linkages between villages and towns and their surrounding countryside.
In his book The Isolated State, published in 1826, the German geographer Johann Heinrich von Thünen describes how traditional European villages or towns, in the absence of major transport systems, utilised their local landscape.[20]
Von Thünen’s model encompasses four concentric rings of agricultural activity surrounding the settlement. The first ring, closest to the town, accommodates horticulture and dairying, since vegetables, fruit, milk and dairy products must get to market quickly.
The second ring is for timber and firewood: heavy materials that are difficult to transport over longer distances. The third ring consists of extensive field crops such as grain that can be stored in granaries. The final, most distant ring is used for ranching and rough grazing. Beyond this fourth ring lies common land for grazing sheep and goats tended by shepherds.
Von Thünen saw these arrangements as a function of three factors: the cost of transport to market, the cost of keeping soil fertile, and the land rent farmers could afford to pay.
The different circles of crops surrounding towns and villages have different needs of cultivation, protection, and the maintenance of soil fertility. Soils in the first ring, where the most valuable crops are grown, require regular manuring. Further away from the settlement, perennial crops like fruit trees and vines need less frequent attention, mainly in the spring and during harvest time.
In the 1980s I filmed in Dinkelsbühl, in Franconia, one of the few traditional market towns in Germany still surrounded by a largely intact, protective town wall. Its agricultural belts were still much in evidence.[21]
Similar cultivation systems have been in existence all across the Mediterranean. A British geographer, Michael Chisholm, studied long-established village land-use patterns in various countries across the world.
Regarding the La Mancha region in Spain, he quotes research describing intricate arrangements for different crops around village locations, arranged in concentric circles: “On a terrain which is almost perfectly homogeneous…
“The pattern of settlement and land use is remarkably geometric. In the middle of the nude plain there are enormous villages… Around the villages, the bare fields on the one hand and the olives and vines on the other are disposed in concentric circles.
“The latter crops … generally are not found nearer the village than 3 or 4 kilometres. There is a third and outer ring, the uncleared land abutting on the surrounding hills … devoted to grain and tree crops according to the needs of the population and the state of the market.”[22]
It is important to realise that a sustainable relationship between settlements and local landscapes assured stable cultures, which in one way or another existed for millennia. At a time of climate change and increasingly expensive long-distance transport, can we move towards more local ways of living once again?
Conclusions
One aim of this essay was to establish that, traditionally, in communities with only minimal outside interference, land use and culture are closely interwoven.
Left to their own devices, tribal and village communities invariably built ‘eco-active’ cultures, in balance with Nature’s regenerative capacity.
This applies equally to forest dwellers like the Mbuti and the Kayapó, cattle herders like the Nuer, Alpine mountain farmers, agro-foresters like the Chagga, peasant farmers in India, Korea and China, and traditional agro-urban communities.
There is much to learn from such long-established practices as we face a climate and biodiversity emergency. In their varied ways, they are all defined by a balanced give and take between themselves and their local landscapes. They all source their existential supplies from the soil rather than from subterranean resources.
In the last 80 years, fossil fuel technology has profoundly changed how we feed ourselves, disregarding local sources and bringing in food and other vital necessities from far away.
In northern Europe, most fruits and vegetables are now trucked long-distance – from Italy, Spain or Morocco. The grains and pulses used for animal feed, pasta or bread are mostly shipped across the Atlantic, from the US, Australia or Canada, or from Brazil.
Timber comes from the very places tropical forest dwellers call home, as well as from far-away temperate forests. Our environmental impacts are now on a global scale, but we are only just starting to face up to the long-term consequences.
What can we learn from traditional practices? Over millennia, humanity has developed a tremendous range of lifestyles, adopting a wide variety of environmental options.
Today this is more evident than ever before. For instance, a Chinese peasant farmer on a few acres of land is very different from a Kansas wheat farmer on 1,000 acres, who is backed up by a complex array of technologies – diesel-fuelled farm machinery, pesticides and fertilisers – originating from distant factories, requiring metals, chemicals and energy in their manufacture.
The bulk of the Kansas farmer’s harvest is sold to distant markets, helping to pay for all this technology. Soils are kept productive, not by recycling organic waste, but by mineral fertilisers, some of which leach into groundwater, streams and rivers, and the ocean beyond.
Pesticides, used to deal with the wide range of pests found in monocultures, also end up as soil and water pollutants. Private profits increase as public costs rise. The fact is that contemporary land use systems are subsidised by massive injections of fossil energy.
In her book Soil Not Oil, Vandana Shiva writes: “An analysis of energy in the US food chain found that, on average, it takes 10 calories of energy to produce one calorie of food. … Part of this wasted energy is going into the atmosphere to contribute to climate change…
“Industrial agriculture in the US uses 380 times more energy per hectare to produce rice than a traditional farm in the Philippines… Energy use for corn production in the US is 176 times more per hectare than on a traditional farm in Mexico…”[23]
Nevertheless, a worldwide survey of farmers will probably reveal that the Kansas wheat farmer on 1,000 acres is a global model to be emulated, not the Chinese peasant on three acres.
But in contrast to the agricultures of our predecessors, we have broken all the rules of sustainable living. In the never-ending march of progress, we have thrown overboard long-held notions of environmental security, and the resulting resource depletion, pollution and eco-systems damage are ever-growing concerns.
There is no doubt that we need to rethink our current notions of both energy and land use. Traditional practices have much to teach us. Whilst smallholders still produce a third of the world’s food, often achieving higher yields per acre than highly mechanised farms, they are frowned upon because of lower labour productivity.[24]
Can we build a contemporary ecological agriculture? And, as part of this, can we replace our systemic dependence on fossil fuel energy technology with an all-out effort at mainstreaming renewable energy?[25]
If we are to build an ecological civilisation, we need to venture beyond short-term thinking and explore how culture and environmental regeneration can come together for a new sense of continuity. What does it mean to be custodians of life on Earth?
It is unlikely that many of us will lead the lives of forest people as we look ahead. But traditional forest-dwelling communities have every right to continue with their long-established lifestyles.
Meanwhile there are many initiatives across the world to revive and introduce small-scale, ecologically adapted land use systems – under the headings of permaculture, agroforestry and regenerative agriculture. In one way or another they are all circular systems, based on nutrient and carbon recycling, as indicated in the case studies in this essay.
Throughout history, eco-cultural feedback systems have enabled people to continually adjust their lifestyles to ensure long-term continuity. Could we achieve such a sense of continuity today, but on a global scale?
More than ever, we need a global ecological communications network, conveying the plurality of local options for regenerative living, and indicating what we can or cannot do to the Earth if we wish life to continue in all its immensely rich variety.[26]
This Author
Professor Herbert Girardet is a co-founder of the World Future Council, and a member of The Club of Rome. His most recent book is Creating Regenerative Cities (Routledge). Professor Girardet is also a trustee at the Resurgence Trust, which owns and publishes The Ecologist.
Professor Girardet will be speaking at the SMALL IS THE FUTURE event taking place on Saturday, 17 June 2023 at the Paintworks, Bristol. Speakers include Satish Kumar, Dr Ann Pettifor, Charlie Hertzog Young, Professor Herbert Girardet and Gareth Dale. Buy online tickets here.
Notes
[1] Colin Turnbull, The Forest People, Chatto and Windus, 1961
[2] Historic recordings of Mbuti music made by Colin Turnbull: https://www.worldmusicstore.com/products/music-of-the-rainforest-pygmies-historic-recordings-of-colin-turnbull-cd
[3] https://www.song-bar.com/lyric-word-of-the-week/word-of-the-week-molimo-mbuti-pygmy-music
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zdazJ0X1nc; https://www.facebook.com/Mesmerizingsounds/videos/pygmy-song/476385725889534/
[5] ‘Baka – Growing Up’. Episode of the 1987 documentary series Baka – People of the Rainforest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwhD3-xcAa4
[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DwFIq8mWTI
[7] Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics, Aldine-Atherton, 1972
[8] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/apr/03/yunupingu-yolu-leader-and-campaigner-for-indigenous-rights-dies-aged-74
[9] Herbert Girardet, Amazonia Ablaze, 2022, https://theecologist.org/2022/aug/19/amazonia-ablaze
[10] Darrell A. Posey, Indigenous Knowledge and Ethics: A Darrell Posey Reader, Routledge, 2004
[11] https://amazonwatch.org/news/2022/0303-portraits-of-women-defenders-uniting-across-the-amazon
[12] https://www.conservation.org/projects/brazils-kayapo-stewards-of-the-forest
[13] https://theecologist.org/2022/aug/19/amazonia-ablaze
[14] Edward E. Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People, Clarendon Press, 1940
[15] http://orvillejenkins.com/profiles/nuer.html
[16] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksTxz3yrdcQ
[17] https://www.dw.com/en/mountain-traditions-costumed-cattle-parade-in-the-alps/video-63380050
[18] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFaRs8L8QnY
[19] Franklin Hiram King, Farmers of Forty Centuries: Organic Farming in China, Korea and Japan, Mrs F.H. King, 1911
[20] Johann Heinrich von Thünen, Der Isolirte Staat in Beziehung auf Landwirthschaft und Nazionalökonomie, Friedrich Pertes, 1826
[21] Herbert Girardet, The Metabolism of Cities, 2023, https://theecologist.org/sites/default/files/2023-03/Megamorphosis-Cities-FINAL.pdf
[22] Michael Chisholm, Rural Settlement and Land Use, Hutchinson, 1962
[23] Vandana Shiva, Soil Not Oil: Climate Change, Peak Oil and Food Insecurity, Zed Books, 2016
[24] https://ourworldindata.org/smallholder-food-production
[25] Herbert Girardet and Miguel Mendonça, A Renewable World: Energy, Ecology, Equality, Green Books, 2009
[26] Herbert Girardet Biosphere and technosphere, 2022, https://theecologist.org/2022/nov/28/biosphere-and-technosphere
