Farming our Future conference_Farming, Faith and Hope

	Farming Matters! Farming Our Future
	Farming, Faith and Hope Professor Tim Gorringe Exeter University
Bishop's welcome	The fundamental question we have to ask is what sort of economy we have, and what sort of economy we want. That is a theological question. Luke 16 tells the story of the unjust ‘Oikonomos’. This is our word 'economist'. We are all economists, called to be stewards of God's creation, in fulfilment of God's original purpose. We can be either just or unjust stewards. This was recognised in the middle ages by the attempt to establish a just wage and a just price - a proper reward to the producer, and an affordable price to the consumer. It was an attempt to give concrete economic shape to the idea of shalom - that peace, justice and integrity of creation which is God's will	Conference index
The Future of Farming - where are we going?	I want to make 4 points. First, food is fundamental. In the wake of FMD we have heard much of the centrality of tourism to the rural economy, and of the need for farmers to be seen as park keepers, managing the commons. Yes, to an extent. But let us not forget that world population has more than doubled since 1962. The UN predicts 1 0 billion by 2060, but my guess is that that is conservative. Currently population grows by 80 million per year. To feed 80 million people you need to expand the grain harvest by 21 million tons per year. There are two problems with this. Arable land constitutes one tenth of our world; meadows and pastures one quarter; forest and woodland one third; urban areas, deserts and ice caps the final third. So the amount of fertile land is finite. But the land available to produce food is not just a finite quantity, it is also shrinking, in the face of desertification, overgrazing and urbanisation. If we are going to feed 1 0 or 12 billion we will have to rely on the world's fertile areas. It is true food production has soared in the past 50 years, but not in 49 developing countries, where it failed to keep pace with population growth. This is partly because of the attempt to change traditional agriculture for export crops, the result of which has consistently been to leave local populations hungry.	Agricultural Policy - a personal view
Land and community - developing links	Second, Food is fundamental in another sense. In 1999 five French sheep farmers were jailed for partially dismantling a MacDonald's store which was being put up in their town. They did this in response to America's attack on their main export, Roquefort cheese, which was a victim of American trade barriers introduced in retaliation for Europe's refusal to import hormone-fed beef. The farmers won huge popular support, and were released after spending three months in jail. The debate their action engendered centred on free trade, fair trade, and the kind of food we want. Jose Bove, the farmers' leader, wrote:	Farmers' Marketing - opportunities
Green options	The support for the action showed that people understood that agriculture is not a separate sector, that it can't be reduced to just another aspect of production. Eating habits, quality, gastronomy, cultural identity and social relations all depend on farming, and define what we refer to as agriculture. It follows that the farmer's fate is indissolubly linked to that of other citizens (World Is not for Sale p. 26). Gilles Luneau wrote about this, in the same book: ‘Food is not a mere commodity: eating is an intimate, daily activity, a source of pleasure, a means of survival, and a critical aspect of the way in which we relate to the earth. Food has its rituals in every culture, creed, religion and philosophy. Wheat, maize and rice are more than just crops. They are the outcome of the fusion of sun, water and soil, (add labour). In eating, humans inscribe themselves in the cycles of the universe, and this is far more profound and basic than just making money. Wheat was growing long before coins were cast.’ And then he goes on: ‘If we want to have a say in what we eat, we must control global trade.’ (p.xii)
Questions: Personal stories	Luneau's point is instantiated by the festivals we read of in the Hebrew bible, and by Jesus' use of the Passover meal at the critical moment with his disciples. The eucharist takes this up. At every eucharist we remind ourselves of the fundamental part food plays in the economy of grace, celebrating the whole process of production, and as a feast of freedom we commit ourselves to challenge unjust ways of dealing with this basic resource.	top
Bishop's welcome	Third. Farming is part of the overall way in which the market works, or rather doesn't work. The reason that 800 million in the world today are starving is not due to poor distribution, but to the way the market works: tariffs, balance of payments, the ability to pay, and so forth. The world overseen by the WTO is the world which cannot address poverty because to do so breaks the dogma of free trade. Today the economies of whole countries is brought to ruin because the price of coffee has fallen by 80% (though not in our supermarkets). When a dogma is responsible for loss of life, it is an idol.. The crisis in British farming is part of this whole insane economy. In other words, it is not separate from the Christian Aid Trade for Life Campaign.. Effectively they are the same concern. What we call globalization is a system where giant corporations acquire assets transnationally with a view to making profit. These assets include food and water. The American transnational Cargill, for example, controls 75% of all world trade in grain. Brewster Kneen, Canadian beef farmer and food campaigner, writes: ‘If five or six corporations have control over every seed of all major commercial crops planted anywhere on earth, this is totalitarian. Add to seeds control over the genetics of all major lines of commercial animals and it will be somewhat more totalitarian. Then engineer all the genetics - plant or animal - to be hybrids, sterile or both, and the achievement will be without question totalitarian. It will amount to the occupation of the land - the earth itself - by foreign troops and their local mercenaries.’ At the other end of the chain there is a growing occupation of the land by a handful of global supermarket chains, and an occupation of the supermarkets themselves by transgenic foods and food products, unlabelled, so that the public cannot identify the invaders and thus avoid and reject them. Food and water become part of an economy which is a form of competitive power game. What sort of an economy do you call that? It is for this reason I believe Richard North is right, in The Death of British Agriculture, to say that he cannot see any salvation for British agriculture within the framework of the European Union. He writes, 'The confusion of responsibility and the power given to civil servants apart, it is not just the CAP which is the problem ... it is the single market, harmonisation, integration and regulatory agendas which are also lethal' (p.281)	Conference index
The Future of Farming - where are we going?	So what to do about it? Achieving Justice, Peace and the integrity of creation is bound up with the recovery of democracy. This is how George Monbiot ends his book on the Corporate takeover of Britain; how David Korten argues in The Post Corporate World; and is also Richard North's point in The Death of British Agriculture. When Jose Bove, the French Union leader, was released from prison he said, 'We're here to tell Chirac and Jospin: You can't just do what you like without consulting us. We will not accept the selling of citizens' rights to the multinationals or the WTO. We are here to resist, to construct, to reclaim power at the base, and not let ourselves be manipulated by the world's most powerful people.' That has to he our agenda. Don't say we can't learn from the French.	Agricultural Policy - a personal view
Land and community - developing links	In conclusion. In her History of Alternative Agriculture Joan Thirsk argues that there have been 3 previous periods of alternative agriculture 1350-1500;1879-1939;1980 on. Many of the ideas tried now, like set aside, have been tried before. The important thing that follows from her researches is this: the strong assumption of our age that omniscient governments will lead the way out of economic problems will not serve. The solutions are more likely to come from below, from the initiatives of individuals, singly or in groups, groping their way towards fresh undertakings. They will follow their own hunches, ideals, inspirations and obsessions.....the most successful strategies are unsuccessful.
Green options	She quotes William James, in a remark I quoted at the Food Day in Exeter Cathedral last year: ‘I am against bigness and greatness in all their forms, and with the invisible, molecular, moral forces that work from individual to individual, stealing in through the crannies of the world like so many soft rootlets, or like the capillary oozings of water, and yet rending the hardest monuments of mans pride, if you give them time. So I am against all big organizations as such, national ones first and foremost; against all big successes and big results; and in favour of the eternal forces of truth, which always work in the individual and immediately unsuccessful way, underdogs always, till history comes, after they are long dead, and puts them on top.’	Farmers' Marketing - opportunities
Questions: Personal stories	For further reading: J.Bove, The World is Not for Sale, Verso 2001 Tim Gorringe, The Education of Desire, SCM 2001 B.Kneen Farmageddon: Food and the Culture of Biotechnology New Society 1999 R.North, The Death of British Agriculture, Duckworth 2001 J.Thirsk, Alternative Agriculture: A History Oxford 1997
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