Sixty Harvests
Speaking at a World Soil Day event in 2016, Maria-Helena Semedo, deputy director-general of natural resources at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, caught my attention. Semedo pointed out that we have not been good stewards of the land and that if current soil degradation rates are not reversed, most of the world’s topsoils could be depleted in just sixty years. Another way of expressing the same thought is that we have only sixty harvests remaining if we cannot halt and overturn the damage done by deforestation, overgrazing, and chemical-heavy[1] industrial farming within the conditions of a burgeoning population and a heating planet.
While others have pointed out that sixty years is a fairly arbitrary figure, indeed a few agrarian scientists refuted such a notion entirely, I prefer to use it as a metaphor for any systemic crisis in which simply stopping what we do, or doing something different, ostensibly to improve matters, invariably turns out to be deficient. In some cases, these actions can actually cause the system to fail even faster.
I would propose that the degree of destruction we have unleashed as a species, on each other as much as the natural environment, can only be dealt with through a leap of consciousness leading to regenerative healing along a number of differing dimensions.
We tread so clumsily on the Earth with no regard for future generations. Our collective ecological footprint is immensely damaging. And while the climate emergency is undeniably connected to excessive production and consumption in the most affluent nations, we have continued much as before and have largely failed to address this predicament. Of course, the younger generation has now caught on to this folly and will not allow us to forget it. Nor should they, for we are culpable in not taking action when the means for the restoration of nature are already available.[2]
The destructive scale of agriculture is vast. Intense monocultural farming and industrial practices are responsible for environmental devastation, desertification, the contamination of freshwater ecosystems with high volumes of salt, fertilisers, and other chemicals, and massive species loss.
Yet almost 60 percent of agricultural production in the West is concerned with growing fodder for livestock — confined because of economies of scale in giant foodlots. This practice contributes to poor human nutrition and soil degradation but is not surprising. Since the late 60’s agricultural production has been captured by capitalist ideals. The goal of every corporation in the industry is profitable growth for shareholders. This is done by externalizing costs, applying efficiencies, and exploiting nature. The production of wholesome food for human consumption does not enter into the equation when profits drive business.
That is not to say there are no solutions. By shifting food production away from industrial farming to regenerative organic methods wherever possible, we can choose a reverse course and begin to replenish our soil at the same time.
The need for regeneration applies not just to agriculture but to a range of Earth-scale activities, along with their theoretical fundamentals, that have failed the human family for decades. Until recently we did not pay too much attention to these shortcomings because the systems we had designed were actually working as intended. The economy was designed to create more wealth for one group over others. Industrial farming was always intended to benefit corporations more than farmers. And so on…
So we were taught to rationalize the results using every kind of logic from the absolute necessity of using chemicals in farming and “trickle-down” economics that started as a joke, to the notions that labour is worthy of compensation but unemployment deserving only contempt, education is the preserve of those who can pay for it and the assertion that equality is impossible to achieve.
Taken as a whole, the destruction being wrought by a combination of design defects and poorly-applied or unsuitable management practices, fuelled by increasing levels of greed and stupidity, within and across our most life-critical socio-economic systems [such as food, health, governance, energy, communications, and economics] are bringing about the possible extinction of life itself. Incredibly, incumbent power is not just letting this happen but hastening the end-game.
It is these failures that are resulting in the symptoms of societal collapse we see today in the US: obesity, poverty, ill-health, gender inequality, racism, decaying infrastructure, and extremism on every corner.
The continued use of energy from fossil fuels is no longer tenable. The major energy companies understand this. In fact, they have known it for many years. Remaining stocks should be left in the ground as we implement massive efficiency and conservation practices aimed at totally replacing coal and gas with cleaner, low-carbon renewables.
At the same time, holistic agriculture and innovative carbon capture technologies could sequester the massive amounts of carbon that currently hang in the atmosphere. Given the imperative for competition within the ethos of capitalism, major corporations in the energy industry would need help to remove distressed or stranded assets from their balance sheets during a mandated period of cooperation. It is easy to imagine what infrastructure would be needed to enable a transition to clean energy. Indeed the Centre for the Future is already working on one such idea.
The economy no longer works on behalf of humanity. But it can and must. Possibly the greatest impediment to economic reform is the mantra of growth and development, without which many economists argue the quality of life built up over generations will diminish and fade. That, too, is a lie. If the tiny gifts discovered under the smokescreen of measures taken to curtail the spread of CODID-19 do not persuade us of this nonsense, I am not quite sure what will. During this great pause, we have relished working from home, avoiding the daily commute into the office. We have been surprised by the gifts of solitude, of silence, and bird song. We have seen fish swimming in the clear waters of the Venetian canals. And even the sun peering through the layers of cloud in Wuhan. We have appreciated what we had missed without even knowing it.
Excessive extraction of raw materials, over-exploitation of ecosystems, old industrial practices, and over-production of goods that are not essential for human needs can be rapidly curtailed to maintain long-term sustainability of the biosphere and to improve the quality of life. We will not miss most of it. By prioritizing human health, wellbeing, and social harmony over growth we shift the orthodox mindset towards one of regenerative economics. That simple shift alone will help reduce inequality and injustice.
The world population is still growing by roughly 80 million people a year. This urgently needs to be stabilized, then gradually reduced, within a framework that guarantees both social and cultural cohesion. The education and empowerment of women, along with family planning services, have all been effective in lowering fertility rates and achieving gender equality, as well as strengthening human rights. Once again, regenerative social practices can easily be implemented if we have a mind to shift resources accordingly.
Mitigating and adapting to climate change, while navigating the global transition we are in and respecting the diversity of the human family, entails regenerative transformations, both in the ways our civilization functions and in the ways we interact with nature. Arising from the pandemic and the glimpses of a future we had not previously thought possible, there is cause for hope. Public sector agencies are making climate emergency declarations. Schoolchildren are striking. Ecocide lawsuits are being executed in the courts. Grassroots citizen movements are demanding change, and many countries, states, and provinces, cities, and businesses are responding.
Unfortunately, there is an elephant in the room. It’s the same elephant that hinders the deployment of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. It has to do with the magnitude of the problem, the fear that we might lose something important in the process, and the perceived impracticality of the challenge. Generally, we become easily fatigued when too much change is demanded of us, or imposed too quickly, with little explanation. Within the context of the kinds of 2nd and 3rd order change envisaged here, such existential demands frequently manifest as an array of unbearable psychological tensions with only two reactions possible: discord or trauma.
In order for real change to occur, in ways that lead to a transition that avoids these consequences, we must not leap straight into disconnected solutions to agriculture, or energy, or population. We need, instead, to create the conditions wherein these discrete goals and changes can be realized within an interconnected ecosystem of conscious evolution. That is why a regenerative mindset is so vital. We can beaver away at individual systems all we like. It is highly probable we can improve their effectiveness to some extent. But we will never achieve the transformation we really need.
Regenerative practices across the spectrum can bring a fresh functionality to global society that is sustainable. But, much more than that, it can bring in its wake greater social and economic justice, and realign our priorities for adapting to climate change, while guaranteeing far greater human wellbeing than does business-as-usual.
But we need to start there. Intervening disjointedly in the domains of energy, or agriculture, or public health, can only get us so far. It might give us seventy or a hundred harvests. Creating the conditions whereby real transformation can occur is leadership. And that, too, needs to be approached from a mindset of regenerative consciousness.
[1] Herbicides, including the notorious glyphosate (marketed as Roundup) patented and released by Monsanto in the early ’80s, as well as various fungicides, insecticides, and chemical fertilizers.
[2] See the 100 existing technologies in the Drawdown Project, for example.