Sylvie Brunel ignores the reality behind organic farming
In it she talks of the “productionists”. Traditional agriculture is “productionist” and industrial, aiming to produce as much as possible. Traditional farms are like any other company, they share their aims (productivity and profit) and their methods (technique and industry).
Sylvie Brunel invents an imaginary enemy, the nemesis of “productionist” farming, who is an urban dweller, nostalgic of “the good old times” and “the lost Eden of our countrysides”. Meanwhile Sylvie Brunel evokes the country people, the farmers, as if they were one homogenous mass, they “cannot take it anymore”.
Whilst there is much truth in her article, the reality is rather more complicated. Yes, farming work in the pre-industrial world was extremely hard. Yes, there were droughts and famines. Yes, people need to eat better than they do today, especially those from poor or developing countries. Yes, the French countryside is shaped by farming and is not “natural”. Yes, “productionist” farming allowed France to become an exporting country.
Sylvie Brunel insists on the necessity of irrigation which “produced the most brilliant of civilizations”, no one doubts that necessity. But do we need so many expensive and destructive projects? She claims that “the ‘conversion’ to organic (…) is not better for the planet” as there is “more CO2 linked to mechanical weeding, or transportation”. But no one said that eating organic was all it takes, one must also consume local, seasonal products. Sylvie Brunel is forgetting that whilst weeding is not necessarily carried out by petrol-run machines; herbicides, insecticides, pesticides and fungicides are all a type of poison. She also seems to be forgetting the state of the soil and sub-soil, which besides the farmed species, has nothing - no flora, fauna or microbes that are necessary in maintaining an ecosystem.
Other problems with traditional farming include health problems to humans, mass death of bees, animal suffering on modern farms and massive destruction of bio-diversity.
Obviously organic farming is more expensive; there is less quantity produced and labour costs more. However, traditional farming has its costs too, Sylvie Brunel is forgetting that traditional farmers are often in debt for many years or decades in order to buy machines, and chemical products. But with the 10% unemployment rate in France, wouldn’t it be better to turn to a way of farming that creates work for people, and pays them the money, rather than it going to banks and large industrial groups? There is not a lack of funds, it is just badly distributed.
It is true that organic products can be “conserved for very little time” leading to “immense wastage”, but surely a system based on conserving food that is full of chemicals and preservatives is to blame? It is not just agriculture that needs to be reconsidered, but our whole system of production, distribution and consumption.