Earth is our home: August 2008 Archives

The Unitarian Universalists have named Ethical Eating: Food and Environmental Justice as the Congregational Study and Action Issue for 2008-2012.  As an old sceptic of General Assembly Resolutions I find the Study and Action process to be much more productive than simply passing resolutions, congregations are able to dig into the issue and try to both understand the issue and find ways to address it.  Given the gathering world crisis in food production and distribution, coupled with the destruction that chemical agriculture is doing to top soils and ground water taking action on "Ethical Eating" is critical.   

Here is a resource for Ethical Eating that I will be distributing to members of my congregation during our discussion of the implications of food, and how we eat it for the world we long to live in.

Most of us have been brought up to believe in that United States was a democratic nation, with government of laws. "of the people, for the people, by the people."  But if that is so, why, when most of the people believe that global warming poses a danger to planet, and that global warming is caused by human activity does our government and our economic institutions persist in activities that are leading us to catastrophe?

David Korten author of The Great Turning; From Empire to Earth Community asks and answers that question in the following remarks:

" [T]he governing institutions to which we give the power to set our priorities and our collective course. We might wonder how such reckless injustice could happen in a world governed by democratically elected governments.

The answer is both simple and alarming. Our world is not governed by democratically elected governments. It is ruled by global financial institutions in the service of financial speculators who exchange trillions of dollars each day in search of instant unearned profits to increase the fortunes -- and the power-- of the richest people on the planet. Global financial institutions bring down governments that displease them, and buy and sell the largest corporations like commodities. By design and law the defining priority and obligation of these governing institutions is to generate financial profits to make rich people richer, in short to increase inequality in a world in desperate need of greater equity. To this end, the corporations that rise or fall at the pleasure of the speculators, assault our eyes and ears with advertising messages intended to get those of us who already have more stuff than we need -- to buy more stuff.

That is the big picture. In summary, we must:

1. Bring human consumption into balance with Earth's natural systems by eliminating unproductive consumption and by restoring and even enhancing Earth's natural regenerative processes.

2. We must bring our human relationships into balance with one another by sharing resources and knowledge equitably and turning from a culture of competition and private accumulation to a culture of cooperation and sharing.

3. We must create a system of radically democratic life-serving governing institutions that support balanced relationships with one another and Earth, give voice to every person, and nurture the higher order potentials of the human consciousness."

Five thousand years ago the indigenous people of Southern Mexico first domesticated corn, from a inedible progenitor teosinte.  Thus began the agricultural revolution in North America enabling Native peoples of America to grow a surplus that would take through the winters.  The land was now able to support a larger population of people, and the arts were able to be developed.  A similar development had begun in Tigris and Euphrates Valley enabling Europe, African, and Asia to begin the journey toward civilizations.  According to the Mayans. people are descended from corn.

Today the Mexican people derive at least 60 percent of their calories from corn, eaten as tortillas, tomales, and according to Wendy Call corn is fashioned in Oaxaca province into  "baked totopos. A large, round cracker that stays fresh for months, the totopo represents local culture as much as maize represents Mexican culture. Baking totopos is a special skill, passed from mother to daughter to granddaughter."  Oaxaca may be home to the widest diversity of corn varieties in the world, but Call reports that the indigenous farmers in Oaxaca are having increased difficulty finding a market for their corn.  They are being undercut by the relatively cheap corn imported from the United States under the so called agreement called the North American Free Trade Agreement.  While corn is being processed in the United States into biofuels, and the price of processed foods and fresh corn in the super market is making increasingly difficult for working people to pay their bills, corn grown in the United States is being used to undermine Oaxaca's farmers and the provinces economy.  

All over Mexico trade policies are displacing people from agriculture who then become part of the Mexico's surplus labor force.  Many of these people join the migration north to become America's undocumented work force.  Read Wendy Call's article in Yes magazine on indigenous rights organizing and cooperatives for how Oaxaca's people are fighting back.

Our species has evolved on this planet supported nutritive conditions, and abundant resources.  Homo sapiens working together in communities have been able to create cultures that can remember the lessons that we have learned and apply those lessons to finding solutions.  Within those cultures we have erected institutions, complex sets of human relations that continue over time that facillate needed social functions in the areas of governance, production, finance, medicine, education, security, and religion.  But,  it is those very institutions that concentrate our collective power that have endanger us today.

In the last three centuries, beginning in a few countries in the so called industrial revolution, and now embracing the whole world in a global economy based on domination over both people and nature by corporations we are depleting the resources of our planet; most critically its deep, rich agricultural soils, it groundwater stored during from the time of the ice ages and its biodiversity.  

If we continue along this road the world's economic and social structures will collapse.  The leaders of the key institutions of the major nations of this earth appear to be under the illusion that no fundamental change in direction is required, that we can find technological solutions that will allow the corporations to continue business as usual.  

In the past grass roots movements have discovered ways to make changes in the direction of major institutions.  We think of the rise of organized labor, the consumer rights movement, the civil rights movement, the women's movement, and the environmental movement of the past.   While we have seen more and more grass roots movement toward more sustainable economics and agriculture, there is much more to do. 

In the words of the Earth Charter (2000)

We stand at a critical moment in Earth's history, a time when humanity must choose its future. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great promise. To move forward we must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms we are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny. We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace.

Because of the urgency of this task, I will be developing sermons and themes during the coming year on the Great Turning, the effort to make the turn away from catastrophe and toward earth community.

This was my column for the coming month in Throop Unitarian Universalist Church's newsletter Tidings. 

Last year the U.N. General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples, both the U.S. and Canada voted against it.  While it is significant that the international community (supported by the majority of the worlds peoples)  have come to understand indigenous peoples' right to protect their lands and preserve their traditional lifestyles, most of the world's 370 million indigenous peoples continue to face destructive policies at the hands of corporations and the governments that they own

Ben Powless, a Mohawk Indian from the United States who works with the Indigenous Environment Network thinks U.S. and Canadian governments will continue to be hostile to indigenous rights unless a majority of their citizens are informed enough to hold those accountable who play a powerful role in shaping public policy.

"The wider public must understand indigenous peoples' rights and concerns," he said. "They must act to protect them because as the most marginalised group in this world, it spells out how the rest of us will be treated, and is also the surest way to protect our last remaining ecosystems." 

Halder Rizvi agrees with Powless and she points out:

"Many climate change scientists share this view. They think the indigenous peoples can play a vital role in preserving biodiversity and the planet's resources because they live in close proximity with nature."

India adopted Western style agriculture beginning in the 1960s.  The so called  "Green Revolution" which used chemical fertilizers and anti pest poisons helped double outputs of wheat and rice in the Punjab.  But in the last decade, says Professor R.K. Mahajal, an agricultural economist at Punjabi University. "The Green Revolution is not as green as it was earlier -- it has now become brown and pale," says Mahajal. "The profit margins have skewered to the minimum. At this rate, in 50 years Punjab will become a desert, like Rajasthan."

In a significant article in Alternet  there is a critique of Western style agriculture and evidence that sustainable ways of agriculture must be adopted soon to prevent soil depletion,  and serious health risks to the population.

"People are fed up with chemical farming," says Amarjit Sharma, a farmer for 30 years who began organic farming four years ago. "The earth is now addicted to the use of these chemicals." Sharma is now the custodian of his village's organic seed bank. He sells his crop of wheat for more than twice the price of his neighbors who use pesticides and fertilizers, while he reaps just over half the yield. And he doesn't have to invest in costly inputs from the marketplace, such as hybrid seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, which keeps him from going into debt every season. He uses natural, homemade pesticides such as cow manure mixed with urine, soured milk, garlic, chilies and the leaves of a native plant to ward off parasitic insects.

"The major difference between chemical farming and organic farming is that with chemical farming the yield either decreases or stays stagnant over time, while of organic farming, field and quality of the soil increase," says Sharma. "After two or three years, the yield will be equal."