Feeding the Spirit while Feeding the Body: The Role of Technology1

Lindsay Falvey2

Summary/Introduction: Feeding the spirit relies on feeding the body. It is the subsequent action after basic needs are met, according to the sages. The action of producing food may be part of the means of feeding the spirit, in the same manner that most human actions may. All systems of food production conducted with awareness seek to minimize environmental damage. Yet all systems of agriculture interfere with nature, and as nature includes humans and their technologies, feeding the body of billions of humans implies large-scale use of technologies that impact on nature. Spiritual and bodily nourishment may coincide for some food producers, but for the majority of food consumers who live in cities, spiritual nourishment will be found in the practices of their normal lives, rather than in belief-driven agricultural systems. Future food production systems may possibly engage urban dwellers, which may allow feeding the spirit while feeding the body, but this does not necessarily make those food production systems superior to broadacre or smallholder farming. The paper discusses these matters and others by comparing scientific and alternative forms of food production.

This paper was initially prepared for a conference that was to consider alternative forms of food production within a spiritual gestalt. It argues for an open-minded consideration of all forms of food production, and seeks to stifle arguments that one form of agriculture is superior to another, or offers greater spiritual benefit than another. It takes world food needs as its context for both food production and spiritual outpourings such as compassion, and considers science as a peak of rational learning that is best applied with the insight of spiritual understanding.

What are we feeding?

If the body is fed, then the next activity of the considered life3 is nourishment of the soul. This axiom of the sages comes to us from philosophy and religion. Today feeding the body is reliant on centuries of technology, whether we eat from supermarkets or our own gardens. Yet we easily focus on individualistic notions of physical wellbeing in place of spiritual development. This possibly occurs for the same reasons that the spiritual intent of religions is subverted by belief-based practices. Such is our human nature – spiritual development appeals, but is easily displaced by physical and belief systems purporting to offer easier salvation.

Salvation from what? Simply put, we seek salvation from the fundamental fear of death in its various forms of loss, change and disappointment. When we recognize this motivation we can readily understand why personal health has become confused with spiritual development. I do not mean to deny the benefits of physical health – but excessive, even obsessive, interest in physical health seems

1 Full treatise prepared for the Yoko Civilization Research Institute for their 2011 Conference on ‘The Coexistence Between Nature and Human Beings: Viewed through Agriculture’ from which the paper for presentation at the conference was extracted.2 Professor Lindsay Falvey, Former Dean, Faculty of Land and Food, University of Melbourne, Australia <lindsay.falvey@gmail.com>3 ‘The unconsidered life is not worth living’. Ascribed to Socrates

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psychologically unhealthy. The matter is better expressed in the rhetorical question: ‘what is the benefit of living ten more years if one is not at peace with oneself?’ Christians will recognize the sentiment as ‘what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world but lose his own soul?’4

Technology leads to longer lives – the two major technological fields that allowed increased longevity have been public health and agricultural science. The former reduced epidemics and infant mortality when the latter ensured food was available. Of course, both fields also led to today’s huge population as well as increased longevity, which in turn produced a need for more technology to produce more food. As an agricultural scientist who has spent much of his life concerned with international food production, the body that I see we need to feed is not the individual in a comfortable lifestyle but the global population. And at this point, I should be clear that I cannot see any way to feed an estimated nine billion persons without the application of modern technology.

This creates a dilemma for those who do not like the use of some technologies yet wish to live by values of compassion and equity. The diagram illustrates the virtues that feed the spirit compared to their lack creating a hungering of the spirit – in today’s parlance, angst. At the personal level the anxiety becomes, ‘how can I advocate alternative forms of food production if they may lead to others starving?’ To an extent, such questions are part of life. They are a simple illustration that there are no tidy answers to existential questions. But we can

respond constructively, for example by realizing that the essence of spiritual guidance is testing each experience ourselves in terms of its contribution to reducing suffering. It is for these reasons that I am uncomfortable with belief-based or prescriptive solutions of some schools of alternative agriculture.

How can I reconcile this statement – that some schools of alternative agriculture are not advancing spiritual development – when elsewhere I have supported self-sufficient agriculture?5 The answer is in the previous paragraph: each of us must test these matters in our own experience, not simply trust a guru. In saying this, albeit using an Indian word, I am conscious of the benefits of learning in the manner of one’s culture. Thus the guru system works because the guru knows his role (and when to end it) and the disciple knows his – within the culture in which the guru is a spiritual teacher. But it is that same culture from which the teachings of sages – advanced gurus if you like – include the reference above to test matters in one’s own experience. One version includes words to the effect ‘do not trust your guru, but test it yourself … ’.6

4 Mark 8:365 Falvey, Lindsay (2003) Agri-History and Sustainable Agriculture: A Consideration of Technology and Ancient Wisdom. Asian Agri-History Journal 7(4): 279-2946 Kalama Sutta in the Anguttara Nikaya (Buddhist scriptures)

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So I put the question again. ‘Can we claim that we are feeding our own spirits by advocating a food production technology that restricts the ability of others to feed their bodies?’ If we are conscious of the choice, of course we cannot. If we are ignorant of global food issues and seek to feed our spirits, then as soon as our eyes are opened we are faced with mental suffering. The essence of the question above is in the word ‘advocate’ – a word in this context that could equally well be translated as evangelize, proselytize, spread the word, advertise, extend the truth, and so on. Not grasping after converts is the essence. The only way that we can feed our spirit while feeding our body from a specific practice such as gardening or a prescribed approach to growing our own food is to conduct that practice for ourselves. This is the nature of spiritual development – it is a personal practice requiring diligence, not the warm fuzziness of joining a social network. To advocate that others follow our chosen practice by claiming that it contains some specific truth is unlikely to feed our spirits.

Technology does not feed the spirit, but it does feed the bodies of the world. In a book recently published7 I show that small farmers feed up to half of the world

mostly from garden-size plots aimed to feeding their families before selling any surplus. At the same time, I note the continuing need for broadacre farming – that is, modern technologically-driven large-scale farming. Both are needed to meet the foreseen population of nine billion, most of whom will be in cities. Both rely on new technologies. Alternative forms of food production do hardly feature in this schema.

So let’s be clear: modern farming is not evil. It has no sinister agenda to pillage the environment. Like all technology – it is benign in itself. Of course it can be used in different ways like any other technology. The way it is practiced today produces many unwanted and some unnecessary environmental and social side effects. But that is a product of our societies and individuals, not of the technology, just as atomic theory can be applied in various ways. While we base our societies on a material and consumer foundation, we must expect excesses in the use of all technologies. In food production, I expect that we are only just entering a phase of socially and environmentally exploitive use of technologies because the financial rewards of owning part of the food supply system are becoming even more

7 Falvey, Lindsay (2010) Small Farmers Secure Food: Survival Food Security, the World’s Kitchen and the Critical Role of Small Farmers. Thaksin University Press in association with the Institute for International Development. Pp 232.

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commercially attractive. Such matters may be regulated by good governance, which ensures that the needs and aspirations of society are not compromised by private actions.

Regardless of its misuse, modern farming is integrally reliant on new technology. In an earlier discussion of sustainability8 I have somewhat flippantly noted that the system on which we are now reliant in fact sustains research – could this be a mechanism of sustainable agriculture in a modern context? The technology that supports farming comes from research, which builds on the great experimental agricultural science tradition that began in Alsace in the 1830s, which happens to be around the point of inflection for the acceleration of population growth. It also comes from knowledge of other practices – two areas that feed into the continued development of technology are from traditional food production systems (i.e. century-old practices of long extant communities), and from alternative agriculture approaches.

So I do not see ‘modern’ agriculture as opposed to, for example, ‘organic’ agriculture. I see them as parts of the same process. The language of opposition is easy, and serves to create the separateness that facilitates cult-think. It takes a more open mind to relate this to wider human endeavours, such as feeding the human population. If we are to feed our spirits we need to open our minds and to keep them clear. We may feed our bodies and spirits through specific mindful agricultural practices. But, as I see it, we compromise feeding both our spirit and our body if we are absorbed in proselytizing for social change.

Explained in this way, the title question – ‘what are we feeding?’ – may be answered succinctly as follows. If we make food production our spiritual practice we may feed our own body and spirit at the same time, but if we promote a belief, we should take care that we are not feeding something more akin to our egos. We are playing with language through such metaphor as ‘feeding’ the spirit, and such language is already complicated by our use of it in everyday religion and science.

Language in Religion, Science and Spirit

We need food to live. Six billions of us requires huge amounts of food. A future predicted population of at least nine billion requires, not just 50 percent more food, but probably 80-100 percent more, to cater for urban and transport wastage and civilized food preferences. If in the language of religion we agree that is an ‘unconditional duty for mankind to exist’,9 this food must be grown. In fact, even the irreligious seem to agree. If we are to all grow our own food from our own small gardens, cities would become quite different as would civilization; this may be a good thing – pointless hedonism replaced by productive work appeals to many would-be social engineers. But it does not seem possible under the reigning ideologies of democratic capitalism. And social engineering for spiritual

8 Falvey, Lindsay (2004) Sustainability: Elusive or Illusory? Wise Environmental Intervention. Institute for International Development Fund, Adelaide. 245Pp.9 Jonas, Hans (1985) The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search for an Ethics for the Technological Age. University of Chicago Press. Pp263.

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development has never proven sustainable. Our science-based food production systems seem destined to continue.

Science in its best form – a methodology and language for understanding nature – has no belief base and when applied as technology is oriented to maintaining man’s survival, like the role of religion quoted above. Science does this through the precautionary principle, which put simply, precludes engaging in developments that place human survival at risk. The idea is obviously widely agreed. However, if it is taken to mean that man has the ability to understand the implications of all his actions and to control outcomes relative to his survival, it is more difficult to agree. Yet both religion and science contain an unspoken assumption that we have both the ability to comprehend and control nature. When we do that, we are already viewing nature as something other than ourselves. This can easily occur when we enjoy a surfeit of material comfort and indulge in luxurious ideologies.

We are enjoying luxury – sitting on top of Maslow’s10 pyramid and self-actualizing, but it is at the expense of others when they face famine. So I pose the question: how can we feed the future population and care for the environment and ‘control’ the climate and stop species extinction and advance human rights and maintain our lifestyles and comfort and and and … ? We cannot – and to do so is to rock the pyramid that we have made unstable by these multiple ‘wants’. We cannot do all

this from our current approaches, although modern agriculture offers more hope of feeding the world than what are called ‘alternatives’. This may not be what this audience expects to hear, but consider it this way: the problems of modern agriculture that we discuss

are made known to us by the same science that is said to have created the problems. Our knowledge of environmental contamination, for example, is a product of scientific ability to detect such contamination. If application of technology caused the problem, science is charged with developing technologies to solve the problem. It has also solved problems the public has forgotten, which is why, for example, it is more fashionable today to criticize the Green Revolution as environmentally destructive. But that overlooks its relieving of suffering from the starvation that faced the world at the time. There is never a single solution in a complex system, and life is the most complex system we know of. This is why the ‘silver bullet’ or ‘win-win’ journalistic euphemisms are derided by scientists, for they know no intervention in a biological system has only a single effect.

The Green Revolution is nevertheless useful in demonstrating how we neglect to ‘feed the spirit while feeding the body’. It highlights how we were spectacularly successful in feeding the body while paying little attention to feeding the spirit.

10 Maslow, A.H. (1943) A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review 50(4): 370-96.

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Ancient production systems were swept aside by modern Western approaches and many Asian scientists were trained as if only technology mattered. Fortunately many farmers and a few scientists retained a language of a wider system in which the spiritual needs of food producers were considered.

This nexus between feeding the body then the spirit is what the sages have related down the ages. First seek the essentials of life and then devote yourself to spiritual practice. The essentials of life – food, shelter, clothing and basic medical attention – have been defined for 2,500 years or longer, as has the subsequent imperative to

pursue spiritual development. We attended to the language of the body but not the language of the spirit through the Green Revolution. But the spirit is nourished by personal action, and it takes a strong social fabric to withstand fraying of its strands from unregulated materialism. These are strange things

to most modern ears, but it does not take much reading to see that this has been a cycle of learning and forgetting, of rise and decline in civilizations across the ages. Most Westerners for example, in lauding the governmental successes of the Greco-Roman world, forget that the enemy that aware citizens sought to guard against most commonly was not a barbarian force but luxury.11 Thus some then recognized distinct needs of the spirit and the body.

Failing to make such distinctions distorts reality, which is relevant when considering how we feed our spirits. Yet distinctions are the most useful means of communicating in everyday language. This has been explained by many insightful persons. One whom I admire is the late Thai-Buddhist monk Buddhadasa who spoke of everyday language and Dharma language.12 I cannot present this paper in

Dharma language and so I rely on contrast, categorizations and distinctions to make my points. To feed the spirit from such discourse requires reflection more than reaction, consideration more than confrontation. Then we may see things as they really are – not by agreeing with me or any other presenter, but by developing one’s own spiritual discernment. This leads me to

say that seeing things as they really are is a definition of wisdom – and by saying that I have defined wisdom as the opposite of delusion. So I use everyday language to contrast wisdom with delusion. I need to use the comparative language of everyday communication to present the idea in discussion, in this case here at the Yoko Civilization’s gathering.

11 Fox, Robert (2006) The Classical Age. Penguin. Pp704.12 Buddhadasa Bhikku (1992) Paticcasamuppada: Practical Dependent Origination. Suan Mokkhabalarama, Chaiya, Thailand. Pp 116.

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If wisdom is seeing things as they are, then beliefs and preconceived notions and fixed ideas are not wise. Believing that we can maintain things in some comfortable state is a delusion; it is not wise. Yet much of what is said about sustainability assumes that we can control life to suit our fixed ideas of what is natural. But nothing is fixed and thus there is no fixed idea in science; the scientific method through its null hypothesis aims to remove our human predilection to fixity and believing our senses.

How does all this relate to different forms of food production? How does it apply to our spiritual natures? Put simply, it means that it is not productive to claim that one food production system is superior to another – each may be the most appropriate for a specific circumstance. In terms of our spiritual natures, it means that a belief – that is a fixed view of what is the truth – arrests development. Perhaps it can be a stepping-stone if we are starting from a cultural base reliant on belief. But in any case, our common tendency to think we know a ‘truth’ intellectually is but a superficial aspect of knowing in our own spiritual experience. Some people claim that what ‘feels right’ through intuition is the ‘truth’; there are even some in the more individualistic cultures who say that there is an absolute ‘truth’ for each person, such that ‘that is your truth, mine is different’.

But these are not truths, they are the beliefs, fixed views and protective delusions that have served the majority of persons who do not seek to deeply nourish the spirit – or to express it in the Western secular language, who do not seek a deep personal understanding. So in such a context, how does feeding the spirit relate to feeding the body?

Feeding the Spirit

Feeding the spirit may be akin to the feeling of contentment in today’s lexicon, such as attempted in discussions about gross domestic happiness in Thailand,13 which highlighted the conflict between social and individual spiritual objectives. Within the field of agriculture such confusion may be more common since food is a basic of life, and because agricultural metaphor pervades spiritual discourse. This abundance of scriptural metaphor exists for two good reasons: 1) At the time of great spiritual advances around the world between 500 BCE and AD 100, agriculture was the central activity of the stable societies that produced

13 Chantalakhana, Charan., Wanapat, Metha and Falvey, Lindsay (2005) Gross Domestic Happiness (GDH) in Smallholder Agricultural Development: Well-Beings and Social Stability’. Plenary paper presented at the AHAT-BSAS International Conference on Integrating Livestock-Crop Systems to meet the Challenges of Globalization, 14-18 November 2005, Sofitel Raja Orchid Hotel, Khon Kaen, Thailand.

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scriptures because agricultural technologies economically underwrote a small part of society to organize spiritual practice and codify religions, and 2) The flows of nature understood from agricultural practices were the obvious metaphors comprehensible to all. Thus it remains commonplace today to talk of ‘growth’, ‘cultivating’, ‘nurture’ and ‘nourishment’ in spiritual and psychological discussions. So too, we here speak of ‘feeding’ the spirit in language drawn from the practices that feed the body.

Our spirits are fed by stillness and reflection to appreciate the myriad interactions that are life. As we appreciate the uncountable interactions that affect all material and non-material things, we harness our rational consciousness in attempts to understand life and ourselves. At this stage of our rational development we overcome our inability to comprehend such diverse interactions by using mathematical models, such as for climate change, social policy, international finance systems, meteorological forecasting and various aspects of food production. But if we ignorantly believe the results of a model, or worse, believe that a model is perfect and delivers the ‘truth’ we are but a clanging cymbal of fear and delusion. Such is the common state of common man.

Thus a well-fed spirit is essential to awareness of the limits of rationality. For a very small part of humanity, science provides ever-unfolding explanations that can engender wonder and thus lead to insight. For others it may be meditation practice to calm the mind and so comprehend more clearly. For yet others it may be removing themselves from distracting lifestyles – such as those who retreat to monasteries or immerse themselves in gardening or small-scale farming. But the wise men of the ages have passed down the advice that most occupations offer the same benefit if engaged in with full awareness. However, rather than full awareness, society fosters rational thought and diversionary beliefs. We may feed the spirit by understanding what is lost in such circumstances. Let me take a popular belief in sustainable agriculture as an example.

Sustainable agriculture is today’s grail of both ‘organic’ and modern (‘scientific’) agriculture. ‘Organic’ agriculture is served by some science supplemented by convictions and conventions – I will come back to this point when discussing some particular forms of alternative agriculture. For the moment, I focus on the mainstream agricultural science that serves modern agriculture. It builds on soil science principles known to the ancient Greeks, on such technologies as the nitrogen fixation by legumes and soil amelioration by lime practiced by the Romans, on genetic principles deduced by Mendel in his monastery garden as well as on millennia-old irrigation technologies. However, for most discussions it is assumed to have commenced with commercializing of manufactured inorganic fertilizers and organic pesticides, which for fertilizers can be traced to the first modern experimental farm of Jean-Baptiste Boussingault at Pechelbronn in Alsace, France in the 1830s.14

Since that time – the mid-nineteenth century – huge increases in food production have resulted; a working estimate of the increase in production resulting from

14 McCosh, F,W.J. (1984) Boussingault, Chemist and Agriculturist. Dorcrecht, Boston. Pp280. See also <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Boussingault>

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that application of science might be as high as 475 percent. This means nearly six times as much food is produced today than in the 1850s when chemical innovations were first developed. Of course, if they had not been developed, other technologies may well have been, or else most of us would never have been born or fed. With such success, including the accelerated introduction of the technologies to Asia known as the Green Revolution, inevitable contingent effects occur. Those undesirable outcomes are not unique to these technologies, but are rather the consequence of all human attempts at manipulating life. As we observed above, the myriad interrelationships of life are beyond our ability to comprehend. If they could be comprehended, no responsible person would implement harmful ideas in the first place. Examples of our limited comprehension abound, from ancient Roman water pipes made from lead causing neurological diseases, to past irrigation systems sterilizing soil by salinity, to narrowing genetic bases of major cereals increasing the risk of disease in more than one grain at the same time.

It is easy to say that humans act this way when separated from the spirit. But does this help in practical terms? Has civilization ever combined spiritual and economic development? The answer looks negative if we accept that civilization is the lifestyle of living in cities characterized by politics, intellectual learning, technology and divisions in labour. It doesn’t specifically include anything to do with spiritual progress. If civilization is to live

harmoniously together as might be claimed of Confucian society, it may be a foundation for feeding the spirit, but it is not guaranteed. At base, we feed our spirits individually by knowing ourselves. If we live in a civilized society, we probably have time to feed our spirit. But if we seek to do so by adopting an alternative lifestyle, we inevitably find that our ideals are compromised by our dependencies on the wider society. This is the situation for the majority of recluses, as is most evident in religious traditions where those supposedly separated from the world are supported by those living in the world through gifts of food and clothes. Many believe that such giving brings merit to them, but is that really spiritual development?

If one is looking for prescriptive answers, all of the above must sound depressing. But it is only so because we are fixed on one view – wanting something to be as we imagine, and trying to control things that way. Better to recognize that we have separated our spiritual and rational natures. And this includes all of us who live in modern lifestyles. Let me use the example of Western society to illustrate how this separation of our essential nature affects us.

Scientia and Sapientia

The rational values on which modern society is based rely on technology produced by science to deliver ever-greater comfort, health and food. But that

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science is a pale imitation of the Latin word from which it is derived – scientia, which once included that other part of knowledge known from experiential research – sapientia. This is the outcome of spiritual searchers over millennia, which has been translated into everyday language as teachings and moral guidelines for those who do not have the time or application to discover things for themselves. As the two are separated today, feeding the spirit requires us to accord equal credibility to both sapientia and scientia. Perhaps we might even call the integration of the two ‘wisdom’ or ‘insight’.15

Insights into the natural world indicate the essentialness of variations, cycles, arising and decay, and the sublime state of living within, understanding, and accepting that process. The Buddhist paradigm called 'Dependent Origination'16 expresses an instantaneous cycle of our minds when they are not insightful; it begins at any point of the cycle, such as ignorance of interactions allowing a mental formation such as ‘sustainable agriculture’ to be conceived and so stimulate mental and physical effort, sensory involvement, and a craving for the realisation of the concept. Identification with the idea leads to disappointment when it fails to achieve all that was imagined, until a new deluded mental formation arises and a new cycle begins. This way of life is essentially inconsistent with the natural order and hence always produces consequences or conditions in which other outcomes may occur. This explanation of karma vipaka (actions and their effects) is instructive as to what feeds the spirit. If we find that a specific form of agriculture in which we believe – be it ‘natural’ agriculture, ‘organic’ agriculture, ‘biodynamic’ agriculture, ‘Permaculture’, ‘Steiner’ agriculture or any other type – does not provide the output we desire (feeding all people, reliable yields, unblemished fruit etc.), we are disappointed because we are in this delusional cycle. Of course, many adherents to a particular type of agriculture argue that they are not disappointed, but often they have not tested their ideas or themselves in the diversity of global environments or oriented their thoughts to feeding the world’s population.

With a blend of sciential and sapiential knowledge, it would seem that fitting in with the natural state is more likely to feed the spirit. The agricultural environment is not the natural state of the environment; it is man-made and man-maintained. If there is a form of food production that hardly touches nature (excluding man), it is akin to the food gathering of early humans. Does this mean that we must abandon hope of finding a ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ form of agriculture? Or does it mean that we have somehow retreated from the wisdom of integrated knowledge? To accept the first is to share some views of the deep ecologists17 who value ecological integrity above human aspirations – they say that humans are 15 Falvey, Lindsay (2002) Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Truth: A Consideration of Technology and Wisdom. Asian Agri-History Journal 5: 23-28.16 Buddhadasa Bhikku (1992) Paticcasamuppada: Practical Dependent Origination. Suan Mokkhabalarama, Chaiya, Thailand. Pp116.17 Naess, Arne (1973) The Shadow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement: A Summary. Inquiry 16:95-100.

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just another species that may or may not survive. While true, this is fatuous intellectualism, for each species and individual and especially humans will strive to survive no matter what.

The integrated view – wisdom – regards agriculture as an act of humans within nature. As part of the natural world human acts are ipso facto natural. Buddhism appears to accept this logic and simply uses it to illustrate that karmic consequences are also part of the natural order.18 Humans only differ from other beings in terms of their superior cognitive ability, which allows them to understand more of the natural order. Humans may, by their very human-ness, also be the only beings subject to the 'suffering of change', and the desire for sustainability may be an attempt to escape this suffering.19 Acting on this desire might be a means of feeding the spirit.

So, if we now return to the dichotomous language of everyday, we may divide agriculture differently into two types: one that is conducted with wisdom and so is done with constantly awareness of incomprehensible interactions and unforeseeable effects while always seeking to mitigate their excesses, and another that is oriented to producing food without regard for the consequences. This second outcome sounds remarkably like the Biblical20 story of the rich man’s barns full of grain, which allows him to ‘eat, drink and be merry’, but not for long. Even clearer are the words from a version rendered into a Buddhist story.21

Our discussion of the integration of scientia and sapientia indicates that it is one more ideal. Civilized societies have not proven able to keep them united for long. Our histories suggest that when unity occurs it soon degenerates into beliefs, usually defined as ‘–isms’, ranging through environmentalism, communism, sustainability, organic farm-ism and free market-ism. All are ideologies and all subject to the same flaw of the unthinking acceptance that wise men advise against. But as we must live in a world of billions of people with a continually increasing population, it is not practical to suggest that we can revert to living in a manner that does not impact the environment. Perhaps the most practical response, if the most responsible actions of population reduction and consumption reduction cannot be achieved, is to minimize the negative impact. This is the ‘reverence for life’ of Schweitzer which he expressed as ‘the farmer who has mowed down a thousand flowers in his meadow in order to feed his cows must be careful on his way home not to strike the head off a single flower by the side of the road in idle amusement, for he thereby infringes the law of life without being under the pressure of necessity’.22 Wisely practicing agriculture in this 18 Payutto, Payutto (1993) Good, Evil and Beyond: Karma in the Buddha's Teaching. Translated by Bhikkhu Puriso. Buddhadhamma Foundation Publications, Bangkok. Pp116.19 Falvey, Lindsay (2005) Religion and Agriculture: Sustainability in Christianity and Buddhism. Institute for International Development, Adelaide. Pp350.20 Luke 12:1921 ‘After a bountiful harvest, a rich man built larger godowns to store his extra grain. He sat back thinking he was now set for a life of leisure in his self-made devaloka. Then he dropped dead. What value were those things to him then! All surplus savings are without value. Invest in the true value of your spiritual life.’ From Falvey, Lindsay (2009) Dharma as Man: A Myth of Jesus in Buddhist Lands. Uni-verity Press, Australia. Pp250. Page 51.22 Schweitzer, Albert (1950) The Animal World of Albert Schweitzer. Translated by Charles Joy. Boston.

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manner seems the best possible outcome for feeding the body and the spirit at the same time – at least at our current stage of technological development.

One means of considering the gap between scientia and sapientia is through wider cultural appreciation; without overstating the differences, the holistic aspects of Eastern traditions may be seen to contrast with the sapientially-deficient aspects of some modern agriculture, which is perceived as emanating from the West.

Bridging the Gap Between Traditional and Modern Knowledge

Sensitive Western observers often claim that Asian religions with their animistic inclusions tend more to environmental and animal welfare matters than routine Western approaches. Perhaps this is related to less of a distinction between man and other life forms, which is said to allow more objective social consideration of such subjects as abortion and infanticide as noted in a previous Yoko Civilization conference.23 If that is true, it might also apply to those aspects of arguments about genetic manipulation in the West that have become mired in assumptions of stewardship. Without such a cultural constraint, as Fukuyama argues in the case of abortion, the action can be considered in terms of impact on a society or individuals. A bridge already developing between traditional Eastern and modern Western views can inform many such considerations, including, as discussed later for the peculiarly Western ideal of Permaculture. But in some cases such as genetic manipulation we are faced with technological change that is more rapid than our ability to consider moral and social values.

By speeding up the process, we cannot expect to know the consequences of immediately applied novelties that themselves are rapidly overlaid with newer products. What once changed over a generation has shortened to take only a decade, and now a week. So with this understanding, how can we know where an innovation like genetic modification will lead us? Genetic manipulation of food to increase yields from existing agricultural areas and to adapt food crops to areas previously unsuitable to agriculture is promoted as part of the solution to world food needs – feeding the body. But if we seek to feed the spirit at the same time, we are challenged to reflect on the myriad interrelationships thrown up by such a new breeding technology. We know how to manage many of these issues as they are also products of long extant breeding technologies, such as aggressive weeds, narrowing gene pools and reduced byproduct output. Nevertheless, since the time for reacting is reduced it commits us to even more research and technology. Realistically, we must accept that the world will need more food and that such technologies reflect the way the world is going. Megacities, population, trade exploitation, absurdly cheap supermarket prices (see the Coles’ Supermarket

23 Fukuyama, Francis (2003) Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. Picador. Pp272.

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advertisement – milk $1/litre in Australia),24 and uneven application of science are all realities, and all should be open to objective consideration by wise persons. But more commonly, the subject is fraught with opinion, lobby groups, misinformation and outdated knowledge, even within international agencies, NGOs and governments charged with alleviating the problems, and the whole field is fueled with misguided passion.

With such misguided vision, can we expect to bridge the gap between wise and unconsidered agriculture? We have already implied that we feed both body and spirit by introducing wisdom into agriculture. So it follows that it is wise for fixed views in

agencies and sects to open to each other with full awareness. You may say that this will never happen, but in fact it may be just the way that the best part of modern agriculture works. If we set aside political views about ownership of food, genes and chemicals, we see that modern agriculture is constantly changing as science feeds in new knowledge. Just as models such as that for climate change are always being improved as new knowledge is provided, so models for agriculture change. As we speak, traditional knowledge of intercropping from Asia and Africa is being integrated into modern agricultural systems, just as are ideas from alternative forms of agriculture, such as treating soil as a living medium rather than an inert substrate. It is not a case of ‘either-or’ or ‘them-versus-us’ but of integrating knowledge. It is a sort of middle path, as has evolved in some traditional systems over millennia.

One example of a traditional system is detailed in an earlier book about Thai agriculture; it concerns the Tai ethnic group.25 The Tai emerged as lowland wet rice growers in China more than a millennium ago, migrating south with their glutinous rice and unique muang-fai irrigation technology, which proved sustainable for a millennium. As the Tai merged with the pre-existing Mon-Khmer culture, the interaction built an administrative system that could balance human foibles in a complex irrigation system. This was all supported by a blend of animism, Buddhism and good governance that combined traditional ceremonies with rice production. Other traditional Tai value systems, such as retention of holy wood lots (see figure26) and spirit worship, seem to have linked practices to an overall worldview in a manner unknown to modern Western ideologues. Such systems did not arrive fully formed, they evolved in response to problems, trials for solutions and adoption of viable technologies.

24 Coles Supermarket advertising brochure, Melbourne, Australia. 19 February 2011.25 Falvey, Lindsay (2001) The Tai and Thai Agriculture. Asian Agri-History Journal 5: 109-122.26 Sheng-Ji Pei 1985 Some Effects of the Dai People’s Cultural Beliefs and Practices Upon the Plant Environment of Xishuangbanna, Yunnan Province, South West China. In Hutterer KL, Rambo, AT and Lovelace G. (Eds) Cultural Values and Human Ecology in South East Asia. Centre for South and South East Asian Studies, Paper No 27, University of Michigan.

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The social organization relied on local leaders elected by those in a village and a valley. Their roles included: calculating the amount of water and its allocation to individual farmers; coordinating construction of weirs and canals; coordinating annual repairs required after each wet season; managing propitiatory and other rituals associated with rice culture, and collecting fees for irrigation system maintenance and associated rituals. The system served Thai agriculture until the twentieth century when it was overtaken in the national Royal Irrigation Department and replaced by modern technologies.

Where other groups copied the old technology they also adopted the religious ceremonies, presumably as effective means of maintaining social and psychological wellbeing in the communities. The titles of community leaders related to water management including religious rites still remain in the title of HM The King of Thailand. The contrast with a secular or newly invented belief base in the West for a ‘permanent’ agriculture is clear; one is based on holistic knowledge passed down for a millennia while the other is based on a recent ecological understanding by a few with a following that owes much to reactionary fashions as a means of compensating for an emptiness in Western life. Yet the two could share so many factors. Linking the two cultures seems the obvious next step, for the benefit of both.

Another type of middle path is described by Uphoff27 as a means of enhancing management productivity by learning from small farmers and integrative technologies. Far from being an approach that eschews technology or science, it acknowledges the same interrelationship on which agricultural science is based. That is, Phenotype (production of grain, for example) is a function of Genetic and

Environmental influences – P≈G+E. He calls the approach ‘agroecologically-informed’. Rather than assuming that one solution suits all cases, genetic potential is captured by creating the best growing environment rather than following fertilizer recipes. This management relies on understanding the ways that crops and animal operate as components of ecosystems, especially in symbiotic relationships. So beginning with the best available genotypes from breeding,

while recognizing that further genetic improvement may yet be made, the most efficient transformation of water and nutrients into food are achieved as a basis for continuing improvement. This is modern agriculture operating with inputs from cultural traditions in agriculture. Rice yields increases of 50-100 percent and water use reductions of 25-50 percent have been demonstrated in controlled

27 Cornell International Institute for Food (1999) Alternative to Conventional Modern Agriculture for Meeting World Needs in the Next Century’ Conference on Sustainable Agriculture: Evaluation of New Paradigms and Old Practices, April 26-30, 1999 Bellagio, Italy.

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experiments and a range of other benefits have been measured.28 But no recipe can be offered since this is an approach to working within an environment less than controlling an environment. Numerous other examples are recorded in the literature.29 The system is the basis of so-called ‘prescription farming’ whereby each fractal of land has fertilizer applied according to its history, crop and current needs controlled through a tractor-mounted data bank; the technology is there in modern agriculture, but the incentive to use it is at best variable. Both Uphoff’s and ‘prescription farming’ are examples of bridging the gap between different agricultural -isms by wisely taking experience from other approaches.

Another example of the approach may be seen in a current review of Southeast Asian practices. This notes that the efficient use of feed resources is the primary driver of productivity from animals since availability of arable land, water, fossil fuels, fertilisers is continually decreasing. By shifting priority to ruminants increased production of animal protein from waste and low-value products is feasible. It is concluded that prescriptive technologies are wasteful and often irrelevant and certainly less effective than participatory research-extension-farmer linkages.30

Some of the priorities for feed resource use that arose from this review included: intensive use of crop residues; integrated ruminant-oil palm systems; use of oil palm by-products; wider technology adoption; systems methodologies; mitigation of climate change impacts on feed; research-extension-farmer linkages; year-round feeding systems, and integrated farming systems. Such strategies define the current changes in those systems.

These are just examples from the hundreds available that illustrate the meeting of ‘modern’ and other forms of agriculture. It is a redefinition of ‘modern’ if you like. Rather than interpret ‘modern’ to mean selfish unconcern for health and the environment as is implied by advocates of many ‘alternative’ agricultures, it may be defined as the ongoing absorption and application of new knowledge from all sources. Seen in this way, technology is part of that knowledge, and ‘modern’ agriculture is more holistic than other forms that exclude aspects of knowledge and experience. But, of course, not all modern agriculture is practiced in this way. The ascription of selfish unconcern to some modern agriculture is valid, but those who apply that mode of action do so to all activity not just food production.

28 Technical Presentation of the System of Rice Intensification Based on Katayama's Tillering Model. Henri de Laulanié, Association Tefy Saina1 http://sri.ciifad.cornell.edu/aboutsri/origin/Laulanie.pdf29 Norman Uphoff (2009) Agroecological Alternatives to Genetic Engineering: Maximizing Genetic Potential from Existing Cultivars. Chapter 8 in Handbook on Food, Politics and Society, edited by Ronald Herring. Oxford University Press.30 Devendra, C. and Leng, R.A. (2011) Feed Resources for Animals in Asia: Issues, Strategies for Use, Intensification and Integration for Increased Productivity. Asian-Australian Journal of Animal Science 24: 303 – 321.

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The above examples do not overtly focus on feeding the spirit while feeding the body, which itself indicates their Western bias. Such an holistic approach is sought in Western societies, but is not expressed at the level of sensitive scientists’ work – they often assume it. Meanwhile a less scientifically informed group acts on its impulse to reunite with spiritual aspects of life and seeks to do this through beliefs associated with the basic practice of food production. The result might be imagined to be the same – holistic agriculture; but so far it is not. To illustrate the point that holism is not defined by belief but by intelligent and open-minded practice, we may take two Western ‘alternative’ agricultures as examples of the limitations of excluding non-conforming knowledge – Permaculture and Steiner Agriculture.

Permaculture and Steiner Agriculture

Two modern alternative agricultures of Permaculture and Steiner (Biodynamic) Agriculture provide examples of many of aspects of small-farmer agriculture – but they are both Western innovations. Permaculture31 is a series of practices that seeks permanent agricultural production from integrated approaches as inspired by Mollison;32 Biodynamic Agriculture,33 which is somewhat similar, is an interpretation of Steiner’s cryptic insights into nature. They are here discussed from a paper of the Asian Agri-History Journal.34

Permaculture originated in Australia and has evolved into ideals and practices that aim to be sustainable within multi-species systems deemed to be natural. It is a worthy goal and a useful means of educating a generation in the West that has been alienated from nature and its cycles. On the other hand, its practices are not new and offer little of the spiritual integration that traditional Asian approaches have retained. This point is confusing to Asian adherents as they often have been alienated from their own agricultural and cultural roots as part of the nation-building projects of the colonial and post-colonial eras.

Small Asian farmers offer long experience that does not automatically occur to advocates of Permaculture and other alternative approaches. Two reasons may be proffered: 1) Western-influenced societies’ predilection to beliefs that hark back to calmer times when man was closer to nature, and 2) the cultures of the West having been eroded by material ease such that a generation has arisen without knowledge of its own culture’s traditional myths and religion, and which is not being nourished by an ever-changing pop culture.

Perhaps Steiner’s agricultural approach is a fairer example for this part of the discussion for his practices derive from insights that may be seen as non-material 31 <www.permaculture.org>32 Mollison, B. and Holmgren, D. (1978) Permaculture One: A Perennial Agriculture for Human Settlements. Tagari Publications. Pp128.33 Steiner, Rudolph (1924) Eight Lectures in Agricultural Science. Rudolph Steiner Press, Switzerland. Pp175. 34 Falvey, Lindsay (2010) Traditional and New-Age Conservation Agricultural Practices. Keynote Paper prepared for the Asian Agri-History Conference, Rajasthan, September.

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or sapiential knowledge. Steiner’s premise reflected the thought of Germany of his era, and so assumed that the human race was in decline – in his estimation as a result of eating an unnatural diet from chemical agriculture. He advocated humus and manure enhanced by ethereal forces to grow fresh fruit, vegetables and meat as a means of revitalizing humans. His disciples interpreted his complex insights into a practical Biodynamic Agriculture, yet even with this mythic belief-base Steiner’s ideas are restricted in application, perhaps more so than those of the newcomer Permaculture. Could this be a function of failing to conform to their home cultures, which today acknowledge a global society?

Both Permaculture and Biodynamic Agriculture contain valuable ideas and ideals. Steiner in his Eight Lectures on Agricultural Science presented some remarkable insights and Permaculture has likewise made some of the current generation aware of food production. Some of Steiner’s explanations proved erroneous while practices proved productive, and in the same way some of Permaculture’s outputs are useful, even if explanations are deficient. At the same time, a popular craving for a belief rather than maintaining a skeptical mind tends to alienate disciples of both alternative agricultures from science.

Science on the other hand is the insatiable knowledge magnet of modern man. Its cultural openmindedness in agriculture may be seen as having received a fillip from colonialism, which apart from the litany of negatives, allowed a form of cultural interchange between those sensitive enough to appreciate the views of others. In the case of India, Sir Robert Howard35 – a director of an Indian research institute in the early twentieth century – provides an example. Beginning with ‘the white man’s burden’ of developing the colonies, he gradually came to appreciate the benefits of traditional Indian peasant agriculture over industrial approaches to food production. His focus was largely soil based and he contrasted the sustainability of the traditional humus-based agriculture with the decline of civilizations that failed to respect the soil. His belief – that ‘at least half the illnesses of mankind will disappear once our food supplies are raised from fertile soil and consumed in a fresh condition’ – echoes sentiments from Steiner in Europe.

Likewise King,36 after considering the directions of industrial agriculture in 1910s found Asia’s traditional systems to be valuable, even if again, some of his explanations have since proved erroneous. Whether or not King, Howard and Steiner misunderstood the chemistry of humus or some other detail should be irrelevant to us today; the important point is that all three appreciated the benefits of peasant agriculture. King noted the durability of Chinese and other Asian agriculture, Howard revered the traditional practices of India, while Steiner’s ideas stimulated a more European or Western approach, one legacy of which may in fact be Permaculture.As the concept of ecology gained ground in public consciousness, it entered the Permaculture lexicon in such forms as maximizing biomass per unit of land area without chemical fertilizers through mixed-species production. Again the

35 Howard, Robert (1943) An Agricultural Testament. Oxford University Press, London. Pp253.36 King, F. (1911) Farmers of Forty Centuries: Or Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan. <http://www.earthlypursuits.com/FarmFC/FFC>

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practices were moving closer to those of Asian peasants. Those developing the Permaculture concept in Australia naturally oriented it to the perennial issue of water conservation in conjunction with land use.37 With reforming of the landscape, it was claimed that agriculture could be sustained permanently – but its ideas were hardly new and were less developed than those that had been honed over millennia elsewhere. In addition, these environmental modifications were essentially a variation of the same Western attitude of extensive control of nature that underpins industrial agricultural systems. While the approach of Permaculture needed no greater justification than recognition of the millennia-old ongoing practices of small farmers in developing Asia, its intellectual isolation led it to seek credibility as part of Fukuoka’s38 holistic work. That referencing has been selective and retains a Western emphasis. The continued isolation of second-generation adherents to Permaculture even allowed claims that government manure projects in developing countries were part of the same ‘discovery’. But in fact, such practices are more common in the world than is industrial agriculture. Yet Permaculture as an output of the West may yet be useful in such situations if that makes integrated thought more credible. For example, as I have noted elsewhere,39 the self-sufficiency movement in Thailand attracts mainly lip service and is understood by many as a reaction to fiscal imperatives – because decision-makers in Thailand now follow Western norms. The objectives of Western alternative agricultural approaches discussed here are essentially similar to those of traditional Asian agriculture, minus the integrated spiritual dimension. No doubt there are practitioners of Permaculture, Steiner and other alternative agricultures whose own worldviews have been influenced by their endeavours and some who may even see their group as the beginning of a brave new world. But such fervour comes and goes with centuries and does not

expand unless society in general adopts the principle and allows itself to be governed accordingly. Other conservation prophets have failed to sustain their message in the West; all four mentioned herein – King, Howard, Steiner, and Mollison – share this fate and their disciples are few and of limited influence. The world is not heading in that direction. Yet I see value in these approaches.

To assess that value we must ask, ‘can traditional agricultural practices be de-sanctified – stripped of myth and other holistic worldviews – and applied in a secular environment to the same effect?’ My answer is probably not. The holistic involvement of traditional practices cannot be faked – they either define life and the society or they are subject to the whims of human nature. These groups would do well to learn from remnant traditional agriculturists in Asia. They might also

37 Yeomans, P. (1973) Water for Every Farm. CreateSpace Publishers. Pp366.38 Fukuyama, Francis (2003) Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. Picador. Pp272.39 Falvey, Lindsay (2000) Thai Agriculture: Golden Cradle of Millennia. Kasetsart University Press, Bangkok. Pp490.

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learn by linking with the traditions of self-understanding that have long existed in the West as well as in immigrating Asian religions, and so gain further insight into the realms that their rhetoric purports to explore – and then fulfill the promise of feeding the spirit. From such insights one might expect that their dis-integrated criticisms of industrial agriculture might be abandoned in the light of the imperative of fostering the best of all forms of agriculture to feed a population that may soon be beyond both traditional and industrial agricultural production capabilities.

The main point is simply that the more open-minded we are then the more we may learn from other parts of history, the world and science. And then we may feed our spirits. Thus Permaculture and Steiner Agriculture have a valuable place in widening understanding of other forms of agriculture, and of course vice versa. And they, like all forms of food production, have a responsibility to understand global social needs and trends. These trends currently herald a future where food production systems are even further removed from what we have so far called ‘modern’, ‘industrial’, ‘conventional’, ‘traditional’, ‘organic’ or ‘alternative’ agriculture.

Future Food

One does not have to be a futurologist like Ray Kurzweil40 to foresee that the future of food in a more populous world is not going to rely alone on current technologies or even new technologies for existing production systems. Agriculture as we think about it is only 10,000 years old, which is a short time in human historical terms, and we are now attuned to an ever faster rate of technological and system changes. Land-based food production will no doubt continue and may even provide luxury food products. But there will be urban food production on a scale that will make current garden plots seem primitive. Why? Because demand will drive the need for accessible food. At present food is so cheap in Western countries that it leads to unnecessary environmental and animal welfare impacts; price rises are part of the answer. But price rises will not suit the majority of urban consumers, the largest growing urban group, as they are very poor. Something cheap and home produced will suffice. Consider these likely future food outcomes:

home fish tanks for food not aesthetics; ‘vertical vegetable venetians’; ‘fungi farms in your flat’; ‘living algal soups’ ‘home hutches’ for rabbit meat (one pair 30 per year @ 1.5kg) ‘rodent rooms’ or ‘guinea-pig granjas’ (one pair 60 per year @ 800kg)41

worm farms and so on.

And consider the future agribusiness that will deliver cheap city food from factory-produced fruit, vegetable, and cloned meat production managed through

40 http://www.fastcompany.com/100/2010/62/ray-kurzweil41 Kyle, Russell (1987) Feast in the Wild. Kudu Publishing, Oxford. Pp203. [see also New Scientist June 25, 1987: 58-61]

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robotics.

That future for food will make feeding the spirit while feeding the body even more a personal matter. The open mind that the sages’ advice requires will be necessary to separate food from soil just as food has largely been separated from toil. And so we come back to the same point at which we set out – and perhaps know the place, like Eliot,42 for the first time – that feeding the spirit is a function of our motivation and openness in whatever we do. There is no one essential spiritual form of food production.

Drawing some Conclusions1. Feeding the body is more about meeting the needs of six or nine billion

people than about perfecting the nutrition and health of a small proportion of privileged persons.

2. Belief placed before openness limits feeding of the spirit.

3. Contributing to feeding the growing body of human biomass seems more compassionate than luxury feeding of self, and hence may be expected to feed the spirit for those who practice it in an openhearted and openminded manner.

4. ‘Modern’ agriculture, despite some selfish misapplication, is ever open to new technological developments and knowledge from ‘alternative’ agricultures. It is thus the most likely food production system for feeding the global human body, and perhaps even contributing to feeding some spirits.

5. Conceiving the universe as one living system in the manner of the early Lovelock43 is a boon to life, and is a product of conceptual scientific understanding not of belief or feeling.

Can we expect to feed the spirit while feeding the body? Yes, but it relies on all bodies having enough food in the first instance. And it does not mean that this or that food production method holds some magical spiritual element, rather it means that spirit is fed according to our motivations and openness. Put simply in today’s urban context, science and technology allow us to feed our spirits while feeding our bodies on food from farm, forest, food store or our flat.

42 see T.S. Eliot’s Little Gidding in The Waste Land.43 Lovelock, J. (1979) Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. Oxford University Press. Pp176.

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