George Monbiot is someone I have a lot of respect for. In the April issue of HEN, I spoke about his recently released book, Regenesis, on food systems, their collapse and his vision for a regenerated food system.
So it was with great interest that I read his recent Guardian article where he gives a summary, in a way, of his whole book.
According to Monbiot’s research, our global food has become less diverse, with only four crops accounting for almost 60% of all the calories grown by farmers. Those four crops are wheat, rice, maize and soy. Furthermore, their production is now highly concentrated in a handful of nations, including Russia and the Ukraine. This “Global Standard Diet” is grown by “Global Standard Farms” which are supplied by the same corporations with the same packages of seed, chemicals and machinery, and therefore vulnerable to the same environmental shocks.
After studying his subject thoroughly, Monbiot tells us that we urgently need to diversify away from global food production, both geographically and in terms of crops and farming techniques. We need to break the grip of massive corporations and to produce food and strengthen an entirely different means of food production.
That vision is what inspired me to be part of creating our original local Food security group in my ‘hood and it pleases me that we have a fairly strong network of people here who know about food growing. That doesn’t mean we will necessarily escape the consequences of this global system food collapse, but local food production is more important now than ever and we can see the starts of these more local systems everywhere.
“I believe we can create a truly humane, sustainable, and health food production system without killing any animals. I imagine a revolution in veganic agriculture in which small farmers grow a variety of vegetables, fruits, grains, and legumes, all fertilized with vegetable sources.” … Gene Baur