Food For Tomorrow?
C. Dean Freudenberger, Ph.D
Augsburg Publishing House, Minneapolis, Mn. 1984, 173 pp.
"There may be no more important
social problem in this century than the increasing imbalance between human
population and the resource base that sustains it. The problem is creeping, diffuse, and undramatic compared with
others that command attention: nuclear proliferation, international monetary
disturbances, or the politics of the Mid-East."
Donnella
Meadows, quote from the Introduction to Part 1, p. 13.
Food acquisition is the
primary biological work of all life, including human beings. Throughout history even to this present day
much of human energy, at times exceeding 90% of productive work, has been
engaged in food acquisition and preparation.
Civilizations have arisen, power struggles have been waged, cultures
have emerged–over the securing of a dependable food supply.
Food for Tomorrow?
is a cry and summons for radical global change in food production ideology and
methodology. Present-day agriculture is
highly productive, creating a world-wide economic system predicated upon inexpensive
food. This is a false security, warns
author C. Dean Freudenberger, for current high agricultural yields correlate to
high fossil fuel usage, intensive pesticide and herbicide application,
irrigation, and an alarming deterioration of soil and water base. As Herman E. Daly and John B. Cobb, jr.
argue elsewhere, "Sometime during the next 40 years the cost of oil will
necessarily rise to the point where the present agricultural system will
collapse."[1]
Without a comprehensive transition to a global sustainable agricultural
base, Freudenberger asserts, massive famine, population upheaval, political
aggression, and irreversible environmental calamity is inevitable.
Dr. Freudenberger has an
array of credentials. He holds a Ph. D.
in social ethics from Boston University, and at the time this book was written
was a professor of Christian ethics at Claremont School of Theology with a
concentration in international development.
In 1950 while training in agriculture at California State Polytechnic
University at San Luis Obispo, he was invited to serve as an agricultural
missionary to the Katanga Province of what was then the Belgian Congo
(Zaire). His career continued until
1973 under the auspices of the United Methodist Church, concentrating in rural
community and agriculture primarily in Africa but to other continents as
well. Dr. Freudenberger writes from
life-long observation and involvement with the eye of one well-trained in both
theology and agricultural science.[2]
Part 1,
The World Food
Crisis
Freudenberger begins his
book by illustrating the current and impending food crisis in stark,
apocalyptic terms. This gains the
reader's attention! Improper management
of the land is not new, asserts Freudenberger, who quotes W.C. Lowdermilk's
1930's study which demonstrated causality between the collapse of most major
civilizations during the past several thousand years to land abuse.[3]
Modern technology, however, can accelerate the process of resource
deterioration. Freudenberger
extensively quotes statistics to demonstrate severe soil erosion and
compaction, salination, groundwater depletion and contamination, and the
dissipation of the biological genetic pool, each and together factors edging us
ever nearer to a calamitous precipice.
Freudenberger contends, however, that the vise-grip connection between
agricultural productivity and fossil fuels is the most imminent time-bomb incessantly ticking-away toward its explosion. Whether it is the fuel that runs the
tractor, powers the irrigation systems, drys the grains, ships to markets, or
manufactures the fertilizers–modern Westernized agriculture is now resting upon
a base of cheap, available fossil fuel.
It is not a matter of "if" but rather the fact of
"when" this fuel becomes scarce and consequently expensive, claims
Freudenberger, that a food crisis locally and globally will literally explode
in human anguish.
Even now, Freudenberger
points out, it is impractical for developing third world countries to adopt
Westernized agricultural methods–there simply is not enough fuel available
globally for such a wide-spread application.
Thus, solutions for sufficient food for developing countries must not be
through means of importation of Western technologies but rather a careful,
innovative approach that integrates appropriate intermediate technologies,
maintains social and community integrity, and an optimum long-term sustainable
productivity.
Part
2 The Needed Ethic
For a New Agriculture
In this two-chapter
section, the author attempts to lay out
a biblically-grounded ethic for sustainable agriculture. Freudenberger emphasizes that the Hebrew
word abad translated as
"till" or "cultivate" in contexts referring to agricultural
work (Gen. 3:23; Prov. 12:11; Ezek. 36:9, etc.), is the same word abad translated as "service"
in several hundred passages as the common understanding in which one assists,
cares for, or demonstrates allegiance to another, usually in the context of
service to God ( "[you shall] serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart
and with all thy soul" –Deut. 10:12).[4]
Thus, humans are to serve the land. The ethical parameters, according to Freudenberger, take shape in
(1) justice; (2) participation; (3) sustainability.
In speaking of justice,
Freudenberger writes,
" To what primary purpose and goal should our agricultural science
and technology be committed? Should it
be to the maintenance of favorable trade balances and the maximization of
profit? Or should our purpose be the
maintenance and renewal of the necessary resources for food, clothing, and
shelter for both now and the future?"
(p. 98).
The implications of
justice lead to Freudenberger's second ethical criteria, participation. "Participation assumes that every
person has a responsibility to take initiative in formulating or changing
policy ...(p. 101), not just corporations or other concentrations of
power. Ultimately we need to 'see
ourselves as coparticipants with God.
This is our highest value and the one closest to our idea of
covenant'" (p. 103).
In its simplest
understanding, sustainability is justice for the future. It is integrally tied to a theology of
hope. Finally, sustainability is
iconoclastic to the practice of maximum profit and short-term gain. Sustainability, that is, life within the
equilibrium and carrying capacity of an ecosystem, finally is gratitude to God
through harmony with His creation.
Microbiologist Rene Dubos sums up
well the needed ecological ethic.
"We must base our actions upon value judgments on the quality of the
relationship between humankind and the earth, in the future as well as in the
present" (p. 106).
God has created us for a
harmonious relationship with Him, with one another, and with all creation. As Christians, this is our one goal.
Part
3 Toward Solutions
Freudenberger claims to
be optimistic. He feels people in the
U.S. (which is the hands-down leader in world agriculture) have a deep-rooted
biblical tradition which needs but evoked to set in motion movement toward a
sustainable future. Prophetic
envisioning, education, and public policy shifts must occur. Technology is essential, Freudenberger
insists, but it must be used correctly toward a goal of agricultural
sustainability and economic justice, not maximum profit through resource
depletion and competitive jostling.
Ultimately, we need a renewal of covenant–with God; with one another as
a global and local human community present and future; and with our task to
serve the earth.
A
Critique
As one who lives in a
rural community, I found Freudenberger's work both insightful and
envisioning. It is my strong contention
that the enormous social problems of urban America (and urban globally) that
are capturing the thrust and energy of Christian social justice efforts cannot
be resolved in isolation from systemic rural problems. Although the direct linkage between rural
economic, social, and population disruption and dislocation to that of the
enormous urban plight in its massive global scale is well-known, little seems
to be happening systematically to reverse this tragic momentum!
In my own home area I
continually see this lamentable trend.
Talented young people, the potential future leadership for our
community, emigrate to urban centers to develop careers. Our community is left impoverished of talent
and vision. One problem simply is that
small-scale farming under modern agricultural practices is unprofitable in our
region. The U.S. Department of
Agriculture, and the research centers at land grant universities continue to promote
economic policies and technologies which work against a sustainable,
community-centered agricultural economy.
As Freudenberger points out succinctly, this means cheap food production
that increases the efficiency of our urban-based economic system, as well as
improves our national balance of trade–but a crash will come when oil and gas
scarcity hits.
The idolatry of mammon
at the expense of present and future human community is summed up well in
former Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz's famous quotation in 1965. "Adapt or die; resist and perish ...
agriculture is now big business. Too
many people are trying to stay in agriculture that would do better in some place
else" (p. 71). It is lamentable
that the basic, primeval work of human beings, the procurement of their food
from the land, has now been taken away from their reach by a technological and
economic system that plunders the land, disdains human communities, and
finally, most dangerously, displaces God.
Freudenberger mentions
this growing rural crisis in America, quoting statistics from Ingolf
Vogeler's, The Myth of the Family Farm (Boulder, Colorado:
Westview, 1981),
"Although
30% of the total population of the United States is rural ... of America's
poor, 44% are rural, and 66% of U.S. substandard housing is found in the rural
sector. But only 27% of federal funds
for poverty programs is committed to the rural sector.... About one-third of
all students in U.S. public schools are enrolled in rural districts ... yet
receive [from the then HEW] only 5% of its research dollars, 11% of library and
material funds, and 13% of basic vocational aid training." (p. 69)
Rural areas are
typically disproportionately served in health care, public transportation, and
basic services. Writing in 1984,
Freudenberger states,
Today a person can major in urban studies
in over 130 colleges and universities in this nation. But there is no integrated program in any state university where
one can major in rural studies, even though rural America has over 70 million
people. It is no wonder that federal
and state agencies repeatedly hand down decisions and propose rules and
regulations that result in the closing of too many rural schools, rural post
offices, rural branch rail lines, rural hospitals, and rural
businesses." (p. 70)
Perhaps my only
disparity with Freudenberger is his optimism that the church in its present
state, if only informed, will generate enough response to turn matters
around. With heavy heart I must
disagree.
First of all, the church
in its understanding and practice in matters of economics and justice for
present and future communities, is
scarcely differentiated from secular society (with notable but far too rare
exceptions!). The church is culturally
and economically seduced. The Western
church speaks with bright cheer, "Peace, peace, when there is no
peace" (Jer. 8:11). Too many who
are in power, both those who claim to be Christian as well as those who do not,
have full bellies and fat wallets with an insatiable lust for more–damn the
future!
I can only cry out,
along with Freudenberger and other prophets of truth, that the enemy is at the
gate, disaster looms close (Ezek. 33:1-9), and with my life and soul put my own
back into the plough, to live right with God, humanity, and the creation, in
humility and gratitude as empowering grace is given. And hope that my living and my faltering words will inspire
others, as others also might rebuke, challenge, and inspire me, that the light
not flicker out upon this darkened earth, but that Jesus indeed will find faith
when He returns (Lk. 18:8).
CONCLUSION
It seems to me that
their are two significant thrusts necessary as a responsible response to the
challenge of a dependable, just, and sufficient future food supply. The church should have primary
responsibility for the one, and supplementary responsibility for the
other. Foremost, the church needs to
recover a doctrine of creation grounded in the Holy Trinity and Incarnation
that firmly establishes that creation has been and is imputed a sacredness
inasmuch as the Son has worn "its clothes" and the Spirit animates
its being. "The cross-impaled
parched dirt drank deeply His Blood."
The church must simply turn from its adopting of the world's idolatrous
and false dualisms of spirit and matter and base objectification of all facets of life, or face the judgment of
mutiny and apostasy to its Lord. A
theologically-sound doctrine of creation proclaimed in envisioning power should
move the church toward an ethic of service to the land in a symbiotic,
sustainable, reverent practice that can enlighten and salt society at-large.
Second, public policy
needs to be soundly designed and implemented that will favor just, sustainable
ecological principles while discouraging and steadily phasing out abusive
practices. The battleground, of course,
will be in the economic sector, for although in the long haul sustainable
practice is the only viable economic consideration, short-term prosperity might
decline. So be it, for our material
idolatry is sending us to our own self-made hell! Indeed, the church needs to lead the way in living out a vision
of shalom, that life can be
meaningful without material and energy addictions.
Finally, energy,
conservation, and agricultural policies need to be drastically changed. Non-renewable energy needs to be moved away
from the private sector into a status as a carefully-metered public domain
resource, while the market place is encouraged toward competitive sustainable
energy and resource development. Carbon
taxes, land abuse fines, and mining fees that include underground water are
possible disincentives to squandering non-renewable resources. Farmers, producers, and consumers who
respect sustainable practice must have policies favorable to economic their
viability. Research dollars need to be
reshuffled to sustainable agricultural practice, and rural infrastructure
support must become more equitable.
And if nothing is
done? Imagine a time, not too far
distant ahead, say 30 years from now.
The energy orgy is ending, fuel is becoming scarce and prices are
climbing precipitously. Fortunes are
being lost and gained. The rich still
have their energy, the restless seething poor are shut-out. But the greater shock than the gas pump
prices is at the grocery store. Modern
food production from its growth, harvest, storage, processing, and distribution
is almost totally addicted to cheap, available fossil fuel energy. It was not always that way. And..... it will not always be that
way!