42.
One Old Man With A Bucket Of Cow Dung
On A Mission To Save India’s Soil
Can one man with a bucket of cow dung be a recipe to save the planet? No claim could be more preposterous and more insane. That is until you watch the international awards winning film, One Man One Cow One Planet!
This is the story of a New Zealander spearheading a silent revolution in some of the world’s most destitute areas, all alone with a bucket of cow dung. This film is being claimed to be a blueprint for a post-industrial future. It takes you into the heart of the world's most important renaissance.
Hero of the film, Peter Proctar is an eighty year old gardener and soil expert from New Zealand. He comes with a vast experience of sixty years in his field.
His favourite animal is the cow because of all the dung she provides. Dung is something that Proctor prizes more highly than gold, jewels, fossil fuels, or many other natural resources. His favourite invertebrate is the earthworm, which he describes as “the unpaid servant of soil health.”
This is the story of a New Zealander spearheading a silent revolution in some of the world’s most destitute areas, all alone with a bucket of cow dung. This film is being claimed to be a blueprint for a post-industrial future. It takes you into the heart of the world's most important renaissance.
Hero of the film, Peter Proctar is an eighty year old gardener and soil expert from New Zealand. He comes with a vast experience of sixty years in his field.
His favourite animal is the cow because of all the dung she provides. Dung is something that Proctor prizes more highly than gold, jewels, fossil fuels, or many other natural resources. His favourite invertebrate is the earthworm, which he describes as “the unpaid servant of soil health.”
In the film, his farm operates on human scale, and is self sustaining, ethical and biologically diverse. It is a blue print for future when fossil fuels will be scarce. World’s most valuable commodity will be the knowledge of how to farm and the wisdom of how to grow food that is more than just stuff to fill our stomachs. Indeed what he is presenting may be the last chance this planet has.
His proposal assumes significance as our existence on this planet gets precarious and as modern industrial agriculture destroys the earth.
Desertification, water scarcity, toxic cocktails of agricultural chemicals are pervading our food chains as ocean ecosystems collapse and soil erosion and massive loss of soil fertility take place all over the world. Our ecosystems ore overwhelmed. Humanity's increasing demands are exceeding the Earth's carrying capacity. Modern agriculture causes topsoil to be eroded at 3 million tons per hour. (that’s 26 billion tons a year)
Human mass is replacing biomass and other species. The carrying capacity of the earth is almost spent. To maintain our comfort zone lifestyles we will soon need five earths to sustain us in the style to which we have become accustomed.
Mainstay of any civilization is its agriculture. It thrives and survives on agriculture, because food is all that matters, first and foremost. Two other essential ingredients, water and air are of course free. Industries are artificial and they sap the vitality of human beings and nature. They deplete all resources, human, environmental and natural. Industries are a short run drama and a drama doesn’t last very long. Next few decades will see the sad ending of this drama when the curtain of realities falls. Agriculture is real life. Drama is for few hours and real life is forever.
Modern industrial agriculture is a form of molesting earth. Humanity is set to pay a big price for this callousness, for this crime. Lesser and lesser number of people today are having an interest in agriculture. Unscrupulous profit crazy corporations are taking over small farms. These corporations have only one relationship with Earth - that of exploitation & profiteering. All this can not last forever. We are taking food for granted, we are taking God’s nature for granted. Its not going to work. Something has to change and something will change, whether we like it or not.
Agriculture is still the occupation of almost 50% of the world's population, but the numbers vary from less than 3% in industrialized countries to over 60% in Third World countries.
What if the world were an apple? One quarter of the apple is land and the rest is water. Cut the one quarter of apple, that is land, into half and put aside that half which is deserts and mountains. Peel of what is left and that represents the topsoil that must feed the whole world. This analogy illustrates how important it is to get the best out of the available soil to provide abundant and nutritious food for everyone on the planet.
But modern agriculture couldn’t care less for this precious resource. Modern agriculture is at war. It is at war with the mother Earth, with the environment. The weapons used in this war are massive agricultural machines, chemical fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides, pesticides and now genetic manipulation of the crops.
At the end of World War II, military industrial complex needed new markets for its surplus chemicals. It gave birth to Agriculture Industrial Complex. Decades of our addiction to these chemicals have led to toxic oceans, toxic water, toxic air and toxic food. From chemical deserts of factor farms to our inner life, our world as a place of nature is unrecognizable.
Most of us are far removed from the fields where our food is grown. Separating us from our food, our primary source of life, is a vast globalized distribution system, controlled my multinational corporations.
Fight against corporate control of our food is the fight for food sovereignty. When corporations dictate what farmers must grow, they are controlling what all of us must eat. The outcome of battle for agricultural control may dictate the future of the Earth.
His proposal assumes significance as our existence on this planet gets precarious and as modern industrial agriculture destroys the earth.
Desertification, water scarcity, toxic cocktails of agricultural chemicals are pervading our food chains as ocean ecosystems collapse and soil erosion and massive loss of soil fertility take place all over the world. Our ecosystems ore overwhelmed. Humanity's increasing demands are exceeding the Earth's carrying capacity. Modern agriculture causes topsoil to be eroded at 3 million tons per hour. (that’s 26 billion tons a year)
Human mass is replacing biomass and other species. The carrying capacity of the earth is almost spent. To maintain our comfort zone lifestyles we will soon need five earths to sustain us in the style to which we have become accustomed.
Mainstay of any civilization is its agriculture. It thrives and survives on agriculture, because food is all that matters, first and foremost. Two other essential ingredients, water and air are of course free. Industries are artificial and they sap the vitality of human beings and nature. They deplete all resources, human, environmental and natural. Industries are a short run drama and a drama doesn’t last very long. Next few decades will see the sad ending of this drama when the curtain of realities falls. Agriculture is real life. Drama is for few hours and real life is forever.
Modern industrial agriculture is a form of molesting earth. Humanity is set to pay a big price for this callousness, for this crime. Lesser and lesser number of people today are having an interest in agriculture. Unscrupulous profit crazy corporations are taking over small farms. These corporations have only one relationship with Earth - that of exploitation & profiteering. All this can not last forever. We are taking food for granted, we are taking God’s nature for granted. Its not going to work. Something has to change and something will change, whether we like it or not.
Agriculture is still the occupation of almost 50% of the world's population, but the numbers vary from less than 3% in industrialized countries to over 60% in Third World countries.
What if the world were an apple? One quarter of the apple is land and the rest is water. Cut the one quarter of apple, that is land, into half and put aside that half which is deserts and mountains. Peel of what is left and that represents the topsoil that must feed the whole world. This analogy illustrates how important it is to get the best out of the available soil to provide abundant and nutritious food for everyone on the planet.
But modern agriculture couldn’t care less for this precious resource. Modern agriculture is at war. It is at war with the mother Earth, with the environment. The weapons used in this war are massive agricultural machines, chemical fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides, pesticides and now genetic manipulation of the crops.
At the end of World War II, military industrial complex needed new markets for its surplus chemicals. It gave birth to Agriculture Industrial Complex. Decades of our addiction to these chemicals have led to toxic oceans, toxic water, toxic air and toxic food. From chemical deserts of factor farms to our inner life, our world as a place of nature is unrecognizable.
Most of us are far removed from the fields where our food is grown. Separating us from our food, our primary source of life, is a vast globalized distribution system, controlled my multinational corporations.
Fight against corporate control of our food is the fight for food sovereignty. When corporations dictate what farmers must grow, they are controlling what all of us must eat. The outcome of battle for agricultural control may dictate the future of the Earth.
India - A Case Study
Peter has been working with crisis-struck farmers in India for the past fifteen years and providing a strong grassroots alternative to industrialised conventional agriculture, which is failing on all counts.
India was one of the richest countries in the world, not because of its gold, diamonds or rubies, but because of its bio-mass. In India they could grow anything because of wonderful temperature, wonderful climate, the moisture and the warmth. That was the secret of India’s legendary wealth.
India has been an agro-based economy since time immemorial. Cow has been an integral part (backbone) of its agriculture. But during industrial development and Green revolution, they switched over to chemical based and machine based farming, replacing age old methods involving cow dung, cow urine, and bull power.
Today chemical-based farming (Green Revolution) has rewarded India with degradation of soil, low yields of crops, emergence of new pests and diseases and percolation of toxic chemicals into the food chain.
This has resulted in more than 1.85 lakh farmers committing suicide all over India in the last 15 years. For millennia, organic cow based farming was practiced in India without any marked decline in soil fertility.
Green revolution was supposed to alleviate India’s hunger. Viewed holistically, green revolution was a failure. Chemical agriculture destroyed India’s natural abundance, farming communities and soil. High yielding plant varieties turned out to use far more water, growing significantly less crop per drop. Today in much of India, rivers have long since dried up. The only water is hundreds of meters down.
Just the thirty or forty years of chemical usage has destroyed the soil which was working flawlessly for thousands of years. International Water Management Institute describes India’s green revolution as ‘living on borrowed water, and borrowed time’.
As an alternative to this destruction, the method Peter Proctar is proposing is called biodynamic farming. Cow which is venerated in India, is central to this biodynamic farming. With her 4 stomach, she is a unique animal of digestion. Cow dung forms the basis of many biodynamic preparations. Cow Pat Pit (CPP) is one way of processing cow dung. Proctors call is ‘Muck And Magic’ because the recipe contains mystical preparations.
A farmer who acquired a field six years ago was asked - how was the land when you started? He replied, “It was quite hard, like a rock.” Why? “Because they were using chemicals at that time.” How is it now? “In last six years, I have put compost and green manure, and it has become like cotton and even further it has become like butter. Its so smooth and easy to cultivate.” Why are so many birds here while you are cultivating? “There is such a population of earth worms now, and as I cultivate they eat the earthworms and insects as they come out,” came the reply. Healthy soil makes healthy plants, healthy animals and healthy people.
India was one of the richest countries in the world, not because of its gold, diamonds or rubies, but because of its bio-mass. In India they could grow anything because of wonderful temperature, wonderful climate, the moisture and the warmth. That was the secret of India’s legendary wealth.
India has been an agro-based economy since time immemorial. Cow has been an integral part (backbone) of its agriculture. But during industrial development and Green revolution, they switched over to chemical based and machine based farming, replacing age old methods involving cow dung, cow urine, and bull power.
Today chemical-based farming (Green Revolution) has rewarded India with degradation of soil, low yields of crops, emergence of new pests and diseases and percolation of toxic chemicals into the food chain.
This has resulted in more than 1.85 lakh farmers committing suicide all over India in the last 15 years. For millennia, organic cow based farming was practiced in India without any marked decline in soil fertility.
Green revolution was supposed to alleviate India’s hunger. Viewed holistically, green revolution was a failure. Chemical agriculture destroyed India’s natural abundance, farming communities and soil. High yielding plant varieties turned out to use far more water, growing significantly less crop per drop. Today in much of India, rivers have long since dried up. The only water is hundreds of meters down.
Just the thirty or forty years of chemical usage has destroyed the soil which was working flawlessly for thousands of years. International Water Management Institute describes India’s green revolution as ‘living on borrowed water, and borrowed time’.
As an alternative to this destruction, the method Peter Proctar is proposing is called biodynamic farming. Cow which is venerated in India, is central to this biodynamic farming. With her 4 stomach, she is a unique animal of digestion. Cow dung forms the basis of many biodynamic preparations. Cow Pat Pit (CPP) is one way of processing cow dung. Proctors call is ‘Muck And Magic’ because the recipe contains mystical preparations.
A farmer who acquired a field six years ago was asked - how was the land when you started? He replied, “It was quite hard, like a rock.” Why? “Because they were using chemicals at that time.” How is it now? “In last six years, I have put compost and green manure, and it has become like cotton and even further it has become like butter. Its so smooth and easy to cultivate.” Why are so many birds here while you are cultivating? “There is such a population of earth worms now, and as I cultivate they eat the earthworms and insects as they come out,” came the reply. Healthy soil makes healthy plants, healthy animals and healthy people.
Cow Based Biodynamic Agriculture
Biodynamic agriculture is an advanced form of organic agriculture with an emphasis on food quality and soil health ; and as such, uses no synthetic fertilizers or pesticides. ‘Biodynamic’ originates from two Greek words, bios meaning life, and dynamos meaning energy. The pioneer of biodynamic agriculture was Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) an Austrian scientist, philosopher, and educator. He identified the deleterious effects on the soil and the deterioration of the health and quality of crops and livestock that farmers experienced following the introduction of chemical fertilizers at the turn of the twentieth century. In a series of eight lectures known as the “Agricultural Course” made in 1924 Steiner taught the fundamental ecological principle that the farm is a living organism, an individual self-contained entity within a whole harmonious system. Bio-dynamics is a complete holistic outlook on agriculture. Though the Steiner theory of biodynamics might be a bit esoteric on reading, when it is put into practice, it becomes eminently practical.
Bio-dynamic agriculture is the oldest organic farming movement practiced in over 40 countries in the world. It includes the normal organic farming practices, such as the use of compost, green manures, and crop rotation. In addition, Bio-dynamic agriculture uses a series of Preparations numbered from 500 to 508 which are based on various mineral, plant, and animal substances. These enhance all the bacterial, fungal and mineral processes that are found in the organic farming system. Placing great importance on the auspicious positions of the moon, sun and planets, a Planting Calendar is used for applying the biodynamic preparations, sowing seeds, planting plants, applying liquid manures, spraying fruit trees and crops, and other farming activities. Experience has shown that use of the Bio-dynamic techniques can make all organic farming processes work more quickly and better.
A biodynamic farm is characterized by self-sufficiency and biological diversity where crops and livestock are integrated, nutrients are recycled, and the health of the soil, the crops and animals, and the farmer too, are maintained holistically. Consideration of the farm as an ecosystem feeds into holistic management practices that embrace the environmental, social and economic aspects of the farm.
Its objectives differ significantly from those of conventional agriculture, or agribusiness, which maximizes profit with mechanical and technological inputs for unlimited exploitation of the Earth’s resources. The biodynamic model feeds family and farm workers first, and then trade surpluses to the local community. One main difference between organic and biodynamic farms is that organic farms often exclude animals for ethical reasons and monocrop production is common.
Movements like this may be the last chance this planet has for a healthy, secure, and ecologically efficient food supply.
Bio-dynamic agriculture is the oldest organic farming movement practiced in over 40 countries in the world. It includes the normal organic farming practices, such as the use of compost, green manures, and crop rotation. In addition, Bio-dynamic agriculture uses a series of Preparations numbered from 500 to 508 which are based on various mineral, plant, and animal substances. These enhance all the bacterial, fungal and mineral processes that are found in the organic farming system. Placing great importance on the auspicious positions of the moon, sun and planets, a Planting Calendar is used for applying the biodynamic preparations, sowing seeds, planting plants, applying liquid manures, spraying fruit trees and crops, and other farming activities. Experience has shown that use of the Bio-dynamic techniques can make all organic farming processes work more quickly and better.
A biodynamic farm is characterized by self-sufficiency and biological diversity where crops and livestock are integrated, nutrients are recycled, and the health of the soil, the crops and animals, and the farmer too, are maintained holistically. Consideration of the farm as an ecosystem feeds into holistic management practices that embrace the environmental, social and economic aspects of the farm.
Its objectives differ significantly from those of conventional agriculture, or agribusiness, which maximizes profit with mechanical and technological inputs for unlimited exploitation of the Earth’s resources. The biodynamic model feeds family and farm workers first, and then trade surpluses to the local community. One main difference between organic and biodynamic farms is that organic farms often exclude animals for ethical reasons and monocrop production is common.
Movements like this may be the last chance this planet has for a healthy, secure, and ecologically efficient food supply.
An Emergent Agricultural Knowledge System Against The Corporate Takeover
Biodynamic farms have broad ecological implications as a blueprint for agriculture when fossil fuels are scarce. But they have cultural implications too. Today in India, biodynamic and organic farming methods represent a revolution, one farmer at a time, against the vested interests of agribusiness disguised as science and the global dominance of corporations such as Monsanto.
The advantage of a cow based biodynamic farming for Indian farmers is that they are practising a form of non-chemical, nontoxic farming that does not require the use of any hybrid or GM seeds. Monsanto is a company that’s trying to monopolise seed production and its only objective is that every farmer in the world who buys seed should buy from Monsanto. As 60 percent of India’s population depends on small and marginal farming, the impact of stopping traditional methods of seed saving and swapping, and taking farmers to court for patent infringement where they are fined 1-2 million rupees, is literally killing them. Indian farmers want freedom and independence from corporate control. They don’t want any Monsanto or Syngenta to tell us what seed they grow and what crop they should harvest and what food to eat. This perspective reflects Gandhi’s definition of food sovereignty or the right of all people to decide what they grow and eat free of international market forces.
Peter Proctor’s book, Grasp The Nettle explains how it all works. The cow dung is used to create compost and it has to be prepared in a particular way. It involves CPP or Cow Pat Pits where the cow dung is layered in pits. One preparation involves the dung being put into cow horns and then being buried. It is left in these pits right through winter after which the crumbly textured mix it turns into is mixed with water and sprayed on the crops. This preparation enables the plant to hold on the moisture for longer and helps the roots go deeper. The experiments are a total success – farms that have adopted this method have healthier and juicier crops. Little wonder that Peter Proctor is almost venerated by the rural Indian farmer, many of whom have wiped out their debts and shed the yoke of corporate control thanks to following his ‘back to Nature’ philosophy. When they hear he’s visiting, they come from miles around, sitting around him with their ubiquitous cell phones, waiting to hear the words of wisdom that fall from his mouth about the state of the soil. After all, it’s because of him that thousands of Indian farmers have stopped using chemical fertilizers and pesticides and have adopted biodynamics as a way of life.
Maybe it was easier in India than anywhere else in the world. After all, the cow has always been worshipped and it was easy enough to make them see why this way was so much better. Cow dung has traditionally had a number of uses in India – made into cakes and burnt as fuel, mixed with water and applied on floors to prevent insects from coming into the home and to manufacture biogas. And maybe the typical small holding Indian farmer was in tune with his land – and his cow of course – to realize that the so called green revolution, ushered in by the global pesticide manufacturers, only resulted in polluting the soil, poisoning it as well as the ground water. Unlike many other places in the world, the harsh effects of chemical farming were much more visible here much sooner. With over half the population in India depending on agriculture, this was devastating!
Maybe that’s why Peter Proctor can be seen working among the rural farmers of India - maybe it was so much easier to convince people who lived in close communion with the land rather than farmers in more westernized societies where it takes much longer for the ill effects of chemical farming to be felt. Maybe when the holdings are small and so much depends on it, there’s a sensitivity to the soil and its needs – and an awareness of when things are good and in harmony with the rest of nature.
The advantage of a cow based biodynamic farming for Indian farmers is that they are practising a form of non-chemical, nontoxic farming that does not require the use of any hybrid or GM seeds. Monsanto is a company that’s trying to monopolise seed production and its only objective is that every farmer in the world who buys seed should buy from Monsanto. As 60 percent of India’s population depends on small and marginal farming, the impact of stopping traditional methods of seed saving and swapping, and taking farmers to court for patent infringement where they are fined 1-2 million rupees, is literally killing them. Indian farmers want freedom and independence from corporate control. They don’t want any Monsanto or Syngenta to tell us what seed they grow and what crop they should harvest and what food to eat. This perspective reflects Gandhi’s definition of food sovereignty or the right of all people to decide what they grow and eat free of international market forces.
Peter Proctor’s book, Grasp The Nettle explains how it all works. The cow dung is used to create compost and it has to be prepared in a particular way. It involves CPP or Cow Pat Pits where the cow dung is layered in pits. One preparation involves the dung being put into cow horns and then being buried. It is left in these pits right through winter after which the crumbly textured mix it turns into is mixed with water and sprayed on the crops. This preparation enables the plant to hold on the moisture for longer and helps the roots go deeper. The experiments are a total success – farms that have adopted this method have healthier and juicier crops. Little wonder that Peter Proctor is almost venerated by the rural Indian farmer, many of whom have wiped out their debts and shed the yoke of corporate control thanks to following his ‘back to Nature’ philosophy. When they hear he’s visiting, they come from miles around, sitting around him with their ubiquitous cell phones, waiting to hear the words of wisdom that fall from his mouth about the state of the soil. After all, it’s because of him that thousands of Indian farmers have stopped using chemical fertilizers and pesticides and have adopted biodynamics as a way of life.
Maybe it was easier in India than anywhere else in the world. After all, the cow has always been worshipped and it was easy enough to make them see why this way was so much better. Cow dung has traditionally had a number of uses in India – made into cakes and burnt as fuel, mixed with water and applied on floors to prevent insects from coming into the home and to manufacture biogas. And maybe the typical small holding Indian farmer was in tune with his land – and his cow of course – to realize that the so called green revolution, ushered in by the global pesticide manufacturers, only resulted in polluting the soil, poisoning it as well as the ground water. Unlike many other places in the world, the harsh effects of chemical farming were much more visible here much sooner. With over half the population in India depending on agriculture, this was devastating!
Maybe that’s why Peter Proctor can be seen working among the rural farmers of India - maybe it was so much easier to convince people who lived in close communion with the land rather than farmers in more westernized societies where it takes much longer for the ill effects of chemical farming to be felt. Maybe when the holdings are small and so much depends on it, there’s a sensitivity to the soil and its needs – and an awareness of when things are good and in harmony with the rest of nature.
India’s Organic Farms Work At Village Level
During the past fifteen years, Peter Proctor has visited India twenty five times to teach biodynamic farming methods to as many farmers as possible. Despite his eighty years, he visits ten villages a day. Proctor’s involvement is part of a major campaign to promote and encourage alternative forms of agriculture that use no synthetic inputs in response to an epidemic of farmer suicides, most of whom were farming GM crops. This initiative has encouraged 4 million hectares under organic farming methods and 1000 officially supported training schemes for biodynamic and organic farms in the Maharastra region, a suicide hotspot. These farms work at village level and each village has formed an organic federation accredited at district level where farmers participate to solve their own problems. By building up their knowledge base, farmers gain independence from agribusinesses through reducing external inputs. By using biological practices such as green manures, cover cropping, companion planting, and natural insecticides, money is saved that would have been spent on costly pesticides and fertilizers, and is put back into their own communities to improve the quality of life of everyone. This great change in rural prosperity has brought whole communities back together again and enabled the integration of health education in local settings.
The good news about the benefits of this cow based farming has spread quickly and there are now in excess of 2,00,000 compost piles throughout India that recycles cow dung, paddy straw and almost anything else nature provides. Recycling local and freely available resources such as leaves and dung from the ubiquitous and revered cows provides an appropriate alternative technological strategy for Indian farmers and doesn’t cost lives.
The good news about the benefits of this cow based farming has spread quickly and there are now in excess of 2,00,000 compost piles throughout India that recycles cow dung, paddy straw and almost anything else nature provides. Recycling local and freely available resources such as leaves and dung from the ubiquitous and revered cows provides an appropriate alternative technological strategy for Indian farmers and doesn’t cost lives.
Alternatives To The “Green Revolution”
How to Save the World is an award winning independent film that documents the progress of Peter Proctor and his cow based biodynamic farming movement in India. Writer and director Barbara Burstyn treats us to visions of verdant biodynamic farms where colorfully dressed young men and women prepare the field preparations and spray them in spiral motions from large copper bowls onto the soil. The old ploughman driving two golden cows tells his story of how the soil has become soft and almost butter-like and alive with worms under biodynamic systems. Elsewhere, we see vast areas of land where the soil is so saturated with layer upon layer of chemicals that it has become great lumps of dry, dusty boulders where no life exists. Organic farmer Jaspal Singh explains that this is the result of the “Green Revolution”, that has not only been a killer of farmers, but has made the soil unproductive, waterlogged, pest infested, depleted of nutrients, and has dried up rivers. Singh says that until he learned about chemical free organic and biodynamic farming systems that uses fifty percent less water, he had no alternative to the chemical and water intensive practices of the Green Revolution.
Despite the negative effects of chemicals on the soil, the use of pesticides is increasing and claims the lives of at least 2,00,000 people per year in India by direct poisoning.
In India, seed dealers get huge commission from chemical companies and Indian farmers are forced to take hybrid seeds and pesticides as part of credit packages from salesmen in order to continue to farm. Shantytowns of farmers evicted from their lands because of failed harvests and unpaid debts have sprung up by the rows of pesticide sellers set up in small roadside huts with shelves filled with packets of GM seeds and cans of pesticides. These seeds cost farmers four hundred percent more and yield thirty percent less. A 2006 report shows that 60 percent of farmers using GM seed could not cover their investment, let alone feed their families.
The film, How to Save the World captures the rhythmical movement and vitality of India, but cannot resist a cynical take on the corporate model that builds a market by forcing once independent farmers into debt and dependence on international aid for the very same grains and legumes they once grew successfully. It puts the blame for dependency and for world hunger fairly and squarely on the shoulders of industrial agriculture, genetic engineering, military dominance and trade liberalization, and not on food scarcity. The failure of the globalised free market is starkly symbolized by miles of empty toll roads, built as an infrastructure for corporate agriculture that many farmers in India cannot afford, or do not want.
How to Save The World leaves us in no doubt that one would be fortunate to find oneself connected to an idyllic rural biodynamic farm where pay and conditions for workers and their families are fair, food is of the highest quality and plentiful, the local economy thrives, the farm shop is a sell out, and the farmer and the local community is happy and content. And there is no reason why million more small to medium sized farming communities everywhere could not enjoy the same good life.
What Peter Proctor is doing however, is starting a revolution – quietly and effectively at the grassroots level of agricultural India. Why did this man come all the way from New Zealand braving the heat and dust of rural India to start a movement that would take on the might of multinationals and their juggernaut on its way to control everything we eat and drink? Why would a man who is partially deaf, with one glass eye, an opera buff, who doesn’t particularly like spicy Indian curry come halfway across the world to try and save debt-ridden Indian farmers from the clutches of corporations like Monsanto?
Because he cares. Yes, Peter Proctor cares – and this caring goes beyond the farmers and their plight. He cares about the planet and what we as humans are doing to denigrate it. He cares enough to say, ‘Enough!’ and to do his bit to work in tandem with Nature, not against it. He cares enough to want to try and bring back the beauty of balance that Nature should ideally have. To repair the delicate web of interdependence that all creatures in the world should be connected with.
Despite the negative effects of chemicals on the soil, the use of pesticides is increasing and claims the lives of at least 2,00,000 people per year in India by direct poisoning.
In India, seed dealers get huge commission from chemical companies and Indian farmers are forced to take hybrid seeds and pesticides as part of credit packages from salesmen in order to continue to farm. Shantytowns of farmers evicted from their lands because of failed harvests and unpaid debts have sprung up by the rows of pesticide sellers set up in small roadside huts with shelves filled with packets of GM seeds and cans of pesticides. These seeds cost farmers four hundred percent more and yield thirty percent less. A 2006 report shows that 60 percent of farmers using GM seed could not cover their investment, let alone feed their families.
The film, How to Save the World captures the rhythmical movement and vitality of India, but cannot resist a cynical take on the corporate model that builds a market by forcing once independent farmers into debt and dependence on international aid for the very same grains and legumes they once grew successfully. It puts the blame for dependency and for world hunger fairly and squarely on the shoulders of industrial agriculture, genetic engineering, military dominance and trade liberalization, and not on food scarcity. The failure of the globalised free market is starkly symbolized by miles of empty toll roads, built as an infrastructure for corporate agriculture that many farmers in India cannot afford, or do not want.
How to Save The World leaves us in no doubt that one would be fortunate to find oneself connected to an idyllic rural biodynamic farm where pay and conditions for workers and their families are fair, food is of the highest quality and plentiful, the local economy thrives, the farm shop is a sell out, and the farmer and the local community is happy and content. And there is no reason why million more small to medium sized farming communities everywhere could not enjoy the same good life.
What Peter Proctor is doing however, is starting a revolution – quietly and effectively at the grassroots level of agricultural India. Why did this man come all the way from New Zealand braving the heat and dust of rural India to start a movement that would take on the might of multinationals and their juggernaut on its way to control everything we eat and drink? Why would a man who is partially deaf, with one glass eye, an opera buff, who doesn’t particularly like spicy Indian curry come halfway across the world to try and save debt-ridden Indian farmers from the clutches of corporations like Monsanto?
Because he cares. Yes, Peter Proctor cares – and this caring goes beyond the farmers and their plight. He cares about the planet and what we as humans are doing to denigrate it. He cares enough to say, ‘Enough!’ and to do his bit to work in tandem with Nature, not against it. He cares enough to want to try and bring back the beauty of balance that Nature should ideally have. To repair the delicate web of interdependence that all creatures in the world should be connected with.
