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The possibility of a looming oil shortage is seen by many to be too massive to solve, however Wednesday’s Distinguished Lecture Series speaker doesn’t see it this way.
Famed ecofeminist Vandana Shiva said there is a solution to this problem, and this same solution can solve world food shortages and help with global climate change.
The solution, according to Shiva, is a switch to an ecological and organic way of producing food.
She said we could improve our food output and save tons of fossil fuels by switching to less machine- intensive farming practices on local farms.
“If you’re running out of oil you better start doing things that don’t depend on oil, and one human activity that in fact improves when you get rid of the fossil fuel imputes is agriculture,” Shiva said.
Shiva advocates switching to a local-based farming system instead of the large corporate farms that operate across the world today.
Industrial farming is actually less effective than organic farming, which helps protect and restore the environment. This would help with climate change and food shortages across the world, Shiva said.
“Industrial agriculture is a very inefficient way of producing food. It uses 10 units of energy to get one output, and we could be using one unit of energy to produce two units of output, and through that we would actually be rejuvenating the environment and rebuilding rural areas and getting healthier food to eat,” Shiva said.
Shiva added genetically engineered food is limited in what it can do, and it is causing more harm to our food system than it is helping. She also said studies have shown genetically engineered food is not producing more food as was first thought.
“The only two traits that have been introduced are toxic traits. Any technology that introduces more poison into your food system is not a very smart technology,” Shiva said. “And further, a technology that within a short lifetime is failing even its narrow object it claimed.”
Shiva is an environmental feminist and author of several books. She has received a number of awards for her work and was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.
University of Wisconsin graduate student Joel Creswell said he thought Shiva’s critique of world agriculture systems was accurate, and she was one of few who is championing the cause, but her language, such as “love the land” and “feel the soil,” sometimes came off as too “touchy-feely.”
“Honestly I think the language of ecofeminism, which I think is an important philosophy, has a lot of really valuable things to say about the world, but I think the language is sort of off-putting for a lot of people,” Creswell said.
UW graduate student Adrienne Shelton said some of her alternative ideas, like getting rid of all machinery, might not work with the general public, even if they agreed with her.
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Flipping to organic farming is not the answer to the global oil shortage that is developing. The USA uses 26% of the world’s oil and the largest part of that, 67% to be exact, is for transportation. The biggest help to lowering gas prices and helping the environment is to introduce battery operated cars. 75% of the oil used in california is for transportation. If battery operated cars became widely used, the cost of energy would fall 20-40%. This would act as an economic stimulas to many nations who could invest more into education and health care. It would raise the standard of living for most citizens.
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This was a fantastic lecture and it left me feeling equally inspired to action and angry about the huge amount of power and influence that large corporations wield in our world today. Where our food comes from is a choice that we make multiple times per day, so I urge everyone to get in touch with how and where there food is produced. We are lucky enough to live in a city where local, organic food is readily available (yes, there is a farmers market year round!), so take an extra 30 seconds to make an educated choice that will benefit the health of the local economy and of the greater environment. As an added benefit, I assure you that it is much more pleasurable to shop at the farmers market that at a chain grocery store. With each of these decisions, we grab power from the corporations and bring it back to the people where it belongs.
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This quote is excellent at capturing the “philosophy” of ecofeminism.
“UW graduate student Adrienne Shelton said some of her alternative ideas, like getting rid of all machinery, might not work with the general public, even if they agreed with her.”
You see, in the imaginary universe of ecofemisism we don’t need machinery or corporations or mass production. We don’t need to exploit the earth and produce in order to live. We can just live in harmony with nature and work the land with our own hands (like they do in third-world countries) and be showered with double the output for every unit of energy expended.
But wait, this doesn’t work in reality? Well, let’s not let reality get in the way of our ideals.
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Re: Jim
It is hard to imagine a system of food production, or material exchange more broadly, outside of the dominant capitalist mode. Yet Shiva is putting effort into doing just this, and organizing people behind such ideas. Trashing the theoretical label that has been attached to her views is a waste of time. Do you have a better idea, or should we just keep going as is, destroying the only environment we know that sustains life and creating (and recreating) gross social inequalities? Has this worked in reality for the billions of people who are hungry every night? Please put some effort into your criticisms.