by HELENA NORBERG-HODGE
Today, the planet is on fire with global warming, toxic pollution and species extinction, with fundamentalism, terrorism and fear. The dominant media tell us that WE are to blame: our greed is the cause, and we as individuals must change our consumer habits. However, if we try to deal with these crises individually, we won’t get very far. We need to stand back and look at the bigger picture. It then becomes obvious that the driving force behind our crises is a corporate -led globalization. Despite the apparent enormity of making changes to our economic system, isolating this root cause can be very empowering. Rather than confront an overwhelming list of seemingly isolated symptoms, we can begin to discern the disease itself.In so doing it also becomes apparent that joining hands with others is a key to reversing environmental and social breakdown.
The most powerful solutions involve a fundamental change in direction – towards localizing rather than globalising economic activity. In fact, “going local” may be the single most effective thing we can do. Localisation is essentially a process of de-centralisation – shifting economic activity back into the hands of local businesses instead of concentrating it in fewer and fewer mega-corporations. Food is a clear example of the multi-layered benefits of localisation.
Since food is something everyone, everywhere, needs every day, a shift from global food to local food would have a great and immediate impact, socially, economically and environmentally. Local food is, simply, food produced for local and regional consumption. For that reason, ‘food miles’ are relatively small, which greatly reduces fossil fuel use and pollution. There are other environmental benefits as well. While global markets demand monocultural production – which systematically eliminates all but the cash crop from the land – local markets give farmers an incentive to diversify, which creates many niches on the farm for wild plant and animal species. Moreover, diversified farms cannot accommodate the heavy machinery used in monocultures, thereby eliminating a major cause of soil erosion. Diversification also lends itself better to organic methods, since crops are far less susceptible to pest infestations.
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