H5N1
Gaia speaks who listening?

It took me until this morning to wake up and realise that something new was happening. Another outbreak of Avian flu, this time in Norfolk , England had occurred and was widely reported in this Sunday ' s papers . A nother farming crisis, it seems only a short time since the last massive farming crisis; foot and mouth disease, in the UK . And we are again being told that large numbers of birds, this time, will have to be slaughtered- an eerie echo of foot and mouth where up to 8 million animals were slaughtered. Now again we face something similar, The Observer reported “ All 159,000 turkeys at the hub of Bernard Matthews's business empire were due to be placed into crates, … . and gassed to death. ”

Bad luck? Another predictable crisis? Revenge of Gaia? No I don ' t think any of those are in fact what is happening to our agricultural system. Our system of agriculture has gone down a ‘ long road to nowhere ' along with our industrial, financial, our health, housing, and transport systems. It simply won ' t work any more and bird flu, just like Katrina and Rita, is a harbinger of things to come. This outbreak of avian flu is a significant notice of the approaching end of what we have taken for granted in the industrialised world; an endless variety of cheap, plentiful food.

Simple ecological analysis will show that without lashings of energy, and other energy intensive inputs such as fertilisers, pesticides, antibiotics, and vaccines the current model doesn ' t work. Vast farms containing millions of single species, highly bred animals, in this case 159,000 turkeys are unstable and will not survive in an energy scarce, carbon constrained future. Many ‘ peak oil ' pundits have been saying this pointing to the 10 calories of energy, in the form of fossil fuels, which go into creating each calorie of food. The argument goes that food supply will increase only as long as fossil fuels supplies go on increasing, which may not be that much longer. But this outbreak of avian flu paints a different picture. If I were to look for a ‘ canary in the coal mine ' avian flu and disease amongst our most vulnerable part of the food system- meat production-would be the early warning signals that the system is broke beyond repair.

One of the fundamental characteristics of nature is abundance. We live in an abundant world. Millions of species are constantly evolving to create diverse ecosystems the world over. Each variable of the myriad of ecological variables – temperature, altitude, light, precipitation, soil nutrient levels, longitude, sea side, lakeside, mountainside- all go into determining a species relative competitive advantage and symbiotic relationship with all other life forms in a location to create a bio system bursting with abundance. Nature abhors a vacuum, and life springs up where ever possible. We live on a planet of life, radiant and rich -an endless variety life in all its forms. Each local develops its ' own response to living, and many different life forms, many unique to that particular local.

Each human culture, each human tribe would have developed alongside its many life forms, some of which became food, and other useful things necessary for life- timber for housing, canoes, boats, arrows, fibres for roofing, clothes, coverings, rugs, etc. And then there were all the other plants, animals, fish, fungi, bacteria, and insects that provided the food for their immediately useful, and necessary food and implements. Human beings, until relative recently, have always lived amongst a vast web of life which our ancestors knew we are completely dependent on, a truth we have forgotten.

Our ancestors, especially in pre ‘ totalitarian agricultural ' times, would have subsisted in each local on a variety of foods, and each local would have been slightly, and perhaps widely difference and diverse. Instead we have created world wide food monocultures -of meat production in this instance. The vast majority of meat eaten by humans consists of a handful of species- cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, chicken, turkeys, and duck. Everything else is small change.

We have taken an abundant world and created scarcity. We have taken diverse, resilient, niche ecosystems and replaced them with highly unstable monocultures. Not only have we done this in individual countries but we have linked all countries in virtually every region of the planet into a single agricultural system. If that system fails, we have no back up, there is no plan ‘ B ' . The life forms closest to us on this planet – animals- are sending us acute messages of our poor judgement and incomplete understanding of life on earth. These acute messages are increasing in number, and becoming increasingly shrill. How long will it be before a major food system collapses, and food for human being becomes scarce? How long will we continue to intensify and narrow our food production when Gaia is screaming at us to diversify?

Gaia ' s language is clear and unmistakable to those who can hear. H1N5, ice caps melting, hurricanes, tornados, the sweetness of a spring morning, the cool mustiness of tropical nights, and the profusion of life on an abundant planet. Her language is spoken in birth, life, and death. She whispers to every life form on the planet and we procreate, live and die according to her ‘ word ' . Every species ‘ knows ' Gaia ' s language, it ' s coded in every strand of DNA, fused through every cell, and eco-system. Gaia ' s language is the language of life. For us humans in an advanced technological society that language is contained in science, the study of what life is. Yet somehow we have lost the ability to hear her, thinking like narcissistic children that the world revolves around us rather than the other way round. We are obsessed by our powers over our world, and unable to see that rather than conquering the world, we still need to live in the world just like every other living thing.

We are living at a cross roads. The problems with our agricultural system, will not be solved easily or by a quick fix, nor will they be solved by the ‘ free market ' . They will be solved by people who have learned to look at life on earth as our ancestors have looked, and learned that we have to live on earth according to the laws of ecology just as we have to live according to the laws of gravity or hydraulics.

The obvious solutions in this case are to re -localise, simplify, and diversify our food supply. Solutions, real solutions will be found and created by those who have changed their beliefs about who human being are and our place in amongst – not above- an abundant and rich world. Real change will either come in the form of collapse, or a recognition of the failure of the current system and replacement with something that works and is sustainable. That ' s our only choice, everything else is fiction.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2005565,00.html

observer main story

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2005503,00.html

the price of a £5 bird

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,,2005506,00.html

observer leader

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article2214848.ece

Naresh 6.2.07