Author of Finding Lights in a Dark Age, Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future and A Small Farm Future
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Posted on September 25, 2012 | 12 Comments
A lot of eco-thinking is based on the idea that there is a ‘balance of nature’. If only humanity could figure out how to play its part in that balance instead of jumping wildly on the far end of the scales, the argument goes, then we could assure our own future and that of our fellow organisms.
But is there really such a thing as a ‘balance of nature’? And if there isn’t, does that mean that anything goes as far as we humans are concerned, that we should consider ourselves a ‘God species’, to use Mark Lynas’s phrase, and not allow our horizons to be restricted by the irritating constraints of existing biology?
My answers to those two questions are ‘no’ and ‘no’, and here I’ll briefly attempt to explain why.
There seem to be three distinct levels at which the ‘balance of nature’ is usually invoked – the whole earth system, individual ecosystems and inter/intra-species relationships. At the whole earth system level, the key idea is James Lovelock’s famous ‘Gaia’ theory, which proposes that the Earth is a self-regulating or homeostatic system with a goal – the regulation of surface conditions so as always to be as favourable as possible for contemporary life (Lovelock The Revenge of Gaia, p.208). The problem is right there in that sentence. For it’s one thing to posit homeostasis, and quite another to posit goals. A thermostatically controlled heating system is self-regulating but, unlike its designer, it is not a conscious agent with specific ‘goals’, and there are any number of reasons why the switch may suddenly be flipped. So I’d argue that at the earth systems level forces may exist that tend to conserve various planetary conditions, but this implies no ultimate direction towards a balanced end-state. Lovelock frequently talks about Gaia in the third person as if she is a goal-oriented agent, but he also says that he finds it useful to think of the Earth only as being like an animal, that Gaia is mere metaphor (The Revenge of Gaia, p.20). I don’t think he can have it both ways. If Gaia is mere metaphor (and I can’t see any evidence to suggest otherwise) then the ‘balance of nature’ is at best contingent and provisional, not intrinsic. There are no goals, and no reason to suppose that something won’t come along to switch the celestial heating system on or off. If Gaia truly exists, she must be some kind of mad, amoral scientist, hurling endless germplasm into an indifferent world, throwing curveball after curveball at it (or, being English, perhaps I should say googly after googly), and giggling as she watches whether it can cope. On reflection, I reckon she’s probably a man.
At the ecosystem level, I think we tend to overestimate natural balance partly because our short lifespan makes us perceive stability where ultimately there is none, and partly because we humans have largely succeeded in extracting ourselves from specific actual ecosystems. If we go for a hike in the woods it’s easy to marvel at the natural balance of the biota surrounding us, but ‘natural balance’ may not be the best descriptor for the relationships between actual organisms fighting their numerous battles for position in the woodland, except as an ex post facto description of the outcome of those battles. Similar arguments apply to natural succession. It’s tempting, for example, to think that nitrogen-fixing pioneer species work collaboratively with successor species to enrich the overall environment (with alder playing John the Baptist to the oak tree’s Jesus, for example), but biological research suggest that the priority has more to do with the superior colonizing strategies of the pioneer plants than of any necessary relationship between the two (Begon et al, Ecology, p.481-2). And the boundaries of ecosystems are never rigid, always in flux, always exchanging energy or other inputs at the margins…
At the inter/intra-species level – well, after many years of Social Darwinism proclaiming the competitive struggle for existence, red in tooth and claw, that now all looks rather more like the self-image of an aggressively expanding colonial society than anything deeply grounded in empirical science. But by the same token the stories we now often like to tell ourselves of biological coexistence and cooperation may reveal more about our own modern preconceptions than anything about the world beyond our window (indeed, coexistence can result from what ecologists call the ‘ghost of competition past’ and even genuine symbiosis in nature often turns out to be at another organism’s expense, such as the conspiracy against giraffes worked by acacias and ants). All in all, I suspect that anybody choosing to pin their colours to a particular point on the continuum between savage competition and blissful harmony as a description of biological process is as right, and as wrong, as anybody choosing an entirely different point. Better, I think, not to choose a point at all.
So if there is no real ‘balance’ in nature, does that mean that we humans should feel free to mess with it however we please? I’d like to answer ‘no’, and here’s why. Environmental philosophers have long attempted to show that living things have ‘intrinsic value’ aside from the values that humans place upon them. I don’t think they’ve succeeded, which in some ways I find regrettable but in others a relief, since the biocentric nature ethics of somebody like Paul Taylor puts you in a serious quandary about whether it’s ethically acceptable to actually eat. To be honest, I’m no longer terribly interested in debating the finer philosophical points of such analyses, but I find the writings of Aldo Leopold (eg. ‘The land ethic’ in his book A Sand County Almanac) and his latter day interpreters like J. Baird Callicott (eg. Beyond The Land Ethic) instructive. I’d offer the following brief encapsulation of their arguments in layman’s language: the natural world is complex, humans don’t understand all that much about it, and we gain when we try as much as possible to empathise with and learn from others rather than subordinating them to ourselves (which needn’t imply that we can’t eat them). Or, as Callicott puts it, “A thing is right when it tends to disturb the biotic community only at normal spatial and temporal scales. It is wrong when it tends otherwise” (Beyond The Land Ethic, p.138).
So if as a farmer I grow cabbages, like all other organisms I inevitably intervene in the biotic community and try to turn some of its resources to my own ends. My activities will be of great interest to others in the biotic community, such as cabbage white butterflies, who will do likewise. I could ignore them, and eat whatever remains of my holey, caterpillar-shit encrusted cabbages. Or I could make further interventions in the biotic community: I could cover my cabbages with enviromesh in a (usually fruitless, in my experience) attempt to stop the butterflies entering; I could plant lovage and yarrow nearby to encourage parasitic wasps to come along and lay their eggs inside the caterpillars until they’re eaten from inside out by the wasp larvae; I could spray the cabbages with a Bacillus thuringiensis preparation, or with pyrethrum; or perhaps I could plant transgenic cabbages with Bt toxin engineered into the genome.
All of these strategies make a determinate intervention in nature, and all will have many biotic consequences cascading down the succeeding generations, but if there is no ‘natural balance’ to which any of them converges which of them should I adopt? Going back to the land ethic and Callicott’s summary of it, I feel most comfortable with the ones somewhere in the middle of the list – ones which I suspect also score on grounds of long-term human self-interest, though sadly not short-term profit. Those middle strategies also appeal to me because I think they probably strike more of a balance between my ends and those of other members of the biotic community. For if ultimately there is no balance in nature, perhaps there’s something to be said for finding a balance in ourselves.
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a brilliant post. i particularly like “our short lifespan makes us perceive stability where ultimately there is none”.
Surely your cabbage patch is such a massive intervention in the normal dynamic relationships of the biotic community that to now start to wonder about a bit more intervention in ecological terms is rather incongruous. After all in creating your patch you have killed all the plants, tilled the soil, adjusted the nutrient levels and introduced an entirely foreign species unable even to coexist symbiotically with any welcoming fungi left alive in the soil.
Having said that I am pleased that you do and would therefore offer my own way of thinking about the cabbage patch conundrum. I have one rule and one guideline. The rule states that one should choose the method which has the least impact on the biotic community beyond your patch. The main consequence of this rule is that you absolutely must do something because if you allow the crop to fail by not going that extra mile someone else has to do the growing thereby at least doubling the impact. Of the options that you offered enviromesh seems to me to be the best because it has very little or no impact.
The guideline is that one should select a method that tends to act at a scale where the consequences are tangible to oneself. Again enviromesh is the best option. All the others require me to delegate the impact assessment to remote scientists who provide generic information and can not generally be trusted.
Having been introduced to enviromesh by you this year we have had great success with it being able to control the pigeons, cabbage white butterflies, carrot root fly, flea beetle and I also suspect reduced slug and rodent damage. I have to admit that we have had to attend to it after bad weather which is easier at our scale than yours.
Thanks for your posts, Ben and Paul. Paul, I think the logic of my argument is either that there are no normal dynamic relationships in the biotic community or else that, if there are, my cabbage patch is one of them. Either way, I’m not too worried about having a cabbage patch, but since all of a sudden an awful lot of cabbage patches have appeared around the world I’m potentially worried that things may turn out badly for us if we don’t manage them well.
I’m inclined to agree with you that we should aim to lose as little crop as possible, although this of course is the same ‘land sparing’ argument used by many in favour of high energy, chemical, biotech farming so again perhaps there is a need for us to find our own balance here. But I’m interested that you prefer Enivromesh over a strategy of encouraging beneficial insects (last year I used buckwheat, phacelia and white clover which had the additional benefits of efficient phosphate cycling, weed suppression and mycorrhizae promotion). Overall yield per area may be a bit less, though possibly not in the long-term, but I would argue that it’s probably the most biotically robust approach of the ones I listed and also largely exempts you from an impact on biotic communities elsewhere that you mention – I’m not sure you can really say that of Enviromesh in view of its debt to the petroleum economy, though I admit that the debt per metre of mesh used in a garden is pretty small.
Perhaps you would agree that relationships exist within the biotic community and that they are dynamic with feed back mechanisms but find the word “normal” to be a problem? I would have avoided the word if Callicott had’t used it as well. It may be difficult to define a normality for your cabbage patch but any attempt would never approach the condition in which you keep it. It could be that your field has been tundra, taiga, birch scrub, lime and elm dominated wood land, oak woodland, grass land ,improved grass land. Which is normal and what therefore should be the basis for your further interventions? Is this another way to put your original question? My answer is that it is a troubling human conceit to identify a “normal” form of ecosystem and then to manage it with the aim returning to it. Don’t do it, leave well alone is my approach. (I can see an argument for reversal of previous interventions).
To explain my preference for not using the apparently benign use of insect encouraging plants. First off all you need more land for the plants. Second you planted one North American, one Chinese and one indigenous plant which has been selectively bred. But most importantly I imagine that the parasitic wasps that you have encouraged to succeed by providing and abundance of caterpillars will then wish to continue to succeed by moving out into the wider world. I am not against the use of these methods but don’t believe we can know the consequences so would prefer to use another method which better meets my guideline. In other words I can see the effect that it is having and do not need to “imagine” what goes on beyond the boundary of my perceptions.
I’m not really sure what you’re objecting to here. The whole point of my original post was indeed to suggest that it’s a troubling human conceit to identify a “normal” form of ecosystem and to aspire to preserve it, so we can agree on that. But then why are you bothered about the planting of cabbage patches and the use of non-indigenous species? The main problem is quantitative, not qualitative, and that’s the sense in which I used the word ‘normal’: if there are too many cabbage patches or too many badly managed cabbage patches we may find it becomes increasingly hard to realise our ambitions concerning our welfare, so we ought to be careful about how we proceed.
On the insect vs Enviromesh issue I don’t have a particularly strong opinion about which is best, but I disagree with your objections to the insect strategy: 1. you don’t necessarily need more land (undersow the clover and put the other plants between rows or in field margins), 2. using non-indigenous plants is not intrinsically problematic (there isn’t a ‘normal’ ecosystem…) 3. parasitic wasps are among the most widespread of indigenous insects and all I’m doing with my plantings is encouraging them to shop at my market stall rather than someone else’s. They’re subject to familiar predator-prey dynamics; they’re not going to take over the world. By contrast, Enviromesh depends on a high tech global industrial structure that is manifestly destructive both socially and environmentally, so I think we do need to imagine what goes on beyond the boundary of our perceptions or our properties in our use of it. Granted, all strategies have unknowable consequences, but I don’t think there are good grounds for supposing that Enviromesh has the least.
I am not seeking to object. Nor am I looking for an argument and now wish I had not bothered to post a reply since I find nothing persuasive in your points but now better understand that we basically look at things so differently a discussion is pointless.
Shame, I think we look at things more similarly than most. And I find discussions are rarely pointless, even with those with whom I disagree, though I’d possibly draw the line with planning officers.
Yeh I agree it is a shame but in my hands this forum is too blunt a tool. I don’t have the skills for it and end up getting frustrated. There’s too much else to get frustrated about without bringing on another load from friends.
I personally find cabbages such a pain in the arse to grow that I dont bother with them. my customers have Kale and spinach or can bugger off!
Daniel, I like your style, sir – and if you can tell your customers to bugger off and stay in business, then I think you have precious skills indeed
I admit I dont actually tell them to bugger off, I also admit my customer service is probably not the best. But like many smallholders, selling produce is not my only source of income. Luckily.
If there was a chance of making enough of a living from 13 acres and paying rent on our home, fuel etc maybe I would take customer sevice more seriously.
Just in case there’s any doubt, my previous comment wasn’t intended as a criticism! I think there’s a lot to be said for telling customers to bugger off – not literally of course (some of my customers may be reading this after all…) but in the wider sense of questioning the model of consumer sovereignty that dominates economic thinking. A healthy dose of producerism instead of consumerism could do the world a lot of good. I’m writing something about this at the moment, but I’d be interested in hearing about other growers’ experiences…and also about how people combine commercial growing with other sources of income.