Julian Rose – There can be no more certain way to decimate life on Earth than through the act of setting in reverse the natural expansiveness of nature. Yet that is exactly what has been happening for the past two centuries, through the relentless eradication of farm and forest biodiversity in a fixated, tunnel vision pursuit of specialisation and profit.

Witness the fresh food market: so reduced has the range of edible vegetables available to the modern shopper become, that just seven varieties now constitute approximately 90% of green foods sold in post industrial Northern European and North American supermarket chains. Whereas, less than one hundred years ago, highly localised food growing offered a far wider range of fruits and vegetables; in spite of supermarkets boasting global food sourcing policies that are supposed to offer almost limitless choice.

The same goes for breeds of cattle, pigs, sheep and hens.  Once diverse breeds, have now been reduced down to a few well known lines due to superstore’s rapacious demand for ‘perfect conformation’, standardisation and increasing sterilisation of the means of production.

It is almost impossible to comprehend the levels of destruction that have accompanied this merciless march of ‘progress’. And this is how it is still hailed today, by the scientific and agrichemical specialists who feed through their apocalyptic dreams of genetically modified, pesticide soused super crops to the government officials and barley barons who collude to keep the agricultural industry on its road to Armageddon.

So where did it all start?

It is safe to say that the commencement of an industrial revolution in the British Isles around 1750 played a critical role in setting in motion, for the first time, the production of food as a ‘commodity’. A major industry with global outreach and a big earning export market. Up until this point, farming was a largely a family affair in which the first priority was to feed the household and only then was any surplus taken to the market. Continue reading →