People take agriculture for granted because it is one of mankind's oldest technologies. It remains perhaps one of the most complex. Hunter gatherers began investigating what could be eaten more than 100,000 years ago, an arduous process involving trial and error made more difficult by the fact some foods, like acorns and cassava, have to be soaked or otherwise processed to be edible. This vital knowledge was passed on to posterity in lore. Eventually the list of the more basic foodstuffs became common knowledge, though among the ancients, knowledge of pharmacological plants often stayed secret.
Eventually everyone knew what food was and that knowledge remained stable for centuries. Now the World Economic Forum has a plan to change that. It will revise the list of what humanity eats wholesale to defeat Climate Change. "Our global food system is in urgent need of transition. At present, one-third of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions come from food production." The great work of agriculture will be revamped and the transition will involve all aspects of food production and consumption:
The food transition aims to reshape the way society produces, distributes, consumes and discards food – a transformation that will impact the mutual advancement of human and environmental health. The scale of change is akin to the energy transition. Reorienting to a low-carbon economy requires intervention at every level of strategy.
"How soon will we be eating lab-grown meat?," another WEF article asks. Instead of wasteful pastoralism and ranching, meat will be grown in laboratories from stem cells taken live animals and grown in nutrient-rich conditions. Food, in the words of the Ellen Macarthur Foundation, is about to waken from its ten-thousand year slumber to become "nature positive" through the agency of fast-moving consumer goods companies (FMCGs) who will be persuaded to get with the program. "FMCGs and retailers design what we eat – how it looks, how it tastes, and how good it is for us and for nature."
To understand just how profound this proposed change will be it is useful to review how agricultural technology evolved until fairly recently. Although agricultural technology developed from the moment it started 10,000 years ago many of these were the adoption of basic contrivances. "Simple hand tools providing relief at the beginning gradually evolved into the mechanical equipment commonly available to farmers today," a process that can be described as "low-tech mechanization." It was essentially old agriculture made more convenient, each new step building on the last. But the advent of information technology and genetic engineering has now made it possible to change this age-old industry as never before.
It is artificial intelligence and food modification that really makes "nature positive" agriculture possible. The key shift is the planned replacement of actual foodstuffs with "lower impact alternatives", shifting food systems towards beans, chickpeas, lentils, nuts, and grains instead of meat and dairy and less saturated fats (butter, milk, cheese, meat, coconut oil and palm oil) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The full panoply of 21st century technology will be mobilized to completely alter what farmers produce and populations consume.
Yet food redesign is not the almost painless step it is made out to be but rather a wrenching change for almost everyone involved in agriculture, as shown by 2024 European farmers' protests. Chief among the grievances were proposed environmental regulations (such as a carbon tax, pesticide bans, nitrogen emissions curbs, and restrictions on water and land usage) that are part of the "nature positive" agriculture initiative. The resulting protests ultimately led to the fall of many governments throughout the continent. "Angry farmers are reshaping Europe," proclaims the New York Times, "as the far right senses an opportunity".
“The graduates of elite schools that run this country have no idea about farm life, or even what a day’s labor feels like,” Mr. Monnery said. “They’re perched up there, the successors to our royal family, Macron chief among them."
Is this a case of rural know-nothings resenting their betters or are the farmers right to resist? Because 37 percent of the world's land area is devoted to agriculture, employs a quarter of the global workforce and encompasses so many varied ecosystems and social milieus, changing the way multitudes of people produce food is perhaps the greatest social engineering project in history.
It is equivalent to altering a significant part of the biosphere and is in its own way a form of climate engineering. Practices tested over millennia will be replaced with new initiatives by fast moving consumer goods companies (FMCGs) in the historical blink of an eye. Not only will these changes affect plants and animals, they will affect farmers who in some countries make up more than half of the country's population. How will they transition to the new technology? What will they do if they can't? These are real issues and the recent anger of European farmers against Green policies offers a preview of the storm that lies in store.
Perhaps as relevant to the consideration of a Green food systems overhaul are the risks to the consumers of comestibles themselves. The health risks posed by genetically engineered food and their interactions among themselves are not yet well understood. In the words of a study cited in the Australian Parliament "many years of research with animals and clinical trials are required for this assessment." The great advantage to existing foodstuffs is that they have been tested by humans in every clime, not for ten but ten thousand years, a delay which impatient activists cannot endure.
The WEF's food modification project throws away a proven food system database for unverified future benefits. It literally bets the farm in one of the most crucial aspects of human activity: sustenance, perhaps without reckoning with the consequences. That is not simply foolish but insane. In their hubris the modern globalists resemble H.G. Wells' Martians, seemingly all powerful, striding across the face of the earth with their all-conquering narrative, yet curiously blind to failure in humble things.
These germs of disease have taken toll of humanity since the beginning of things—taken toll of our pre-human ancestors since life began here. But by virtue of this natural selection of our kind we have developed resisting power; to no germs do we succumb without a struggle, and to many—those that cause putrefaction in dead matter, for instance—our living frames are altogether immune. But there are no bacteria in Mars, and directly these invaders arrived, directly they drank and fed, our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow. Already when I watched them they were irrevocably doomed, dying and rotting even as they went to and fro. It was inevitable. By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is his against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor die in vain.
The activists may stumble as did the Martians. Humanity has bought his food through a hundred thousand years of trial and error. By the toll of a billion deaths man has wrung fruit from the earth, and it is his against all comers; it would still be a surpassing achievement were the WEF ten times as mighty as they are. For neither do men toil nor sup in vain.
Powerful point, wonderfully written!
Yes
You can tell Bill Gates and the WEF that I'll be eating medium rare billionaire before I eat lab grown meat...
Maybe folks should start to prepare for something akin to a 666 within this next 10 to 20 years ?
Richard thank you for this brilliant, elegant and very accessible defense against those that make war on farmers. I will share it as widely as I can.
The Soylent Corporation smiles in anticipation...
Of course this will fail misearbly, like electric cars and green energy; the only doubt is whether ist's going to be with elections, kicking these ghouls out of power for good (see Europe last month, hopefully USA next fall), or with pitchforks and torches like in Sri Lanka.
I personally would restore public executions by guillotine.
Their ultimate goal is simple and openly stated: the reduction of the earth's population to no more than 500 million. So far they have been doing a pretty good job of it, what with war, pestilence, abortion, feminism, gay and trannyism, and now--- mass starvation.
RF - I’ve been reading your & your Belmont Club columns for years on PJMedia, a member there since beginning of PJTV . Now I have a new “must” read news/opinion site at “the-pipeline”. Thank you.