On April 25, 2013, HOFER hosted the 2nd “Back to the Roots” Journalists’ Forum in Vienna. Following last year’s great success with the adventurous and dedicated ecologist David de Rothschild, this year I met Jakob von Uexküll, founder of the Alternative Nobel Prize and the World Future Council. His remarkable personality captivated me and the entire audience.
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The topic of the day was the future we are all systematically ruining. Just as our financial system is in the process of destroying our economic future, conventional agriculture is on the verge of destroying the very foundations of our existence.
In terms of calories, conventional agriculture produces enough food to feed 14 billion people. Yet 12% of the world’s population is undernourished (870 million people), 3.5 million children die each year from malnutrition, and one-third of global grain production is used for animal feed.
Climate change is increasingly seen as a current and future cause of hunger and poverty. One-third of globalCO2 emissions originate from conventional agriculture. Intensive agricultural practices are destroying large areas of farmland. Over the past 40 years, one-third of the world’s farmland has had to be abandoned due to soil erosion. Every year, approximately 20 billion additional hectares become unusable for agriculture.
In addition, the overexploitation of the soil leads to a lack of water retention. As a result, we are promoting a form of agriculture that systematically wastes precious water.
Clean water is also needed to flush pesticides out of the soil; this water is then referred to as “gray water.” Millions of people suffer from pesticide poisoning every year. Hundreds of thousands do not survive.
Conventional agriculture is the biggest threat to biodiversity, which is the foundation of life for all of us. Yet biodiversity is precisely what will be so important in the future. A large gene pool makes it easier for agriculture to adapt to global environmental change. The wild relatives of our crop plants are essential for breeding new varieties to ensure that our need for healthy food continues to be met in the future.
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We continue to consume and remain blind to our responsibility. We continue to use billions in tax dollars to subsidize a system that has no future—a system that is devouring our future.
We have a worldview based on mechanical causality, which is nothing more than a distorted perception of reality.
Conventional agriculture is a form of farming that is independent of land area—a modern yet old-fashioned form of colonialism that exploits and allows others to be exploited, operates on the basis of economic speculation, and will lead us all into an ecological catastrophe.
Only when we begin to understand that we are part of a deeply interconnected world in which everything is alive and interrelated, and that we are rooted in a complex natural system—ecological, economic, and social alike—will we have a future.
Let’s stop mistreating, exploiting, lying to, and taking advantage of one another! Let’s be open about how we work. Let’s make our work transparent and understandable to everyone.
For even Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) knew that tyranny can only survive by maintaining anonymity and fostering mistrust among its subjects. Anything that fosters mutual trust must be avoided.
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Only by taking responsibility for one another and for our shared world will we have a future. No one will be able to save themselves without the others.
Only a transformed organic farming sector can guarantee food sovereignty in the future!
The realization that each individual, through their consumption, bears responsibility for what happens to others and to the environment will bring about change.
Politics will no longer solve the problems of the future. It is too deeply entangled in serving its own interests. No salvation will come from politics.
Let’s take responsibility into our own hands and set out to build a civil society that acts with respect!
That way, the future can have confidence in us!
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Werner Lampert (born in 1946 in Vorarlberg, Austria) is considered one of the pioneers in the field of sustainable products and their development in Europe. This organic pioneer has been deeply involved in organic farming since the 1970s. With Back to the beginning (Hofer) and Ja! Natürlich—he developed two of the most successful organic brands in the German-speaking world.
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