Those who talk about the land and those who work it, those who defend it and those who know it, have never seemed so far apart. Environmentalists are mainly elected from the metropolises and would not know how to grow a carrot; farmers vote for everything except EELV and rhyme eco-friendly with bobo. The practices follow. We plant trees in cities and cut down hedges in the countryside (more than 20,000 kilometers per year, a rate which is accelerating dramatically).
This strange divorce is based on a common presupposition: the hermetic separation between nature and culture, which the anthropologist Philippe Descola has shown to what extent it structures Western civilization. The ideal of political ecology would be to park human beings in building blocks, in the name of reducing carbon emissions, and to leave nature to its own devices all around, in spaces of renaturation (rewilding) inspired by the principles of deep ecology. The FNSEA’s ideal would be for the aptly named “crops” to be independent of nature, its vagaries and its singularities, and for the farmer who becomes a “farm manager” to be able to manage his farm from his lab, armed with drones. , milking robots and intelligent tractors. On the one hand, we deplore the miseries of the Anthropocene, leading to the sixth mass extinction of species on our planet; on the other hand, we invoke the wonders of human progress, assimilated to technical advances and rising yields. In both cases, no dialogue possible between nature and culture(s).
Before we can agree on the question of phytosanitary products or fallows, we must therefore overcome this intellectual impasse. And to guide us, we need the thoughts of Elisée Reclus more than ever. A prolific geographer from the second half of the 19th century, traveler and explorer, formidable stylist of nature, Elisée Reclus is often considered a precursor of ecology. To make matters worse, he had a turbulent political life, a republican for a time taking refuge in London, a communard sent to prison (then again in exile in Switzerland), and a figure of peaceful anarchism.
Reclus unconditionally condemns the brutality with which man has too often taken over nature, destroying virgin forests or polluting the rivers that flow through industrial cities. He already highlights the relationship between deforestation and climate change. He does not spare the farmers either, who “eliminate species by the hundreds, perhaps by the thousands, because of uniformity, regularity, obligatory method in cultivation”: one would think one is reading a contemporary report on the disappearance birds and insects (whose populations, let us remember, have collapsed by 30% and 80% respectively over the last thirty years in Europe).
Reestablishing the link between agriculture and ecology
But “the evil he has done, man can undo.” And Reclus cites, for example, the Swiss farmers who respect the charm of the landscapes, the buoys of Flanders “transformed by drainage into countryside of exuberant fertility”, or the beautification of plants by horticulturists. We can “exploit the earth while making it more beautiful” and reconcile the development of humanity with that of nature, ensuring that the first preserves and improves the environment, and that the second softens our morals. We must accept anthropization by embracing the very logic of the evolution of species, and “cultivate our terrestrial garden” in a way that makes it more natural than nature…
The translation of this philosophy into the current debate can be summed up in one word: agroecology. Its principle: to take care of the land, to make it fertile and productive by itself. Its mission: to reestablish the link between agriculture and ecology, between production and soil. Its two pillars: limit or eliminate synthetic inputs; reduce or eliminate plowing. From these simple premises, all variations are possible, adapted to the terroirs, practices and constraints of each individual. Let us note in passing that organic, as it is defined today, essentially concerns human health, by guaranteeing the consumer that they will not ingest chemical products. Agroecology is both less strict and more ambitious, since it takes into account the entire ecosystem.
For several decades, initiatives have abounded to (re)invent agricultural techniques that respect the soil and promote biodiversity. We get lost in all their variations: soil conservation agriculture, permaculture, agroforestry, mound cultivation, regenerative agriculture, microfarms, etc. It is not a question of venerating mother earth but of finding in nature itself the solutions to the problems it poses to us: welcoming natural predators to eliminate pests, reducing weeds through cultural associations, enriching the soil thanks to plant cover, etc. Natural evolution has spent hundreds of millions of years experimenting: why not take inspiration from it? Far from going backwards, agroecology is teeming with innovations, now analyzed and improved by scientific research. Semi-direct, for example, breaks with millennia of plowing…
Conventional agriculture risks starving us
Contrary to the soothing discourse of agro-industry on “agriculture-that-feeds-the-world”, it is conventional agriculture which risks starving us, by destroying the land on which it is based (60% of European soils are depleted), and agroecology which will save yields. Experiments like that of the Bec Hellouin Organic Farm have proven how productive permaculture market gardening can be (“bio-intensive”). The experiments carried out for more than ten years in France by INRAE agronomists tend to show that agroecology is also possible in large crops. And above all, as noted by another public organization, France Stratégie, the profits generated by agroecological farms make them highly competitive. Of course, the reduction in many costs (inputs, machines, logistics, etc.) must be offset by attention paid to the environment and its specific requirements. It is the end of the single recipe and the revenge of know-how over expertise.
Such a transition is more akin to a revolution, similar in scale to mechanization in the last century. It presupposes a political ambition as clear and assumed as that of Edgard Pisani, Minister of Agriculture under General de Gaulle in the 1960s and architect of agro-industrial modernization. By setting a clear objective and removing contradictory injunctions, agroecology could first reconcile farmers with the rest of society and also with each other. But it will also have to mobilize each of us. Because it requires reviewing the logic of CAP subsidies and, more broadly, the functioning of the European market; to reorganize distribution circuits; to demand efforts from a consumer whose share of the budget dedicated to food has never been so low. Better yet, if agroecology implies an increased need for labor in the fields, we must assume a form of urban exodus, with major consequences in terms of land use planning, social services and local governance. . Repopulating the countryside, renaturing people, recreating landscapes: what a great project for the nation!
This revolution is the condition for our collective progress. Reclus the anarchist remains faithful to this beautiful idea of the Enlightenment, to the point of making it the title of the last chapter of his volume Man and the Earth. Following the historian Giambattista Vico, he refuses to consider progress as a linear development. Rather, he sees it as a sinusoidal succession of corsi and of ricorsi, progress and regression. Today we are undoubtedly going through a period of regression (and regret); It is by recognizing our mistakes that we will be able to overcome it. The denial of technosolutionists in the face of the crisis of life is precisely what prevents us from resuming the path to progress, defined less as the growth of added value than as the increase in diversity – diversity of species in nature, diversity of modes of life in society.
Man, the spokesperson for a silent land
What then, in this new alliance between nature and culture, is the role of man? Becoming “nature becoming aware of itself”. If humanity occupies a particular place on the planet, it is through the reflexivity that it can implement, becoming in some way the spokesperson for a silent earth. It is not a question of returning nature to itself, but on the contrary of giving it a voice and acting in its name. It is not a question of inhibiting man, but on the contrary of taking him out of himself by awakening “the feeling of nature in modern societies”, to use the programmatic title of an essay by Reclus. The beginning of “nature awareness” is walking in the fresh air. Everybody out !
A thousand miles from the ranting of the Elysée recluse, Elisée Reclus offers us a general reconciliation. Culture with nature, and people with each other, united in a free association similar to the functioning of an ecosystem. Neither god, nor master, nor glyphosate!
* Gaspard Kœnig is a philosopher and writer. His latest novel Humus (Ed. de L’Observatoire), which narrates the crossed destiny of two young agronomists, won the Interallié 2023 prize.
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