Agriculture Best Quotes

Awake! arise! the hour is late! Angels are knocking at thy door! They are in haste and cannot wait, And once departed come no more. Awake! arise! the athlete's arm Loses its strength by too much rest; The fallow land, the untilled farm Produces only weeds at best.

Why should people in one part of the globe have developed collectivist cultures, while others went individualist? The United States is the individualism poster child for at least two reasons. First there's immigration. Currently, 12 percent of Americans are immigrants, another 12 percent are children of immigrants, and everyone else except for the 0.9 percent pure Native Americans descend from people who emigrated within the last five hundred years. And who were the immigrants? Those in the settled world who were cranks, malcontents, restless, heretical, black sheep, hyperactive, hypomanic, misanthropic, itchy, unconventional, yearning to be rich, yearning to be out of their damn boring repressive little hamlet, yearning. Couple that with the second reason - for the majority of its colonial and independent history, America has had a moving frontier luring those whose extreme prickly optimism made merely booking passage to the New World insufficiently novel - and you've got America the individualistic. Why has East Asia provided textbook examples of collectivism? The key is how culture is shaped by the way people traditionally made a living, which in turn is shaped by ecology. And in East Asia it's all about rice. Rice, which was domesticated there roughly ten thousand years ago, requires massive amounts of communal work. Not just backbreaking planting and harvesting, which are done in rotation because the entire village is needed to harvest each family's rice. The United States was not without labor-intensive agriculture historically. But rather than solving that with collectivism, it solved it withe slavery.

He cannot wisely consent to spend the best years of his life in getting ready to live.

In a time of disorder [Laertes] has returned to the care of the earth, the foundation of life and hope. And Odysseus finds him in an act emblematic of the best and most responsible kind of agriculture: an old man caring for a young tree.

It was the general opinion of ancient nations, that the divinity alone was adequate to the important office of giving laws to men... and modern nations, in the consecrations of kings, and in several superstitious chimeras of divine rights in princes and nobles, are nearly unanimous in preserving remnants of it... Is the jealousy of power, and the envy of superiority, so strong in all men, that no considerations of public or private utility are sufficient to engage their submission to rules for their own happiness? Or is the disposition to imposture so prevalent in men of experience, that their private views of ambition and avarice can be accomplished only by artifice? — … There is nothing in which mankind have been more unanimous; yet nothing can be inferred from it more than this, that the multitude have always been credulous, and the few artful. The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature: and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had any interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of heaven, any more than those at work upon ships or houses, or labouring in merchandize or agriculture: it will for ever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses. As Copley painted Chatham, West, Wolf, and Trumbull, Warren and Montgomery; as Dwight, Barlow, Trumbull, and Humphries composed their verse, and Belknap and Ramzay history; as Godfrey invented his quadrant, and Rittenhouse his planetarium; as Boylston practised inoculation, and Franklin electricity; as Paine exposed the mistakes of Raynal, and Jefferson those of Buffon, so unphilosophically borrowed from the Recherches Philosophiques sur les Américains those despicable dreams of de Pauw — neither the people, nor their conventions, committees, or sub-committees, considered legislation in any other light than ordinary arts and sciences, only as of more importance. Called without expectation, and compelled without previous inclination, though undoubtedly at the best period of time both for England and America, to erect suddenly new systems of laws for their future government, they adopted the method of a wise architect, in erecting a new palace for the residence of his sovereign. They determined to consult Vitruvius, Palladio, and all other writers of reputation in the art; to examine the most celebrated buildings, whether they remain entire or in ruins; compare these with the principles of writers; and enquire how far both the theories and models were founded in nature, or created by fancy: and, when this should be done, as far as their circumstances would allow, to adopt the advantages, and reject the inconveniences, of all. Unembarrassed by attachments to noble families, hereditary lines and successions, or any considerations of royal blood, even the pious mystery of holy oil had no more influence than that other of holy water: the people universally were too enlightened to be imposed on by artifice; and their leaders, or more properly followers, were men of too much honour to attempt it. Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favour of the rights of mankind. [Preface to 'A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States of America', 1787]

Education became Finland’s best hope for preparing its population for a new economy based not on agriculture or manufacturing, but on knowledge.

I’ve said that education is a living process that can best be compared to agriculture. Gardeners know that they don’t make plants grow.

Agriculture makes people dependent on a few domesticated crops and animals instead of hundreds of wild food sources, creating vulnerability to droughts and blights and zoonotic diseases. Agriculture makes for sedentary living, leaving humans to do something that no primate with a concern for hygiene and public health would ever do: namely, living in close proximity to their feces. Agriculture makes for surplus and thus almost inevitably, the uneven distribution of surplus generating socio-economic status differences that dwarf anything that other primates cook up with their hierarchies. And from there it's just a hop, skip and a jump until we've got Mr. McGregor persecuting Peter Rabbit and people incessantly singing Oklahoma.

As a working definition of art, I lean toward Tolstoy's: "Art is a human activity having for it's purpose the transmission to other of the highest and best feelings to which mankind has risen." It seems to me that, regarding agrarian art, the farther it moves away from the natural world, especially when the main goal is money profits, the more difficult it becomes for it to reflect "the highest and best feelings" of humanity. The same is true of, of course, of agriculture itself. The farther it tries to remove itself from nature in search of money, the more it moves away from the highest and healthiest kinds of food.

The United States was not without labor-intensive agriculture historically. But rather than solving that with collectivism, it solved it with slavery.

Agriculture brought to human beings more than a new way of procuring food. It introduced a new way of thinking about the relationship between humans an nature. Hunter-gatherers considered themselves to be part of the natural world; they lived with nature, not against it. They accepted nature`s twist and turns as inevitable and adapted to them as best they could. Agriculture, on the other hand, is a continuous exercise in controlling nature; it involves the taming and controlling of plants and animals, to make them servants to humans rather than equal partners in the natural world. With agriculture, I suggest, humans began to extend this idea of control over nature to other aspects of the natural world, including children.

Why the ancient rishis selected the cow for apotheosis is obvious to me. The cow in India was the best comparison; she was the giver of plenty. Not only did she give milk, but she also made agriculture possible. The cow is a poem of pity; one reads pity in the gentle animal. She is the second mother to millions of mankind. Protection of the cow means protection of the whole dumb creation of God.

Despite the initial reliance of commerce on routes created through military conquest, it soon became obvious that whereas armies moved quickest by horse across land, massive quantities of goods moved best by water. Mongols expanded and lengthened the Grand Canal that already connected the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers to transport grain and other agricultural products farther and more efficiently into the northern districts.

We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven. We have adopted Christianity merely as an improved method of agri-culture. We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb. The best works of art are the expression of man’s struggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and that higher state to be forgotten.

Today an estimated 13 percent of birds are threatened, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. So are 25 percent of mammals and 41 percent of amphibians, in large part because of human activity. Hydropower and road construction imperil China’s giant pandas. The northern bald ibis, once abundant in the Middle East, has been driven almost to extinction by hunting, habitat loss, and the difficulties of doing conservation work in war-torn Syria. Hunting and the destruction of wetlands for agriculture drove the population of North America’s tallest bird, the whooping crane, into the teens before stringent protections along the birds’ migratory route and wintering grounds helped the wild flock build back to a few hundred. Little brown bats are dying off in the United States and Canada from a fungus that might have been imported from Europe by travelers. Of some 300 species of freshwater mussels in North America, fully 70 percent are extinct, imperiled, or vulnerable, thanks to the impacts of water pollution from logging, dams, farm runoff, and shoreline development.

We are dealing, then, with an absurdity that is not a quirk or an accident, but is fundamental to our character as people. The split between what we think and what we do is profound. It is not just possible, it is altogether to be expected, that our society would produce conservationists who invest in strip-mining companies, just as it must inevitably produce asthmatic executives whose industries pollute the air and vice-presidents of pesticide corporations whose children are dying of cancer. And these people will tell you that this is the way the "real world" works. The will pride themselves on their sacrifices for "our standard of living." They will call themselves "practical men" and "hardheaded realists." And they will have their justifications in abundance from intellectuals, college professors, clergymen, politicians. The viciousness of a mentality that can look complacently upon disease as "part of the cost" would be obvious to any child. But this is the "realism" of millions of modern adults. There is no use pretending that the contradiction between what we think or say and what we do is a limited phenomenon. There is no group of the extra-intelligent or extra-concerned or extra-virtuous that is exempt. I cannot think of any American whom I know or have heard of, who is not contributing in some way to destruction. The reason is simple: to live undestructively in an economy that is overwhelmingly destructive would require of any one of us, or of any small group of us, a great deal more work than we have yet been able to do. How could we divorce ourselves completely and yet responsibly from the technologies and powers that are destroying our planet? The answer is not yet thinkable, and it will not be thinkable for some time -- even though there are now groups and families and persons everywhere in the country who have begun the labor of thinking it. And so we are by no means divided, or readily divisible, into environmental saints and sinners. But there are legitimate distinctions that need to be made. These are distinctions of degree and of consciousness. Some people are less destructive than others, and some are more conscious of their destructiveness than others. For some, their involvement in pollution, soil depletion, strip-mining, deforestation, industrial and commercial waste is simply a "practical" compromise, a necessary "reality," the price of modern comfort and convenience. For others, this list of involvements is an agenda for thought and work that will produce remedies. People who thus set their lives against destruction have necessarily confronted in themselves the absurdity that they have recognized in their society. They have first observed the tendency of modern organizations to perform in opposition to their stated purposes. They have seen governments that exploit and oppress the people they are sworn to serve and protect, medical procedures that produce ill health, schools that preserve ignorance, methods of transportation that, as Ivan Illich says, have 'created more distances than they... bridge.' And they have seen that these public absurdities are, and can be, no more than the aggregate result of private absurdities; the corruption of community has its source in the corruption of character. This realization has become the typical moral crisis of our time. Once our personal connection to what is wrong becomes clear, then we have to choose: we can go on as before, recognizing our dishonesty and living with it the best we can, or we can begin the effort to change the way we think and live.

Whether in their policy of religious tolerance, devising a universal alphabet, maintaining relay stations, playing games, or printing almanacs, money, or astronomy charts, the rulers of the Mongol Empire displayed a persistent universalism. Because they had no system of their own to impose upon their subjects, they were willing to adopt and combine systems from everywhere. Without deep cultural preferences in these areas, the Mongols implemented pragmatic rather than ideological solutions. They searched for what worked best; and when they found it, they spread it to other countries. They did not have to worry whether their astronomy agreed with the precepts of the Bible, that their standards of writing followed the classical principles taught by the mandarins of China, or that Muslim imams disapproved of their printing and painting. The Mongols had the power, at least temporarily, to impose new international systems of technology, agriculture, and knowledge that superseded the predilections or prejudices of any single civilization; and in so doing, they broke the monopoly on thought exercised by local elites.

No, the founders of our culture didn't just fall into a lifestyle of total dependence on agriculture, they had to whip themselves into it, and the whip they used was this meme: Growing all your own food is the best way to live. Nothing less could imaginably have done this amazing trick.

The Middle Ages in Europe are traditionally seen as the time of Crusades, chivalry and the growing power of the papacy, but all this was little more than a sideshow to the titanic struggles taking place further east. The tribal system had led the Mongols to the brink of global domination, having conquered almost the whole continent of Asia. Europe and North Africa yawned open; it was striking then that the Mongol leadership focused not on the former but on the latter. Put simply, Europe was not the best prize on offer. All that stood in the way of Mongol control of the Nile, of Egypt’s rich agricultural output and its crucial position as a junction on the trade routes in all directions was an army commanded by men who were drawn from the very same steppes: this was not just a struggle for supremacy, it was the triumph of a political, cultural and social system. The battle for the medieval world was being fought between nomads from Central and eastern Asia.

The literatures of Greece and Rome comprise the longest, most complete and most nearly continuous record we have of what the strange creature known as Homo sapiens has been busy about in virtually every department of spiritual, intellectual and social activity. That record covers nearly twenty-five hundred years in an unbroken stretch of this animated oddity’s operations in poetry, drama, law, agriculture, philosophy, architecture, natural history, philology, rhetoric, astronomy, logic, politics, botany, zoölogy, medicine, geography, theology,—everything, I believe, that lies in the range of human knowledge or speculation. Hence the mind which has attentively canvassed this record is much more than a disciplined mind, it is an experienced mind. It has come, as Emerson says, into a feeling of immense longevity, and it instinctively views contemporary man and his doings in the perspective set by this profound and weighty experience. Our studies were properly called formative, because beyond all others their effect was powerfully maturing. Cicero told the unvarnished truth in saying that those who have no knowledge of what has gone before them must forever remain children; and if one wished to characterise the collective mind of this present period, or indeed of any period,—the use it makes of its powers of observation, reflection, logical inference,—one would best do it by the one word immaturity.

In the twentieth century the women who wanted to be on their own were some of the best, the honest ones, those who instinctively rejected the trash. But here came a tragical dilemma. If they accepted Business and served it, they served the very thing from which they fled, and at best became imitation men. If they rejected Business and lived on allowances or incomes, they were in the anomalous position of hunting with the industrial hounds and running with the agricultural hare. An instinctive sense of this made many of them turn "artist." And so Europe was cluttered up with incompetent women "artists" -- not that a woman is incapable of being an artist, but because the assumed role provided an escape. Either situation was impossible, and the solution is not yet found.

Once there were three tribes. The Optimists, whose patron saints were Drake and Sagan, believed in a universe crawling with gentle intelligence—spiritual brethren vaster and more enlightened than we, a great galactic siblinghood into whose ranks we would someday ascend. Surely, said the Optimists, space travel implies enlightenment, for it requires the control of great destructive energies. Any race which can't rise above its own brutal instincts will wipe itself out long before it learns to bridge the interstellar gulf. Across from the Optimists sat the Pessimists, who genuflected before graven images of Saint Fermi and a host of lesser lightweights. The Pessimists envisioned a lonely universe full of dead rocks and prokaryotic slime. The odds are just too low, they insisted. Too many rogues, too much radiation, too much eccentricity in too many orbits. It is a surpassing miracle that even one Earth exists; to hope for many is to abandon reason and embrace religious mania. After all, the universe is fourteen billion years old: if the galaxy were alive with intelligence, wouldn't it be here by now? Equidistant to the other two tribes sat the Historians. They didn't have too many thoughts on the probable prevalence of intelligent, spacefaring extraterrestrials— but if there are any, they said, they're not just going to be smart. They're going to be mean. It might seem almost too obvious a conclusion. What is Human history, if not an ongoing succession of greater technologies grinding lesser ones beneath their boots? But the subject wasn't merely Human history, or the unfair advantage that tools gave to any given side; the oppressed snatch up advanced weaponry as readily as the oppressor, given half a chance. No, the real issue was how those tools got there in the first place. The real issue was what tools are for. To the Historians, tools existed for only one reason: to force the universe into unnatural shapes. They treated nature as an enemy, they were by definition a rebellion against the way things were. Technology is a stunted thing in benign environments, it never thrived in any culture gripped by belief in natural harmony. Why invent fusion reactors if your climate is comfortable, if your food is abundant? Why build fortresses if you have no enemies? Why force change upon a world which poses no threat? Human civilization had a lot of branches, not so long ago. Even into the twenty-first century, a few isolated tribes had barely developed stone tools. Some settled down with agriculture. Others weren't content until they had ended nature itself, still others until they'd built cities in space. We all rested eventually, though. Each new technology trampled lesser ones, climbed to some complacent asymptote, and stopped—until my own mother packed herself away like a larva in honeycomb, softened by machinery, robbed of incentive by her own contentment. But history never said that everyone had to stop where we did. It only suggested that those who had stopped no longer struggled for existence. There could be other, more hellish worlds where the best Human technology would crumble, where the environment was still the enemy, where the only survivors were those who fought back with sharper tools and stronger empires. The threats contained in those environments would not be simple ones. Harsh weather and natural disasters either kill you or they don't, and once conquered—or adapted to— they lose their relevance. No, the only environmental factors that continued to matter were those that fought back, that countered new strategies with newer ones, that forced their enemies to scale ever-greater heights just to stay alive. Ultimately, the only enemy that mattered was an intelligent one. And if the best toys do end up in the hands of those who've never forgotten that life itself is an act of war against intelligent opponents, what does that say about a race whose machines travel between the stars?

told his students in “The World Since 1914” class that there was little point in discussing the Third World when they knew so little about how their own society works: “So I told them about the USA — really very hair-raising when it is all laid out in sequence: . . . . 1. cosmic hierarchy; 2. energy; 3. agriculture; 4. food; 5. health and medical services; 6. education; 7. income flows and the worship of GROWTH; 8. inflation. . . showing how we are violating every aspect of life by turning everything into a ripoff because we. . . have adopted the view that insatiable individualistic greed must run the world.” 7 He feared “that the students will come to feel that all is hopeless, so I must. . . show them how solutions can be found by holistic methods seeking diversity, de-centralization, communities. . .etc.” 8 Pleased with the class response, he later recalled: “The students were very excited and my last lecture in which I put the whole picture together was about the best lecture I ever gave. That was 10 Dec. [1975], my last full day of teaching after 41 years.

The "Society for Humanity" is a Northern organization, primarily, you know, and they make no secret of not wanting the Machines. -- Susan, they are few in numbers, but it is an association of powerful men. Heads of factories; directors of industries and agricultural combines who hate to be what they call "the Machine's office-boy" belong to it. Men with ambition belong to it. Men who feel themselves strong enough to decide for themselves what is best for themselves, and not just to be told what is best for others.["] (from The Evitable Conflict, 1950)

In agricultural communities, male leadership in the hunt ceased to be of much importance. As the discipline of the hunting band decayed, the political institutions of the earliest village settlements perhaps approximated the anarchism which has remained ever since the ideal of peaceful peasantries all round the earth. Probably religious functionaries, mediators between helpless mankind and the uncertain fertility of the earth, provided an important form of social leadership. The strong hunter and man of prowess, his occupation gone or relegated to the margins of social life, lost the umambiguous primacy which had once been his; while the comparatively tight personal subordination to a leader necessary to the success of a hunting party could be relaxed in proportion as grain fields became the center around which life revolved. Among predominantly pastoral peoples, however, religious-political institutions took a quite different turn. To protect the flocks from animal predators required the same courage and social discipline which hunters had always needed. Among pastoralists, likewise, the principal economic activity- focused, as among the earliest hunters, on a parasitic relation to animals- continued to be the special preserve of menfolk. Hence a system of patrilineal families, united into kinship groups under the authority of a chieftain responsible for daily decisions as to where to seek pasture, best fitted the conditions of pastoral life. In addition, pastoralists were likely to accord importance to the practices and discipline of war. After all, violent seizure of someone else’s animals or pasture grounds was the easiest and speediest way to wealth and might be the only means of survival in a year of scant vegetation. Such warlikeness was entirely alien to communities tilling the soil. Archeological remains from early Neolithic villages suggest remarkably peaceful societies. As long as cultivable land was plentiful, and as long as the labor of a single household could not produce a significant surplus, there can have been little incentive to war. Traditions of violence and hunting-party organization presumably withered in such societies, to be revived only when pastoral conquest superimposed upon peaceable villagers the elements of warlike organization from which civilized political institutions without exception descend.

The obvious question is, what are the “conditions to which presumably we are genetically adapted”? As it turns out, what Donaldson assumed in 1919 is still the conventional wisdom today: our genes were effectively shaped by the two and a half million years during which our ancestors lived as hunters and gatherers prior to the introduction of agriculture twelve thousand years ago. This is a period of time known as the Paleolithic era or, less technically, as the Stone Age, because it begins with the development of the first stone tools. It constitutes more than 99.5 percent of human history—more than a hundred thousand generations of humanity living as hunter-gatherers, compared with the six hundred succeeding generations of farmers or the ten generations that have lived in the industrial age. It’s not controversial to say that the agricultural period—the last .5 percent of the history of our species—has had little significant effect on our genetic makeup. What is significant is what we ate during the two and a half million years that preceded agriculture—the Paleolithic era. The question can never be answered definitively, because this era, after all, preceded human record-keeping. The best we can do is what nutritional anthropologists began doing in the mid-1980s—use modern-day hunter-gatherer societies as surrogates for our Stone Age ancestors.

Archaeologists are familiar with such monumental structures from sites around the world – the best-known example is Stonehenge in Britain. Yet as they studied Göbekli Tepe, they discovered an amazing fact. Stonehenge dates to 2500 BC, and was built by a developed agricultural society. The structures at Göbekli Tepe are dated to about 9500 BC, and all available evidence indicates that they were built by hunter-gatherers. The archaeological community initially found it difficult to credit these findings, but one test after another confirmed both the early date of the structures and the pre-agricultural society of their builders. The capabilities of ancient foragers, and the complexity of their cultures, seem to be far more impressive than was previously suspected.

A greater and more ruinous mistake cannot be fallen into, than that the trades of agriculture and grazing can be conducted upon any other than the common principles of commerce; namely, that the producer should be permitted, and even expected, to look to all possible profit which, without fraud or violence, he can make; to turn plenty or scarcity to the best advantage he can; to keep back or to bring forward his commodities at his pleasure; to account to no one for his stock or for his gain. On any other terms he is the slave of the consumer; and that he should be so is of no benefit to the consumer. No slave was ever so beneficial to the master as a freeman that deals with him on an equal footing by convention, formed on the rules and principles of contending interests and compromised advantages. [Thoughts and Details on Scarcity]

difference, as we have seen in the preceding chapter. In a competitive market economy it is the high-cost producers, the inefficient producers, that are driven out by a fall in price. In the case of an agricultural commodity it is the least competent farmers, or those with the poorest equipment, or those working the poorest land, that are driven out. The most capable farmers on the best land do not have to restrict their production. On the contrary, if the fall in price has been symptomatic of a lower average cost of production, reflected through an increased supply, then the driving out of the marginal farmers on the marginal land enables the good farmers on the good land to expand their production. So there may be, in the long run, no reduction whatever in the output of that commodity. And the product is then produced and sold at a permanently lower price. If

In terms of literary history, the publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 is seen as a landmark. The volume contains many of the best-known Romantic poems. The second edition in 1800 contained a Preface in which Wordsworth discusses the theories of poetry which were to be so influential on many of his and Coleridge's contemporaries. The Preface represents a poetic manifesto which is very much in the spirit of the age. The movement towards greater freedom and democracy in political and social affairs is paralleled by poetry which sought to overturn the existing regime and establish a new, more 'democratic' poetic order. To do this, the writers used 'the real language of men' (Preface to Lyrical Ballads) and even, in the case of Byron and Shelley, got directly involved in political activities themselves. The Romantic age in literature is often contrasted with the Classical or Augustan age which preceded it. The comparison is valuable, for it is not simply two different attitudes to literature which are being compared but two different ways of seeing and experiencing life. The Classical or Augustan age of the early and mid-eighteenth century stressed the importance of reason and order. Strong feelings and flights of the imagination had to be controlled (although they were obviously found widely, especially in poetry). The swift improvements in medicine, economics, science and engineering, together with rapid developments in both agricultural and industrial technology, suggested human progress on a grand scale. At the centre of these advances towards a perfect society was mankind, and it must have seemed that everything was within man's grasp if his baser, bestial instincts could be controlled. The Classical temperament trusts reason, intellect, and the head. The Romantic temperament prefers feelings, intuition, and the heart.

The civilized man is distinguished from the savage mainly by prudence, or, to use a slightly wider term, forethought. He is willing to endure present pains for the sake of future pleasures, even if the future pleasures are rather distant. This habit began to be important with the rise of agriculture; no animal and no savage would work in the spring in order to have food next winter, except for a few purely instinctive forms of action, such as bees making honey or squirrels burying nuts. In these cases, there is no forethought; there is a direct impulse to an act which, to the human spectator, is obviously going to prove useful later on. True forethought only arises when a man does something towards which no impulse urges him, because his reason tells him that he will profit by it at some future date. Hunting requires no forethought, because it is pleasurable; but tilling the soil is labour, and cannot be done from spontaneous impulse. Civilization checks impulse not only through forethought, which is a self-administered check, but also through law, custom, and religion. This check it inherits from barbarism, but it makes it less instinctive and more systematic. Certain acts are labelled criminal, and are punished; certain others, though not punished by law, are labelled wicked, and expose those who are guilty of them to social disapproval. The institution of private property brings with it the subjection of women, and usually the creation of a slave class. On the one hand the purposes of the community are enforced upon the individual, and, on the other hand the individual, having acquired the habit of viewing his life as a whole, increasingly sacrifices his present to his future. It is evident that this process can be carried too far, as it is, for instance, by the miser. But without going to such extremes, prudence may easily involve the loss of some of the best things in life.

Gene Logsdon is equally critical of the federal government’s interference with regional farming markets. In The Contrary Farmer,20 he explores how government manipulation of agricultural markets has led to costly, hare-brained, and environmentally damaging practices. For example, farmers are tempted by government subsidies to grow corn on land far better suited for other, unsubsidized crops. The end result: the agricultural and economic diversity of whole regions of the United States is diminished. This has the knock-on effect of undermining opportunities for people in these regions to obtain a variety of affordable, locally grown produce. People talk about addressing such problems by further regulating lobbyists, but every new wave of regulations seems only to make matters worse. The best way to avoid cronyism and the government manipulation of markets in favor of corporate bigness is to have big government shrunk down to size and hemmed in by severe limits.

Of course it was not only the law that interfered with our management of the paper. The politicians, too, soon took a hand. The Oberpräsident of Schleswig-Holstein, a man named Kürbis (which is German for pumpkin) forbad its publication; it appeared the next day, entitled Die Westküste [The West Coat]. This too was banned, and for a short time my brother's wish was fulfilled and we edited Die Grüne Front. I, too, had the gratification of seeing my original suggestion realised whn it became, in due course, Die Sturmglocke. Finally, the Oberpräsident forbad us from publishing any paper at all which was not purely concerned with technical agricultural matters. So we rechristened it Der Kürbis, aand the leading article consisted of variations on the subject of pumpking as given in the encyclopaedia; we expatiated on how pumkins flourish best in plenty of dung and on the disagreeable nature of their blossom's scwent. Thenceforth the paper resumed its original name of Das Landvolk and that was that.

The overwhelming consensus is that egalitarian social organization is the de-facto system for foraging societies in all environments. In fact, no other system could work for foraging societies. Compulsory sharing is simply the best way to distribute risk to everyone’s benefit: participation mandatory. Pragmatic? Yes. Noble? Hardly. We believe this sharing behavior extended to sex as well. A great deal of research from primatology, anthropology, anatomy, and psychology points to the same fundamental conclusion: human beings and our hominid ancestors have spent almost all of the past few million years or so in small, intimate bands in which most adults had several sexual relationships at any given time. This approach to sexuality probably persisted until the rise of agriculture and private property no more than ten thousand years ago. In addition to voluminous scientific evidence, many explorers, missionaries, and anthropologists support this view, having penned accounts rich with tales of orgiastic rituals, unflinching mate sharing, and an open sexuality unencumbered by guilt or shame.

In the last chapter I suggested that humans are, like our primate ancestors, innately equipped to live in dominance hierarchies that can be quite brutal. But if that’s true, then how come nomadic hunter-gatherers are always egalitarian? There’s no hierarchy (at least among the adult males), there’s no chief, and the norms of the group actively encourage sharing resources, particularly meat.26 The archaeological evidence supports this view, indicating that our ancestors lived for hundreds of thousands of years in egalitarian bands of mobile hunter-gatherers.27 Hierarchy only becomes widespread around the time that groups take up agriculture or domesticate animals and become more sedentary. These changes create much more private property and much larger group sizes. They also put an end to equality. The best land and a share of everything people produce typically get dominated by a chief, leader, or elite class (who take some of their wealth with them to the grave for easy interpretation by later archaeologists). So were our minds “structured in advance of experience” for hierarchy or for equality? For hierarchy,

The Industrial Revolution brought about dozens of major upheavals in human society. Adapting to industrial time is just one of them. Other notable examples include urbanisation, the disappearance of the peasantry, the rise of the industrial proletariat, the empowerment of the common person, democratisation, youth culture and the disintegration of patriarchy. Yet all of these upheavals are dwarfed by the most momentous social revolution that ever befell humankind: the collapse of the family and the local community and their replacement by the state and the market. As best we can tell, from the earliest times, more than a million years ago, humans lived in small, intimate communities, most of whose members were kin. The Cognitive Revolution and the Agricultural Revolution did not change that. They glued together families and communities to create tribes, cities, kingdoms and empires, but families and communities remained the basic building blocks of all human societies. The Industrial Revolution, on the other hand, managed within little more than two centuries to break these building blocks into atoms. Most of the traditional functions of families and communities were handed over to states and markets.

Hunter-gatherer societies have typically been egalitarian, as we'll soon see, throughout hominin history. Inequality emerged when stuff, things to possess and accumulate, was invented following animal domestication and the development of agriculture. The more stuff, reflecting surplus, job specialization, and technological sophistication, the greater the potential inequality. Moreover, inequality expands enormously when cultures invent inheritance within families. Once invented, inequality became pervasive. Among traditional pastoralists or small-scale agricultural societies, levels of wealth inequality match or exceed those in the most unequal industrialized societies. Why have stratified cultures dominated the planet, generally replacing more egalitarian ones? For population biologist Peter Turchin, the answer is that stratified cultures are ideally suited to being conquerors. They come with chains of command. Both empirical and theoretical work suggest that in addition, in unstable environments, stratified societies are better able to survive resource shortages than egalitarian cultures by sequestering mortality to the lower classes. In other words, when times are tough, the unequal access to wealth becomes the unequal distribution of misery and death.

But I am pondering over the skill with which you have presented the whole argument in support of your proposition, Ischomachus. For you stated that husbandry is the easiest of all arts to learn, and after hearing all that you have said, I am quite convinced that this is so. Of course it is, cried Ischomachus; but I grant you, Socrates, that in respect of aptitude for command, which is common to all forms of business alike—agriculture, politics, estate-management, warfare—in that respect the intelligence shown by different classes of men varies greatly. [...]Just as a love of work may spring up in the mind of a private soldier here and there, so a whole army under the influence of a good leader is inspired with love of work and ambition to distinguish itself under the commander’s eye. Let this be the feeling of the rank and file for their commander; and I tell you, he is the strong leader, he, and not the sturdiest soldier, not the best with bow and javelin, not the man who rides the best horse and is foremost in facing danger, not the ideal of knight or targeteer, but he who can make his soldiers feel that they are bound to follow him through fire and in any adventure. [...]And this, in my judgment, is the greatest thing in every operation that makes any demand on the labour of men, and therefore in agriculture. Mind you, I do not go so far as to say that this can be learnt at sight or at a single hearing. On the contrary, to acquire these powers a man needs education; he must be possessed of great natural gifts; above all, he must be a genius. For I reckon this gift is not altogether human, but divine—this power to win willing obedience: it is manifestly a gift of the gods to the true votaries of prudence. Despotic rule over unwilling subjects they give, I fancy, to those whom they judge worthy to live the life of Tantalus, of whom it is said that in hell he spends eternity, dreading a second death.

This terrifying experiment has already been set in motion. Unlike nuclear war—which is a future potential—climate change is a present reality. There is a scientific consensus that human activities, in particular the emission of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, are causing the earth’s climate to change at a frightening rate.7 Nobody knows exactly how much carbon dioxide we can continue to pump into the atmosphere without triggering an irreversible cataclysm. But our best scientific estimates indicate that unless we dramatically cut the emission of greenhouse gases in the next twenty years, average global temperatures will increase by more than 3.6ºF, resulting in expanding deserts, disappearing ice caps, rising oceans and more frequent extreme weather events such as hurricanes and typhoons.8 These changes in turn will disrupt agricultural production, inundate cities, make much of the world uninhabitable, and send hundreds of millions of refugees in search of new homes.9 Moreover, we are rapidly approaching a number of tipping points, beyond which even a dramatic drop in greenhouse gas emissions will not be enough to reverse the trend and avoid a worldwide tragedy. For example, as global warming melts the polar ice sheets, less sunlight is reflected back from planet Earth to outer space. This means that the planet absorbs more heat, temperatures rise even higher, and the ice melts even faster. Once this feedback loop crosses a critical threshold it will gather an unstoppable momentum, and all the ice in the polar regions will melt even if humans stop burning coal, oil, and gas. Therefore it is not enough that we recognize the danger we face. It is critical that we actually do something about it now. Unfortunately, as of 2018, instead of a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, the global emission rate is still increasing. Humanity has very little time left to wean itself from fossil fuels. We need to enter rehab today. Not next year or next month, but today. “Hello, I am Homo sapiens, and I am a fossil-fuel addict.

propose that we consider our farmers on a spectrum, let’s say, of agrarianism. On one end of the spectrum we have farmers like James, interested in producing the finest foodstuffs that they can, given the soil, the climate, the water, the budget, and their talent. They observe how efficacious or not their efforts are proving, and they adapt accordingly. Variety is one of the keys to this technique, eschewing the corporate monocultures for a revolving set of plants and animals, again, to mimic what was already happening on the land before we showed up with our earth-shaving machinery. It’s tough as hell, and in many cases impossible, to farm this way and earn enough profit to keep your bills paid and your family fed, but these farmers do exist. On the other end of the spectrum is full-speed-ahead robo-farming, in which the farmer is following the instructions of the corporation to produce not food but commodities in such a way that the corporation sits poised to make the maximum financial profit. Now, this is the part that has always fascinated me about us as a population: This kind of farmer is doing all they can to make their factory quota for the company, of grain, or meat, or what have you, despite their soil, climate, water, budget, or talent. It only stands to reason that this methodology is the very definition of unsustainable. Clearly, this is an oversimplification of an issue that requires as much of my refrain (nuance!) as any other human endeavor, but the broad strokes are hard to refute. The first farmer is doing their best to work with nature. The second farmer is doing their best despite nature. In order for the second farmer to prosper, they must defeat nature. A great example of this is the factory farming of beef/pork/chicken/eggs/turkey/salmon/etc. The manufacturers of these products have done everything they can to take the process out of nature entirely and hide it in a shed, where every step of the production has been engineered to make a profit; to excel at quantity. I know you’re a little bit ahead of me here, but I’ll go ahead and ask the obvious question: What of quality? If you’re willing to degrade these many lives with impunity—the lives of the animals themselves, the workers “growing” them, the neighbors having to suffer the voluminous poisons being pumped into the ecosystem/watershed, and the humans consuming your products—then what are you about? Can that even be considered farming? Again, I’m asking this of us. Of you and me, because what I have just described is the way a lot of our food is produced right now, in the system that we all support with our dollars. How did we get here, in both the US and the UK? How can we change our national stance toward agriculture to accommodate more middle-size farmers and less factory farms? How would Aldo Leopold feel about it?

Though it’s best not to be born a chicken at all, it is especially bad luck to be born a cockerel. From the perspective of the poultry farmer, male chickens are useless. They can’t lay eggs, their meat is stringy, and they’re ornery to the hens that do all the hard work of putting food on our tables. Commercial hatcheries tend to treat male chicks like fabric cutoffs or scrap metal: the wasteful but necessary by-product of an industrial process. The sooner they can be disposed of—often they’re ground into animal feed—the better. But a costly problem has vexed egg farmers for millennia: It’s virtually impossible to tell the difference between male and female chickens until they’re four to six weeks old, when they begin to grow distinctive feathers and secondary sex characteristics like the rooster’s comb. Until then, they’re all just indistinguishable fluff balls that have to be housed and fed—at considerable expense. Somehow it took until the 1920s before anyone figured out a solution to this costly dilemma. The momentous discovery was made by a group of Japanese veterinary scientists, who realized that just inside the chick’s rear end there is a constellation of folds, marks, spots, and bumps that to the untrained eye appear arbitrary, but when properly read, can divulge the sex of a day-old bird. When this discovery was unveiled at the 1927 World Poultry Congress in Ottawa, it revolutionized the global hatchery industry and eventually lowered the price of eggs worldwide. The professional chicken sexer, equipped with a skill that took years to master, became one of the most valuable workers in agriculture. The best of the best were graduates of the two-year Zen-Nippon Chick Sexing School, whose standards were so rigorous that only 5 to 10 percent of students received accreditation. But those who did graduate earned as much as five hundred dollars a day and were shuttled around the world from hatchery to hatchery like top-flight business consultants. A diaspora of Japanese chicken sexers spilled across the globe. Chicken sexing is a delicate art, requiring Zen-like concentration and a brain surgeon’s dexterity. The bird is cradled in the left hand and given a gentle squeeze that causes it to evacuate its intestines (too tight and the intestines will turn inside out, killing the bird and rendering its gender irrelevant). With his thumb and forefinger, the sexer flips the bird over and parts a small flap on its hindquarters to expose the cloaca, a tiny vent where both the genitals and anus are situated, and peers deep inside. To do this properly, his fingernails have to be precisely trimmed. In the simple cases—the ones that the sexer can actually explain—he’s looking for a barely perceptible protuberance called the “bead,” about the size of a pinhead. If the bead is convex, the bird is a boy, and gets thrown to the left; concave or flat and it’s a girl, sent down a chute to the right.

One of the standing examples of Gujarat strides in solar power is the Charanka Solar Power Generation Park in North Gujarat which was raised in just one year. The park, which is today Asia’s biggest single-point solar generation facility, produces 225 MW of solar power by 22 private producers who have invested Rs 3400 crores in the park. A work force of 5,000 worked on it for 1 year during peak hours everyday. Says D.J. Pandian, Gujarat’s Energy Secretary: ‘Charanka is a shining example of Gujarat’s enterprise and efficiency.’ What is more, the governance in the energy sector is not marked by just goal setting and achieving. It is a reflection of farsightedness of a rare kind that isn’t visible elsewhere in India. It is best demonstrated in its steps to control the depleting water table with an eye on future. In an age in which populism and vote-bank politics are the norm in Indian democracy, the Modi Government has purposely kept the supply of agriculture power to 8 hours though it can afford to give more power with an eye on rural votes, power being surplus now. The reason is simple, the more the power to the farm sector, the greater the exploitation of groundwater by farmers wanting to earn more by producing more. Striking this fine balance between the farmers’ needs and balancing the natural resources is seen as a fine example of precise planning and farsighted governance free of populism. Interestingly, Modi has been able to maintain this balance even in the face of electoral pressures. In 2012, an election year, the Modi Government did allow new bore connections to farmers in 40 banned tehsils but with a rider: those taking new connections would have to adopt drip or sprinkler method of irrigation which consumes less water and therefore less power.

a fertile agricultural valley about twenty-five miles from the Pacific Coast - and both valley and coast would serve as settings for some of his best fiction. In 1919 he went to Stanford University, where he intermittently enrolled in literature and writing courses until he left in 1925 without taking a degree. During the next five years he supported himself as a labourer and journalist in New York City, all the time working on his first novel, Cup of Gold (1929). After marriage

Grains are packed with a lot of calories and energy, but they also contain a wide variety of compounds that are toxic to humans and animals, and not easily digested.  When I say “toxins,” I’m not referring to the man-made variety, but rather those made by the plants themselves as a defense against the animals who consume them, which includes you and me. These plant toxins are also called “antinutrients,” their purpose being to deter predators and help the plant to survive. An antinutrient is a compound that interferes with the absorption of nutrients across your intestinal wall. The best known antinutrient is gluten. People who have celiac disease become extremely ill if they consume gluten, even in minute amounts. Cultivated grains today are very different from the wild grains of the pre-agricultural era.

Beans also digest very slowly, providing sustained energy and preventing the blood-sugar roller coaster commonly associated with high-carb and/or processed foods. Many bean varieties also boast folic acid, which benefits the heart, as well as immune-boosting minerals like magnesium, iron, zinc and potassium. Best Sources: Red beans, small red kidney beans and pinto beans rank among the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s top four antioxidant-containing foods. Other beans you may want to add to your rotation: black beans, garbanzo beans and black-eyed peas. Should

What the commissar said was again repetitious. He declared that the governments of the capitalist countries were being ruthlessly exploited; the farmers in those countries were working with primitive implements. Only in the Soviet Union were farmers taken care of: they were happy; they were embarking on the socialist way of production (he said this as if it were an accepted fact); and they were supplied with the best agricultural machinery.

From the Bridge” by Captain Hank Bracker Nesting Dolls The first stacked dolls better known as Russian Nesting Dolls, matryoshka dolls or Babushka Dolls, were first made in 1890 by Vasily Zvyozdochkin. Much of the artistry is in the painting of the usual 5 dolls, although the world record is 51 dolls. Each doll, which when opened reveals a smaller doll of the same type inside ending with the smallest innermost doll, which is considered the baby doll and is carved from a single piece of wood. Frequently these dolls are of a woman, dressed in a full length traditional Russian peasant dress called a sarafan. When I served with the Military Intelligence Corps of the U.S.Army, the concept of onion skins was a similar metaphor used to denote that we were always encouraged to look beyond the obvious. That it was essential to delve deeper into a subject, so as to arrive at the essence of the situation or matter. This is the same principle I employed in writing my award winning book, The Exciting Story of Cuba. Although it can be considered a history book, it is actually a book comprised of many stories or vignettes that when woven together give the reader a view into the inner workings of the Island Nation, just 90 miles south of Key West. The early 1950’s are an example of this. At that time President Batista was hailed a champion of business interests and considered this a direct endorsement of his régime. Sugar prices remained high during this period and Cuba enjoyed some of its best years agriculturally. For those at the top of the ladder, the Cuban economy flourished! However, it was during this same period that the people lower on the economic ladder struggled. A populist movement was started, resulting in a number of rebel bands to challenge the entrenched regime, including the followers of autocrats such as Fidel and Raul Castro. Castro’s M 26 7 militia had a reputation of indiscriminately placing bombs, one of which blew a young woman to pieces in the once-grand theater, “Teatro America.” A farmer, who failed to cooperate with Batista’s army, was locked into his home with his wife and his daughter, which was then set on fire killing them all. What had been a corrupt but peaceful government, quickly turned into a war zone. Despite of Batista’s constitutional abuses and his alliance with the Mafia, the years under his régime were still the most prosperous ones in Cuba’s history. Of course most of the money went to those at the top of the economic ladder and on the lower end of the scale a house maid was lucky to make $25 to $30 a month. History tends to repeat itself. Civilized countries that experience economically difficult times, because of greed by the elite and privileged few, become ripe for a civil insurrection. It is not enough to accept the first solution we encounter, but rather we must peel back the layers of onion skin to understand what has happened and how to rectify the problem. Usually things are not as simple as they seem, and to embrace the first person that offers a simple solution can plunge us deeper into an economic abyss. This is what happened in Italy and Cuba as well as Germany in 1933. Remember that Adolf Hitler was elected with a 90% plurality. Following a populist movement can be disastrous. Strictly adhering to a party doctrine, by the less informed, is outright dangerous. It is important in a democracy that people retain civility and are educated and knowledgeable. It is crucial that we understand history as well as the perils and consequences that are possible. Reading books like The Exciting Story of Cuba allows us to peel away one onion skin after the other, or open one nesting doll after another, until we understand the entire picture. What has happened in other civilized countries can happen here in the United States…. Beware!

How Does What We Eat Affect the Planet? The things you put on your fork have the power to affect not only your health, but also agricultural practices, climate change, and even our economy. One church member told us about Nigerian farmers he met who were given seed by a large agricultural company at a cheaper price than their regular seed, but then the seeds from that crop couldn’t be replanted. (They are designed that way.) The farmers then were forced to buy the seed from the same company at a higher price the next year and eventually couldn’t afford to farm. This pattern of industrial agricultural practices not only has impacted the quality of the food you eat, but also creates hunger in little children in Africa. When you stop buying industrial food, it has an enormous ripple effect. The power of your fork can change the world. When it comes to our health and the health of the planet, we have a lot more to learn and study, but we don’t need all the answers in order to take action. We can each make choices to buy more whole foods, sustainably raised animals, locally grown produce, and more. Just as we’ve learned that certain fats are good for us and others are destructive, we can learn what agricultural and food practices are best for us too.

Noon found me strolling about the ashram grounds, on to the grazing land of a few imperturbable cows. The protection of cows is a passion with Gandhi. “The cow to me means the entire sub-human world, extending man’s sympathies beyond his own species,” the Mahatma has explained. “Man through the cow is enjoined to realize his identity with all that lives. Why the ancient rishis selected the cow for apotheosis is obvious to me. The cow in India was the best comparison; she was the giver of plenty. Not only did she give milk, but she also made agriculture possible. The cow is a poem of pity; one reads pity in the gentle animal. She is the second mother to millions of mankind.

Correlations made by big data are likely to reinforce negative bias. Because big data often relies on historical data or at least the status quo, it can easily reproduce discrimination against disadvantaged racial and ethnic minorities. The propensity models used in many algorithms can bake in a bias against someone who lived in the zip code of a low-income neighborhood at any point in his or her life. If an algorithm used by human resources companies queries your social graph and positively weighs candidates with the most existing connections to a workforce, it makes it more difficult to break in in the first place. In effect, these algorithms can hide bias behind a curtain of code. Big data is, by its nature, soulless and uncreative. It nudges us this way and that for reasons we are not meant to understand. It strips us of our privacy and puts our mistakes, secrets, and scandals on public display. It reinforces stereotypes and historical bias. And it is largely unregulated because we need it for economic growth and because efforts to try to regulate it have tended not to work; the technologies are too far-reaching and are not built to recognize the national boundaries of our world’s 196 sovereign nation-states. Yet would it be best to try to shut down these technologies entirely if we could? No. Big data simultaneously helps solve global challenges while creating an entirely new set of challenges. It’s our best chance at feeding 9 billion people, and it will help solve the problem of linguistic division that is so old its explanation dates back to the Old Testament and the Tower of Babel. Big data technologies will enable us to discover cancerous cells at 1 percent the size of what can be detected using today’s technologies, saving tens of millions of lives. The best approach to big data might be one put forward by the Obama campaign’s chief technology officer, Michael Slaby, who said, “There’s going to be a constant mix between your qualitative experience and your quantitative experience. And at times, they’re going to be at odds with each other, and at times they’re going to be in line. And I think it’s all about the blend. It’s kind of like you have a mixing board, and you have to turn one up sometimes, and turn down the other. And you never want to be just one or the other, because if it’s just one, then you lose some of the soul.” Slaby has made an impressive career out of developing big data tools, but even he recognizes that these tools work best when governed by human judgment. The choices we make about how we manage data will be as important as the decisions about managing land during the agricultural age and managing industry during the industrial age. We have a short window of time—just a few years, I think—before a set of norms set in that will be nearly impossible to reverse. Let’s hope humans accept the responsibility for making these decisions and don’t leave it to the machines.

But the purpose of agriculture is quite different from that of a factory. It has to provide food in order that the race may flourish and persist. The best results are obtained if the food is fresh and the soil is fertile. Quality is more important than weight of produce. Farming is therefore a vital matter for the population and ranks with the supply of drinking water, fresh air, and protection from the weather. Our water supplies do not always pay their way; the provision of green belts and open spaces does not yield a profit; our housing schemes are frequently uneconomic. Why, then, should the quality of the food on which still more depends than water, oxygen, or warmth be looked at in a different way? The people must be fed whatever happens. Why not, then, make a supreme effort to see that they are properly fed? [...] The financial system, after all, is but a secondary matter. Economics therefore, in failing to insist on these elementary truths, has been guilty of a grave error of judgement.

The province’s most lucrative agricultural export market was Matsutake pine mushrooms, prized in Japan for their fragrance and taste. Consumers in Tokyo and Kyoto were willing to pay up to 10,000 yen (US$110) for the best specimens.34 Chinese consumers preferred the caterpillar fungus Cordyceps sinensis, which consumed its host, the ghost moth caterpillar, from inside out as it hibernated on the mountain grasslands. But rising demand and intense competition is driving foragers to collect earlier in the year, sometimes before the fungus has had time to release spores. This means it has no way to reproduce. Production has plummeted over the past twenty years, driving up the price of the fungus to almost twice the price of gold, gram for gram.35 Many Chinese believe this ghoulish parasite, known in Tibetan as yartsa gunbu, or bu, is variously a cure for cancer, an aphrodisiac, and a tonic for long-distance runners.

The manorial system, widespread in the West from Charlemagne’s time onward, was not at first favorable to the development of agriculture and commerce. Manors tended to be self-sufficient; the economy was closed. Men lived in their small world, in constant fear of the strange world beyond, from which came only evil. The best they could hope for was to endure, and they endured.

Chicken coop There is a seemingly permanent controversy over the basic purpose of the chicken coop. The chickens themselves tend to refer to them in melodramatic terms (e.g., “the Auschwitz of agriculture”). Fortunately, nobody listens to chickens, because they are delicious.

Agriculture is a country's best kept economic secret.

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The so-called “Goulash capitalism” episode in Hungary clearly illustrated the problem. In 1994, shortly after the privatization of agriculture and food production, the country was swept by an epidemic of lead poisoning. After searching far and wide for the cause, doctors and scientists finally tracked down the source of the problem. Manufacturers of paprika—a staple of Hungarian cuisine—had been grinding up old paint, much of it lead-based, and adding it to the spice in order to improve its colour. The practice was so widespread that Hungarian officials were forced to order all the paprika in the country removed from store shelves and destroyed. At the time, no laws were in place to prevent such a catastrophe, simply because it had not occurred to anyone that this kind of thing would happen. Under communism, in which firms had no competition, no one had any incentive to poison their customers, and so consumer protection laws were unnecessary. In making the transition to the market, policy-makers assumed that producers would compete with one another to produce the best-quality paprika. They didn’t realize that producers would compete only to produce the best-looking paprika.

When Operation Flood was sanctioned I knew that it was a massive and extremely complex operation and we would need all the help we could possibly get from all quarters. It was in this connection that, one day, I called on J.R.D. Tata, Chairman of one of India’s largest industrial houses, one known for its commitment to quality and for its patriotism. I met him and explained to him the entire concept behind Operation Flood. I told him that such an enormous task would be extremely difficult to pull off alone and I requested him to spare six managers from the house of Tatas for one year, to help us improve the nation’s dairy industry. I could pay them only public-sector salaries, but within that, I assured him, I would pay them the best that I could. At the end of that year, his managers would return to his company, far richer for their thorough understanding of cooperatives and of agriculture. I was confident that it would be an extremely valuable experience for his managers. J.R.D Tata listened to me very patiently and then told me that since this was not a decision he alone could take I would have to present it to the board. I agreed to do so and met the board and once again explained the intricacies of the entire project to the members. They, too, listened very politely, smiled and nodded. But that is as far as they were prepared to go. To this day, I do not know whose decision it was, but we were loaned not even a single manager from the Tata Group. After all, would it have so adversely impacted the Tatas if they had deputed six managers to the NDDB and that, too, for a brief period of one year? The incident left me with a bitter taste and justified my belief that, in the ultimate analysis, the corporate world and the cooperative world are distinctly different. I

Japan, a country that had done its best to have no contact with strangers and to seal out the rest of the world. Its economy and politics were dominated by feudal agriculture and a Confucian hierarchical social structure, and they were steadily declining. Merchants were the lowest social class, and trading with foreigners was actually forbidden except for limited contact with China and the Dutch. But then Japan had an unexpected encounter with a stranger—Commodore Matthew Perry—who burst in on July 8, 1853, demanding that Japan’s ports be open to America for trade and insisting on better treatment for shipwrecked sailors. His demands were rebuffed, but Perry came back a year later with a bigger fleet and more firepower. He explained to the Japanese the virtues of trading with other countries, and eventually they signed the Treaty of Kanagawa on March 31, 1854, opening the Japanese market to foreign trade and ending two hundred years of near isolation. The encounter shocked the Japanese political elites, forcing them to realize just how far behind the United States and other Western nations Japan had fallen in military technology. This realization set in motion an internal revolution that toppled the Tokugawa Shogunate, which had ruled Tokyo in the name of the emperor since 1603, and brought Emperor Meiji, and a coalition of reformers, in his place. They chose adaptation by learning from those who had defeated them. They launched a political, economic, and social transformation of Japan, based on the notion that if they wanted to be as strong as the West they had to break from their current cultural norms and make a wholesale adoption of Western science, technology, engineering, education, art, literature, and even clothing and architecture. It turned out to be more difficult than they thought, but the net result was that by the late nineteenth century Japan had built itself into a major industrial power with the heft to not only reverse the unequal economic treaties imposed on it by Western powers but actually defeat one of those powers—Russia—in a war in 1905. The Meiji Restoration made Japan not only more resilient but also more powerful.

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I ask about Temple Grandin, since she understands modern agriculture and Smithfield has hired her for consultation. She advices extra space so the animals can turn around, "soft, pliable" objects to chew on, and toys so they can play. She's a Ph. D too. Yet to all appearances, Smithfield has put none of her recommendations into practice. "Temple, he replies, "is a person that we pay to come in and say, 'How is the best way to deal with these animals?' We seek that advice. We pay those people." Exactly. They pay animal-welfare consultants for the privilege of saying that they have paid for animal-welfare consultants, without actually heeding any of the recommendations.

In the following years, Andrew remained at his father’s side, assisting in the farm work and livestock breeding and continuing his experiments with ostensibly labor-saving agricultural contraptions. That phase of his life came to an end with the close of the century. In 1898, the sixty-five-year-old Philip took his third wife, a widow named Frances Murphy Wilder, twenty-five years his junior. Not long afterward, Andrew left home. Despite the best efforts of researchers, little is known about the next eight years of Andrew Kehoe’s life. Census records show that, in 1900, he lived in a boardinghouse in Ann Arbor and worked as a “dairyman.”17 At some point—at least according to his claims—he enrolled at the Michigan State Agricultural College in East Lansing. Founded in 1855 as the nation’s first educational institution devoted to “instruction and practice in agriculture, horticulture and the sciences directly bearing upon successful farming,” the college (which later evolved into Michigan State University) gradually expanded its curriculum to include training in mechanical, civil, and electrical engineering, Kehoe’s alleged major.18 Sometime during this period, he evidently made his way to Iowa and found work as a lineman, stringing electrical wire. He also seems to have spent time in St. Louis, attending an electrical school while employed as an electrician for the city park.19 Family members would later report that, while residing in Missouri, he suffered a serious head injury: “a severe fall” that left him “semi-conscious for nearly two months.”20

1995 archaeologists began to excavate a site in south-east Turkey called Göbekli Tepe. In the oldest stratum they discovered no signs of a settlement, houses or daily activities. They did, however, find monumental pillared structures decorated with spectacular engravings. Each stone pillar weighed up to seven tons and reached a height of five metres. In a nearby quarry they found a half-chiselled pillar weighing fifty tons. Altogether, they uncovered more than ten monumental structures, the largest of them nearly thirty metres across. Archaeologists are familiar with such monumental structures from sites around the world – the best-known example is Stonehenge in Britain. Yet as they studied Göbekli Tepe, they discovered an amazing fact. Stonehenge dates to 2500 BC, and was built by a developed agricultural society. The structures at Göbekli Tepe are dated to about 9500 BC, and all available evidence indicates that they were built by hunter-gatherers.

Xiaochen Fu is one of Richard’s former students at the Kennedy School and now a manager at the Bank of China. When she worked at Agricultural Bank of China, the third largest bank worldwide, she used this maxim to help the bank make its transition to the digital era. At a time when clients were increasingly using smartphones to conduct banking transactions, her bank still had more than 300,000 staff working at 25,000 branches around the country. Some branches found that fewer and fewer clients came in person. She and her staff were struggling to decide how they should adjust the number and location of their branches. “Then I remembered Professor Zeckhauser’s maxim. To find the extreme case, we went through regulations and procedures for all the services provided by a full-function bank branch, in order to identify which services would be very difficult or impossible to deliver online. (For example, the government forbids third-party couriers to deliver physical gold, so clients who want to buy physical gold products must go to branches.) After finding all such services, and considering the needs and preferences of clients served at different branches (for example, senior clients and rural area clients still prefer face-to-face financial services), it became much clearer which branches should be closed, and which ones should be saved. The planning project proved to be cost-efficient, and allowed the bank to adapt to the digital age and better meet the needs of our clients. I reckon that the maxim gave me not only the tools but also the courage to deal with such complicated conditions.” Xiaochen’s account identifies two critical benefits a maxim may bring. It can help you focus on how to approach a problem, and it can give you the courage to take action when you determine the best decision. This is true for many other maxims in this book.

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Part 2 - Now the problem is India is with multiple cultures, context specific reasons and languages - so protecting value of India means protecting each and every cultural values in India, but when these people turn arrogant their values getting down, that is the problem, you have to withstand the pain to show you are capable, if you are capable then the culture you belong is also capable - this is applicable for anyone, and once your character and your cultural identities are analyzed you will be easily estimated to be fit for something. But in my case, it is totally complicated, First I am Ganapathy K (Son of Krishnamoorthy not Shiv), that born on 14- April 1992 (Approximate Birth day of Lord Rama and Tamil New year and Dr Ambedkar birthday), My family name is Somavarapu (Which means clans of Chandra - Or Monday - Or cold place) My family origin is from Tenali - Guntur, but permanently settled in TN, born in agricultural family (Kamma Naidu (General caste in AP and Telangana) but Identified as Vadugan Naidu (OBC) for reservation benefits as OBC Non Creamy - as made by my ancestors - I did not make this. And Manu smiriti varna system did not take place in south India much like UP or Rajasthan even in ancient times. Even in ancient times, north rulers did not rule south india at all, rather they made friendship sometimes or they made leaders for south people by selecting best fit model. So whomever are said to be kshatriyas in South are Pseudo Kshatriyas or deemed Kshatriyas which means there are no real Kshatriyas in South India - and it was not required much in south. tribal people and indigenous people in south were very strong in ancient time, that they prayed and worshiped only forest based idolizers. they do not even know these Hindustani or Sanskrit things, and Tamil was started from Sangam literature (As per records - And when sangam literature was happening - Lord shiva and Lord Karthikeya was present on the hall - As mentioned on Tholkappiam ) - So ethically Tamil also becomes somehow language of God, Krishnadevraya once said Telugu was given by Lord shiva. And Kannada is kind of poetic language which is mixture of Dravidian style languages with some sanskrit touch and has remarkable historical significance from Ramayana period. My caste (Kamma) as doing agriculture work was regarded as upper sudra by British people but since they knew sanskrit, they were taking warrior roles ( Rudramadevi, munsuri naidu clan, pemmasani clan, kandi nayaka (Srilanka clan ) As Kamma also has interactions with Kapu, Balija, Velama, Telaga and Reddy clans - they were considered as land lords/Zamindari system - later in some places given chowdary and Rao title too. And my intellactual property in Bio sciences and my great granpa wrtings, my family knowledge which includes (Vattelzhuthu - Tamil + Malayalam mixture) sanskrit notes about medicinal plants in western ghats which my great grandpa wrote, my previous incarnation in Rajput family and European family.

I've got two smart boys," she'd say. "Two mighty smart boys." .... "First thing you're going to do is memorize your times tables." .... I learned the times table. I just kept repeating them until they fixed themselves in my brain... Within days of learning my times table, math became so much easier that my test scores soared.... "I've decided you boys are watching too much television," she said one evening, snapping off the set in the middle of a program... "From now on, you boys can watch no more than three programs a week." .... Mother had already decided how we would spend our free time when we weren't watching television. "You boys are going to go to the library and check out books. You're going to read at least two books every week. At the end of each week you'll give me a report on what you read." .... Slowly the realization came that I was getting better in all my school subjects. I began looking forward to. my trips to the library. The staff got to know Curtis and me, offering suggestions on what we might like to read.... By reading so much, my vocabulary improved along with my comprehension. Soon I became the best student in math when we did story problems. .... The final week of fifth grade we had a long spelling bee in which Mrs. Williamson made us go through every spelling word we were supposed to have learned that year. As everyone expected, Bobby Farmer won the spelling bee. But to my surprise, the last word he spelled correctly to win was agriculture. I can spell that word, I thought with excitement. I had learned it just the day before from my library book. As the winner sat down, a thrill swept through me--a yearning to achieve--more powerful than ever before. "I can spell agriculture," I said to myself. "and I'll bet I can learn to spell any other word in the world." .... I can learn about flax or any subject through reading. It is like Mother says--if you can read, you can learn just about anything.... As I continued to read, my spelling, vocabulary, and comprehension improved, and my classes became much more interesting.

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View now with delight the works of your own hands, your fruit trees of all sorts, loaden with sweet blossoms, and fruit of all tastes, operations, and colors: your trees standing in comely order, which way soever you look. And the roots of your trees powdered with strawberries, red, white and green; what a pleasure this is!

The modern urban-industrial society is based on a series of radical disconnections between body and soul, husband and wife, marriage and community, community and the earth. At each of these points of disconnection the collaboration of corporation, government, and expert sets up a profit-making enterprise that results in the further dismemberment and impoverishment of the Creation. Together, these disconnections add up to a condition of critical ill health, which we suffer in common -- not just with each other, but with all other creatures. Our economy is based upon this disease. Its aim is to separate us as far as possible from the sources of life (material, social, and spiritual), to put these sources under the control of corporations and specialized professionals, and to see them to us at the highest profit. It fragments the Creation and sets the fragments into conflict with one another. For the relief of the suffering that comes of this fragmentation and conflict, our economy proposes, not health, but vast "cures" that further centralize power and increase profits... Only by restoring the broken connections can we be healed. Connection is health. And what our society does its best to disguise from us is how ordinary, how commonly attainable, health is. We lose our health -- and create profitable diseases and dependencies -- by failing to see the direction connections between living and eating, eating and working, working and loving. In gardening, for instance, one works with the body to feed the body. The work, if it is knowledgeable, makes for excellent food. And it makes one hungry. The work thus makes eating both nourishing and joyful, not consumptive, and keeps the eater from getting fat and weak. This is health, wholeness, a source of delight. And such a solution, unlike the typical industrial solution, does not cause new problems.

✍️ मेरी माटी मेरा देश : Our country blessed with world’s best land has nurtured from Agriculture Revolution, strengthened through Industrial Revolution is now incharge of Space Revolution ( Chandrayan-3). Our flag is now much beyond the Planet Earth ! We can be a developed Nation even before our 100th year. Just by being literally literate & sensible in acts

Convergence is ubiquitous and not limited just to the external appearance or morphology of animals. It is also widely observed and documented in animal behavior and in plants, fungi, and even bacteria. Let’s start with behavior. What do you think these four species—a cobra, a stickleback fish, an octopus, and a spider—share? There is no convergence in body form here, unlike the Caribbean anoles. But a behavior has converged among them that has led to the success of each of their species: the females of the species guard their eggs. One of the best examples of convergent behavior is observed in humans and—hold your breath—ants! And I have witnessed this convergence with my own eyes. When I was on a family vacation in the stunningly beautiful Peruvian Amazon, I stumbled upon the tiny creatures that had beaten our human ancestors to the discovery of agriculture by many millions of years: the leafcutter ants. I had waited years to witness the miracle, and there it was in its full linear glory. A long single column of thousands of large green leaves appeared to be miraculously moving in perfect synchrony of their own volition on the forest floor. Each large leaf was being carried by a single tiny ant, who purposefully disappeared underground to pass on the booty to her specialist sisters. These ants chew the leaves to grow a fungus garden used for food for the entire colony. Not unlike human farmers, these ants produce fertilizers (amino acids and enzymes) to aid the fungal growth, remove contaminants that can hinder the agricultural output, are highly selective in what they grow, and continuously tend to their enormous gardens.8

In Rodgers and Hammerstein’s familiar “A Wonderful Guy,” from South Pacific, the hard, alliterative consonants of the opening line, “corny” and “Kansas,” fall precisely on the downbeat of two successive measures. However interesting Rodgers’s waltz and Hammerstein’s simile, the two join in a musical-verbal conjunction that conveys the emphatic joy of the singer at that moment. Hammerstein knew that the anapests (“corny as,” “Kansas in”) were verbal equivalents of the waltz, which he emphasized with the crackling alliteration. Kansas is actually not very corny in August: Kansas is the wheat state and Iowa is the corn state. If you imagine “I’m as corny as Iowa in August,” you can hear the poetic, musical, and dramatic reasons for Hammerstein’s agricultural stretcher. Americans hear and, consequently, understand these verbal-musical bundles automatically; the words and music of the best American film and theater songs fit so snugly that their conjunction seems “natural.” Only by pulling words and music apart does one hear careful art coyly masquerading as simple nature.

Scholars describe an “economic revolution” at this moment in China, hundreds of years before Europe’s own industrial revolution. Movable type and the magnetic compass were invented. Farmers figured out new agricultural techniques that allowed them to grow far more rice in the same amount of space. Printed books spread information on these breakthroughs around the country. More and more people moved out of a feudal(-ish) economy that ran on tribute, and into a market economy that ran on money. Now people could specialize in what they and their land were best suited for.

Most human cultures have been overtly polygynous. In hunter-gatherer cultures the men who are the most charming, the most respected, the most intelligent, and the best hunters tend to attract more than their fair share of female sexual attention. They may have two or three times as many offspring as their less attractive competitors. In pastoral cultures the men who have the largest herds of animals attract the most women. In agricultural societies the men who have the most land, wealth, and military power attract the most women. Before the middle ages, in urban civilizations with high population densities, the men at the top of the hierarchy almost always had harems of hundreds of women producing hundreds of babies.

Nautical blue? Nah.” Her best friend, Chantal, used her fingertip to reveal the next set of colors. “Back in Chicago, with Lake Michigan nearby, maybe. But out here?” Her tone indicated just what she thought of the rural Illinois town. She tapped another hue on the swatch. “What you want here is cornflower blue.” Grinning, Simone shook her head. She’d missed joking around with Chantal. And nothing could dim her pride in the town’s agriculture. Their corn fed the nation. Lake Michigan was picturesque but cold and forbidding half the time.

Beyond One-Way ANOVA The approach described in the preceding section is called one-way ANOVA. This scenario is easily generalized to accommodate more than one independent variable. These independent variables are either discrete (called factors) or continuous (called covariates). These approaches are called n-way ANOVA or ANCOVA (the “C” indicates the presence of covariates). Two way ANOVA, for example, allows for testing of the effect of two different independent variables on the dependent variable, as well as the interaction of these two independent variables. An interaction effect between two variables describes the way that variables “work together” to have an effect on the dependent variable. This is perhaps best illustrated by an example. Suppose that an analyst wants to know whether the number of health care information workshops attended, as well as a person’s education, are associated with healthy lifestyle behaviors. Although we can surely theorize how attending health care information workshops and a person’s education can each affect an individual’s healthy lifestyle behaviors, it is also easy to see that the level of education can affect a person’s propensity for attending health care information workshops, as well. Hence, an interaction effect could also exist between these two independent variables (factors). The effects of each independent variable on the dependent variable are called main effects (as distinct from interaction effects). To continue the earlier example, suppose that in addition to population, an analyst also wants to consider a measure of the watershed’s preexisting condition, such as the number of plant and animal species at risk in the watershed. Two-way ANOVA produces the results shown in Table 13.4, using the transformed variable mentioned earlier. The first row, labeled “model,” refers to the combined effects of all main and interaction effects in the model on the dependent variable. This is the global F-test. The “model” row shows that the two main effects and the single interaction effect, when considered together, are significantly associated with changes in the dependent variable (p < .000). However, the results also show a reduced significance level of “population” (now, p = .064), which seems related to the interaction effect (p = .076). Although neither effect is significant at conventional levels, the results do suggest that an interaction effect is present between population and watershed condition (of which the number of at-risk species is an indicator) on watershed wetland loss. Post-hoc tests are only provided separately for each of the independent variables (factors), and the results show the same homogeneous grouping for both of the independent variables. Table 13.4 Two-Way ANOVA Results As we noted earlier, ANOVA is a family of statistical techniques that allow for a broad range of rather complex experimental designs. Complete coverage of these techniques is well beyond the scope of this book, but in general, many of these techniques aim to discern the effect of variables in the presence of other (control) variables. ANOVA is but one approach for addressing control variables. A far more common approach in public policy, economics, political science, and public administration (as well as in many others fields) is multiple regression (see Chapter 15). Many analysts feel that ANOVA and regression are largely equivalent. Historically, the preference for ANOVA stems from its uses in medical and agricultural research, with applications in education and psychology. Finally, the ANOVA approach can be generalized to allow for testing on two or more dependent variables. This approach is called multiple analysis of variance, or MANOVA. Regression-based analysis can also be used for dealing with multiple dependent variables, as mentioned in Chapter 17.

all kinds of ways that climate change could become a catalyzing force for positive change—how it could be the best argument progressives have ever had to demand the rebuilding and reviving of local economies; to reclaim our democracies from corrosive corporate influence; to block harmful new free trade deals and rewrite old ones; to invest in starving public infrastructure like mass transit and affordable housing; to take back ownership of essential services like energy and water; to remake our sick agricultural system into something much healthier; to open borders to migrants whose displacement is linked to climate impacts; to finally respect Indigenous land rights—all

Of all the tactics brought to bear upon the growers in the sixties, the most important was the United Farm Workers’ (UFW’s) ever-resourceful grape boycott. Here, ironically, the weakness of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLR A), which had left agricultural workers out of its purview as a sop to southern political interests, proved beneficial. The Taft-Hartley amendments had eliminated the secondary boycott, which otherwise would have allowed unions to boycott firms who did business with an employer that was being struck—that is, boycott the secondary handler of a good. For the farmworkers, not being covered by the act meant that they could take their struggle from the fields to the secondary sight of the supermarkets that sold grapes. Working outside of the New Deal order, in essence, proved to be the workers’ best hope and most successful strategy.

Economic growth Stalin style was simple: develop industry by government command and obtain the necessary resources for this by taxing agriculture at very high rates. The communist state did not have an effective tax system, so instead Stalin “collectivized” agriculture. This process entailed the abolition of private property rights to land and the herding of all people in the countryside into giant collective farms run by the Communist Party. This made it much easier for Stalin to grab agricultural output and use it to feed all the people who were building and manning the new factories. The consequences of this for the rural folk were calamitous. The collective farms completely lacked incentives for people to work hard, so production fell sharply. So much of what was produced was extracted that there was not enough to eat. People began to starve to death. In the end, probably six million people died of famine, while hundreds of thousands of others were murdered or banished to Siberia during the forcible collectivization. Neither the newly created industry nor the collectivized farms were economically efficient in the sense that they made the best use of what resources the Soviet Union possessed. It sounds like a recipe for economic disaster and stagnation, if not outright collapse. But the Soviet Union grew rapidly. The reason for this is not difficult to understand. Allowing people to make their own decisions via markets is the best way for a society to efficiently use its resources. When the state or a narrow elite controls all these resources instead, neither the right incentives will be created nor will there be an efficient allocation of the skills and talents of people. But in some instances the productivity of labor and capital may be so much higher in one sector or activity, such as heavy industry in the Soviet Union, that even a top-down process under extractive institutions that allocates resources toward that sector can generate growth. As we saw in chapter 3, extractive institutions in Caribbean islands such as Barbados, Cuba, Haiti, and Jamaica could generate relatively high levels of incomes because they allocated resources to the production of sugar, a commodity coveted worldwide. The production of sugar based on gangs of slaves was certainly not “efficient,” and there was no technological change or creative destruction in these societies, but this did not prevent them from achieving some amount of growth under extractive institutions.

THIS BOOK contains three parts. Part One is a brief history of humanity through five ages of existence—Animal, Paleolithic, Agricultural, Industrial, Information—each containing lessons for how to be healthy today. Part Two applies these lessons to multiple areas of modern-day life: food, fasting, movement, bipedalism (standing, walking, running), temperature, sun, and sleep. Part Three is a more speculative vision of how those most ancient of roles—hunter and gatherer—can instruct and inspire us to build healthy and ethical relationships to other living things. In short, to understand where we come from, to make the best of where we are, and to craft a better future.

In the face of this vision, Powell put forth another. What was needed above all else, Powell believed, was to know the land, to understand the land, and to react accordingly. This had practical consequences: while a cow might properly graze on a half-acre in the lush East, it would require fifty times that amount of land in most of the West. It followed that the standard acreage of settlement should be different, and it followed that settlement should take into account sources of water. Powell’s goal with his survey was to clearly map out the western lands, to determine what land could be realistically used for agriculture, which meant also determining where irrigation dams should be placed for best effect. In other words, his goal, to use Wendell Berry’s phrase, was to think about “land use” and to do so on a massive scale. Specifically, Powell wanted to think out the uses of land that would be the most beneficial and fruitful for the human beings living there, and for the entire ecosystem (though that word did not yet exist). From the Mormons, Powell learned how “salutary co-operation could be as a way of life, how much less wasteful than competition.” In the late 1880s, Powell wrote a General Plan for land use in the West that “reached to embrace the related problems of land, water, erosion, floods, soil conservation, even the new one of hydroelectric power” that was based on “the settled belief in the worth of the small farmer and the necessity of protecting him both from speculators and from natural conditions he did not understand and could not combat.” It was a methodical, sensible, scientific approach, essentially a declaration of interdependence between the people and their land, and the miracle is that it came very close to passing into law. But of course it met with fierce opposition from those who stood to profit from exploitation, from the boosters and boomers and politicians who thought it “unpatriotic” to describe the West as dry. After all, how dare he call their garden a desert? What right did he have to come in and determine what only free individuals should? Powell was attacked in the papers, slandered in Congress. According to Stegner, Congressman Thomas M. Patterson of Colorado referred to Powell as “this revolutionist,” and the overall attack on Powell “distinguished itself for bombast and ignorance and bad faith.

A good example of a really large-scale anarchist revolution—in fact the best example to my knowledge—is the Spanish revolution in 1936, in which over most of Republican Spain there was a quite inspiring anarchist revolution that involved both industry and agriculture over substantial areas, developed in a way which to the outside looks spontaneous. Though in fact if you look at the roots of it, you discover that it was based on some three generations of experiment and thought and work which extended anarchist ideas to very large parts of the population in this largely pre-industrial—though not totally pre-industrial—society. And that again was, by both human measures and indeed anyone's economic measures, quite successful. That is, production continued effectively; workers in farms and factories proved quite capable of managing their affairs without coercion from above, contrary to what lots of socialists, communists, liberals and others wanted to believe, and in fact you can't tell what would have happened. That anarchist revolution was simply destroyed by force, but during the period in which it was alive I think it was a highly successful and, as I say, in many ways a very inspiring testimony to the ability of poor working people to organize and manage their own affairs, extremely successfully, without coercion and control. How relevant the Spanish experience is to an advanced industrial society. one might question in detail.

Why does this happen even though India has a good economic foundation? It is because we have an economic system which is vulnerable to the fluctuations of the world economy and our economic growth is not sustainable, as witnessed from the 5 per cent GDP growth in the 1990s to 9 per cent for around four years till 2009 and, finally, the present 5.5 per cent. This is mainly due to our prevailing economic policies which are stifling the growth of agriculture and food processing, the manufacturing sector and the service sector. If we bring a marked change in our socio-political and economic policies with a focus on inclusiveness, then I am confident that we as a nation will be able to overcome the economic crisis and progress to new heights.

There are five areas where India has core competencies for integrated action: (1) Agriculture and food processing (2) Reliable and quality electric power, surface transport and infrastructure for all parts of the country (3) Education and healthcare (4) Information and communication technology (5) Strategic sectors

Today I address professionals, business leaders and researchers on how they can contribute with innovative ideas to achieve these ten pillars. These are as follows: 1) A nation where the rural and urban divide has reduced to a thin line. 2) A nation where there is equitable distribution and adequate access to energy and quality water. 3) A nation where agriculture, industry and the service sector work together in symphony. 4) A nation where education with value systems is not denied to any meritorious candidates because of societal or economic discrimination. 5) A nation which is the best destination for the most talented scholars, scientists and investors. 6) A nation where the best of healthcare is available to all. 7) A nation where the governance is responsive, transparent and corruption free. 8) A nation where poverty has been totally eradicated, illiteracy removed and crimes against women and children are absent and no one in the society feels alienated. 9) A nation that is prosperous, healthy, secure, peaceful and happy and follows a sustainable growth path. 10) A nation that is one of the best places to live in and is proud of its leadership.

I began to see all kinds of ways that climate change could become a catalyzing force for positive change—how it could be the best argument progressives have ever had to demand the rebuilding and reviving of local economies; to reclaim our democracies from corrosive corporate influence; to block harmful new free trade deals and rewrite old ones; to invest in starving public infrastructure like mass transit and affordable housing; to take back ownership of essential services like energy and water; to remake our sick agricultural system into something much healthier; to open borders to migrants whose displacement is linked to climate impacts; to finally respect Indigenous land rights—all of which would help to end grotesque levels of inequality within our nations and between them.

It needs to be understood that--as Reich points out--Fascism is not a 20th Century invention. With the institution of slavery, the glorification of conquest and the subjugation of women, the Fascist or Dominator State already appears in history. All the early agricultural/monarchist systems contained the full body of Fascist theory and practice; Hitler and Mussolini merely revived this system after it had appeared to be in eclipse due to industrialism and democracy.

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Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of independent India transformed India into a democracy. Dr C. Subramaniam’s Agriculture Vision enabled India to realize the Green Revolution. Dr Varghese Kurien’s Milk Vision led to India’s White Revolution. Prof. Vikram Sarabhai’s Space Vision enabled India to join the space club. Dr Homi Bhabha’s Nuclear Vision led India to become a nuclear power.

The vision for India’s Green Revolution was formed in the 1970s under the leadership of C. Subramaniam. With his visionary leadership, and with the scientific leadership of Nobel Laureate Dr Norman Borlaugh and Dr M.S. Swaminathan, and the active support of B. Sivaraman, Secretary Agriculture, in partnership with agricultural scientists and farmers,

The knowledge society has two very important components driven by societal transformation and wealth generation. The societal transformation is with respect to education, healthcare, agriculture and governance. These will lead to employment generation, high productivity and rural prosperity.

Koch Agriculture first branched out into the beef business, and it did so in a way that gave it control from the ranch to the butcher’s counter. Koch bought cattle feedlots. Then it developed its own retail brand of beef called Spring Creek Ranch. Dean Watson oversaw a team that worked to develop a system of “identity preservation” that would allow the company to track each cow during its lifespan, allowing it over time to select which cattle had the best-tasting meat. Koch held blind taste tests of the beef it raised. Watson claimed to win nine out of ten times. Then Koch studied the grain and feed industries that supplied its feedlots. Watson worked with experts to study European farming methods because wheat farmers in Ukraine were far better at raising more grain on each acre of land than American farmers were. The Europeans had less acreage to work with, forcing them to be more efficient, and Koch learned how to replicate their methods. Koch bought a stake in a genetic engineering company to breed superyielding corn. Koch Agriculture extended into the milling and flour businesses as well. It experimented with building “micro” mills that would be nimbler than the giant mills operated by Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill. Koch worked with a start-up company that developed a “pixie dust” spray preservative that could be applied to pizza crusts, making crusts that did not need to be refrigerated. It experimented with making ethanol gasoline and corn oil. There were more abstract initiatives. Koch launched an effort to sell rain insurance to farmers who had no way to offset the risk of heavy rains. To do that, Koch hired a team of PhD statisticians to write formulas that correlated corn harvests with rain events, figuring out what a rain insurance policy should cost. At the same time, Koch’s commodity traders were buying contracts for corn and soybeans, learning more every day about those markets.