Crossing the Internal Frontiers - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 188

required; political power because existing support erodes as new forms
of social organization emerge; or personal power because the sun is setting
on an old idea. Yet, as we have seen, those who progress beyond the internal
frontiers originate from many places and perspectives. There is nothing
to support a contention that only certain sorts of people are able to make
such a transformation. Equally, there is nothing to say that all individuals
will. This millennium offers all kinds of opportunities to make the future
sustainable for life on Earth. Putting the culture into agri-culture and the
wonder and magic back into nature, together with connecting up food
systems along agroecological, knowledge-based and community-oriented
principles, can, I believe, help in these wider transformations.
This means that we will need to develop entirely different ways of
thinking about the value of food, and the additional services or side effects
that come from sustainable agricultural systems. Public money that is used
to subsidize farmers in industrialized countries, or to support agricultural
development in developing countries, should be targeted towards both the
provision of public goods and services, and the creation of fairer, more
equitable systems of production. Some private markets, such as for carbon
sequestration , will provide further income to farmers engaged in sustainable
agriculture. Further sources of income will come from ecotourism.
Farming must reorient itself as a multifunctional activity, with diverse cultural
and environmental connections. An important step is the radical reform
of national agricultural policies. Without such change, advances seen to
date will stay small scale and parochial. With it, a new direction towards
a multipurpose and sustainable agriculture, tied closely to cultures and
communities, could become increasingly mainstream. Get it right, and we
have mutually supportive, productive and interconnected systems. Get it
wrong, and we have productive systems that continue to undermine their
own success by damaging the health of nature, people and communities.