Monoscapes - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 28

stretches to a European horizon, and could yield 12 to 15 tonnes on every
hectare in a good year. Yet, people still go hungry. The modern agricultural
revolution of the second half of the 20th century transformed landscapes
worldwide, and brought unprecedented levels of food production. World
food production grew by 145 per cent during the 40 years to the year
2000, and even per person by 25 per cent, despite considerable population
growth. 1 But as we all should know, this extraordinary 'success' still masks
the persistent hunger of 800 million people.
Landscapes hide many ills, acts of unkindness and savagery perpetrated
by people on other people. We look upon old landscapes with pleasure,
and yet they can hide so much. Often they embody something deeply
important to a whole culture: the dark, mysterious forests of central
Europe, or the wide prairies and steppes of North America or Central
Asia, or the spectacular rice terraces of Asian hillsides. Stephen Daniels
and Denis Cosgrove say: 'a landscape is a cultural image' , which implies both
observation and separation, something with many codes and levels of
understanding. 2
The art historian John Barrell details some of the ambivalences in
landscapes in The Dark Side of the Landscape. 3 The English pastoral landscape
projects images of harmony with nature and of continuity; this was a
foundation for Romantic notions of landscape. Yet, look closely, and the
work of many painters raises questions about the relations between the
land and people, and between people and people, particularly between the
rich and poor. These questions apply widely. During the 18th and 19th
centuries, many painters were directly commissioned by the wealthy, so
it is hardly surprising that they should tend to present a partial construction
of the landscape. Few painters depicted the country house and gentleman
landowner in the same territory as the poor cottager. It is either the house
in the landscape, or it is the labourer, hard at work, and somehow happy
to be there. The labourers work continuously, and if they stop working,
you suspect the vision might fade. As Barrell put it: 'it is not just that the rich
have the power to be benevolent. . . but that the act of benevolence is an act of repression.'
In these landscapes, there is paradox and tension. We are looking at
cultural landscapes that are deeply rooted and persistent, or that at least
come to embody timelessness. But the social aspects can imply a persistence
of deeply rooted inequality and poverty. This is a good reason for believing
that the conservation of a landscape without social change is only half
of the picture. As we shall see later, all the recent significant progress with
sustainable agriculture involves both social and natural transformations.
During this period, however, the idea of creating a harmonious and
well-organized society was founded on continuous hard work, and
labourers who, according to Barrell, 'do not step between us and the landscape -