Our living environments are disintegrating; To simply survive and regain our lost freedoms, we urgently need to build a new economy of nature, one that is long-term. To do this, I believe that we must agree to gradually leave the metropolises, get back to work and dot our natural environments with small semi-autonomous villages within which the inhabitants will keep fire and place.
Thanks to the judicious exploitation of the natural resources offered by the ecosystems at the heart of which they are located, the inhabitants of these bioregions – geographical areas whose distinct ecological characteristics allow the basic autonomy of those who occupy it – will practice responsible omniculture .
This is the term that I now use to describe the range of economic relationships of food, clothing, energy or other types that we must establish between humans and nature in its entirety, whether animal, plant or mineral, to last.
Because responsible omniculture embraces biodiversity as a whole, it becomes one with nature, takes root in it, solidifies it. Conversely, an irresponsible intensive culture, based on a techno-scientific economy, a major producer of ersatz, extractivist, colonialist and deadly, is crumbling it.
The great beauty of the small scale
“ Small is beautiful », concluded the economist Schumacher in 1973. When I speak of the great beauty of the small scale, I am referring to the great beauty of the practices and principles employed, to ensure their subsistence, by small rural communities which, thanks to a responsible omnicultural peasantry, contribute to the sustainability rather than the devastation of their environment.
When I talk about responsible principles and practices, I’m talking about recognizing one’s wrongs, maximizing one’s beneficence. Tending towards self-production and self-consumption, that is to say producing what we need on the smallest scale possible, this seems to me to be the best way to reduce the damage and maximize the benefits linked to the actions we take. ‘we must pose to survive.
By teaching us to rely on others for almost everything, Western culture has led us in the opposite direction. By dispossessing human beings of their means of production, by transferring to slaves the task of clothing, housing and feeding them, capitalism has alienated them. Blind to the profound consequences of their consumer choices, incapable, even if they wanted to, of knowing by what trick of witchcraft the goods they obtain were produced, modern humans are easily fooled by the trends of the moment .
One of them, the “vegan movement” (the most radical form of which is veganism), is this current of thought which, aided by certain information that we have chosen to extract, for example, from the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the United Nations, promotes the simplistic scenario according to which the planet could be spared many calamities if only we had the “courage” and “decency” , it is insinuated, to adhere en masse to a diet, or even an economy, exclusively based on plants.
By leading consumers to believe that all livestock farming is a scourge for the planet — instead of pointing the finger at industries that work irresponsibly — these claims call for the abolition of our economic exchanges with animals.
However, rejecting the breeding of animals also means rejecting their eggs, their milk, their honey, their manure, their labor power, their leather, their silk, their wool, their protection, their heat, their beauty. , their company… to replace them with simulacra.
It is rushing into the arms of technosciences which ask for nothing better than to rain down their substitutes on us. Animal protein is replaced by imitation meats from bioreactors and “fauxmages” made from factory-made plant “milk”; leather, silk and wool are replaced by synthetic fibers; manure, synthetic fertilizers; animal traction, engines; to animals, machines; to humans, robots.
Furthermore, most of the studies on which we base our rejection of livestock farming concern the harms of intensive agriculture whose practices are dictated by productivism and greed. In fact, few studies have focused on the environmental profile of foodstuffs produced by omnicultural farmers, nor on the feasibility and consequences of a global transition towards an essentially techno-vegetable agriculture.
Put your feet back on the ground
In light of the data we have, strictly plant-based techno-intensive agriculture does not allow for eco-responsible and equitable exploitation of nature. On our blue planet, only about 10% of the earth’s surface area (3% of the globe’s surface area) is made up of cleared arable land, capable of supporting the large-scale crops of fruits, vegetables, legumes and cereals that feed our grocery stores, and which fuel industries producing plant-based foods. Mistreated by irresponsible agriculture, these surfaces have already started to melt like snow in the sun.
In return, natural meadows, mountain pastures and forests occupy 70% of the land surface (if we exclude Greenland and Antarctica), while the oceans occupy more than 70% of the surface of the globe. Here they are, the places from which the largest share of our subsistence must come: perennial and diverse ecosystems where we can practice responsible pastoralism, aquaculture, gathering, fishing and hunting.
And I repeat, relying on others for everything is unsustainable. Consequently, crowding into metropolises in the hope of being entirely fed by others is unreasonable. The key is to reclaim, at least in part, our means of subsistence.
Slaughtering your chickens in the fall, your kids in the spring, collecting your eggs, milking your goats, making cheese, composting your manure and growing your fruits and vegetables allows you to eat responsibly. Lumbering, wild gathering, making laundry soap using wood ash and making scouring sponges by growing loofahs allows you to meet several basic needs in a responsible way.
That’s what we do here at home — it only costs us an hour or two a day on average, leaving us plenty of time to do a bunch of other things afterward — and there’s no denying that our overall footprint is much lighter than that of many people who know nothing, or almost nothing, about the origins, to say nothing of the trace, of what they consume for food, clothing and housing.
This is why I campaign tirelessly in favor of the peasantization of the world. I hope there will be eight billion of us interested in our basic autonomy. Full time for some, part time for most, a few hours or a few days a week, and each in their own way, according to their particular arrangements.