A New Model for Agriculture
APRIL 19, 2007
The indigenous peoples of the Northwest Coast have long served as anthropologists' greatest mystery in the "birth of agriculture" story. Globally, they stood alone among forager cultures for being settled in permanent villages, with elaborate arts and a hierarchical social structure. That led Doug Deur of the University of Washington, and Nancy Turner of the University of Victoria (here within our 100-mile circle), to suggest the revolutionary thing: perhaps it is the Western model of agriculture that is wrong instead.
In their important book Keeping It Living (UBC/University of Washington presses, 2005) they show how agriculture is not simply "our way, or no way." They champion the more elastic term of cultivation. This embraces the major landscape modifications (such as burning and clearing) and plant husbandry (weeding and re-planting of bulbs or split roots) practiced by Northwest Coast peoples before Europeans arrived.
In the past, anthropologists viewed these techniques as merely subsistence scrabblings. However, hereditary Ahousaht chief Richard Atleo argues in the book's preface: "Amidst the abundant resources of the Northwest Coast of North America, territories were considered complete, requiring only tending and nurturing to provide for the needs of each community. ... in the midst of abundance, 'subsistence' is not an appropriate descriptor."
Western agricultural models, imposed now by global powers such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, have clearly failed the world's hungry; all we hear of is scarcity. Wouldn't it be wise to adopt a model of agriculture where we work with the landscape, instead of against it? -ADS
