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Notes towards an egalitarian food gathering process
Throughout this book, we will try to discuss the choices and options available
to us and determine the immediate and long-term effects that they may have.
Food sources are a determining factor of how egalitarian and democratic a society
can be.
Many people in society seem to believe that the main criteria for a food system
is how efficiently it can produce food, and hence, how much food can be produced
on a limited area of land. But we know that that is a poor test of a food system.
If a food system can produce massive quantities of food, but encourages a social
system that is anti-egalitarian, then we end up with a large number of slaves.
What we want is the opposite -- a smaller number of free, democratic communities.
The table below compares the qualities that a food source or sources need
to have in order to encourage the development of an egalitarian and democratic
society, versus the qualities that will make a hierarchical, class-based society
likely or inevitable.
| Egalitarian |
Hierarchal and State-Forming |
| Minimal Labour: This is desirable for more than the obvious reasons
of avoiding toil. A food system which requires a minimum of labour per capita
has several ramifications. 1) Flexibility of labour, means that the society
can support people with disAbilities and chronic illnesses who are sometimes
or always unable to physically participant in food-getting since it is still
possible for enough food to be gathered for everyone. |
Intense labour and toil: |
| Minimal Specialized Skills: Ideally, almost anyone can learn and
engage in the skills necessary to get food, and participate in the process.
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Very specialized skills and division of labour: Few or very few
people are knowledgeable enough to participate in food production. Hence,
the majority of people depend on someone else for their survival, since
the products of specialized labour can be controlled by the state or other
rulers. |
| Availability and Surplus: Constant food availability with minimal surplus:
Hence food is readily available, and there is no surplus which needs to
be guarded or distributed by an administrative system which could easily
become coercive and undemocratic (assuming that it was democratic in the
first place). |
Irregular food availability with large, defended surplus: The irregular
availability of food means that more administration is required, and that
the population is more at risk of food deprivation. In thin times, they
are more vulnerable to disaster, and hence require an abundant surplus which
must be guarded and redistributed. |
| Sustainable: The society is self-sufficient. |
Unsustainable: The society is not self sufficient and must engage
in colonialism and conquest in order to maintain itself. Because it is not
sustainable, it is destroying adjacent living communities. |
| Variety and Nutrition: Food is varied and nutritious, because it comes
from a diverse and complex living community. |
Food is mass produced and consists of only a few main foods, because the
food system is based on the efficient surplus production of a few main,
domesticated food sources. This is less nutritious and ecological. |
| Context: Food production takes place within a broader social, political,
and ecological context. |
Farming is "totalitarian" and isolated. |
| Portion of Population engaged in getting Food: Since most people engage
in food production, and nearly everyone engages in food production at some
point in their lives, food production is considered and important part of
every day life |
Few people participate in food production. Since few people produce food,
and those people are essential for the community to exist and persist, those
in power must control, terrorise and denigrate them to keep them from usurping
their power (just as they control, terrorise and denigrate women). |
| Distribution of Food sources: Food sources are widely distributed on the
landscape and between peoples and communities |
Food sources are centralised (and subsequently controlled) |
| Ownership:Once harvested, the harvester "owns" the food and can distribute
it, but food in nature belongs to no one. Sometimes, food that has been
planted may been owned (or at least, taken care of) by the person or people
who planted and raise it. |
Ownership:Food, the land it is grown on, the seeds that it grows from,
the DNA in those seeds, the nutrients that feed the seeds, and the "product"
are all owned and controlled by those in power, not by those who do the
actual work. |
| Minimum People: In hunter-gatherer societies, each adult and small group
has the necessary skills to feed themselves. Hence, if their social or economic
situation becomes untenable, they can leave and still survive. |
Many People: In modern societies, producing food requires many people
with many different skill sets and tool sets. So if the majority of these
people are corrupt, it is difficult to escape them. |
| Buffering: Ideally, the food sources should be able to sustain a short-term
"overdraft" to compensate for the introduction of new refugees to the area. |
Fragility of food sources would discourage the admission of immigrants,
and cultivate a xenophobic mindset. |
We will discuss different food systems by the criteria above, to determine
those that we want to develop and encourage, and those which should be removed
and discouraged.
The food options in the following section will be those that best meet the
criteria we have set out here. We will attempt to, over time, look at food sources
for a variety of bioregions, and include them here.
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