I'm often asked if I miss the country I grew up in, France, or how living in Europe compares to living in North America. I invariably say that I prefer life in the "New World", though the reasons I give tend to vary. I'm not totally sure what the reasons are really, but they seem to center around an increased feeling of freedom, freedom from the conformity and rigidity that has had centuries to settle over every aspect of the life of a European, a sense of the future being still something to be written, something to fight for, to dream, rather than a looming and inevitable social order already determined by the deep ruts set by a bloated, crushing history.
Pondering the difference between these two related, Western societies is a common pattern for me, and so it was when I watched two films on sustainable agriculture these past few months. One film was French, Colinne Serreau's "Solutions Locales à un Désordre Global", and the other was a US/Canadian documentary about permaculture by our friend Donna Read and Starhawk, "Permaculture: The Growing Edge", which we saw at Donna's house when we were there in September.
Both films are based on a similar observation: modern industrial agriculture, like our modern capitalist society in general, is radically unsustainable. Both films then go on to show how restructuring our agriculture (and therefore our society), are necessary steps if we are to develop a sustainable culture.
What struck me though were the different paradigms that emanated from the way the subject was approached. The approach taken by the permaculture crowd and presented in the North-American documentary is that self-reliance on an individual level, or maybe family or household level is the necessary basic condition to build a plentiful, sustainable society. Community is a theme that pervades the film also, but as is explained by one of the interviewees, community is something that the individual needs. In this way, community is seen as an assortment of individuals coming together to seek fulfillment of their basic, individual social needs. Permaculture, sustainability, and community are therefore seen as lifestyle processes undertaken by individuals, and that grow, through the grassroots, into a sustainable society.
In contrast, "Solutions locales..." focusses on the ills caused to society by our deficient and destructive mode of agriculture, and seeks solutions at the level of farms and broad organizations seeking to reclaim a sane way of sustaining society. Instead of seeking an empowering, sustainable lifestyle for individuals, the film seeks to determine how ecological farms can be developed to feed a large number of people in society, or how organizations such as Vandana Shiva's Navdanya seed saving organization can help a whole class of farmers. Much more attention is paid to yield and efficiency, while no mention is made of individual scale matters such as homesteading and the emotional well-being resulting from living a life ostensibly in harmony with the Earth.
I loved both films, and gained different insights from each. From "Growing Edge", I felt inspired and empowered about how individual lifestyles choices can be made in a way that impacts other people; from "Solution Locales..." I gained a deeper scientific knowledge of the problems surrounding industrial agriculture, and a clearer view of a sustainable, societal level of organization. Both films conveyed the priceless humor and good nature of people dedicated to this movement, even amidst the depressing reality that agriculture has a long way to go yet.
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