For The Wild - HELENA NORBERG-HODGE on the Violence of Globalization ⧸236

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00:00:30.000 Hello, and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. Today, I'm speaking with

00:00:39.760 Helena Norberg-Hodge.

00:00:41.320 So the mechanisms really fundamentally are doing the same thing, and that is destroying

00:00:47.720 the small and strengthening the big. And it's not just small versus big, but small local

00:00:56.300 versus big global.

00:00:59.280 Helena Norberg-Hodge is a recipient of the Alternative Nobel Prize, the Arthur Morgan Award, and the Goy Peace Prize

00:01:06.600 for contributing to the revitalization of cultural and biological diversity

00:01:11.480 and the strengthening of local communities and economies worldwide.

00:01:15.680 She is author of the inspirational classic Ancient Futures and Local is Our Future.

00:01:22.180 Helena is the founder and director of Local Futures and the International Alliance for Localization.

00:01:28.400 Well, Helena, thank you so much for joining us today.

00:01:34.180 I'm really looking forward to diving in with you.

00:01:39.120 Thank you. I'm really happy to be here.

00:01:41.400 I've heard a lot about you.

00:01:43.180 Ditto.

00:01:43.780 Well, I do think that many of our listeners are probably already acutely aware of the absurdity of our global trade system.

00:01:54.720 catching seafood in Alaska, sending it to China to be processed, then sending back to the United

00:02:00.620 States to be sold, for example. But I think often we get fixated on the absurdity, and then we forget

00:02:07.360 to really interrogate why this is done, who benefits from it, and what policies support it.

00:02:15.140 So why is it critically important to care about trade deals? And what are the tax policy loopholes

00:02:21.680 that continue to uphold and even strengthen the wastefulness of our global trade system?

00:02:27.980 Well, I would say the most important area to look at is trade treaties that, in the name of free

00:02:35.120 trade, have been, particularly since the Second World War, been a vehicle whereby global traders

00:02:44.480 in money, in other words, the banks as well as the corporations, have been getting more and more

00:02:51.080 freedom. So most people think about trade treaties as being deals between countries.

00:02:57.120 What they don't realize is that the countries are tending to think that if they do a trade deal that

00:03:05.440 will favor General Motors over Volvo in Sweden, you know, from America, that this is going to

00:03:12.680 benefit their own country. And in actual fact, what's been going on is that these giant corporations

00:03:20.840 that have become multinational, transnational, a long time ago.

00:03:26.600 At one point Mitsubishi even said to Japan,

00:03:29.320 no, no, no, we're not Japanese anymore,

00:03:32.560 because they are operating globally

00:03:35.200 and they're, through the treaties,

00:03:37.560 are getting the freedom to move in and out of any country.

00:03:42.320 And particularly in the last 30 years,

00:03:44.980 there's been an escalation of these treaties

00:03:47.180 that have allowed big businesses essentially to use cheap labor

00:03:53.060 in so-called poor countries, and then whether it's in manufacturing

00:03:58.260 or even things like sitting in front of a phone all day

00:04:01.480 answering questions about train inquiries in England,

00:04:05.940 someone sitting in the Philippines is answering the questions. 1.00

00:04:09.420 It actually turns out to be incredibly inefficient on top of everything else

00:04:13.840 for ordinary users, for ordinary citizens.

00:04:17.180 But this global expansion of corporations through trade deals, I would ask the main reason why we are in this dire state of where we are extinguishing species, as we speak, we are extinguishing jobs and livelihoods, and really importantly, too, we're extinguishing identities.

00:04:38.500 Now, the way that works is that by helping the giant corporations that are operating globally, what's actually been set in motion is a type of giantism where it's impossible for these companies to respect and respond to diversity.

00:04:56.940 the authenticity the uniqueness the incredible diversity of life becomes an inefficiency

00:05:04.760 it is standardization and monoculture that becomes necessary and i i don't want to give

00:05:13.160 you a mile long answer you know i could go on i could go on for hours about this but i would say

00:05:18.780 that the best area to understand this is to look at food and farming and to just vision you know

00:05:26.280 in front of your eyes the way that bigger and bigger monocultures link to larger and larger

00:05:35.080 supermarkets and link to importing food from all over the world so that in the you know giant

00:05:43.500 supermarket you will find you know items from every continent and you get you know if people

00:05:50.820 aren't paying attention to what's happening on the ground if they don't see those monocultures

00:05:56.060 they think it's a great thing you know you can get anything you want but this system which

00:06:01.560 delivers this splendid diversity in the supermarket is actually actively eliminating

00:06:08.720 the diversity so whether it's the species of plants of animals whether it's the different

00:06:15.800 types of cheeses that were once made in france or different types of miso in japan all of that

00:06:23.540 diversity is being eradicated and more and more this system not only imposes monoculture on

00:06:32.720 on the land on i should also mention in the sea with trawling nets that can hold 13 jumbo jets 0.71

00:06:42.520 where you know life on the sea is just lifted out and only a fraction of that is used it's a it's

00:06:50.140 criminally wasteful and maybe the most important thing to point out is that when you take any two

00:06:59.960 bits of land and on one you produce monoculture one thing i'm only going to have you know the

00:07:06.500 same species of trees or fruits or trees or vegetables on the other bit of land you diversify

00:07:15.940 you will always be able to get more from the land on the diversified bit of land whether it's a

00:07:23.020 square meter or a thousand square kilometers you will always be able to be more productive

00:07:29.680 so what modern trade-based global agriculture has led to is a steady path towards not only

00:07:40.600 producing less and less and less from each unit of land but destroying the very land that was used

00:07:47.820 for the production it's creating the dust poles that we know about so the urgent need is to shift

00:07:55.360 towards more localized systems which i hope we'll come back to but also maybe in plain language you

00:08:02.920 know i just want to say to people think about the fact that every time you go to buy some food

00:08:08.880 And keep in mind, every person on the planet needs to eat every single day.

00:08:14.840 There's no area, there's no issue, there's nothing that we do that's a more fundamental lever in shifting things towards greater health, towards ecological and human well-being, than focusing on the food system.

00:08:30.640 It was so good to hear this analysis. And it's something I think about a lot, this global trade

00:08:41.380 insanity. And yeah, I'd like to ground listeners in the massive disparity between countries that

00:08:48.200 are tremendously resource wealthy versus those that dominate the spheres of production and

00:08:54.320 manufacturing. An example that immediately comes to mind is that of the chocolate industry,

00:08:58.820 Where the last time I checked, Ghana and Cota Ivory single-handedly hold over 50% of the market share of cacao beans.

00:09:08.680 Yet the amount of money that they're able to generate in export earning is nothing in comparison to manufacturers' net sales.

00:09:15.600 For example, in 2016, these two West African countries earned $5.7 billion in cacao exports.

00:09:23.520 Whereas in the same year, Hershey created $7.4 billion in net sales.

00:09:29.800 So yeah, I wonder if you could begin our conversation by elaborating how distribution networks,

00:09:37.480 branding, marketing, and even intellectual property rights are assisting in this grave

00:09:42.780 global robbery.

00:09:44.640 Yes.

00:09:45.100 I mean, what I would say is that generally speaking, farmers everywhere in the world

00:09:51.280 have been marginalized, and if we step back

00:09:54.500 and look at the truth of what's been going on,

00:09:57.900 we'll see that after the Second World War,

00:10:01.760 these trade deals were brought in as a mechanism,

00:10:05.600 supposedly, and I think in the minds of many

00:10:08.140 of our leading politicians and so on,

00:10:10.880 the idea was we're going to prevent another depression,

00:10:14.260 we're going to prevent another world war

00:10:16.240 by integrating all economic activity under one umbrella.

00:10:21.280 And so the World Bank, the IMF, and the GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, was set up.

00:10:28.260 I think the really important thing that we need to look at today is not so much the relationship between different countries as the relationship between this gradual takeover, and I mean takeover of every country.

00:10:44.380 I'm saying that even America is captured by global banking and corporate system.

00:10:51.280 It sounds a bit like a conspiracy, and I don't think it ever was

00:10:55.880 a conscious conspiracy, but what had happened is that

00:10:59.920 because the global traders in money and other goods or the banks

00:11:04.800 and other global actors had so much power,

00:11:08.920 they were influencing governments already after the Second World War,

00:11:13.120 and then this has been increasing.

00:11:15.380 So there is still obviously a certain divide between rich countries

00:11:20.280 and poor countries in terms of, if you look just at the dollar value

00:11:27.100 and the dollar, if you like, the sort of hourly wage,

00:11:31.740 you'll see this huge difference between the majority of people

00:11:35.700 in poor countries and the majority of people

00:11:38.260 in so-called rich countries.

00:11:40.620 But I have to say, already in the 70s, again,

00:11:44.720 when I came back to Sweden, having lived in this traditional

00:11:48.760 culture of Ladakh and later on also working in Bhutan, as I came back, I saw extreme poverty

00:11:57.780 in Sweden, a poverty that led me to have to talk about happiness and what was causing the sort of

00:12:05.060 widespread depression. And later on now, we've got epidemics of anxiety. And when you actually

00:12:13.260 start looking at the fabric of community the intergenerational community fabric is something

00:12:22.040 that we evolved with so in the human sphere we were deeply connected across the generations

00:12:29.620 and I came to realize how profoundly important that was in creating this wealth of self-acceptance

00:12:38.300 and feeling completely fine with who you are and what you are

00:12:42.260 and what a wealth that is.

00:12:44.320 So in terms of the, you know, cacao and in terms of what's happening

00:12:47.860 with Hershey and Nestle and so on, for sure there are huge injustices

00:12:52.400 and they're not in any way to sort of be dismissed.

00:12:56.900 But I think we're going to miss, you know, sort of miss the point

00:13:00.380 if we don't recognize that the global narrative that's been pushed on us

00:13:07.220 as part of creating a corporate-dominated global consumer culture is everywhere.

00:13:16.140 Oof.

00:13:17.360 Yeah.

00:13:18.980 Well, a particular facet that I'd like to focus on a bit more is making the connection

00:13:25.240 between trade agreements and climate change really explicit.

00:13:29.560 It's been predicted that if nothing changes, by 2050, commercial ships and the aviation

00:13:35.200 industry will make up 35% of the world's CO2 emissions. Additionally, the Trans-Pacific

00:13:42.000 Partnership at one point sought to require that the U.S. Department of Energy approve all exports

00:13:47.900 of liquid natural gas and embolden the fossil fuel industry to sue the government for trying

00:13:53.740 to enact climate regulations, and while the U.S. ultimately ended up pulling out of this trade

00:13:59.660 agreement. You know, this does highlight that trade agreements work to the detriment of creating

00:14:05.720 an inhabitable earth. And so I wonder if you think it's even possible to have trade agreements that

00:14:12.160 seek to address the rampant environmental pollution that they've created in the first place.

00:14:19.420 I think it's absolutely possible. But what it's going to require is that the movements,

00:14:26.180 which are very significant of people around the world who are, you know,

00:14:32.040 particularly here engaged with climate, wake up to the arena they need to focus on.

00:14:38.980 And I think, and I'm seeing a shift.

00:14:41.480 There is a shift going on and it gives me hope because I've been, you know,

00:14:44.820 I've been trying to raise awareness about it for almost 45 years.

00:14:49.760 And it's definitely a willingness now.

00:14:53.380 there's been you know the new york times has even sort of cautiously stated oh well maybe

00:14:59.180 governments won't want to be so dependent on global trade anymore you know when you can't

00:15:04.400 even get loot paper or masks in your own country what's going on and of course remember again how

00:15:10.280 important the food side of it is because we're talking about an arena that is transforming the

00:15:17.520 natural world more massively than any other. So I think it's absolutely possible to have trade

00:15:24.540 agreements, but no way are they going to be what we want without civic society at the table. So it

00:15:32.800 means the first step is much greater awareness about scrutinizing these trade treaties. And then

00:15:40.040 we'll find that even in Sweden, and I say even because we had a little, you know, we're a bit

00:15:46.640 more closed rod governments we feel that we have a little more access to what's going on but there

00:15:53.480 about four years ago some journalists contacted me to say that in sweden they had passed a law

00:16:00.800 that now trade treaties had to be negotiated in secrecy they have generally been done in secrecy

00:16:08.740 because it's you know it's quite specialized and people you know generally feel it's very

00:16:15.060 technical and even what you're relating there some of what you just mentioned about those trade

00:16:20.680 treaties i'm not familiar with those details because it gets extremely complex but the basic

00:16:27.380 principle the basic fact that these trade treaties are about giving global traders more freedom

00:16:34.920 that and and along with a few other key items here should be what the movements focus on and we need

00:16:44.000 the not just the environmental movement we really need all of these people who are waking up to the

00:16:51.060 fact that if we don't look at the economic trajectory we're going to end up i believe

00:16:58.440 losing everything because what's happening because of this extractive crazy crazy crazy economy

00:17:05.740 is that more and more people are working harder and harder we're talking about a poverty rising

00:17:12.140 up into the middle classes we're talking about all these people who supposedly are doing so much

00:17:18.820 better in china and india those people are now earning so much more money which is being held

00:17:26.160 up as this great victory of globalization working harder and harder and harder i mean we're talking

00:17:31.980 about you know people splitting up families it's a type of slave-like factory system we're talking

00:17:42.180 about the middle classes in sweden in america in germany having to run faster work harder than ever

00:17:50.140 before i've had economist friends document this juliet shaw in america at that time she was at 0.84

00:17:58.020 Harvard. She wrote a book called The Overworked American, looking at how the average American

00:18:03.760 was having to work one month more per year to stay in place. In England, my colleague Richard

00:18:10.760 Douthwaite wrote a book called The Growth Illusion. In that, he showed basically the same pattern,

00:18:17.540 but he looked at buying power. And so when you actually look at the real fact of how many hours

00:18:25.180 you have to work to pay for your house roof of your head you know pay for your food for education

00:18:32.940 health care that was considered basic needs you will see that we are all getting poorer

00:18:38.980 the scary thing is that as people get poorer they are vulnerable to demagogues who are going to say

00:18:46.420 we're going to grow the economy for you we're going to make your country great forget about

00:18:50.620 all this climate and all this business about the amazon it's irrelevant important is to grow the

00:18:58.160 economy and forget about looking after the immigrants and the poor and we're going to really 0.55

00:19:05.000 look after you so we're seeing the swing to the right so i'm arguing to the movements i'm saying

00:19:13.400 please please any of you who care about what's happening to people who care about the injustice

00:19:19.860 of this system including those cacao growers in this you know crazy unfair system and talking

00:19:28.420 about them being better off than we think i'm not at all saying that they're in a good position

00:19:32.960 we're looking at a system that really is marginalizing the majority of humanity

00:19:39.520 and so if we care about the poverty and and the injustice of that and we see and care about the

00:19:47.020 environmental disasters. Let's please come together to demand that economic shift that

00:19:54.960 so clearly can lead to both human and ecological improvements. And ultimately, with this goal of

00:20:04.340 human and ecological well-being, as we know, they are completely linked. We are nature. We are part

00:20:11.680 of nature.

00:20:17.020 Thank you.

00:20:47.020 Oh, I'm scared of the water and I run from the sea

00:20:55.040 Like a baby just born, oh, I'm eager to breathe

00:21:01.900 But the moon is a cancer, oh, the creature I mean

00:21:10.700 Crawling back to the lip of the sea

00:21:30.740 Well, I'd like to read a passage from Poverty Alleviation

00:21:37.240 at an international development organization

00:21:39.880 resurrecting the human being as subject,

00:21:42.980 where the authors write, quote,

00:21:45.540 while claiming to do the opposite,

00:21:47.780 professionals in the field of international development

00:21:50.500 have often been impoverishing global communities

00:21:53.640 through Western economic and technological interventions

00:21:56.940 enabled by the, quote, aid provided by intersected

00:22:01.180 global financial institutions

00:22:03.300 on ureous, harmful, and coercive terms. It is ironic that the West, with all of its economic

00:22:10.540 crashes, corporate scandals, addictive consumerism, runaway militarism, and unsustainable

00:22:16.880 lifestyles, considers itself competent to, quote, develop the other three-fourths of the world's

00:22:23.540 population, end quote. So yeah, I'd like to explore the fallacy of rich and poor countries or

00:22:32.200 developed and developing countries. So can you share with us how foreign aid really underpins

00:22:38.660 these false understandings? Yeah. And again, I'd say that the foreign aid part of it has been

00:22:46.940 fundamental and continues to be, but more frightening now is the massive accumulation

00:22:53.360 of wealth in the hands, directly in the hands of global corporations and banks. And so a lot of the

00:23:00.040 worst you know changes now have to do with the free trade zones where corporations are able to

00:23:08.000 move in and produce and do exactly as they like but foreign aid has been part of this problem

00:23:14.360 where we now know that in the name of aid what was being introduced was increased dependence

00:23:22.840 there was an attempt you know to sell and push technologies produced in the west there was

00:23:29.500 you know at every step it wasn't aiding so-called poor countries to to become genuinely wealthier

00:23:39.500 it was it's taken on a language and a yeah a language that sounds perfect beautiful now in

00:23:49.480 The aid agencies is all about cultural, you know, diversity, about ecology.

00:23:58.440 And when you look at what's actually happening is the introduction of structures that push people away from the land into ever larger megacities.

00:24:10.460 So one of the most frightening things is that the entire system is now set with the help of foreign aid, but also within our own countries.

00:24:20.840 So the mechanisms really fundamentally are doing the same thing, and that is destroying the small and strengthening the big.

00:24:30.220 And it's not just small versus big, but small local versus big global.

00:24:37.440 so whether it's the corner shop in in new hampshire in some village or whether it's the

00:24:44.800 you know the small village shop in in a country and on the other side of the world they're all

00:24:51.880 threatened by the takeover essentially of the merging and now it's you know we're talking about

00:24:58.560 the information society we're talking about the financialization of nature the financialization

00:25:05.640 of the world linked to high tech so aid is involved in this but most of it is now driven

00:25:14.860 by private for-profit corporations and these are publicly traded corporations and that's an

00:25:23.580 important thing for us to remember is that that's a sort of structure that's almost like a machine

00:25:29.320 that's become, you know, it's incapable of responding

00:25:33.760 to ecological or social realities and pressures

00:25:37.740 because it's just, you know, this blind pursuit of profit.

00:25:41.820 If a CEO decides, well, actually, this is a bit damaging,

00:25:45.860 I really should make changes to care more for the soil

00:25:49.860 or for the workers, they won't, they can't survive.

00:25:53.320 There are some privately owned corporations

00:25:55.600 that are able to behave in a more gentle

00:25:58.580 and thoughtful way but really the problem is that we've got to get a clear look at the systemic

00:26:08.540 problem of in every country now that i know of there may be a few very few exceptions

00:26:15.320 the taxes people pay are used in this machine-like way to subsidize private corporate enterprise

00:26:25.380 And those subsidies have included mega infrastructure, also with government aid in so-called developing countries.

00:26:35.860 But all the time, it's further this extractive accumulation of wealth at the top.

00:26:43.440 And maybe also, if I could just mention, it's really helpful for me to realize that when this economic system started,

00:26:52.360 the modern economy started, it was started by some white European men who were overtly racist,

00:27:02.300 misogynist, and anti-nature. It's so important that we recognize that these overtly negative

00:27:11.920 values are not necessarily carried by today's white male elites who are carrying out and

00:27:19.900 continuing with a system that started with that very explicit, you know, anti-nature,

00:27:27.560 anti, and of course, you know, genocide of indigenous people and so on.

00:27:33.280 But you see, when they set that system up, fundamental to the economic principle that

00:27:39.300 was born on the back of slavery, of genocide, and later with colonialism, the foundation

00:27:48.360 of the economy was comparative advantage this is principle that was brought in that principle says

00:27:56.620 don't be self-reliant don't think it's good for your religion to produce a range of things that

00:28:03.880 you need no no no you're going to be much better off if you specialize and export and you specialize

00:28:12.360 what you have a comparative advantage in.

00:28:15.620 On the surface, you know, it sounds okay,

00:28:18.640 but we have to remember it was set up by this global sort of cabal,

00:28:24.080 which wasn't, you know, exactly the sort of conspiracy

00:28:29.580 that people might imagine today,

00:28:31.620 but it was a very clear system that was blatantly

00:28:36.740 about ripping people off around the world to make a few people rich.

00:28:42.360 When we now look at the economy, we must reject this principle of comparative advantage in a fundamental way.

00:28:50.620 So what are we talking about? Comparative advantage meant monoculture.

00:28:56.180 You just produce cacao, you just produce cotton, you just produce sugar, tea, for us, the traders.

00:29:02.120 And then you import everything you need.

00:29:04.340 Well, guess who gets richer from this? The global traders.

00:29:07.540 So now we have to recognize that inbuilt, endemic to the modern economy is, because of the principle of comparative advantage, monoculture, monocultural production.

00:29:21.560 Endemic to the modern economy, monoculture.

00:29:25.300 Endemic to life is diversity.

00:29:29.060 Endemic.

00:29:29.820 it's not just diversity in the sense of every cell every person every leaf being unique and

00:29:38.300 different but the miracle of life each and every one of those cells is changing it's alive it's

00:29:46.800 the most amazing miracle this richness of relationships and it's the it's the what every

00:29:55.040 spiritual teaching is about we wake up to that magic of that interconnected ever rich

00:30:03.440 ever mysterious ever unknowable fabric of life and as we're in tune with that you know what i'm

00:30:12.840 saying is i have seen i have lived with people who were radiantly happy who emanated such a deep sense

00:30:22.220 of equanimity of rightness of feeling I'm fine the way I am but it wasn't about I it was a sort

00:30:30.820 of a we sense so if we could wake up to that that we really must be looking at how can we collectively

00:30:40.080 turn towards a way of doing things that is truly life affirming and I you know what what I'm saying

00:30:49.320 from these 45 years of looking at what's happening

00:30:52.860 in both industrialized countries and non-industrialized

00:30:55.980 is that it really does require this localizing path

00:31:01.900 instead of the globalizing.

00:31:03.360 It's about essentially starting to rebuild

00:31:06.540 greater self-reliance, which, by the way,

00:31:09.060 goes hand-in-hand with greater self-respect,

00:31:12.120 which goes hand-in-hand with lowering the gap

00:31:15.440 between rich and poor.

00:31:16.600 So, yeah, again, my answers are too long.

00:31:21.080 I'll stop them there.

00:31:22.520 Well, there's just so much to say.

00:31:25.180 You know, there's so much to analyze because it is global.

00:31:29.840 It's these huge overarching issues.

00:31:33.280 And, you know, now that we've spoken about globalization, I'd love to orient listeners to localization.

00:31:40.200 And you point out that localization is about bringing the economy back to us.

00:31:44.640 No longer does it have to revolve around the whims of transnational corporations, but instead it can nourish human health and well-being at the community level.

00:31:54.800 So what are the benefits of an economic shift from global to local, and how is localization a wealth-building strategy?

00:32:03.900 Again, I think it's really helpful to start with food and farming.

00:32:08.160 And I just want to remind, you know, the listener again that, you know, it is, maybe I didn't say it before, but I usually always say it.

00:32:16.200 And that is that every person on the planet needs food every day, you know, usually about three times a day.

00:32:22.920 Now, just with that simple recognition that our governments around the world are separating us further and further from the source of that food.

00:32:33.040 Something that we need to survive every day.

00:32:36.980 How is it that we're being separated further and further?

00:32:40.240 How is it that something that's been transported for 10,000 miles

00:32:43.900 will be cheaper than something that's been transported for one mile?

00:32:48.220 Well, the basic structures and principles that I've been trying to outline

00:32:54.120 are a part of that.

00:32:55.960 We have our governments using taxes, subsidies, and regulations

00:33:01.960 to distort the economy to preference and favor the global traders at the expense of billions

00:33:11.740 and billions of smaller businesses enterprises of every kind this is what we need to be looking at

00:33:20.220 and with that shift towards saying no we need to support the multitude of place-based

00:33:26.560 ways of doing things and if we start by looking at food i hope many of you will be as inspired as i

00:33:35.000 am because what i've helped to i've helped to plant ideas around the world including in california

00:33:43.240 and you know new york and going back to the 80s and then um yeah for really starting in the 70s

00:33:53.220 And what I can report is that over these years, it's been slow, but there's a steady increase in local food initiatives, absolutely steady increase.

00:34:08.160 And it's a miracle.

00:34:10.600 It's a miracle.

00:34:13.340 You know, our work and the work of the people who've been doing this has been almost invisible.

00:34:19.880 i would say invisible had almost no support from the media almost no funding it's been sort of

00:34:27.860 blood sweat and tears 90 i would say led to women all around the world things have happened like a

00:34:39.080 woman in in devon where where we had an office and and did quite a lot of work in helping to get the

00:34:47.040 english local food movement started and there you know she had heard that we'd set up farmers markets

00:34:53.980 and that they really helped small farmers her husband was depressed on the verge of suicide

00:35:00.860 started drinking was just giving up because as a small farmer he was just couldn't survive why

00:35:08.080 because our taxes so we you know we're ending up supporting the system that nobody wants

00:35:14.060 but we don't see the connection so these small farmers around the world suffering

00:35:19.680 high suicide rate anyway this woman had heard about the farmer's market that we had set up

00:35:26.560 and she decided to try and her story was so moving for me um you know because she

00:35:32.940 talked about it was quite difficult to persuade people even right now here in this area where i

00:35:40.720 am i've helped to start four farmers markets they are so successful people love them still now as

00:35:48.700 i'm trying to start a fifth one because it's the best way of helping small farmers it's still a

00:35:53.980 struggle you know it's amazing because the system you know is geared against it but anyway this

00:36:00.480 woman she persisted and the shopkeepers in the town where she wanted to do it were opposed to it

00:36:06.580 the council wasn't supportive the local government the farmers themselves and this is also my

00:36:14.360 experience with trying to set these things up they're resistant they don't think it's going

00:36:19.180 to work and you know they're often aggressively and antagonistically against it even those who

00:36:26.240 are going bankrupt but anyway she persisted and finally they had to have their first small market

00:36:32.660 because she hadn't been able to get that many growers and it poured with rain so that was like

00:36:38.660 this is going to be the end of this you know it's just but even then it was so successful

00:36:43.780 and it went from strength to strength and it's there and it's bigger and every day in my inbox

00:36:51.780 I get more of those stories every single day so there is this silent local food movement growing

00:37:00.640 interestingly enough you know a lot of people who are doing it are not necessarily thinking

00:37:07.140 about the global system they're not necessarily even calling what they do local and i would

00:37:13.280 urge people to do so because this is much harder to co-opt local the fashionable term now is regen

00:37:22.260 but watch out you know it comes from big business nestle um what was the other one i just heard of

00:37:30.140 recently but nestle is boasting of being regen um so uh you know we need a holistic analysis

00:37:39.260 and local as one single word is probably the the safest but really it has to be thought of

00:37:47.480 holistically so it's a local system now what happens when you have shorter distances between

00:37:54.720 the farm and the consumer is that you get a market pressure towards diversification the farmers

00:38:04.240 previously have been pushed for these hundreds of years towards bigger and bigger monocultures

00:38:09.860 it goes against nature becomes harder and harder you kill the soil you think that by killing off

00:38:16.200 all the you know external life the weeds the worm everything you're going to be doing better no

00:38:22.720 you're killing life becomes almost impossible to produce you have to buy more external inputs they

00:38:28.500 become more and more more expensive you try to spray more you have one hailstorm it kills off

00:38:35.500 everything when you have diversity you are working with life you're actually even restoring space for

00:38:42.500 wildlife and you are getting more per unit of land but vastly more in highly diversified

00:38:51.520 systems that we need to create you might call it agroecology or permaculture but

00:38:57.840 what's really what really is the truth is that if we build on traditions where farming in many

00:39:06.000 cases had been going on for thousands of years we build on that local knowledge and increase

00:39:13.060 the diversity often by importing some things but with care being very careful about bringing in

00:39:19.800 species from outside that might you know become problematic weeds etc but anyway in the local

00:39:28.480 food movement you can see first of all you know the farmer you know right here who's become a

00:39:36.880 friend who said he'd been a farmer his whole life and felt like a surf there was such pressure for

00:39:43.920 them to produce these standard-sized avocados for the central market, larger and larger quantities

00:39:50.940 pressured for lower and lower prices, and victims of these larger systems where supermarket chains

00:39:57.760 will say, okay, we'll take X number of kilos from you or tons, and then suddenly turn around and

00:40:05.120 say, sorry, no, no, we don't actually need it. Or, you know, they're under total victims of

00:40:11.700 the pressures from the central market and he said you know we felt like serfs you know just

00:40:17.720 and he said after you started the farmer's market it was like entering another galaxy

00:40:22.980 it's just such a pleasure first of all you're talking to consumers who don't care if every

00:40:29.620 avocado is the same size they even value seeing some little blemish as a sign that they haven't

00:40:36.100 been sprayed they talk to you about whether you had an effect from that hailstorm or how it's going

00:40:44.800 without any rain there's just this beautiful coming together where different needs are being

00:40:52.720 met and answered through a we you know rather than an isolated eye so in the local food movement

00:41:01.480 is where you'll see the most beneficial

00:41:05.320 and the most important effects of localization.

00:41:31.480 Nothing we could do untethered from the earth

00:41:40.880 The crowding horizon lives through the gloom

00:41:46.800 And the ghost dances in white blooms

00:41:53.420 yeah i wanted to talk to you about the term downshifting and it comes to mind as we think

00:42:16.300 about localization and scaling local and scaling down and finding ways to resist the work

00:42:23.240 spend lifestyle while also creating a resilient community? And a lot of questions come up for me

00:42:29.840 here because localization obviously requires consumption, but I think we can implement

00:42:36.140 localization while also creating a different sort of consumerism that isn't so rampant and devoid

00:42:42.940 and constant. So this is somewhat of an open-ended question, but can you explain how community

00:42:50.340 structures and community ownership models work in a local economy, and how much consumerism

00:42:57.080 is still necessitated under this model? And what is really required of the community to sustain

00:43:03.060 themselves? First of all, even now in this crisis situation, I want everybody to be aware that

00:43:09.340 if there is a major climate emergency, or say financial or political emergency, and this insane

00:43:18.540 trade infrastructure is blocked in some way it's the supermarket shelves they're going to be empty

00:43:25.080 in about four days so focusing on building up greater food security should be the highest

00:43:33.260 priority everywhere now it turns out that focusing on that food security and in a you know and by

00:43:41.700 that i don't mean some kind of of you know bunker building with you know having lots of tin food

00:43:48.820 we're talking about building up a food security through localized food economies and growing and

00:43:56.120 we're talking about the importance of maintaining the seeds and finding the the heritage seeds that

00:44:04.080 are much more adapted to your cow and the only way to protect that wealth of seeds is through

00:44:12.200 growing it if seed banks can't work at all in the run what you'll discover is if you start going

00:44:19.540 into this movement of the local food systems if there's so much meaningful work to be done

00:44:27.180 there is so there is so much joy in it because as I was saying earlier it does help to restore

00:44:34.560 wilderness as well and I guess I've for myself I my sort of religion is nature it has always has

00:44:43.100 been I grew up in Sweden I was very lucky to have you know wild open spaces and with almost no

00:44:51.100 people uh around and and that's still sort of my my church and i still prefer to go out you know in

00:44:58.660 unspored nature like that but i'm aware that for many people and to some extent for me too

00:45:06.580 that when you engage people which is now happening as part of this whole localization movement

00:45:12.560 prisoners have been given a chance for their last few months in prison to learn how to grow food and

00:45:19.760 to learn it in community you know curated by people who help them to sit in circle to get

00:45:27.040 to know each other from that deeper place where we're talking to each other not to show off

00:45:32.560 which is this separation and fear but to actually connect by being able to be more vulnerable

00:45:39.200 and more honest about your feelings and who you really are on the inside so that along with

00:45:46.360 growing food and learning those skills and actually becoming a productive part of this

00:45:53.220 fabric of life it's amazing it has just these multiple multiple effects of supporting greater

00:46:01.540 self-esteem and a greater well of course increasing skills that also train people for a type of work

00:46:10.620 that they just love and that there's such a need for

00:46:14.200 and that they can continue with.

00:46:16.920 So if you keep in mind just how much there is to be done in that arena

00:46:24.860 and if you can just, you know, I wish I could have the visuals

00:46:29.460 to sort of show you on the one side the dominant path

00:46:33.920 supported by our government is making jobs available

00:46:38.420 to fewer and fewer people and then you know the idea of some kind of handout you know better

00:46:46.780 social welfare or sort of ubi universal basic income as far as i'm concerned they are not

00:46:55.960 appealing because people like to feel that they're engaged with something meaningful that they're

00:47:01.780 doing something productive and and it's a of course when people can't it's a different thing

00:47:08.520 but when you when you realize what these pressures mean on young people and you see

00:47:16.060 which i do very clearly and it's very scary the epidemics of anxiety of depression

00:47:22.520 of fear insecurity you really see how urgent it is that we steer people in this other direction

00:47:33.640 towards localization what you just shared was really valuable and there's this one part of

00:47:41.180 localization that i think about a lot and in localization a strategic solution to globalized

00:47:47.660 authoritarianism you write quote a major challenge to the acceptance of a localist agenda among

00:47:54.660 progressives has been the impression that local and natural are elitist and affordable only to

00:48:02.140 those of comfortable means corporate think tanks have been effective in disseminating this message

00:48:08.720 but the relatively higher cost of healthy alternatives whether organic food local natural

00:48:14.920 building materials and fibers or alternative medicine is largely a product of externalized

00:48:20.540 costs and government subsidies for export-oriented corporate production. Strip away all that

00:48:26.780 artificial support and the cost of globalized products would be out of reach for most, end

00:48:32.520 quote. And yeah, I'd really like to dig into the notion of elitism around localism because I've

00:48:39.480 encountered it often and what I always think about are subsidies and how global fossil fuel

00:48:45.700 subsidies have created a false understanding of price and value. So do you think as a response

00:48:51.940 to charges of elitism, we need subsidies for local goods? Well, I think absolutely we need to shift

00:49:00.620 the subsidies. And I think it's so important that instead of saying to people, if you care about the

00:49:07.780 environment if you care about the health your health and your children's health you should buy

00:49:12.620 organic and shame on you if you don't it's tragic that in the environmental movement there's been a

00:49:19.140 lot of that you know pointing the finger to the end of the door making people feel guilty you know

00:49:24.880 even if they drive their car you know they're living in a system where it's almost impossible

00:49:30.320 to get around without a car so it's really about collective change that we're talking

00:49:37.000 and we're saying let's start thinking about what we can do rather than what can i do it's not at

00:49:46.340 all to say that we shouldn't take any responsibility but within the environmental movement this has

00:49:52.180 been a really a tragic thing is that so when it comes to this food issue instead of saying to

00:49:58.320 people let's come together to create a system where we can lower the price of healthy food

00:50:05.200 you know you should spend more money on your food or we should be saying let's get our voices heard

00:50:13.320 and demand that the subsidies are changed so that the subsidies are not supporting old food from far

00:50:19.300 away that's supporting our own local farmers our own local varieties and healthy non-chemical

00:50:27.560 agriculture. I believe that if we could get the message out to the majority of people,

00:50:35.460 left, right, center, whatever they are, if you said, would you prefer to have your taxes support

00:50:42.080 the farmers in your area, to support the businesses in your area, or would you prefer

00:50:48.100 that your taxes end up supporting global corporations? I can also guarantee that people

00:50:55.540 would vote in the right direction but that choice is not being made available to them because

00:51:01.600 this distant trade regime and these distant corporations are in a way invisible in another

00:51:10.020 way they're not you know everybody knows that big business is big and that they have too much power

00:51:14.540 and most people don't like that but they end up usually focusing on government and then their

00:51:22.520 sentiment becomes anger against government and i see that even at the level of the local government

00:51:28.840 here that so many people who don't realize that the local government is actually carrying out

00:51:34.040 essentially orders from above and they end up being like little policemen regulating us you

00:51:42.840 know whether we're going five miles over the speed limit or if we want to build a staircase in our

00:51:48.960 house we can't have it you know one inch smaller or higher and it's just so crazy that our taxes

00:51:56.040 are ending up used to police us when in the meanwhile global corporations are getting away

00:52:01.440 literally with murder you know in terms of these incredible wasteful polluting practices and you

00:52:10.400 know slave-like conditions in these big factories in china and so on so it's just it's really not a

00:52:17.480 system that i'm seeing that from the very bottom to the very top of society nobody would really

00:52:26.440 want that system if they could have the opportunity to step back and see it as a system see connect

00:52:35.080 the dots and see how it all spins to make their own health their own children less happy less

00:52:42.700 healthy and of course now to present on the other hand the possibility of another systemic direction

00:52:49.940 it needs to be done in in a far better way than we've done i mean i this you know it's it's really

00:52:57.940 difficult to sort of on the one hand talk about the big bad global and then as i've done you know

00:53:04.520 wax lyrical about the local but really what we also need to be talking about is the steps in

00:53:10.480 between and yes a key step in between is that yes we do need to subsidize the localizing path

00:53:19.100 and not only that it needs to be deregulated many of these regulations are either harmful

00:53:27.240 a lot of stuff that's brought in in the name of of health and and public welfare is actually not

00:53:34.520 that it's actually preventing the small especially again in food and farming from functioning more

00:53:42.000 freely and far more efficiently you know we have examples of farmers in france you know been

00:53:48.060 producing the most divine goat cheese for like five generations and then suddenly new eu regulations

00:53:55.360 say they have to have tiles in their ceiling as well as everywhere else in order to be able to

00:54:01.740 keep operating and talking about thousands of dollars of rebuilding and so on which they

00:54:07.080 couldn't afford and they had to go out of business anyway these are just millions and millions of

00:54:12.380 examples like this that most people aren't aware of but once you once we could get out a clearer

00:54:19.720 picture of the benefits of a shift towards localizing we can present a picture which

00:54:26.520 is not about revolution, it doesn't require some dramatic collapse. I'm afraid so many people are

00:54:35.980 you know sort of waiting for some kind of a collapse. It doesn't require any major suffering

00:54:42.520 from any significant numbers of people because if we were to insist on shifting taxes, subsidies

00:54:51.880 and regulations. These are the mechanisms which governments use to steer the society.

00:55:00.000 Now they're steering it towards more unemployment, more pollution, energy consumption, resource

00:55:07.480 consumption. Together, in one fell swoop, this globalizing path destroys jobs, massively

00:55:15.320 increases energy use, resource use, and massively increases pollution. On the other path, we're

00:55:22.520 doing the opposite. We're creating more livelihoods, vastly more, reducing energy use, reducing

00:55:27.860 resource use. And as it happens, that path also leads to greater physical and emotional health.

00:55:36.060 So health of ecosystems, health of people connected. And this could be done relatively

00:55:43.160 smoothly but it's like you know we started talking about the trade treaties and how could

00:55:49.940 they ever be a good instrument it's going to require that the social environmental movements

00:55:55.680 do realize that this is a central systemic arena and that we organize things so that we insist

00:56:04.420 that civic society is at the table so now as we're working out the treaties to take control

00:56:12.180 of big businesses and banks rather than them controlling our government and us we need to

00:56:18.940 be at the table oh yes well i mean there's definitely so much to metabolize and i really

00:56:30.160 appreciate everywhere you took us yeah this has been such a wonderful way to spend the afternoon

00:56:36.940 and thank you so much for giving us so much of your time

00:56:39.980 and your, yeah, your heart and your mind.

00:56:44.820 Well, thank you so much for doing this really important podcast

00:56:48.140 and I hope we can collaborate further.

00:56:56.800 Thank you for listening to For the Wild podcast.

00:56:59.780 The music you heard today was by Dana Anastasia and Chloe Levayan.

00:57:04.480 For the Wild is created by Ayanna Young,

00:57:06.940 Erica Ekrem, and Francesca Glassbell.

For The Wild - June 02, 2021

HELENA NORBERG-HODGE on the Violence of Globalization ⧸236

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