Yesterday I led a harvest thanksgiving service at a local United Reformed Church. I had carefully organised my sermon to focus on the wonder of God's provision in Exodus 16 and the concern of Jesus at the shortage of workers for the harvest in Matthew 9.
But I started by talking about farming and began to stray a bit "off message". Having been brought up in Hackney and lived most of my adult life in Smethwick - neither noted for their modern day farms - I suppose a lot of people would think I have little to say about agriculture. My forebears were resolutely industrial and we can find no evidence that anyone from our family has worked the land since at least 1800.
I know that these days we are supposed to bore our congregations with dire warnings of climate change. Or even - quite rightly - point out that not everyone in our world shares in the harvest.
Nevertheless my five years as a member of the European Parliament's Agriculture Committee really opened my eyes to the wonders of what humans can do with God's provision. I visited many farms in the UK, but also in Sweden, Finland, Germany, Holland, Slovakia, Belgium, France, Greece, Spain, Israel and Taiwan.
These farms varied from high tech farms owned by multi-nationals through to tiny family run organic farms with a lot of variation in between.
As I made my way round these farms I noticed the sheer ingenuity that turned the creation into a source of food.
When I was a child the United Nations used to warn that two-thirds of the world's population were starving. Across Europe, the Indian Sub Continent and much of Asia there were massive refugee problems. There still are problems, but not on such a great scale.
We often beat ourselves up wondering where the world is going. However modern agriculture and the global markets have delivered good cheap food in abundance. And for that we should be grateful.
There is still much to do. We need to make the global players more responsive to need. We need to encourage balanced diets. We need to support and promote fair trade. But we still need to give thanks.
But I started by talking about farming and began to stray a bit "off message". Having been brought up in Hackney and lived most of my adult life in Smethwick - neither noted for their modern day farms - I suppose a lot of people would think I have little to say about agriculture. My forebears were resolutely industrial and we can find no evidence that anyone from our family has worked the land since at least 1800.
I know that these days we are supposed to bore our congregations with dire warnings of climate change. Or even - quite rightly - point out that not everyone in our world shares in the harvest.
Nevertheless my five years as a member of the European Parliament's Agriculture Committee really opened my eyes to the wonders of what humans can do with God's provision. I visited many farms in the UK, but also in Sweden, Finland, Germany, Holland, Slovakia, Belgium, France, Greece, Spain, Israel and Taiwan.
These farms varied from high tech farms owned by multi-nationals through to tiny family run organic farms with a lot of variation in between.
As I made my way round these farms I noticed the sheer ingenuity that turned the creation into a source of food.
When I was a child the United Nations used to warn that two-thirds of the world's population were starving. Across Europe, the Indian Sub Continent and much of Asia there were massive refugee problems. There still are problems, but not on such a great scale.
We often beat ourselves up wondering where the world is going. However modern agriculture and the global markets have delivered good cheap food in abundance. And for that we should be grateful.
There is still much to do. We need to make the global players more responsive to need. We need to encourage balanced diets. We need to support and promote fair trade. But we still need to give thanks.
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4 comments:
We've still got the old problem which goes back at least to Roman times; subsistence farmers round the world are forced off the land to make way for plantations which are used to produce food for export.
I saw this in the Guardian last week, for instance, and I've heard plenty more such stories: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/22/uganda-farmer-land-gave-me-everything?INTCMP=SRCH . This one's about timber, but China, in particular, is grabbing huge areas of land in poor countries to feed its own people. We can produce lots of cheap food, but at what cost?
Robert, I really do have issues about whether subsistence farming is really the best way of working the land. That's one of the reasons why I'm not happy with some aid agencies who seem content to support the status quo rather than change it. There are alternatives to multi-nationals undertaking land grabs but the future must be high tech, with specialism and cash crops. We should be promoting co-operative or social business collectivisations. The idea that we should all live at subsistence level is medieval rather than noble.
I was brought up in a market town with the country side at the bottom of the garden, literally. I have helped my father grow our own vegetables and worked on various farms. I've brought in the hay, dipped the sheep, brought in the cows,cleaned up the byre after them and painted the barn! It's long hours, hard graft, dirty and often dangerous work and that is true at all levels.
Yes, there are unethical practices. Subsistence farmers are not always good to their animals, and often still use growing techniques that we left behind centuries ago. Equally, animals that never see a natural day or are allowed to run free are an offence. Some of what we put on the land is ridiculous. Nevertheless, more people eat better than ever before and there are good ways of farming. I'm with David on this one.
I have no professional advice on how to be a better farmer so I won't attempt to give it. I certainly don't wish to keep any individual in poverty.
Regarding climate change, however, it's not about boring congregations. At the basic level, it's about not wasting what God gave us and not proclaiming a theology of exploitation.
At a less basic level, it is about how the almighty and most high God created the universe from nothing, how God moulded every single quark atom, person, animal, planet and star and how God holds it in being. How all things are created from the same stuff: stars and plants billions of light years apart, you and me, all created of the same stuff. And if the conditions for the birth of the universe had been just slightly different, we would not exist.
It is about how, being made of the same stuff (for example, carbon and oxygen) as the minerals and animals and atmosphere of this planet, we share an ontological (look it up) relationship with them - in a very real sense we are "brothers and sisters".
Yep, really boring.
So, please give me an exciting theology of how we're supposed to deplete the ozone layer until the Gulf Stream diverts south and the entire UK ecosystem is irreversibly damaged and how this should increase my faith in God? And while you're at it, come experience the daily two to three hour tropical-quality rainstorms we're having here in the Midwest that are damaging crops and making people homeless.
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