This is a very comprehensive talk I gave to the Royal Society of Medicine, London in 2000. It remins completly prescient to this day. The title was chosen by the RSM.
The genome is the fertile, fecund plasma of life, the place from which human evolution has flowed forth. We are the expression of this miraculous biological entity, an entity as old and young as time itself. The ozone is a finely tuned shroud of atmospheric particles, which acts as an unseen filter, fracturing and partly absorbing infra red rays which, unrestrained, cause great harm to our biosphere and planetary flora and fauna. The ozone layer is, in many ways, as miraculous as the genome, for it serves to keep our planet earth in the optimum state of balance for the perpetuation of biological and human diversity. How ironic then, that the human genome is now being plundered for the contribution it can make to the global profits of multinational corporations. And the ozone layer is being systematically depleted by polluting emissions from these same global giants.
The scientists who are seeking to chart our DNA are doing so because of the rich prizes believed to be close at hand. The ability to lay out, as a map, the precise location of the genetic information which codes for virtually all known human emotions and physical conditions, makes them guardians (and potential beneficiaries) of a new frontier of knowledge. They are prizing open the last veils of the mystery of life and are about to lay claim to the right to alter and rearrange the very building blocks of evolution itself.
They will operate within the same hierarchical structure of carefully honed expertise as their colleagues, who were set the task of developing recombinant DNA or genetic modification – of agricultural seeds, cereals, and animals. The first manifestation of these laboratory experiments brought us the infamous cloning exercise exemplified by Dolly the sheep and her identical progeny. It also produced a tomato containing genes from the Icelandic cod – with the promise of a “superior fruit – the flavour savour tomato”, designed to resist the freezing temperatures of cold storage while in flight from California to all corners of the globe, at any season of the year. It has gone on from these, as we know, to genetically modified soya beans, maize, rape and many more.
Our food is becoming a novelty, and like other such novelties will be patented and controlled by its manufacturers. The science of genome manipulation may seem impressive, but in all probability it is impairing rather than improving the ability of our planet to heal the multiple wounds of some 250 years of virtually unchecked industrial and post-industrial development.
The problem starts with our apparent unwillingness to recognise the essential symbiosis between human health and planetary health, or respond to the cut-off points that tell us we are pushing both ourselves and the planet too hard. Human and planetary existence share the same health. The illness lies in not recognising this and responding to it. We may, at moments, be able to grasp the elegance of this inherent mutuality, but as a society we appear less than equal to the task of turning it into practice, so continually sidelined are we by the accumulation of wealth. Yet it was this goal that the early pioneers of the organic farming movement set their sights on some 54 years ago when they established the U.K.’s first ecological association called the Soil Association.
They also had a vision of health: it was that soil, plant, animal and man form a dynamic, constant, cyclical law of return – each imparting health, or indeed illness, to the other in a symbiotic chain. So that if any one part should sicken, the others will also be adversely affected. This was not the accepted knowledge. What they were up against was the rapidly accelerating mechanisation and intensification of traditional farming and the equally rapid discarding of many time honoured laws of the land – such as crop rotation, the recycling and composting of organic waste, and the careful husbandry of farm livestock. The advent of cheap synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, and the increasing availability of powerful antibiotics, gave the post-war farmer access to a brave new world of agricultural production techniques eagerly promoted by our Ministry of Agriculture. Food production was about quantity, not quality, and the same pattern of progress (as it was called) could be found in all industrialised models throughout Europe and North America.
The new breed of farmer, adapting to the techniques needed to profit from the higher yields and faster growing livestock, became increasingly dependent on the pharmaceutical and agrichemical industries – and much less so on the indigenous knowledge of his forefathers. He was becoming subservient to a new science of the laboratory, an “industry” rather than a “culture of the land”, and our food was the product at the end of the conveyor belt, rather than the local market stall.
The founding members of the Soil Association saw the warning lights and they realised that this process of agricultural industrialisation was, at best, a short-term expedient designed to greatly increase the output of U.K. food production; but that if it were to become adopted as a long term, mainstream farming policy, both the soils and the quality of food they produce would be dangerously depleted. Not only this, but also that, if food quality was affected, then so too would the overall health of the population be undermined. The rich tapestry of natural biodiversity developed over centuries and integrated as a hallmark of countryside landscapes was also under threat, as monocultural cropping patterns and ever larger, hedgeless fields increasingly threatened to dominate.
Surely we were embarking on a dangerously shortsighted policy entirely inappropriate to the trusteeship of this precious resource? Are not the health of nature and the health of man inextricably bound together? Is not maintaining the fertility of the soil the essential foundation and the life support system of all food production? These were some of the central issues those individuals grappled with, and they are the same ones we grapple with today. The only difference is that now it is even more crucial that a consensus of informed opinion is achieved to support a lasting change of attitude in the way we manage our lives and our land.
It is a commonly held view of leading international ecologists that biological planetary resources are still being used up at a rate of around three times that of our instigation of sustainable resource policies and practices. The window of opportunity for securing the long term health of planet earth is narrowing day by day. Up to 40% of the world’s productive soils have been seriously degraded in the last 100 years, due to agricultural practices more akin to mining than farming. Even in the U.K., where fragile land is repeatedly ploughed and sown to monocrops of wheat, barley and rape, between 10 and 20 tonnes of topsoil per acre is lost each year – soil which has taken millions of years to form.
To make matters worse, much of this loss has been hastened by wholly inappropriate agricultural subsidies. The recognition of widespread atmospheric pollution and ozone depletion, when added to the mismanagement of our agricultural resources, act as stark testimony to the fact that we have been living beyond our means for far too long – and that what is required today is a radical reappraisal of both our attitude to and relationship with the natural world. How much longer can we continue to pay lip-service to the importance of the biological diversity of our land while simultaneously living as though there was no tomorrow?
Some of us who have sought to establish the principles of organic farming over the past 20 to 30 years have been fortunate in having the opportunity to act according to our beliefs – and convert our farmland from an increasing dependency on bought-in agrochemicals and toxic pesticides to a state of self-sustaining renewal, using only the biodegradable by-products of our mixed farming systems. None of us would say this has been easy. Few of us would say it has been demonstrably profitable. But probably all of us would agree – it has been genuinely rewarding. The reward has come not just from the satisfaction of participating in the productive cycle of the seasons and harvesting its fruits. Nor from the fact that we have been as amazed as others at witnessing the power of disease resistance in both crops and animals that accrues incrementally as each organic rotation takes its course. Nor even the visible increase in wild flowers, butterflies and farmland birds that embellish the ecology of the land.
The reward has come from all these, and in addition it has come from helping to break the mould of a long established agricultural ‘production ethic’. A widely held view that commercial food production is about achieving maximum possible yields at the lowest achievable cost. This is the ‘ethic’ of the battery hen house, the monocultural wheat prairie, the super-lactating Friesian Holstein cow. It has brought us poisoned streams, depleted soils and ripped up hedgerows. It produced the mad cow and the tethered sow. It has turned craftsmen off the land and replaced them with machines. It has decimated rural communities and rural markets. It has sold out to the supermarket, the hypermarket and the global market for mass produced, vitamin-depleted, processed, branded sterility. We have explored the myth that this sort of food and farming is ‘the only way to feed the world’ and revealed it instead to be deeply destructive to planetary survival.
We have drawn on the knowledge of our forefathers and the insight of the pioneering ecologists, the doctors, nutritionists, soil scientists and agriculturalists who came together after the war to lay the foundations for change. And we have witnessed – are witnessing – a surge of popular support from a public steadily becoming aware of the real price of “cheap” food, the real choices that need to be made, both for their own health and that of the countryside which so many claim to cherish.
We live in a conflicting yet exciting era. We are increasingly shocked at the degradation of our food and farmland, but we are equally seduced by the “convenience food” lifestyle which has been instrumental in causing it. We are a hypocritical and fickle society. Yet we sense that somewhere around the corner lies a better, less conflict-ridden world. A world that could unify our deeper aspirations and catalyse our creative ideals, the expressions of an intrinsic health. It is, I believe, what being human is all about, a striving for the coming of this world. Yet as our awareness grows, we see more clearly than ever the obstacles that stand in its way.
Lady Eve Balfour, founder of the Soil Association back in 1946, drawing considerable inspiration from the earlier pioneering work of Sir Albert Howard and Sir Robert McCarrison, stated in her seminal work, The Living Soil: “Health is not a state but a dynamic process.” A dynamic which she saw clearly expressed in the nutrient cycle at the base of the plant root system. The symbiotic interplay of micro-organisms, soil fungi and the aerobic intercession of changing weather patterns. She and her colleagues noted how the interaction of these elements could be helped to achieve their optimum dynamic when carefully composted organic matter was returned to the soil on a regular basis. This stimulates the activity of the subsoil and the prevalence of earthworms, whose own activity opens up channels of aeration and hastens the breakdown of surface organic matter into friable, nutrient-rich soil.
Here the foundation for plant, animal and human health is being laid. In the top 6 inches of soil lies the living matter upon which all animal life on earth depends, a teaspoonful of which can contain upwards of 10 million living organisms. If the majority of our food were to have its origin in such soil, we would be laying the foundation for the long term health of the plant and animal life upon which all humanity depends.
The founding members of the Soil Association went on to speculate on the need for a “Ministry of Health” with a remit to draw together the separate Ministerial Departments of Health, Environment and Agriculture and unite them around a new agenda which would work for the common improvement of both ecological and human health – and save each ministry untold billions of pounds wastefully thrown at papering over the cracks in ill-conceived policies. How strongly these ideas still resonate today, when we are confronted daily with the level of crisis management now taken for granted in agriculture, environmental protection and the health service.
We need radical change and it can be achieved by working together. We do not need to wait for any more warnings. It is enough to know how dangerously close our own human immune systems have come to breaking down, faced with a barrage of prettily packaged processed foods of which we in the UK have the distinction of consuming the greatest amount of any other country in the world. Foods whose natural components (if there are any!) have their origins in soils now dangerously depleted of selenium and other vital trace elements that have taken thousands of years to build up, and now have to be applied back to the land as costly soluble, synthesised mineral inputs.
We know enough to see the urgency of changing our ways. Recently Dr David Thomas, a chiropractor, using official Medical Research Council figures from 1940 and MAFF / Royal Society of Chemistry figures from 1991, has traced the deterioration of the mineral content of 27 vegetables over a 51 year period (1936 to 1987). They show a 49% loss of sodium content, a 16% loss of potassium, 25% loss of magnesium, 46% loss of calcium, 27% loss of iron, and 68% loss of copper. It seems deeply ironic that the manufacturers of multivitamin pills have now replaced farmers as the chief providers of our daily nutritional requirements.
The changes we are looking for will need to go beyond correctional tinkering around the edges of indelibly flawed national and international policies. Perhaps I might be bold enough to lay before us the challenge which Eve Balfour and her colleagues so perceptively raised some 50 years ago. The challenge of closing the gap between ‘Human Medicine’ and ‘Planetary Health’, of exploring the interface between a sustainable approach to land management and the integrated science of human health care. To see if a common principle might not emerge which binds them together and informs and guides each to respond to the challenge ahead in a spirit of mutual co-operation?
If the health of our soils and that of our bodies and minds is indeed a common condition, it follows that little can be gained by attempting to keep them separate, since it is continuing to see each in isolation, if not opposition, that holds society back from achieving its true potential and geographic biodiversity of the species from flourishing, rather than floundering.
It would be a fitting tribute to the pioneering and entrepreneurial individuals who gave birth and impetus to the movement for holistic health care and those who launched an ecologically based approach to the care of our land, that there might now emerge a shared mutual respect and commonality of purpose in tackling the formidable barriers that still stand in the way of planetary health.
It is a noble task, which reaches far beyond a preoccupation with individual health protection and quick fix solutions, so lauded throughout the 20th Century. Controversial solutions that have spurred on our hunger to lay bare and demystify the genome of life, perhaps in the process unleashing forces beyond our control.
In the rush to gain financial rewards, we now have moved to the critical point where the laboratory is longer the place to complete the task of scientific experimentation. The laboratory has become the world, threatening the very foundations of evolutionary biology. This poses the question: will the ultimate threat to life lead to the ultimate renaissance? Will it spur us to achieving a collective grasp of our inherent and inalienable relationship with the world around us and the responsibilities we have in ensuring its perpetuity? Genome and ozone are not separate phenomena but two faces of one living entity, an expression and barometer of planetary health whose precarious future lies firmly in our hands.
