What Does the Land Say?

Principal delegates: Ravi Agarwal and Nitoo Das
Respondents: students of ZHdK

What does the land have to say about pesticides, synthetic nitrogen petrol-based fertilization, deforestation, GMO, plastic pollution, disappearing lakes? What does the land say about robotic farming, single crop planting, the reduction of diversity, the extinction of insects? What about the destruction of the Amazon, the destruction of habitat for intensive soy cultivation, and what about increasing water stress?

The “Green Revolution,” implemented in the 1960-70s in the so-called developing world was perhaps the largest concerted effort, supported by both the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, to mass-industrialize agricultural production through the increased deployment of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers as well as new breeds of high yielding crops to greatly increase global food production. Today, some of these areas are facing massive land degradation and soil nutrients depletion forcing farmers to vacate traditional agricultural land and to clear up formerly forested areas.