From the video description:

Jointly produced by 8 Latin American organisations and edited by Radio Mundo Real, the documentary “Seeds: commons or corporate property?” draws on the experiences and struggles of social movements for the defence of indigenous and native seeds in Ecuador, Brazil, Costa Rica, Mexico, Honduras, Argentina, Colombia, and Guatemala.

The main characters are the seeds – indigenous, native, ours- in the hands of rural communities and indigenous peoples. The documentary illustrates that the defence of native seeds is integral to the defence of territory, life, and peoples’ autonomy. It also addresses the relationship between indigenous women and native seeds, as well as the importance of seed exchanges within communities. Exploring the historical origins of corn, and the appreciation and blessing of seeds by Mayan communities, this short film shows the importance of seeds in ceremonies, markets and exchanges.

Local experiences of recovery and management of indigenous seeds demonstrate the significant and ongoing struggles against seed laws, against UPOV and the imposition of transgenic seeds. Whilst condemning the devastation that such laws bring, this film captures the peoples’ resistance to the advancement of agribusiness.

The documentary is available in Spanish; with English, Portuguese and French subtitles. We invite you to watch it and to share it widely in order to continue defending the seeds which have become both peoples’ heritage, and which serve humankind on the path towards food sovereignty.

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In the coming decades, we’ll be able to reduce the carbon intensity of the global economy by about 1.9% per year, if we make heavy investments in clean energy and efficient technology. That’s a lot. But as long as the economy keeps growing by more than that, total emissions are still going to rise. Right now we’re ratcheting up global GDP by 3% per year, which means we’re headed for trouble.

If we want to have any hope of averting catastrophe, we’re going to have to do something about our addiction to growth. This is tricky, because GDP growth is the main policy objective of virtually every government on the planet. It lies at the heart of everything we’ve been told to believe about how the economy should work: that GDP growth is good, that it’s essential to progress, and that if we want to improve human wellbeing and eradicate poverty around the world, we need more of it. It’s a powerful narrative. But is it true?

Maybe not. Take Costa Rica. A beautiful Central American country known for its lush rainforests and stunning beaches, Costa Rica proves that achieving high levels of human wellbeing has very little to do with GDP and almost everything to do with something very different.

Every few years the New Economics Foundation publishes the Happy Planet Index – a measure of progress that looks at life expectancy, wellbeing and equality rather than the narrow metric of GDP, and plots these measures against ecological impact. Costa Rica tops the list of countries every time. With a life expectancy of 79.1 years and levels of wellbeing in the top 7% of the world, Costa Rica matches many Scandinavian nations in these areas and neatly outperforms the United States. And it manages all of this with a GDP per capita of only $10,000 (£7,640), less than one fifth that of the US.

In this sense, Costa Rica is the most efficient economy on earth: it produces high standards of living with low GDP and minimal pressure on the environment.

How do they do it? Professors Martínez-Franzoni and Sánchez-Ancochea argue that it’s all down to Costa Rica’s commitment to universalism: the principle that everyone – regardless of income – should have equal access to generous, high-quality social services as a basic right. A series of progressive governments started rolling out healthcare, education and social security in the 1940s and expanded these to the whole population from the 50s onward, after abolishing the military and freeing up more resources for social spending.

Costa Rica wasn’t alone in this effort, of course. Progressive governments elsewhere in Latin America made similar moves, but in nearly every case the US violently intervened to stop them for fear that “communist” ideas might scupper American interests in the region. Costa Rica escaped this fate by outwardly claiming to be anti-communist and – horribly – allowing US-backed forces to use the country as a base in the contra war against Nicaragua.

The upshot is that Costa Rica is one of only a few countries in the global south that enjoys robust universalism. It’s not perfect, however. Relatively high levels of income inequality make the economy less efficient than it otherwise might be. But the country’s achievements are still impressive. On the back of universal social policy, Costa Rica surpassed the US in life expectancy in the late 80s, when its GDP per capita was a mere tenth of America’s.

Today, Costa Rica is a thorn in the side of orthodox economics. The conventional wisdom holds that high GDP is essential for longevity: “wealthier is healthier”, as former World Bank chief economist Larry Summers put it in a famous paper. But Costa Rica shows that we can achieve human progress without much GDP at all, and therefore without triggering ecological collapse. In fact, the part of Costa Rica where people live the longest, happiest lives – the Nicoya Peninsula – is also the poorest, in terms of GDP per capita. Researchers have concluded that Nicoyans do so well not in spite of their “poverty”, but because of it – because their communities, environment and relationships haven’t been ploughed over by industrial expansion.

All of this turns the usual growth narrative on its head. Henry Wallich, a former member of the US Federal Reserve Board, once pointed out that “growth is a substitute for redistribution”. And it’s true: most politicians would rather try to rev up the GDP and hope it trickles down than raise taxes on the rich and redistribute income into social goods. But a new generation of thinkers is ready to flip Wallich’s quip around: if growth is a substitute for redistribution, then redistribution can be a substitute for growth.

Costa Rica provides a hopeful model for any country that wants to chart its way out of poverty. But it also holds an important lesson for rich countries. Scientists tell us that if we want to avert dangerous climate change, high-consuming nations – like Britain and the US – are going to have to scale down their bloated economies to get back in sync with the planet’s ecology, and fast. A widely-cited paper by scientists at the University of Manchester estimates it’s going to require downscaling of 4-6% per year.

This is what ecologists call “de-growth”. This calls for redistributing existing resources and investing in social goods in order to render growth unnecessary. Decommoditising and universalising healthcare, education and even housing would be a step in the right direction. Another would be a universal basic income – perhaps funded by taxes on carbon, land, resource extraction and financial transactions.

The opposite of growth isn’t austerity, or depression, or voluntary poverty. It is sharing what we already have, so we won’t need to plunder the earth for more.

Costa Rica proves that rich countries could theoretically ease their consumption by half or more while maintaining or even increasing their human development indicators. Of course, getting there would require that we devise a new economic system that doesn’t require endless growth just to stay afloat. That’s a challenge, to be sure, but it’s possible.

After all, once we have excellent healthcare, education, and affordable housing, what will endlessly more income growth gain us? Maybe bigger TVs, flashier cars, and expensive holidays. But not more happiness, or stronger communities, or more time with our families and friends. Not more peace or more stability, fresher air or cleaner rivers. Past a certain point, GDP gains us nothing when it comes to what really matters. In an age of climate change, where the pursuit of ever more GDP is actively dangerous, we need a different approach.

Photo by ohadby

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According to a recent United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization report, due to human ecological malfeasance we have only 60 harvests left on this wasting planet. That’s it: 60 more years of food and then the industrial agribusiness frenzy is over. And it might actually be far worse: the just-­issued report of the Environmental Audit Committee of the British House of Commons warned that:

“Some of the most productive agricultural land in England is at risk of becoming unprofitable within a generation through soil erosion and loss of carbon, and the natural environment will be seriously harmed.”

Indeed, in some places it’s already happening. Food systems around the world are breaking down, and the resulting food shortages have led to wars and revolutions. Starving people are risking everything as they flee to areas where there is still food. Why is this happening?

On one level, it’s quite simple. Business interests chasing enormous short-­term profits have waged war against the productive topsoil of the planet, and we’ve already lost between 50-­75% of life-­sustaining soil worldwide. Using chemical pesticides and fertilizers, industrial agribusiness is burning through 10 tons of soil per hectare per year of cropland, which is soil loss that is up to 20 times the amount of food being produced on that land. And what do we get for that? We get food fit for factory farming and factory nations.

Why would humans destroy the very soils that have long sustained civilizations? The First Nations of North America have an explanation for this form of cannibalistic self-­consumption: the wetiko psychosis. Wetiko, also known by some First Peoples as wendingo, is a cannibal spirit that devours the flesh of humans or, ecologically, eats the flesh of Mother Earth. The wetiko psychosis, then, is the mental derangement that leads our species to consume life-­giving soils, and some will say that the psychosis is caused by spirit possession.

Others might say it’s caused by governments under the control of sociopathic corporations that enslave and crush the spirits of the free. And others might say it’s the result of clever marketing or meme warfare. it’s the wetiko psychosis we’re seeing: the diagnosis is clear.

Just like families that suffer with deranged family members, the family of life on this planet suffers from our collective wetiko psychosis. Eighty percent of life, as measured by the biomass of all organisms alive today, finds their home in the soil. Earthworms, nematodes, fungi, protozoa, bacteria, and more work together to create a “soil food web” that delivers water and essential nutrients to the plants that we see growing atop the land. They form the life bridge between the inert chemistry of the planet and the biological processes that make Earth a living planet – that make our planet Gaia. Wetiko-­deranged humans, however, rip apart and poison the soil food web – dismantle the life bridge – thereby diminishing the complexity and vitality of the nutrient-­delivery system. Want to see what that looks like? Consider these two photos, taken by the authors on the same day in a field near their farm in Costa Rica.

These two fields were part of an experiment comparing industrial/chemical agriculture with regenerative organic agriculture. The fields were planted side-­by-­ side with the same crop – cassava – and the fields were essentially identical at the start of the trial. Same starting soil, same farmers, same crop, same water, and same sunlight. At the time of planting an unprecedented drought hit the region: even though the test sites were in a rainforest region, there was no rain for six weeks.

As the photos reflect, one field survived while the other suffered massive plant death. The field that survived was the regenerative organic field, so neither chemicals nor pesticides were applied to it. The other field – the dead zone – was treated with agrochemicals in accordance with agricultural “best practices” in Costa Rica.

As the drought occurred immediately after planting the first crop in the experiment, we could not attribute the failure in the dead zone to diminished soil organic matter. If anything, the dead zone started with slightly better soils, and even slightly better populations of soil microorganisms. After the chemicals were applied, however, the microorganism populations in the dead zone – both bacteria and protozoa – plummeted, while in the regenerative site those microorganism populations rose. Those were the only differences between the fields, and it appears that the health of the soil food web in the regenerative field was enough to protect plant life during the severe drought.

Drought is the new normal. Farmers must now contend with weather extremes powered by climate change, which is of course is created by our carbon-­spewing, growth-­at-­all-­costs economic system. We need all the help we can get, and the unseen trillions of microorganisms in a healthy field are one of our most critical allies to help weather the storm and regenerate productive soil. Unless, of course, we kill them off through the ongoing process of wetiko agriculture that values short-­term gain and corporate profit over the livelihood of the world’s majority. It seems we are at a civilizational crossroads: cannibalism or regeneration. The goods news is that if we choose life, we all benefit.

By Steven Farrell and Tom Newmark, co-­owners of Finca Luna Nueva Lodge, a regenerative farm and teaching center in Costa Rica. Tom is also the board chair of the Greenpeace Fund USA, The Carbon Underground, and the American Botanical Council, and is a Steering Committee member of Regeneration International.

Photo by Ecoagriculture Partners

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