Valuing Variability: Agriculture,Ecology and COVID-19

Introduction

Debates on the origins of COVID-19 point towards two threads—one, that the virus jumped over from bats to humans through wild pangolins as the intermediate host, possibly at a seafood market in Wuhan, China and second, it came from factory-farmed domesticated pigs in Wuhan. In both cases, the source of the problem lies in our food production and consumption model that is destroying the diversity of nature, both species and their habitats, and creating conditions for repeated zoonosis. Over the last two decades, viruses have jumped the species barrier over to humans, leading to SARS (through civet cats in China), MERS (dromedary camels in the Middle East), Swine flu (pigs in North America), Nipah virus (pigs in Malaysia) and avian influenza (through infected birds; World Health Organisation, 2020).

Moreover, the very same processes that have produced conditions for viruses to emerge and infect human beings are also compromising our immunity by converting us into standardised consumers eating standardised foods with low nutritional diversity, thus, hurting our health. In this essay, I argue that transforming our food systems to re-value the variability of nature and enhancing our ability to work with variability can provide a resilient response out of this crisis.

The Curse of the Wild?

Unlike Ebola or Nipah virus, whose origins could be traced to specific geographical locations and cases, the origins of COVID-19 are, as yet, shrouded in mystery. It emerged that one-fourth of the earliest cases were not from the Wuhan market and neither was the first case from there (World Health Organisation, 2020, Cyranoski, 2020). Moreover, although pangolins were suspected as intermediate hosts as they are in huge demand due to their meat and the medicinal properties of their scales, this, too, is uncertain (Andersen et al., 2020). Other possibilities could be pigs, goats, sheep, or civets (Ye et al., 2020).

Nonetheless, animal welfare activists have called for a ban on wet markets and outlawing of the trade in wild animals. They argue that with human encroachment into wildlife areas for hunting and trading in wild animals, we are exposing ourselves to primate and bat species that harbour viruses which can hop over into humans. The spill-over risk is the highest from threatened and endangered wildlife populations due to extensive loss of their habitat. Activists call for letting wild animals be in their native environments so that the viruses stay with them.

However, a ban will hurt the livelihoods of the poorest in Africa, Southeast Asia, China and elsewhere, who depend on these activities for their economic survival. Moreover, animal protein from these sources is critical to supplementing people’s diets, which, if taken away, will have drastic consequences for their health. ¹ Historically, close proximity between wildlife and people has always been the case. Wild animals have always been a crucial source of food for survival across the world and various indigenous groups (including adivasi groups in India, for instance) have had a close symbiotic relationship with the forest. Whereas the term ‘wildlife’ seems to suggest a place untouched by humans, human encroachment into forests and sustained engagement with the ‘wild’ has been the hallmark of the last few hundred years. ² So blaming proximity for the crisis seems off the mark.

Rather, much of the problem has been a result of commodifying the forest and its products, especially from colonial times, which has intensified over the last 50 years as more and more people are pushed onto ecologically fragile zones for their survival. This desperate push deeper into hinterlands has proceeded without the same kinds of self-regulation which existed in some form earlier. The wildlife trade is fuelled by consumer demand across China and across the world—a demand for food and medicines that has been simultaneously created as newer products are pushed into markets by suppliers (United Nations Environment Programme and International Livestock Research Institute, 2020).

In the COVID-19 case, apart from the long supply chains of wild animals in the wildlife trade, many wild animals including pangolins and civets, are intensively farmed in China. As several past outbreaks have originated in factory farms (Nipah virus and Swine flu), there is speculation that the origin of COVID-19 may possibly be traced back to pig factory farms in Wuhan, which is amongst the top five pig producers in China (Fiebrig, Bombardi and Pablo, 2020).

What are Factory Farms?

Factory-style slaughterhouses were first started in the United States around Chicago in the 1860s. ³ Eventually, they led to the creation of industrial animal farms where cattle, pigs, sheep, chickens were bred from a chosen sub-set of animals to grow to the same size and specifications to be processed easily in factory-style slaughterhouses and produce the same quality (colour, texture and taste) of meat which could be refrigerated, packaged and sold. Animals were housed in crowded conditions to minimise the use of space per animal and antibiotics became necessary to keep these animals alive and disease free. By the 1970s, the American animal farming system was flush with antibiotics and an assembly line system of managing them had become commonplace (Kramer, 1981; Fink, 1998). Over the last 20 to 30 years, such farms have become commonplace in China and even in India.

These immunologically compromised, stressed animals are crowded together, sometimes in unhygienic conditions, and are often transported long distances, creating the conditions for antimicrobial resistant pathogens to develop. Antibiotics are the backbone of the system as these factory farms are sites of continuous infection. When outbreaks take place or contagions emerge, mandatory culling/killing of farm animals is done regardless of whether the animals were infected or not. The growth of factory farms increases the risk, scale and frequency of infection amongst animals with a narrow genetic base and creates the perfect conditions for zoonosis (Wallace, 2016).

Creating Standardised Foods for Standardised Consumers

The rise of factory farms can be attributed to the need for producing standardised food to fulfil the demands of standardised consumers. A standardised consumer is one who expects to see a chicken fillet look exactly like the picture on the website—same size, texture and colour. The same thing applies for vegetables and fruits. A ‘good’ tomato has to be the same shape, hardness and colour (deep red) for a consumer to buy it, regardless of whether the tomato is to be used for making rasam, chutney or salad.

But there is a two-way logic at work here. This standardised demand is a result of the rise of standardised factory farms themselves—they have advertised and marketed their products through brands and supermarkets to create business, at the expense of local producers who would provide non-standardised products. Often, these would be native breeds or desi varieties, of varying shapes, sizes, colours—variation that is the hallmark of nature.

(Un)Fortunately, nature does not produce standardised products. Standardised means ‘compromised’. Uniformity means susceptibility to instant destruction. Disease or predators/pests can wipe out vulnerable populations of plants or animals entirely. Nature thrives on diversity, on variability—that is its mechanism for reducing risk, for increasing the chances of survival.

But the valorisation of a standardised, uniform product became equated with a certain vision of quality, where quality came to be defined solely by appearance and not by taste, purpose of use, or healthfulness. This led to the creation of a ‘discerning’ consumer who began to expect ‘standardised’ foods. However, to produce standardised products, producers were forced to dump the unstandardized, non-uniform produce and eventually, they adopted machines, chemicals and specially bred plants and animals to transform nature’s diverse bounty into products that all looked and felt and even tasted the same (Stoll, 1998). Not every producer was able to survive this monoculture treadmill. One either got big or got out.

Is Vegetarianism/Veganism the Solution?

It is often argued by animal rights activists and consumer welfare groups across the global north that if only human beings stopped eating meat, we would be free from these factory farms and their attendant supply chains. This move to veganism and vegetarianism has been hailed from the United States to Australia. Ironically, India is often upheld as a country with a large vegetarian population to suggest that it is a feasible proposition, even though a majority of Indians eat meat (Natrajan and Jacob, 2018). ⁴

However, such an approach misses the fact that the problem of zoonosis is not about meat consumption per se. It is about the manner in which that meat is grown, processed, transported and consumed. Historically, in countries like India, livestock was reared as part of an integrated model of farming. Animals provided power for ploughing and other farm operations, their dung was used as fertiliser and farm (plant) waste was fed back to them. Whether it was cattle, goats, or even camels, they provided milk and their meat was a critical source of protein. The advent of machines and chemical fertilisers broke this mutually beneficial relationship. Instead of farm waste, dedicated land is set aside to grow monoculture soyabean and maize (corn) that is converted into animal feed in factories. The meat produced from cattle who are given this processed feed, has a very high ecological and carbon footprint. Going back to an integrated livestock model can help reduce this footprint, while also improving overall soil fertility that has been damaged by chemical imbalance and overuse. ⁵

Compromised Consumers?

With the rise of factory farms, the standardised consumer has today become the immuno-compromised consumer because (s)he is eating standardised industrial fare without consuming a diversity of nutrients across geography and season, that are needed to battle infection. Our modern food system has been reduced to dependence on a narrow genetic base of animal and plant products that are highly susceptible to virus outbreaks, which can spread rapidly across the entire system, and even jump over to human beings.

On the other hand, there has been a strong resurgence of nutritious foods and immunity boosting drugs as the COVID-19 Pandemic has unfurled. Indians are talking about the healing properties of giloy, turmeric, neem and various other herbs and spices. Ironically, many of them are being extracted from the mountains and forests of central or coastal India or the Himalayas and are making their way across long supply chains to be converted into pills and powders for the mass consumer. Monoculture farming of these revived products has flourished alongside their over-extraction from dwindling forests, which have been severely impacted by urbanisation, monoculture timber plantations, development projects and now, climate change (Badola and Aitken, 2003).

Thus, the very same processes of monoculture production and consumption that have compromised our immunity in the first place, are now being accelerated in an effort to produce immunity boosting drugs and medicines to save us. This vicious cycle has pushed us further into a downward spiral. With looming climate change, there is risk of imminent collapse.

It is imperative that we begin to re-value variability (Krätli, 2015) and the ability to work with it rather than pushing for standardisation. We need to invest in local food economies building on local agro-ecologies. The best protection we have for our survival is the diversity on our plates. And that diversity on our plates is entirely the gift of the diversity in nature. By transforming our own consumption patterns to locally produced, seasonal, and diverse animal and plant foods, we can begin to address the contradictions of our food production system and begin to regain our own health as well as the health of our planet.