This is a research report I have done at uni for Environmental Anthropology looking at the impacts of agriculture on our environment and the relationships we have with our environment in New Zealand. To begin to think more about how our economy, business and food production are being put ahead of our natural environment. Little green steps for this week, start to think about these issues and how we contribute to them.
Food production is a huge industry that is necessary for human survival and yet the practices we promote within this industry are having significant impacts on our natural environment. With the increasing environmental degradation in New Zealand and in fact in the world today it is important to consider the human/environment relationships that may contribute to these practices. In this assignment I will look at the history of agriculture and the human environment relationships of the early European colonial culture that established it. I will then look at the impact of agricultural practices on New Zealand’s natural environment and how they were influenced by the relationships and attitudes of settlers. Then I will consider how these historical perspectives shaped contemporary New Zealand human/ environment relationships and the intensification of agriculture and what impact this has had. What I will show is that European colonial culture has profoundly influenced the human/environment relationships that have led to environmental degradation and ecological crisis through agricultural practices today.
Food production is a huge industry that is necessary for human survival and yet the practices we promote within this industry are having significant impacts on our natural environment. With the increasing environmental degradation in New Zealand and in fact in the world today it is important to consider the human/environment relationships that may contribute to these practices. In this assignment I will look at the history of agriculture and the human environment relationships of the early European colonial culture that established it. I will then look at the impact of agricultural practices on New Zealand’s natural environment and how they were influenced by the relationships and attitudes of settlers. Then I will consider how these historical perspectives shaped contemporary New Zealand human/ environment relationships and the intensification of agriculture and what impact this has had. What I will show is that European colonial culture has profoundly influenced the human/environment relationships that have led to environmental degradation and ecological crisis through agricultural practices today.
I have chosen this topic for my research report because it is an issue particularly close to me. I live in a farming community in rural northland, New Zealand with my immediate family that includes three small children. Before I was aware of the potential health risks due to agricultural practices I took my children swimming in the river across the road and in the lagoon at our local beach and believed that I was doing great things for their health being in a country environment surrounded by nature. I have since learnt that there are many aspects of intensive agriculture that are degrading not just my own local environment but also the New Zealand environment in general. Because of this I have become deeply concerned about not just the health of my family and the wider New Zealand community but also with our natural environment that we rely on for survival.
Historically New Zealand agriculture and the human/environment relationships associated with it, have roots in European colonial culture, which was based on ideals of progress, expansion, capitalism and economic growth and permeated with Christian thought. The English explored the world with the objective of expanding their empire and British navigators such as Captain James Cook reported back on the resources available in the countries he visited and whether those countries were suitable for British settlement to achieve this expansion (Wilson, 2009, n.p). After his exploration and circumnavigation of New Zealand beginning in1769, Cook concluded that the abundance of trees to feed industrial growth and the environment itself made it a desirable location for potential settlement. But according to Geoff Park (1995), Cook played a far larger role than that of navigator in what was to be the beginning of a dramatic change in the New Zealand environment, he states
“James Cook was as much an agent of industrialised agriculture as a great navigator. It was his Endeavour that first brought ashore Europe’s intent for plains country like this, his men who implanted the seeds of ecological change in this soil the moment they saw the giant trees it grew, laying the groundwork for the food trade that has joined together the earth’s extremes (p.59).
Over the next 70 New Zealand’s natural resources were exploited by sealers, whalers and traders but it wasn’t however until after 1840 and the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi that European colonisation and settlement occurred on a large scale. Agricultural growth followed on from this settlement and the colonial settlers began clearing large areas of land for farming. The economy of the time certainly influenced the human/environment relationships in New Zealand. Between 1850 and the 1970s the highest value exports from this country were initially wool and then also meat and dairy and this early pastoral economy relied on these exports for growth (Easton, 2011, n.p). It was therefore an economic necessity to clear land for pasture and increase the number of animals on the land with little regard for the natural environment. In order for the country to develop economically products for export had to be produced. The natural environment was therefore dispensable because it was worth far less as native forest than it was in pasture. So capitalism drove the settlers to modify the New Zealand landscape and influenced their relationship with the land, a separate entity worth sacrificing for economic benefit. The religious view of this colonial culture also profoundly shaped the way they saw and treated the natural environment. In fact, some have argued that because of the way the relationship between humans and nature was conceived by Christianity, it was the most harmful to the environment of all major religions (Garden, 2005, p.67). The Christian relationship of man to the natural environment can be seen in this quote, “as the earth has been created for the use of man, it is against the laws of Providence that it should be kept in a wild state of nature” ( Maori Messenger, 1857, p.2). It was therefore against the colonists religious beliefs to leave land uncleared or untilled and these beliefs contributed to the attitude of settlers that it was necessary to tame and control nature, in fact it was a religious duty. These beliefs created a division between humans and nature and all other sentient beings, man was superior to all other living things in the natural world as everything had been created for man. The influence of Christianity was not the only cultural influence on the human environment relationship of the colonial settlers. They also had an idealized vision of what New Zealand landscape should look like. Just from the title of his book, New Zealand or Zealandia the Britain of the South, Charles Hursthouse (1857) indicates the connection between New Zealand and Britain and the desire to recreate some aspects of Britain in New Zealand and he goes on to show the British attitude towards the natural environment, “The natural scenery of New Zealand is both bold and beautiful; though to an English eye, accustomed to trim fields, clipped hedges, and to the smooth-rolled, finished look of every acre in England it would frequently appear more bold than beautiful…this stock of ‘raw beauty’, is a fertile cultivable country; where plough and sickle and mill would singularly enrich and brighten the landscape” (p.98). They saw that there was potential in the New Zealand landscape but it would be necessary to modify it dramatically for it to be reminiscent of the English landscapes, for it to be fit with their religious beliefs and to be economically productive.
The impact of agriculture and the detached human/environment relationship between the European colonial culture and the New Zealand environment led to profound ecological damage and change. This occurred through major deforestation, soil erosion, the introduction of foreign species of grasses and weeds, use of chemical herbicides and nutrient deficiency in soil. The first act against nature that the settlers took was the clearing of land. They cleared the land by felling trees and burning stumps, any undesirable trees and all undergrowth, including native tussock grasslands but they also drained wetlands removing forests from these areas and converted them to pasture. Large areas of tussock lands and half of New Zealand’s forest had been converted into pastures by 1930 and by the Second World War 85% of wetlands had been drained and converted as well (Haggerty and Campbell, 2009, n.p.). Once the land was cleared introduced grass species were planted out, unfortunately in addition to grasses, weeds were also introduced. Weeds such as gorse, which was introduced as hedging but became a major problem, proliferated in the New Zealand climate and since the 1930s have required the use of chemical herbicides to control them (Popay, 2009, n.p.). Also the additional animals being grazed and the conversion to pasture affected the soil fertility and so it became necessary to use fertilizers such as superphosphate. Another impact has been soil erosion. This is a consequence of deforestation as tree roots stabilized the subsoil so when settlers converted land to pasture and then farmed animals on that land the soil became unstable and eroded in many areas (Gregg, 2009, n.p).
In contemporary New Zealand, the dominant, rationalist, capitalist culture has been influenced by the detached human/environment relationships of their predecessors and the market economy and because of this agriculture is continually being expanded and intensified at the expense of the environment. The detachment of humans from their natural environment as seen in the example of the New Zealand colonial culture can be seen in the dominant culture today. Val Plumwood (2002) describes this type of detachment and the impact of these relationships on the environment, “Rationalism and human/nature dualisms have helped create ideals of human culture and identity that promote human distance from, control of and ruthlessness toward the sphere of nature as the Other…” (p.4). This type of detachment is augmented because of the reliance on agriculture by the New Zealand capitalist, market economy as it has been since the colonial period. Statistically for the period ending June 2011, agriculture exports contributed 25 billion dollars to the New Zealand economy and accounted for 58% of the total exports (Ministry of Agriculture, 2011). This shows that from an economic perspective agriculture is still very important to the economy and the economy is what drives New Zealand’s dominant culture as it participates in the world market. The result of this is that today there is an estimated 70,000 farms that cover half of the New Zealand’s land area (Haggerty & Campbell, 2009, n.p). Another result of the detached relationship and increasing economic drive of market capitalism has been ecological crisis in New Zealand. This crisis is unfolding in many ways. Agriculture contributes to carbon emissions and therefore climate change. Agriculture produces 49% of the total greenhouse gas emissions in New Zealand from livestock, animal excrement and nitrogen fertiliser (Ministry for the Environment, 2008, n.p) and the production of greenhouse gases from farming is contributing to the warming of earths atmosphere and severe climate change (Ministry for the Environment, 2010, n.p.). This is a global issue but one that will significantly impact on the future of both people and the environment in New Zealand. Declining water quality has been attributed to the intensification of pastoral farming from waste and nitrogen run off which causes eutrophication of lakes and rivers, contamination of shellfish and threats of extinction to native freshwater fish and plants as well as threatening biodiversity (Profitt, NIWA, n.p). The declining water quality has also made many areas unsafe for swimming and fishing, favourite New Zealand past times. There is a trend throughout the history of agriculture in New Zealand and that trend is that with the expansion of this industry comes further environmental degradation. The more intensive it becomes the more there are damaging consequences for the natural environment in New Zealand. There is evidence of this everywhere and yet the efforts to mitigate these issues have been relatively minimal. I believe that this is because we have inherited disconnected relationships with our natural environment from our European predecessors and that in our culture, economic value outranks the value of nature. We see nature as disposable and disconnected from ourselves. Money however is considered an intricate part of our lives but we don’t see nature the same way. And yet we are absolutely reliant on our natural environment for survival. Val Plumwood (2000) indicates that it is a failing of the dominant rationalist culture that we are unable to see that humans depend on the ecological order for survival (p.5) and I wholeheartedly agree. The relationships between humans and the environment in Western culture contribute our destruction of it as Donald Worster so aptly puts it,
“Here it is true in the West which we see reflected in the modern irrigation ditch. It is, first and most basically, a culture and society built on, and absolutely dependent on, a sharply alienating, intensely managerial relationship with nature…Quite simply the modern canal, unlike a river is not an ecosystem. It is simplified, abstracted Water, rigidly separated from the earth and firmly directed to raise food, fill pipes and make money” (Cited in Tvedt & Jakobsson, 2006, p.xix)
This understanding gives us the opportunity to address environmental issues from a different perspective. Rather that looking at the issues themselves as the problem we need to look more to ourselves, how our culture and our relationships with the environment have led to these issues.
Through exploring the human/environment relationships of the dominant culture, my culture, in this country I have had to explore my own relationship with the environment and consider my contribution to the degradation. I now feel a much greater sense of responsibility and connectedness to my natural environment. I feel passionate about reducing my impact on the environment, learning more about sustainable management of this precious and live giving part of ourselves and helping to educate others about how we can collectively make changes to alleviate the damaging impact we are having on it. I believe a deeper connection to our environment engenders this deeper sense of responsibility and may encourage others to look at how they live and what impact it is having. As Val Plumwood stated “A more unified place relationship…can be a wonderful instrument or voice for communication with and sensitivity to the earth and other humans.” (Plumwood, 2008, n.p).
The human/environment relationships of the European colonial culture in New Zealand significantly influenced contemporary culture and our attitudes to our environment that has led to degradation of the environment through agriculture. Agriculture and human/environment relationships in New Zealand have roots in European colonial culture, which was based on notions of expansion, progress, capitalism, and economic growth as well as Christian ideals. These cultural beliefs and ideals combined with agriculture led to significant ecological damage and change. These human/environment relationships also influenced contemporary New Zealand culture and their relationships and attitudes toward nature and this combined with a market economy has led to the expansion of agriculture at a significant cost to the environment. This exploration of the relationships that my culture have with the environment has led to personal revelations in my own life and a commitment to contribute to change.
References
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