But Vandana Shiva's ideas don't work

One of the advantages of the market based economic system is that people try out all sorts of things. We can then look at the results of what they’ve done, copy those that work well and abandon those that don’t. Persisting in advocating those that don’t work is often referred to as religion - or perhaps Einstein’s definition of insanity, repeating the same mistakes and expecting a different result.

All of which is something to keep in mind when considering Vandana Shiva’s approach to farming. The Guardian provides something of a hagiography - to repeat the allusion to religion - in this interview.

The formidable Indian environmentalist discusses her 50-year struggle to protect seeds and farmers from the ‘poison cartel’ of corporate agriculture

Well, yes, we can see why fight The Man would appeal to those with comfy office jobs and who have never had to struggle with the soil for their daily bread.

For Shiva, the global crisis facing agriculture will not be solved by the “poison cartel” nor a continuation of fossil fuel-guzzling, industrialised farming, but instead a return to local, small-scale farming no longer reliant on agrochemicals.

Local, small-scale farming has another name - peasantry. To remove technology - and capitalism, globalisation and markets - from farming would be to condemn all of humanity to permanent peasantry. We think that’s a bad idea.

But more than that, the thing The Guardian doesn’t mention. Shiva’s ideas have been tried. Just recently, in Sri Lanka. She herself has said so. As many have noted the results were, umm, not good. Like the collapse of yields, imminent starvation and the ruination of the entire economy, the bankruptcy of the State.

We do think it would have been useful for The Guardian to point this out. The ideas have been tried and they don’t work. But then those with the comfy office jobs always do think that they’ll retain those in that New World Order, that it’ll not be them sent out to be that new peasantry. Kip Esquire’s Law is one of those ideas that has been tested and found to be true.