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Agriculture is humankind’s most important activity. According to some estimates, some 70% of the water our species uses goes to crops and farm animals, and agriculture takes up more space than any other human activity- just look at Google images of the Earth’s surface. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), agriculture employs at least half of the world’s workforce, which makes it evident that no economic sector will ever create as many jobs as farming does. Agriculture therefore must be at the very center of any project for revolutionary social change.

Farming is, as a matter of fact, a central factor in climate change. According to the non-governmental organization GRAIN, winner of the 2011 Right Livelihood Prize:

“The model of industrial agriculture that supplies the global food system essentially functions by converting oil into food, producing tremendous amounts of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the process. The use of huge amounts of chemical fertilisers, the expansion of the industrial meat industry, and the ploughing under of the world’s savannahs and forests to grow agricultural commodities are together responsible for at least 30 per cent of the global GHG emissions that cause climate change.

Turning foodstuffs into global industrial commodities entails also a huge loss of fossil energy by transporting them all over the world, processing, storing, freezing and taking them to where they are consumed. All these processes contribute to the climate account. By adding them we see that the current food system could be responsible for close to one half of all greenhouse gas emissions.”