It's a simple idea about nature. I want to say a word for nature because we haven't talked that much about it the last couple days. I want to say a word for the soil and the bees and the plants and the animals, and tell you about a tool, a very simple tool that I have found. Although it's really nothing more than a literary conceit; it's not a technology. It's very powerful for, I think, changing our relationship to the natural world and to the other species on whom we depend. And that tool is very simply, as Chris suggested, looking at us and the world from the plants' or the animals' point of view. It's not my idea, other people have hit on it, but I've tried to take it to some new places.
關於自然,我有一個單純的想法, 我想為自然講幾句話, 因為我們這幾天都沒怎麼談到大自然。 我要為土壤、蜜蜂、植物和動物說幾句話, 並向大家介紹我所發現的一個相當簡單的工具, 它其實只不過是一種想法,不算是什麼科技, 但我認為它有能力改變我們跟大自然的關係, 也能改變我們與我們所仰賴的生物間的關係。 這個工具就像克里斯所說的一樣簡單, 就是從植物或動物的觀點來看我們人類和看這個世界。 這不是我獨到的見解,先前就有人提過了, 但我希望能以新的角度來詮釋。
Let me tell you where I got it. Like a lot of my ideas, like a lot of the tools I use, I found it in the garden; I'm a very devoted gardener. And there was a day about seven years ago: I was planting potatoes, it was the first week of May -- this is New England, when the apple trees are just vibrating with bloom; they're just white clouds above. I was here, planting my chunks, cutting up potatoes and planting it, and the bees were working on this tree; bumblebees, just making this thing vibrate.
我的靈感是從哪裡來的呢? 就如同我想出的其他點子跟工具一樣, 我是在花園裡找到靈感的。我是一個認真的園丁, 七年前的某一天,我在種馬鈴薯, 那時是五月的第一個星期, 我住在新英格蘭,蘋果花正迎風搖曳, 像一朵朵白雲高掛在天上, 我則忙著栽種馬鈴薯, 一塊塊的切好,種進土裡。 蜜蜂們也在樹梢間穿梭忙碌著, 大黃蜂飛舞著,樹枝因而顫動。
And one of the things I really like about gardening is that it doesn't take all your concentration, you really can't get hurt -- it's not like woodworking -- and you have plenty of kind of mental space for speculation. And the question I asked myself that afternoon in the garden, working alongside that bumblebee, was: what did I and that bumblebee have in common? How was our role in this garden similar and different? And I realized we actually had quite a bit in common: both of us were disseminating the genes of one species and not another, and both of us -- probably, if I can imagine the bee's point of view -- thought we were calling the shots. I had decided what kind of potato I wanted to plant -- I had picked my Yukon Gold or Yellow Finn, or whatever it was -- and I had summoned those genes from a seed catalog across the country, brought it, and I was planting it. And that bee, no doubt, assumed that it had decided, "I'm going for that apple tree, I'm going for that blossom, I'm going to get the nectar and I'm going to leave."
我喜歡園藝, 其中一個原因是我不需要太專心, 這不像木工,你不會因為不專心而弄傷自己, 你可以放手讓思緒在別處飛舞。 那天下午,我和大黃蜂一起在花園裡工作, 我問了我自己一個問題: 我倆有何相似之處? 我倆在這花園裡所扮演的角色,有何相似或相異之處? 這時我才發現,我們其實有很多共同點。 我們都在為我們選定的品種傳播基因, 而且如果我能聽得見蜜蜂的心思,它一定也和我一樣 覺得我們是萬物的主宰。 我決定要種哪個品種的馬鈴薯, 不管是什麼品種,都是我做決定選的, 我從全國的種子目錄裡挑選我要的種子, 帶回來並把它種下。 而蜜蜂也認為它有決定權, 我要去那棵蘋果樹,我要去那朵花, 我要去採花蜜,我要走了。
We have a grammar that suggests that's who we are; that we are sovereign subjects in nature, the bee as well as me. I plant the potatoes, I weed the garden, I domesticate the species. But that day, it occurred to me: what if that grammar is nothing more than a self-serving conceit? Because, of course, the bee thinks he's in charge or she's in charge, but we know better. We know that what's going on between the bee and that flower is that bee has been cleverly manipulated by that flower. And when I say manipulated, I'm talking about in a Darwinian sense, right? I mean it has evolved a very specific set of traits -- color, scent, flavor, pattern -- that has lured that bee in. And the bee has been cleverly fooled into taking the nectar, and also picking up some powder on its leg, and going off to the next blossom. The bee is not calling the shots. And I realized then, I wasn't either.
我們都習慣以這種角色自居, 認為自己是大自然的主宰,蜜蜂和我都這麼想。 我種下馬鈴薯,我除掉雜草,我培育這些品種。 可是就在那一天,我突然發覺, 這種想法或許只是我們自欺欺人的妄想? 當然,蜜蜂也認為自己有主宰權, 但我們知道不是這樣, 我們很清楚蜜蜂和花之間是怎麼回事, 蜜蜂其實是被那朵聰明的花操縱著。 我所謂的「操縱」,是以進化論的角度來講, 花朵發展出一套獨特的特徵來誘惑蜜蜂, 包括顏色、氣味、味道和花色等。 蜜蜂被花朵巧妙地拐來採蜜, 採蜜時一些花粉會沾到腳上, 並隨著蜜蜂到下一朵花上。 蜜蜂不是花朵的主宰, 我發現我也不是馬鈴薯的主宰。
I had been seduced by that potato and not another into planting its -- into spreading its genes, giving it a little bit more habitat. And that's when I got the idea, which was, "Well, what would happen if we kind of looked at us from this point of view of these other species who are working on us?" And agriculture suddenly appeared to me not as an invention, not as a human technology, but as a co-evolutionary development in which a group of very clever species, mostly edible grasses, had exploited us, figured out how to get us to basically deforest the world. The competition of grasses, right? And suddenly everything looked different. And suddenly mowing the lawn that day was a completely different experience.
我被這種馬鈴薯誘惑,卻沒有被其他品種誘惑, 因此我種植這種馬鈴薯,為它傳播基因,用更多的田來繁殖它。 就在這時我有了這個想法, 何不從這些利用我們的生物的角度來審視自己? 以這種觀點來看,農業就不再是人類的發明,也不是人類的科技, 而是種同步進化的發展。 這一群很聰明的植物,大部分都是可食的穀物,利用了我們, 讓我們來為它們砍伐森林,拓展耕種面積, 這簡直就是植物之間的競爭,對嗎? 以這種觀點來看事情,每一件事都有不同的意義了, 就連割草這件事,也變成了一個前所未有的經驗。
I had thought always -- and in fact, had written this in my first book; this was a book about gardening -- that lawns were nature under culture's boot, that they were totalitarian landscapes, and that when we mowed them we were cruelly suppressing the species and never letting it set seed or die or have sex. And that's what the lawn was. But then I realized, "No, this is exactly what the grasses want us to do. I'm a dupe. I'm a dupe of the lawns, whose goal in life is to outcompete the trees, who they compete with for sunlight." And so by getting us to mow the lawn, we keep the trees from coming back, which in New England happens very, very quickly.
我在我的第一本書裡提及一件事,那是一本談園藝的書, 我提到我一直認為 草坪是被踐踏在人類文化腳下的大自然, 是專制人類塑造出的景觀, 每次我們割草,我們就是在殘忍的壓制它, 不讓它自由播種、死亡或交配, 這就是草坪。 但我發現,「不,這其實正是草所期望的, 我是個傻瓜,我上了草的當!草生存的目標就是戰勝大樹, 戰勝一直與它競爭陽光的大樹。」 每次當我們割草或修剪樹葉,我們就抑制樹的生長, 要不然在新英格蘭,樹葉很容易就長回來。
So I started looking at things this way and wrote a whole book about it called "The Botany of Desire." And I realized that in the same way you can look at a flower and deduce all sorts of interesting things about the taste and the desires of bees -- that they like sweetness, that they like this color and not that color, that they like symmetry -- what could we find out about ourselves by doing the same thing? That a certain kind of potato, a certain kind of drug, a sativa-indica Cannabis cross has something to say about us. And that, wouldn't this be kind of an interesting way to look at the world?
我開始從這樣的角度來看事情, 甚至寫了一本書叫《慾望植物園》。 我發現,以相同的角度來看待花朵, 你就可以推測出蜜蜂的口味和需求, 看它們是否喜歡甜味、喜歡某種顏色、喜歡對稱的花朵。 那麼,以同樣的角度來看我們自己,又可以發現什麼呢? 某種馬鈴薯、某種藥物、 甚至是工業大麻和印度大麻的混種,都有對人類的觀察評語, 用這種角度來觀察世界不是很有趣嗎?
Now, the test of any idea -- I said it was a literary conceit -- is what does it get us? And when you're talking about nature, which is really my subject as a writer, how does it meet the Aldo Leopold test? Which is, does it make us better citizens of the biotic community? Get us to do things that leads to the support and perpetuation of the biota, rather than its destruction? And I would submit that this idea does this. So, let me go through what you gain when you look at the world this way, besides some entertaining insights about human desire.
我說過這個想法只是一種妄想,要證實這個想法 就得看我們從中學到什麼? 當各位談到大自然,也就是我寫作的主題, 你一定想知道這個想法是否符合阿爾多.李奧帕得標準? 它能否幫助我們成為生物界的好公民? 讓我們做出能支持生物圈永續生存的事, 而不去破壞它? 我在此報告,這種想法確實能幫助我們做到這一切。 讓我為各位介紹,你以這樣的角度看世界會有什麼好處, 先撇開有關人類慾望的有趣觀察不談,
As an intellectual matter, looking at the world from other species' points of view helps us deal with this weird anomaly, which is -- and this is in the realm of intellectual history -- which is that we have this Darwinian revolution 150 years ago ... Ugh. Mini-Me. (Laughter) We have this intellectual, this Darwinian revolution in which, thanks to Darwin, we figured out we are just one species among many; evolution is working on us the same way it's working on all the others; we are acted upon as well as acting; we are really in the fiber, the fabric of life. But the weird thing is, we have not absorbed this lesson 150 years later; none of us really believes this. We are still Cartesians -- the children of Descartes -- who believe that subjectivity, consciousness, sets us apart; that the world is divided into subjects and objects; that there is nature on one side, culture on another. As soon as you start seeing things from the plant's point of view or the animal's point of view, you realize that the real literary conceit is that -- is the idea that nature is opposed to culture, the idea that consciousness is everything -- and that's another very important thing it does.
就身為有智能的人類來說,以其他生物的觀點來看世界, 能幫助我們解釋這種怪異的現象, 也就是在人類的歷史中, 150年前所發生的達爾文革命... 啊!渺小的人類... 感謝達爾文讓我們瞭解, 我們只是眾多物種中的一種。 我們跟其他生物一樣會演進, 會影響別的物種,同時被別的物種影響, 我們的命運深深地交纏在一起。 但奇怪的是,150年後竟然沒有人能記取教訓, 沒有人真的相信達爾文的話。 我們還是笛卡爾的信徒,甚至是笛卡爾的後代, 我們相信個人的主觀意識讓我們彼此不同, 這個世界有主觀意識,也有客觀意識, 有大自然,也有人類文化。 一旦我們開始以植物或動物的角度來觀察事情, 我們就會發現真正可笑的想法是: 「大自然是和文化對立的」、 「意識代表一切」。 但以動植物的角度來看世界
Looking at the world from other species' points of view is a cure for the disease of human self-importance. You suddenly realize that consciousness -- which we value and we consider the crowning achievement of nature, human consciousness -- is really just another set of tools for getting along in the world. And it's kind of natural that we would think it was the best tool. But, you know, there's a comedian who said, "Well, who's telling me that consciousness is so good and so important? Well, consciousness." So when you look at the plants, you realize that there are other tools and they're just as interesting.
還有另一個重要的功能, 就是去治療人類妄自尊大的毛病。 你會突然發現,我們所謂的意識, 我們所珍視的意識, 我們認為是大自然傑作的意識, 只不過是另一種讓我們得以在世上生存的工具罷了。 一般人都自然地認為意識是最好的工具, 但就像一位喜劇演員所說過的: 「是誰說意識有多好?有多重要? 不過就是意識嘛。」 所以當你觀察植物時,你會發現他們也有自己的工具, 也是一樣的神奇。
I'll give you two examples, also from the garden: lima beans. You know what a lima bean does when it's attacked by spider mites? It releases this volatile chemical that goes out into the world and summons another species of mite that comes in and attacks the spider mite, defending the lima bean. So what plants have -- while we have consciousness, tool making, language, they have biochemistry. And they have perfected that to a degree far beyond what we can imagine. Their complexity, their sophistication, is something to really marvel at, and I think it's really the scandal of the Human Genome Project. You know, we went into it thinking, 40,000 or 50,000 human genes and we came out with only 23,000. Just to give you grounds for comparison, rice: 35,000 genes. So who's the more sophisticated species? Well, we're all equally sophisticated. We've been evolving just as long, just along different paths. So, cure for self-importance, way to sort of make us feel the Darwinian idea. And that's really what I do as a writer, as a storyteller, is try to make people feel what we know and tell stories that actually help us think ecologically.
我來舉兩個花園裡的例子, 例如青豆。你知道紅蜘蛛危害青豆時,青豆會怎樣嗎? 它會散發出一種化學氣味, 吸引另一種蜘蛛來, 攻擊紅蜘蛛,以保護青豆。 人類有意識,可以運用工具和語言, 植物則有自己的生化武器, 這種武器的精良程度遠超過我們所能想像, 其複雜與精細度也是令人歎為觀止。 我認為這是人類基因組計劃的大醜聞, 因為一開始我們以為人類會有4、5萬個基因, 可是卻只發現2萬3千個, 再和稻米做比較:3萬5千個基因。 到底誰才是比較複雜的物種呢? 其實,我們一樣複雜, 我們都花了同樣長的時間進化, 只是循著不同的路徑進化而已。 所以,治療人類妄自尊大的解藥,也可以讓我們體會到達爾文的真意。 而我,身為一個作家,一個說故事的人, 就是要告訴大家我們知道的事、我們是如何成為人, 幫助大家從生態的角度思考。
Now, the other use of this is practical. And I'm going to take you to a farm right now, because I used this idea to develop my understanding of the food system and what I learned, in fact, is that we are all, now, being manipulated by corn. And the talk you heard about ethanol earlier today, to me, is the final triumph of corn over good sense. (Laughter) (Applause) It is part of corn's scheme for world domination. (Laughter) And you will see, the amount of corn planted this year will be up dramatically from last year and there will be that much more habitat because we've decided ethanol is going to help us.
另一個例子很實際, 我要說的是─我要帶大家到農場去, 我以植物的觀點來看事情,也幫助我瞭解了整個食物鏈, 我發現,其實我們都被玉米操弄了。 各位今天所聽到有關生化乙醇的演說, 在我看來,正是玉米的最終勝利。(笑) 這是...(掌聲)這是玉米佔領地球的陰謀。 (笑聲) 各位會發現,自去年以來,玉米的種植面積已大幅提升, 因為人類認為自己需要生化乙醇, 將來玉米田面積將更大。
So it helped me understand industrial agriculture, which of course is a Cartesian system. It's based on this idea that we bend other species to our will and that we are in charge, and that we create these factories and we have these technological inputs and we get the food out of it or the fuel or whatever we want. Let me take you to a very different kind of farm.
這讓我...這讓我瞭解了工業化農業, 這種農業當然也信奉笛卡兒的教條, 相信我們可以依照人類的意志栽種植物, 我們具有主控權,是我們創造了這種工廠, 我們具有這種科技技術,我們可以栽種植物獲取食物, 或是取得燃油,或任何我們想要的東西。 我們來看看另一種完全不同的農場,
This is a farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. I went looking for a farm where these ideas about looking at things from the species' point of view are actually implemented, and I found it in a man. The farmer's name is Joel Salatin. And I spent a week as an apprentice on his farm, and I took away from this some of the most hopeful news about our relationship to nature that I've ever come across in 25 years of writing about nature. And that is this: the farm is called Polyface, which means ... the idea is he's got six different species of animals, as well as some plants, growing in this very elaborate symbiotic arrangement.
這個農場位於維吉尼亞州的謝南德谷地, 我在那裡找到了一個 完全以植物的觀點看世界的農場, 農場主人是喬依.薩拉丁, 我花了一個星期的時間在他的農場裡參與實作。 我在那裡看到了人類與自然所能發展出最有希望的關係, 那是我25年來以大自然為素材的寫作經驗裡第一次看到, 就是這個。 這個農場叫做「眾生農場」(Polyface), 在這個農場,他以共生的方式, 養了六種不同的動物,還有一些植物。
It's permaculture, those of you who know a little bit about this, such that the cows and the pigs and the sheep and the turkeys and the ... what else does he have? All the six different species -- rabbits, actually -- are all performing ecological services for one another, such that the manure of one is the lunch for the other and they take care of pests for one another. It's a very elaborate and beautiful dance, but I'm going to just give you a close-up on one piece of it, and that is the relationship between his cattle and his chickens, his laying hens. And I'll show you, if you take this approach, what you get, OK? And this is a lot more than growing food, as you'll see; this is a different way to think about nature and a way to get away from the zero-sum notion, the Cartesian idea that either nature's winning or we're winning, and that for us to get what we want, nature is diminished.
他們採用永續農藝,你們懂一些的, 牛、豬、羊、火雞和... 還有什麼呢? 反正有六種不同的動物,對,還有兔子, 每一種動物都能為另一種動物提供生態服務, 像是某種動物的糞便可能就是另一種動物的食物, 他們彼此也會互相幫忙抓害蟲。 我很難描述,那真是大自然的精心設計, 但我還是想讓你們看看其中一個實例, 就是牛和雞之間的關係,那種雞是蛋雞, 我要告訴各位,如果你採用這種方法,會有什麼結果,好嗎? 你會看到,這不僅僅只是人類在生產食物而已, 這讓我們以另一種方式來思考大自然, 也讓我們擺脫零和遊戲,即笛卡兒 不是天勝就是人勝, 我們盡取所需,耗損自然的觀點。
So, one day, cattle in a pen. The only technology involved here is this cheap electric fencing: relatively new, hooked to a car battery; even I could carry a quarter-acre paddock, set it up in 15 minutes. Cows graze one day. They move, OK? They graze everything down, intensive grazing. He waits three days, and then we towed in something called the Eggmobile. The Eggmobile is a very rickety contraption -- it looks like a prairie schooner made out of boards -- but it houses 350 chickens. He tows this into the paddock three days later and opens the gangplank, turns them down, and 350 hens come streaming down the gangplank -- clucking, gossiping as chickens will -- and they make a beeline for the cow patties.
牧場的牛關在廉價電圍欄裡, 是這裡唯一稱得上科技的東西, 只用個還算新的汽車電池供給電力, 就連我也能在15分鐘內架設好約0.1公頃的圍欄。 牛群們在牧場上吃草,輪流在不同地點放牧, 他們會吃光所有的草,一點也不剩。 農場主人等了三天, 然後牽來一台載雞的拖車, 拖車搖搖晃晃, 像是用紙板做成的牧場大篷車, 裡面住了350隻雞。 三天後,他把拖車牽到牧場裡,放下一個跳板, 350隻母雞立刻從跳板上走下來, 嘰嘰咕咕地叫個不停。 直直走向牛糞,
And what they're doing is very interesting: they're digging through the cow patties for the maggots, the grubs, the larvae of flies. And the reason he's waited three days is because he knows that on the fourth day or the fifth day, those larvae will hatch and he'll have a huge fly problem. But he waits that long to grow them as big and juicy and tasty as he can because they are the chickens' favorite form of protein.
做著你想不到的事情, 他們在翻啄牛糞, 找尋蛆、雞母蟲和蒼蠅的幼蟲。 農場主人之所以等上三天, 是因為他知道蒼蠅的幼蟲會在第四天或第五天就會長成蒼蠅, 到時麻煩可就大了; 但他還是希望儘可能讓這些蟲子長大一點,才會更美味, 因為這些蟲子是母雞最喜愛的蛋白質來源。
So the chickens do their kind of little breakdance and they're pushing around the manure to get at the grubs, and in the process they're spreading the manure out. Very useful second ecosystem service. And third, while they're in this paddock they are, of course, defecating madly and their very nitrogenous manure is fertilizing this field. They then move out to the next one, and in the course of just a few weeks, the grass just enters this blaze of growth. And within four or five weeks, he can do it again. He can graze again, he can cut, he can bring in another species, like the lambs, or he can make hay for the winter.
這些母雞跳來跳去, 把牛糞翻得到處都是,只為了找到蟲子, 但他們卻順道把牛糞給散佈出去了。 這一招很有用,算是第二層的生態服務。 第三層則是由在牧場上的母雞 排出糞便, 裡面含有大量氮肥,順道再為牧草施肥。 接下來牛和雞都會移到下一塊牧場, 而幾個星期之後,這塊牧場上又會長出亮眼的牧草。 讓牧人於四五星期後再如法炮製一番, 再放牧牛,收割牧草,帶來另一種動物, 像是羊,農場主人也可以為過冬準備乾草。
Now, I want you to just look really close up onto what's happened there. So, it's a very productive system. And what I need to tell you is that on 100 acres he gets 40,000 pounds of beef; 30,000 pounds of pork; 25,000 dozen eggs; 20,000 broilers; 1,000 turkeys; 1,000 rabbits -- an immense amount of food.
我希望各位仔細看看這個農場裡發生的事, 這是一個很有生產力的系統, 我要告訴各位,這個牧場有40.5公頃, 生產出約1.8萬公斤牛肉,1.4萬公斤豬肉,2萬5千打雞蛋, 還有2萬隻嫩雞,1千隻火雞,1千隻兔子等, 真是龐大的食物量。
You know, you hear, "Can organic feed the world?" Well, look how much food you can produce on 100 acres if you do this kind of ... again, give each species what it wants, let it realize its desires, its physiological distinctiveness. Put that in play.
老是有人問:「有機農業能餵飽全世界的人嗎?」 看看這個農場,你就會知道40.5公頃的土地能生產出多少食物, 你只要給每種生物它所需要的東西就行了。 他們自己知道自己要些什麼,每種生物都有不同的需求, 順應自然就對了。
But look at it from the point of view of the grass, now. What happens to the grass when you do this? When a ruminant grazes grass, the grass is cut from this height to this height, and it immediately does something very interesting. Any one of you who gardens knows that there is something called the root-shoot ratio, and plants need to keep the root mass in some rough balance with the leaf mass to be happy. So when they lose a lot of leaf mass, they shed roots; they kind of cauterize them and the roots die. And the species in the soil go to work basically chewing through those roots, decomposing them -- the earthworms, the fungi, the bacteria -- and the result is new soil. This is how soil is created. It's created from the bottom up. This is how the prairies were built, the relationship between bison and grasses.
現在,我們以牧草的角度來看這件事, 當我們這樣經營牧場時,牧草會怎麼樣? 當有動物吃掉牧草時,牧草的高度就下降, 這時它立刻做出個有趣反應。 如果有人喜歡園藝,應該就聽過「根冠比」這個名詞, 植物讓根部與莖葉 維持某種特定比例,植物才能長得好, 所以當牧草的葉子都被吃掉後,他們的根部也會脫落, 有點像是腐蝕掉根部,讓根部脫落死亡。 接下來在土壤裡的生物就有得忙了, 他們會嚼食這些牧草根,分解他們, 包括蚯蚓、真菌和細菌都以此為生,接下來就產生了新的土壤。 土壤是這麼產生的, 是由土裡的生物製造的, 因此才會有草原, 牛和牧草的關係才會因應而生。
And what I realized when I understood this -- and if you ask Joel Salatin what he is, he'll tell you he's not a chicken farmer, he's not a sheep farmer, he's not a cattle rancher; he's a grass farmer, because grass is really the keystone species of such a system -- is that, if you think about it, this completely contradicts the tragic idea of nature we hold in our heads, which is that for us to get what we want, nature is diminished. More for us, less for nature. Here, all this food comes off this farm, and at the end of the season there is actually more soil, more fertility and more biodiversity.
當我瞭解了這一層關係後,我發現─ 如果你問喬依.薩拉丁是扮演什麼角色,他會說他不是雞農, 他不是牧羊人,他也不是放牧牛的人,他只是個牧草農人, 因為牧草才是這整個體系裡最重要的一環。 如果你仔細思考這件事,這完全顛覆了我們對於大自然的刻板印象, 以往我們只在乎我們得到什麼,卻不在乎大自然損失了什麼, 我們給自己很多,給大自然卻很少。 這個農場能生產各式食物,然而在歲末時, 土壤卻更多更肥沃,物種更豐富多樣。
It's a remarkably hopeful thing to do. There are a lot of farmers doing this today. This is well beyond organic agriculture, which is still a Cartesian system, more or less. And what it tells you is that if you begin to take account of other species, take account of the soil, that even with nothing more than this perspectival idea -- because there is no technology involved here except for those fences, which are so cheap they could be all over Africa in no time -- that we can take the food we need from the Earth and actually heal the Earth in the process.
這是一件很值得我們去做的事, 有許多農人已經在這樣做了, 這已經超越了有機農業, 因為有機農業或多或少還是信奉笛卡兒教條。 這種農業給我們的教訓是,如果我們開始考慮其他物種的生存, 考慮土壤的肥沃,那麼只要我們秉持這種理念, 我們就能取得我們所需要的食物,並藉此復育地球生態, 因為這裡面除了圍欄之外,沒有什麼高科技的東西, 推廣的成本很低, 我們可以將這種農業推廣到非洲去。
This is a way to reanimate the world, and that's what's so exciting about this perspective. When we really begin to feel Darwin's insights in our bones, the things we can do with nothing more than these ideas are something to be very hopeful about.
我們可以讓地球生態恢復生機, 這也是這觀點如此令人振奮的原因。 當我們打從內心服膺達爾文理論時, 光是抱持這種觀點,就能讓我們 做出非常有前景的事來。
Thank you very much.
謝謝各位!