"Le Monde" calls him the peaceful ecologist. His name is Pierre Rhabi, he was born in Algeria and today he's a farmer, a writer and a philosophe. Deeply humanist, he decided to settle in a farm in Ardèche (France), raising goats and cultivating his proper agro-ecologist garden with his wife.
Agro-ecology? The best word to describe it would be harmony. Harmony between the earth and her vegetation, between the cultures, between the animal species, to resume, between humans, their needs, their activity and their motherland.
That is why Pierre chose to raise 30 goats at a maximum, despite the advice of the banks to widen the herd to "fully benefit" from the the land they have. He also decided to make cheese from their milk to make an added value and then sell it on markets instead of selling as much milk as possible to cooperatives as he was advised to.
1. The roots of agro-ecology
When he was a farm worker, Pierre already found it absurd to use poison to help the crop grow. One day, a friend told him and his boss to read "Fécondité de la terre" from Ehrenfried Pfeiffer. His boss was completely shattered and Pierre says "it's probably the first farmer he helped to change".
Then, when they founded their proper farm in 1963 with his wife Michèle, they decided to raise goats because of the biotype of the soil which was rough and stony.
"European lands have lost 50 to 60% of their humus, their organic matter, in a century."
2. Refit agronomy at the unit of the living
Pierre doesn't like to talk about "ground" or "soil", he prefers the word "land", in reference to "motherland" because it remind us that the earth is something infinitely complexe and above all, alive. He compares it to a symphony. You can add a new instrument to an orchestra, as well as you can plant something new in a land, but on condition that it enriches it and doesn't play wrong notes. One of the most dangerous consequence of our modern agriculture is that it destroys the humus, a natural fertilizer made of to replace it by artificial fertilizers and pesticides that are volatile because they are soluble.
3. Methods consistent with peasants
Speaking about fertilizers, Pierre is astounded when he ears that some governments or multinational company want to practice agro-ecology with OGM, which he considers a crime against humanity. He also finds it ridiculous to impose to farmers to buy patented seeds that can't be plant two years in a row when the nature provides so many plants that can adapt to really different crop conditions. He goes so far as to speak about a "spoliation of the elementary farmer's rights".
" I consider research on OGM a crime against humanity."
4. Enhance human and natural resources
Today, farmers mainly work to line the wallet of fertilizers, pesticides and animal food traders, banks, and end up impoverishing themselves. The paradoxe is that by believing they were going modern, they accepted new masters and put themselves in a new relationship of servitude. Moreover, it is also urgent to stop fighting against the nature but to learn to compose with her.
"In France, we observe one suicide every two days among farmers. It's the third cause of death in the profession."
That is where agro-ecology changes everything. It releases the farmer either from his technical alienation that was making him destroy the earth and from his political and economic one that comes with the agro-industry. By seeing his environment as a natural wealth, he discovers a wonderful partner and widen his horizon.
5. Transform societies and territories
We already can observe countries that, with no other choice, have initiated such a transformation. For example, in the 90's, when Cuba was already under the US embargo, the USSR deprived the island of its chemical and mining ressources. Then, it discovered amazing agricultural ressources, and unexpected intellectual and human ones too. Toward its own territory and creativity, Cuba deeply transformed its agriculture and has been hugely developing agro-ecology for a decade.
A more recent example is Greece, that has to change a lot to survive and overcome its deep crisis. For that, numerous unemployed people in town went back to the countryside to cultivate the land and raise some animals in order to live from what was already existing on their territory.
For Pierre, we really have to change our societies an territories as fast as possible, beginning by lowering our petroleum dependance. In the huge industrial farms, we use more fossil energy to raise an animal than it can give to us when we eat it, this is totally absurd. There, to produce 1kg of bovine meat, we need 10kg of vegetable protein that could have feed humans a lot more whereas an average bovine herd can totally be fed by the grass around a farm, which is a lot more coherent.
"It is to hope that the life intelligence could finally illuminate the one of humans."
For that, he makes a call to rediscover and rehabilitate the creative power of the civil society, named its "creative genius"! He deeply believes that the solutions will come from it, that the society change will come by the human change.
By Julia
