Soil Not Oil

Environmental Book Review 

Soil Not Oil 

Vandana Shiva

South End Press, 2008

Truly essential reading, Soil Not Oil is a slender, inviting book that generates several lasting impressions. First of all, within a few paragraphs, it becomes evident that environmental activist author Vandana Shiva is in the fields, talking to the people who work the land, talking to the people who dwell by motorways and suffer exposure to pollutants, talking in person to a collection of everyday heroes presented throughout the book. On July, 8, 2008, the government of India looked at the dire situation Shiva describes throughout the book, (still an on-going environmental catastrophe) and found it to be of such concern to India that a policy was established “which prioritizes food crops over biofuel crops” and resulting in a public declaration that industrial biofuels lead to ecological and economic impoverishment. Shiva, an able essayist, shares in this book a love of India and her deep empathy for her life-threatened subjects, followed up by hard-ass fact and well-researched references. Articulate and clear, it represents a highly-readable crash course in a number of topics, but in particular, readers can expect to emerge with a thorough understanding of several noteworthy environmental discussions. You may have heard that since 1995, more than 270,000 farmers have committed suicide in India, an absolutely chilling figure which begs an individual like Vandana Shiva to speak up. In her elegant voice, rising above the efforts by PR spin doctors from Monsanto and other corporations (corporations the rest of the world holds responsible for the tragedy), Shiva begins the discussion in a refreshingly open style- “at the beginning” with the story of the automobile in India. A charming description of the traditional modes of travel there, the story of “modernizing” a way of life built upon foot and animal paths soon reveals untold damage to remote places where a culturally-rich infrastructure has for thousands of years delivered commendable, healthy and sustainable communities. The removal of quotas from the automobile sector, political corruption, and the banning of the rickshaw, “fossil-free, climate-friendly transportation” in Kolkata and Delhi, quickly resulted in disaster. Compared to other writers explaining the impact of globalization and agriculture, (such as the essays in Hungry for Profit by John Bellamy Foster, or Marie-Monique Robin's The World according to Monsanto, positively reviewed by Shiva) Shiva sets the standard in her genre. This is not only through the warmth conveyed in her writing style, but for her scientific reliability when using facts to support solutions. Casting light upon India’s shining modernization process, “the superhighway and automobile are the ultimate cultural symbols of non-sustainability and ecological exclusion,” Shiva even unearths an eerie historic parallel in Hitler’s highway propaganda of an earlier era. Here the volume is also praiseworthy in detailing the extent to which deliberate misinterpretation of carbon trading and the Kyoto Accord’s now infamous Clean Air Mechanism have (as mirrored in other parts of the world) served a destructive purpose in India.

Soil Not Oil then turns its attention to the fiasco of the biofuel sector globally, and in particular, the Biofuel and Jatropha industry in India. Now we are moving into the territory of Shiva’s favorite discussion, sustainable agriculture, but not before a detailed and enlightening exploration of the Biofuel sector as creating an agricultural crisis. Biofuels, for anyone who may not be up on such things, have for some time now been understood as destructively negative net, (it takes more petrol to produce ethanol than ethanol produced). Shiva expertly articulates Biofuel’s role as “non-sustainable monocultures that serve to increase greenhouse gas emissions” and “a major cause of hunger and landlessness” as an assault on “the livelihood security of the poor.” It is important to understand the reality of negative net, because while governments all over the world have been promoting the Biofuel industry, Biofuel has also become a basis for legitimizing the spread of genetically modified (GM) Soy, which has decimated the rainforests of the Amazon for soy, (22.2 million hectares) at the time of writing (2008). Shiva notes that since January 2003, nearly 70,000 kilometres of Amazon rainforest have been cleared for Biofuel production.

While not exploring the details behind the governmental decision-making that is responding to these horrors such as the 2008 policy placing India's food production ahead of other agriculture, in this book Shiva takes a stance that criticizes the Indian government for failing to protect their wheat surplus in 2006. A failure to fight for a fair price for their surplus resulted in India actually importing inferior, pesticide-laden wheat back in to their nation, causing Indian food security to suffer.

Emphasizing India’s ability to heal, Shiva explores a brief but fascinating history of India’s (and largely Indian women’s) impressive protest movement regarding GE. In particular, she praises resistance against recent attempts to replace traditional mustard seed oil with GM soy oil. India’s proud history of Satygraha, or non-cooperation with destructive policy, is a current of hope running throughout the book. “In biology, the term development refers to self-directed, self-regulated, self-organized evolution from within.”

A no-bullshit, elegant piece of writing, it's a book rich with solutions contrasting present-day crisis.

Expanding our understanding of the life-destroying effects of agribusiness and monoculture, the last third opens with a comparison pitting ancient knowledge against the spin doctors of cash and land grab. Ancient knowledge wins hands down. Describing soil fertility, (her favorite realm) as something that has never been generated by chemical fertilizers, “the Green Revolution has resulted in soil toxicity by introducing excess quantities of trace elements into the ecosystem,” she helpfully reminds us that “micronutrient deficiency leads to metabolic disorders” emphasizing that to destroy the soil is to destroy human health.

Shiva explains that “fluorine toxicity from irrigation has developed in various regions of India. 26 million hectares of India’s land are affected by aluminum toxicity” also commenting upon boron, iron, molybdenum, selenium toxicity, all wrought through Green Revolution practices. Examining the impact of long-distance globalized food systems and their disastrous toll in greenhouse gas emissions, the book actually specifies just how much food miles have increased due to globalization. While we all know that 1 k of food can generate 10 k of CO2 emissions, Shiva also reminds us of a famous 2003 study in Toronto which demonstrated that our food travels an average of 3,333 miles, while a Swedish study recently determined that a typical breakfast has traveled the circumference of the earth in food miles.

Here Shiva’s solutions-driven writing again takes charge. Emphasize sustainable agriculture, based upon the sustainable use of natural resources, land, water and agricultural biodiversity directs the author. Great news for India, Shiva’s preoccupation with creating a comparable agricultural model have resulted in some interesting business statistics as, “conservation of native seeds and biodiverse ecological farming have yielded incomes two to three times higher than monoculture farming.” “Seeds of hope instead of seeds of hopelessness and despair” are how Shiva terms her solution for India’s future. She comments, “humanity has eaten over 80,000 edible plants over the course of its evolution. More than 3,000 have been used consistently. However, we now rely on just eight crops to provided 75 per cent of the world’s food.” She recalls for us that Cargill and ADM, Monsanto, and others are the same companies that destroy the Amazon while attempting to make protesting Indians switch over to their GM soy. Quoting Michael Pollan, the book asks, “how do they match the stories told about them?”

Not a naiive writer accepting any gesture towards organic agriculture, Shiva rejects the idea of pseudo-organic agriculture that substitutes chemical input with organic input, “this is not agroecology” and explains that pseudo-organic agriculture have created “large export-oriented industrial farms in which farmers are viewed as labourers and serfs, instead of sovereign producers,” a system “built on the destruction of the self-organizing capacity of human communities and agro-ecosystems.”

To close, Vandana Shiva perceives opportunity in what she terms the “emergent option.” This option does not destroy the planet but diverts away from entropic laws through the evolution of a living system that are bio-diverse, ecological, and places value on local food systems. By bringing people back to the reality behind agriculture, the energy of compassion takes the place of destruction and greed. Ecology and sharing, counter to the present system of scarcity producing market demand, inevitably win over what she describes as a “scarcity of work, scarcity of happiness, a scarcity of security, scarcity of freedom” and (finally) “a scarcity of the future.”

Rallying us all to cease “sleepwalking to extinction” the book accomplishes an inspiring call for humanity to “unleash our creative energy” and “make systemic change and reclaim our future as a species, as part of the earth family.” 
A writer with a flair for relevant and even entertaining political and historical facts, Shiva neatly combines with an ecological viewpoint reinforced as only a scientist can, making Soil not Oil an essential choice for any progressive-minded reader wishing to engage even a basic discussion of India's current environmental state of affairs.

Shiva, V. (2016). Soil, not oil: Climate change, peak oil and food insecurity. Zed Books.