Unwanted Gift No. 2: Keep On Hoeing
Or you could train a poor farmer from the developing world in organic methods of farming so that he can reduce his costs and save the planet at the same time. But hang on here, smallholding farmers in developing countries have usually worked the soil since they were children, like their parents before them, and their parents’ parents before that, forced to use organic methods and basic hand tools because of poverty, not choice. Today approximately seventy percent of the world lives a subsistence life, living off the land and producing just enough to get by. This is a tragedy, as is treating the developing world like a playground where we can “test out” our romantic view of environmental living, a test that, in truth, is telling poor farmers to adapt to their poverty for the sake of the environment. To dislike what progress has given us in the West is one’s prerogative; imposing this same dissatisfaction on the developing world is an outrage, and wrapping it up as a friendly gift won’t change that.