Over the last couple days my former life-science and farming specialised university (AgroParisTech) has been in the spotlight as a group of graduates deciding to use the graduation stage ceremony to showcase their belief that we need to “desert” the economic, political and social system that is leading to an unsustainable society and will represent a dead end. Ingrained in it was a criticism of the training that the university dispense that “fits, leads and incentivises” this move. I felt that the message and the vision was extremely manichean and dark but it raised valid issues; we are heading towards an unfair disaster, it further raised awareness around those and unleashed a storm of reaction whether supportive (progressive position) or aggressive (defensive position) representative of our polarised societies. I nevertheless cannot support to a 100% their in my opinion; semi-anarchistic and relatively hyper-locally-centred autonomous vision.
To answer the challenges that we face as a world society (and as the human is a gregarious animal there is no way we can escape that) we all have a responsibility to provide a fair, lasting sustainable world for all, for that we definitely need to change the software or the system rulling our world, but together not alone. I do not believe that alone and isolated we are stronger, there is a need for us to work together as humans to rule this world better. In my opinion it calls for a greater involvement of the people on all sides and a greater role for the government and public bodies. Change the system that make us prefer buying cheap imported stuff rather than refurbished stuff, that make us prefer flying or driving instead of using public transport, all of those need to be dealt with as a society. Without denying developing countries a right to development we need to cooperatively reach, craft and design an attractive balance with our world.
System is a bit of a mantra and trust me if there is one thing that we talk about a lot at AgroParisTech it’s about Systems, it’s a way for us to understand the interrelated elements working together. Agriculture, transport or economic policies... everything is linked! On top of that the university gave us a very broad range of classes; “jacks of all trade, master of none” but still capable to make sense of it. Critically, scientist (including social) have ideas and the tools to understand the pinch points to adapt our society to go towards a sustainable system, be it technically, administratively, economically… Because we are talking about broad changes and because we also need to address a multitude of challenges we cannot afford to wait any longer before enacting a transition, and because there are a number of solutions we are unsure off we need to experiment scientifically, get robust evidence on which we can, together rationally adopt decision and make policies. Transparency in the decision making system to design fair solutions to be decided on but also the end of short-sighted politics that do not match ecosystems or the planet's lead in time.
I am part of the "system" because I believe that only together will we be able to make things change, I am in the scientific evidence bit. By refusing to change our ways we will harm others and it’s a fact, including our future generations (Wales with its future generation act has understood this but so far has failed to act rapidly upon it for a variety of reasons). If you read this far you might think that we need radical change at multiple point in the system without being obtuse about some principles (like wanting to liberalise everything, including "natural" monopolies). We need to plan ahead and have a long-term vision of where we are going to guide and inspire us. We need to try to learn from the other’s perspective, I truly believe that if we were walking in other’s people shoes we would be kinder and more respectful. Planning in linking all side of society and thinking holistically about sustainability is extremely important. There is no magical, technological fix(es) ahead and we need to be radical in our thinking without necessarily giving up our heritage, but time of crisis truly offer the possibility for resets like the 2nd world war proved. Let’s make it happen.
Théo Lenormand, May 2022
Video with English captions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUOVOC2Kd50
Transcript of the talk:
The graduates of 2022 are now gathered for the last time after three or four years at AgroParisTech. There are many of us who do not want to pretend to be proud and deserving of obtaining this diploma at the end of an education that pushes us to participate in the ongoing social and ecological devastation.
We do not see ourselves as the "Talents of a sustainable planet".
We do not see ecological and social devastation as "issues" or "challenges" to which we should find "solutions" as engineers.
We do not believe that we need "all agriculture".
Rather, we see agribusiness waging a war on life and peasantry everywhere on earth.
We do not see science and technology as neutral and apolitical.
We believe that technological innovation or start-ups will not save anything but capitalism.
We do not believe in sustainable development or green growth.
Nor do we believe in 'ecological transition', an expression that implies that society can become sustainable without getting rid of the dominant social order.
Every year, AgroParisTech trains hundreds of students to work for industry in various ways: Trafficking plants in the lab for multinationals that increasingly enslave farmers, designing ready-made meals and chemotherapies to treat the sick caused by them, inventing "good conscience" labels to allow executives to believe they are heroic by eating better than others, developing so-called "green" energies that accelerate the digitisation of society while polluting and exploiting at the other end of the world, producing CSR [Corporate Social Responsibility] reports that are all the more lengthy and delirious because the crimes they conceal are scandalous, or counting frogs and butterflies so that the cement workers can make them disappear legally, in our eyes, these jobs are destructive and to choose them is to harm by serving the interests of a few.
Although our course at AgroParisTech has highlighted these opportunities, we have never been told about the graduates who consider these jobs to be more of a problem than a solution and who have chosen to leave.
We are talking to those who doubt, to you who have taken a job because "you need a first experience", to you whose relatives work to perpetuate the capitalist system, and who feel the weight of their gaze on your professional choices, to you who, sitting behind a desk, look out the window and dream of space and freedom, to you who take the TGV every weekend in search of a never to be found well-being, to you who feel an uneasiness rising without being able to name it, to you who often find that this world is crazy, to you who want to do something but don't really know what, or to those who hope to change things from within and don't really believe in it anymore.
We have doubted, and sometimes we still do. But we have decided to look for other ways, to refuse to serve this system and to build our own paths. How did it start?
We met people who were struggling and we followed them to their struggle grounds. They showed us the other side of the projects that we could have carried out as engineers. I'm thinking of Cristiana and Emmanuel, who see the concrete pouring over their land on the Saclay plateau, or this dried-up hole, a derisory compensation for a pond full of newts, and to Nico, who sees from his high-rise building the popular gardens of his childhood bulldozed for an eco-district to be built.
Here and there, we met people who are experimenting with other ways of living, who are reappropriating knowledge and know-how so as not to be dependent on the monopoly of polluting industries, people who understand their territory in order to live with it without exhausting it.
Who actively fight against harmful projects,
Who practice a popular, decolonial and feminist ecology on a daily basis,
Who find the time to live well and take care of each other,
All these encounters have inspired us to imagine our own paths (different people tuning in):
• I am preparing to set up a beekeeping business in the Dauphiné.
• I have been living for two years in the ZAD of Notre Dame des Landes where I do collective farming and food production, among other things
• I joined the movement of the Land movement to fight against the land grabbing and artificialisation of agricultural land across France.
• I live in the mountains where I have done a seasonal job and I am starting to draw.
• I set up a collective in the Tarn, on a Terres de Liens farm, with four other market gardeners, a cereal farmer and three brewers.
• I am committed to fighting nuclear power.
• I'm training today to set up tomorrow and work with my hands.
We are convinced that these ways of living will make us happier, stronger and more fulfilled.
We want to be able to look ourselves in the face tomorrow and support our children's gaze.
Are you afraid to take a step aside because it won't look good on your CV?
Taking a step away from your family and your network?
Denying yourself the recognition that a career as an agri-engineer would bring?
But what kind of life do we want? A cynical boss, a salary that allows you to fly, a 30-year loan for a house, just 5 weeks a year to relax in an unusual gîte, an electric SUV, a fairphone and a loyalty card at the Biocoop? And then... a burn-out at forty?
Let's not waste our time! And above all, let's not let this energy that is boiling away somewhere in us slip away! Let's get rid of it before we get stuck with financial obligations.
Let's not wait for our kids to ask us for money to go shopping in the metaverse, because we won't have enough time to make them dream of something else. Let's not wait until we are incapable of anything other than a pseudo-reconversion in the same job, but repainted in green. Let's not wait for the 12th IPCC report, which will show that states and multinationals have only ever made the problems worse, and which will place its last hopes in popular revolt.
You can branch out now. Start training as a peasant baker. Go wwoofing for a few months,
Take part in a work camp in a ZAD or elsewhere. Join a weekend of struggle with the Earth Uprisings. Get involved in a participatory bike workshop? It can start like that.
It's up to you to find your own ways of branching out
