A Home Garden

By: Wim Van  of Belgium

After meeting Mr.Sarath Fernando several times I noticed that the home garden was a very important notion in his discourse on globalisation

- Can you tell me the story of your home garden, because that’s about your ideal of 

   the good life, no?

The total land area that I own is 20 perches; a perch is 1 upon 160 of an acre. I have built a house, there is a well and a number of other things, and so the land area that is left is about 10 perches. That’s a very small plot of land, half of it. Now, I am not a farmer and I have never been a farmer myself and neither are the members of my family, but we new that tree planting was useful. So, we have planted whatever trees we could get that are useful.

- What do you mean by useful trees?

Well, trees that can give us food, fruit and vegetables. There are also a few flower plants and so on. There are some on the fence. There are certain trees that give us fertilizer. There is one tree that gives us a lot of shade, about 2 or 3 trees, but one big tree that gives us shade. The timber is useful, it’s a good quality timber, but we did not plant it for timber. We just plant it for shade and beauty. Apart from that, of course we were also aware that food could be produced in trees, trees that grow to different heights. So, it’s a combination of trees that are growing to big heights, middle heights, lower heights and there are certain types of food that can grow on the surface, a kind of creepers and so on. Also there are other types that grow on marshland and it is also possible to grow things underground: yams. So, it’s a very random combination.

Now, at the moment (September 2004) we have 2 mango trees. They bear fruit now. We have one orange tree, which gives fruit at certain times. The there are 2 guava trees. It’s a nice, very tasty fruit. Then there is another tree that is not yet giving fruit. It takes a few years. Then there is a lime tree that yields very heavily. Sometimes we pluck about 50-60 fruits at a time. Then there is another, not yet giving fruit, a jack tree. That grows to large heights, it’s a very regular food that we eat. When we have shortage of rice we eat cooked jackfruit. Then there are a number of other vegetables.

At the outlet from the kitchen, we have grown certain things on that kind of wetland. Then there are leafy vegetables of different kinds. There is another food that is used as a vegetable and also as a fruit, it’s a very short kind of a plant that grows on a pot. So all together we have 20 different varieties of fruits and vegetables. Now, to do this, we don’t use any external fertilizer, we don’t need them, because the soil is kept fertile through recycling. All the leaves that fall and sometimes on the fence we have grown things like katurumurunga, which gives also fruit and vegetable, but its leaves are used for fertilizer. Sometimes, occasionally we make or bring also reapers and leaves from the neighbouring plots and make it into compost fertilizer with cow dung and others. The soil is very fertile and we don’t use any agrochemicals and we don’t need to because this diversity keeps away diseases. Also we allow insects and birds and all kinds of animals and earthworms, microorganisms on the ground. We sort of promote that diversity which keeps the soil fertile and it also keeps the soil soft, because the earthworms and so on dig into the soil and they circulate the whole thing and they help in the process of decay.

 We have 3 papaya trees. Therefore we get a constant yield during all seasons of the year because these different plants yield at different times. They don’t die even in the drought season, because there is a little bit of water that comes out of the kitchen and also the soil, because of this very rich humus layer, can retain water. So the losses caused by drought are much less and we try as much as possible to keep the soil covered, always. You put leaves and decaying material. We don’t expose the soil to the sun and the rain, so that the erosion or the washing off of the topsoil is reduced or prevented. Now we don’t sell these fruits and vegetables at the moment, we can’t sell it either, unless you have large quantities. We don’t want to sell it either, but we can save quite an amount of money, by using these as our own food and we have very often enough also to share with others. We allow the birds to eat too. So there is some possibility of having some excess.

- If you have 50 limes in one time, you can’t eat it all?

Then we give it to friends and others, share it, but it’s also possible to market it. We have not gone in that aspect of marketing. I’ll come to that later. Now, therefore, to have some understanding of the money value of this, a papaya fruit in town, average size of fruit, will cost about 40 rupees (30eurocents). If you have 3-4 trees in your garden and if you get one fruit a day yield. That comes to 1200 rupees a month (10 euros) on papaya alone. If you add to that the other things that we get in the form of fruits and vegetables, the financial outcome would be easily more than 2000 rupees a month.

Now if you look at the way paddy farming is done today. A person cultivating an acre of paddy is spending about 15000 rupees (120 euros) or more for agrochemicals and so on. That would include all the input costs, the seed cost, the labour cost and also sometimes for irrigation. We’re not yet paying for irrigation, but when you have to hire labour, all that will come to that much. Now, the income is very often much less than the expenditure and many paddy farmers in Sri Lanka have this serious problem of spending so much and not even getting an income out of it. But here is a situation where we get that much saving at no cost. So that is just on 10 perches of land. Now, in the community that I live in, there are about 100 families who have equal plots of land, 20 perches each. If all of them do it, not all of them are doing it now, in that community we will certainly have an excess of fruits and vegetables, much more than we can eat.

Now, in such a situation, if you give your excess to a seller, on the road side, you can get an income, out of your lime, your banana, your papaya, your vegetables and so on. So therefore there is a possibility of getting a fair share of your food needs at no cost, if everybody does this. You don’t have to invest anything, in money terms. In order to maintain this, you don’t need hired labour. It’s just about 1 hour a day, you just have to cut the plants, just the leaves a little bit and pluck your fruit and that’s all. There is no soil preparation. You don’t have to clean your soil. You don’t have to remove all the grass and so on. We allow the grass to grow, because that helps also in the growth of insects. They’ll have their homes here. So therefore it’s with very little labour and practically no financial investment.

Now, if you think of all villages in Sri Lanka, particularly in the rural areas, about 70% of our people live in the rural areas, they’re poor. They have difficulties in investing in agriculture or whatever, but they have their little plots of land, either land that they own or land that they can use, if they don’t have the ownership. But many of them have these plots of lands. Very often it’s bigger than the plot that I have.   Diversified farming, with recycling of organic matter and conservation can be applied in any part of the country, under any climatic ecological condition, this is possible.

In the worst possible area, there is considerable rain and what is necessary in relation to water is to see that we handle our water correctly. Now, there was this possibility in nature. For instance, some 150 years ago, there was the hill country that was covered with forest and that was the area where we got the highest rainfall and all major rivers in the country start out from the hills. When the hill country was covered with forest, when we had rain, that rain didn’t lead to severe erosion. Therefore water was preserved, stored up, to a greater extent than it does now, and therefore there was a steadier flow of water, coming from the hills, through the rivers and the streams, and then in the lower plains. We had the system of constructing irrigation reservoirs, channels and so on, very extensive and Sri Lanka has a long history of this kind of irrigation and therefore the water that came down was conserved and protected and the ground water was rich. Anyway that’s what we had.

 These things have all changed now, coming back to my earlier story. Now,  we have a situation where a majority of our people who are poor, live in villages. They say 70% of our people live in villages and they have this kind of possibility of living on land, if they have the right to use land, what we propose is that we go back to this whole system. Alternatively, what is proposed now, is to bring big foreign investment in the country, and for us, to bring foreign investment into the country, we got to provide much more of cheaper labour. They come for cheap labour, therefore we have to reduce more of the amount of people who are now having a difficult way of living on land, but this is not worthwhile. It’s not a happy life that they have, a lot of economic difficulties. So, what is being proposed is that, they give up their land, sell their land to bigger operators and then migrate into cities to become cheap labour. Now, after about 27 years of effort to bring foreign investment into the country and so far these foreign investments have not come on a large scale and why? Because the possibilities they had in using Sri Lanka, in using our country, our land and so on, according to their requirements,  was less. The only industry that came in over the last 27 years was export oriented ready made garments and they have employed, given employment to about 400,000 people all these 27 years and now, that was possible because we had an agreement of preferential trade, we had the Multi Fibre Agreement with the US and EU. Under the multi fibre agreement; they bought a certain quota of our export garments. The US bought 60% and the EU bought about 40%. This agreement is phased out this year 2004. It’s going to disappear. Therefore they will go for cheaper imports from China and other countries that provide much cheaper garments. Therefore we are going to loose this market and therefore about 400 000 young people, largely women, who are employed in these factories are going to loose their jobs. Now, that is the only achievement that we have made, attempting to provide employment in industries, the last 27 years. That has no potential anymore and the labour conditions were very bad.

-          And women have a difficulty to go back to their village?

Yes, therefore the potential, that Sri Lanka has, to meet its essential requirements: reduction of poverty, reducing hunger, malnutrition and providing livelihoods, all these things lie in this area of land. I mean the potential that we have is to increase the productivity of land in a manner that would not deplete our resources. The other big advantage in the type of farming that I propose is that it doesn’t deplete the soil. Looking at it from another point of view, I would say what we need to do is to rebuild the regenerative capacity of our soil. What does it mean? Dr. Vandana Shiva, says nature and natural resources have this quality of giving eternally, the way an eternal spring gives. However much you take away, it goes on giving. Now, that is the quality of nature, if you don’t disturb it

-          Yes, but it also needs to get some, like soil needs to get some food also, the soil also needs to get water.

If you look at a natural forest, nobody puts fertiliser, nobody uses pesticides, nobody does irrigation, but these things survive. How do they survive? Because they give life, soil gives life to plants and they give all the nutrients that are required for their growth and then, when they decay, they sort of recycle it. Therefore the soil is kept enriched eternally. Now this nature of resources working as a spring or as something that regenerates itself, has been destroyed. Now, I spoke about the forests in the hill country, when they cut off all the forest in the hill country to plant tea and other plants, we started the period of more than 150 years of constant erosion and all the top soils have got eroded, therefore the hill country is very unfertile. It’s almost rock now and it has lost all its soil, because 150 years of erosion in a country where there are heavy rains, at least 2 seasons a year, you can imagine the type of erosion that takes place when you clean the soil, expose it to the sun and the rains. So we have destroyed that regenerative capacity of the central hills. That was the first destruction.

Then, later came the other period. This was the period of the Green Revolution, where we started farming for higher yields with high yielding varieties of seeds and with external inputs; chemical fertiliser, chemical pesticides, insecticides, weedicides and so on. That has destroyed the balance, the remaining regenerative capacity of the rest of the country, because we have done this for at least more than 40 years, it started in the 1960’s, we have constantly used very destructive agrochemicals that destroy micro organisms, it even destroys the natural balance of insects, because the natural control of unfriendly insects by friendly insects is disturbed. Therefore you require more chemicals to do this. The more chemicals you use, either to kill insects or to kill grass and other weeds and so on, you destroy, and also through chemical fertiliser, you destroy the microorganism’s activity in the soil. Therefore the whole potential for regeneration is destroyed, throughout the country. Now, therefore finally what we have destroyed is the potential, richness of the country, because Sri Lanka has no other resources. We don’t have iron, we don’t have oil, and we don’t have other rich material, very little. So what do we have to survive on?! We have our soil, our water, it is not in short supply and the biodiversity of plants. All this we have destroyed. Therefore development for us, if you want to talk in terms of economic development. I don’t agree with the present concept of economic development at all, as we are destroying that potential. Therefore development for us is a process of rebuilding that potential. That is the immediate advantage of that type of approach to land and agriculture that I propose. Now, what are the other benefits?

-          How will you regenerate the potential?

Before coming to that, I will talk of some other benefits, because then you will understand how we raise the required resources, right? Take the other issue of health. The health-system today is increasingly moving towards a market led health-system. Therefore cost of medicine is very high. I can give you figures to show that half of the population in Sri Lanka just cannot afford to buy the medicines that they require. If you just compare the costs, it’s very easy to explain. They don’t even have the financial potential to get their nutrition. They don’t have the ability to buy their medicine. If they have to buy it from the market, those medicines are very expensive. In addition to that, today we have cut off our free health-system, therefore doctors have become very expensive. We have almost removed our free health-system. We still have the hospitals and the doctors, but no person who seriously wants to cure will go to those hospitals, because they know they don’t have good doctors. The doctors don’t give patients enough time. There are thousands and thousands of patients for a doctor. Therefore it doesn’t work and also they write prescriptions and ask you to buy your medicine from outside market The government hospitals don’t give medicine now. So, people have to go for private treatments and the doctors have very high charges, private channelling and specialist services and so on. Therefore this health-system that we have now is completely beyond reach for more than half of the population.

Therefore our approach to health should be one of removing sickness, not one of curing. I mean eliminate sickness. Now if we implement the first proposal on land and agriculture (no chemicals), much of the diseases that we have would automatically be eliminated, because the diseases that we have emerge out of malnutrition, bad food, chemically contaminated food. Now there is a very large increase in some diseases like kidney diseases, liver diseases, cancer and diabetes, gastritis and so on. They are mostly caused due to bad water and bad food. If you have the first arrangement that I proposed (home garden), where people will have very cheap food or food at no cost and healthy food, food without poison and, if you remove the requirement to use chemical input on your plants, you remove chemical contamination of the water and of the soil. Therefore you have the possibility of eliminating that source of illness, right? We will have good water and healthy food and nutritious diversified food. Therefore, if we deal with this on an island wide scale, all people doing it, all families doing it in all areas, then we have automatically overcome much of the  health issues; good nutrition, healthy food, food without poison and diversified food.

-          You can even have medical plants

Yes, the thing is now, that’s another very, very necessary area that you brought in. Sri Lanka has a wealth of knowledge and natural wealth of having very wide plant diversity and also the knowledge of plants is very extensive. All this 3000 years old Ayurvedic system of medicine is purely knowledge of your plants and how they affect, react on your body. The science of Ayurveda or the science of indigenous medicine is to see how to keep the right balance between the three systems in the body: the digestive system, the respiratory system and nervous system. The whole treatment of this indigenous medicine or historical knowledge is to maintain the right type of balance. If the balance is disturbed you rebuild, re-establish that balance by having the right type of food and the right type of medicine things that come out of the plants and right habits. Therefore it’s quite possible for these people to grow, not only food, but also their medicines and if they have that knowledge of medicine they can treat themselves and this is something that happened in the history of Sri Lanka. This is still live and therefore it’s quite possible to revive.

Now, we have largely overcome the big problem of health. Another big source of disease is due mosquitoes. Now it is very easily understood that the widespread epidemics caused by mosquitoes is due again to the destroyed natural balance. If you don’t destroy your soil with chemicals you have the frogs and the ants and all kinds of animals who will keep mosquitoes under control. In water you have the fish and so on. Therefore these widespread mosquito epidemics can be largely reduced, even diseases like malaria that takes place in those areas. Dengue is another case.

-          That’s because of pollution, no?

Yes, in the cities. Anyway much of the mosquito borne diseases could be reduced. Another big health issue is loss of immunity. Due to chemically contaminated food, doctors have found that this kind of artificial food or junk food you call them, destroy your immunity, right? Therefore you are less resistant to diseases. The right approach to food and nutrition by having the right approach to your land, will automatically lead to a tremendous solution to your other problem of health, nutrition and health, right? Now, concerning that, we can say the following.

Now we have another big problem: the new government and the World Bank proposals for water. They say: There is a big need to provide people with safe drinking water. Now in their proposal, what they say is, to convert the existing water into safe drinking water, you need money and the whole process is mechanical. They say you convert natural sources of water into pipe borne water. It keeps the water pure. This is nonsense. If you convert poisoned water into pipe born water without removing poison, it doesn’t become pure. And chemically contaminated water is not purified through this simple process of chlorination and so on. If you add chlorine, it removes bacteria and other things. That is automatically done in the process of going through the soil. Bacteria do that job well. That is a natural process of purifying, but the contamination that cannot be removed is the chemical contamination. If you overcome this whole problem caused by chemical agriculture you automatically solve a major part of the issue of having safe drinking water.

-          Will you be able to feed the whole country without using any chemicals, because now it has been used, the soil has been depleted? When you would switch, in the beginning it would give for a while lesser yield because you have to rebuild the regenerative capacity.

Now, you say for the moment you have to use chemical fertilisers in order to sustain. But look at Sri Lanka’s situation. Large number of people who work on land, the farmers, can’t afford to buy the chemicals at present prices. Now the government is subsidizing fertiliser, but they have an eternal problem of continuous subsidising, therefore they’re sort of adding on. The prices keep increasing. Therefore what happens is, most of the small farmers, if they have to use chemical fertilisers and so on, whatever they produce, all goes back to the chemical company to pay their prices. Therefore, even in the present condition, even if the yields go down a little bit, it’s much cheaper and much more economically worthwhile if they convert. Now, it is not true, there are also facts and figures, for instance integrated pest management in rice. They do it. I would say maybe now it must be almost 100,000 farmers who have adopted integrated pest management which is just to remove the use of chemical pesticides, allow natural pest control. It gave immediate results. For instance, now they do this wherever they experiment on this, they have parallel plots. On one plot they use chemical pest control. The adjoining plot they don’t use chemical pest control. What generally happens is, they say when you use pesticides on one plot all the insects will go away and go to the other area. This is not a disadvantage, it’s an advantage, because the insects who fly away are not only the unfriendly insects, but also the friendly insects. Proportionally the variety of friendly insects is much higher than the variety of unfriendly insects. So therefore, the result is automatic and it’s immediate and in places where they have done this, they have seen that the yields don’t go down, due to pest damages, just one season application will reduce the diseases and immediate reduction in the use of chemical pesticides. With fertiliser it may be different, you might take a few seasons for that fertility to build, but then again one has to look at the economics of this. If you keep on using chemical fertilisers, that increases the requirement for chemical fertilisers further, and chemical fertilisers keep on increasing in price. With the present oil prices the fertiliser prices are going to increase much more in the future. Therefore, the sooner we shift over, the better it is. I think the big mistake of the green revolution was that they said that the world is not producing enough food.

-          That is what is being said, yes.

Yes, but this is not true, if you look at the whole situation statistically, now take the case of Sri Lanka, to make it simpler.

-          Yes, but Sri Lanka is of course a country, which has a very fertile potential. If you take all countries and the countries of sub Saharan Africa, they will probably not be able to produce for themselves, so they will have to import, so some countries will have to produce more than only for their population. I just say this to see this global food production and in that way it might maybe be true that if some countries can produce more than they need, they can feed also the other countries who can produce less. So in that way, maybe on global scale you need to produce more than only for the own people…

Yes, what needs to be prevented however is the fact that, now there are some countries that produce much more than they can eat. What they want is to expand their market. In order to expand their market they have conscious policies of destroying whatever the potential others have to produce their own food. Instead of helping them to improve and build up on their potential. For instance, if they want to export wheat to Sri Lanka, the way it is happening now. The World Bank says it’s not worthwhile producing rice in Sri Lanka. Now, Sri Lanka is a very clear case where we definitely produce the rice that we require, at much lower cost! Now the high cost today is because of high costs of inputs. If you reduce that high cost of inputs and there will maybe be a few seasons where we may not produce the same amount, but that can very quickly be picked up. The thing is, now they say it’s not worthwhile to produce rice in Sri Lanka, because of the present economics. It’s much cheaper to import wheat and wheat flower and even rice from other countries. Then we destroy the potential that we have here. The moment we do that we will not continue to get even wheat flower at the present cost. That is going to definitely increase in price and a very clear case is about milk. Now Sri Lanka has a tremendous potential to produce fresh milk sufficient for the country. We were doing that. We were importing much less milk earlier and there were in the villages, like in India, households. They were having their cattle and they were producing their milk at very low cost.

-          So, what you are saying is that these policies are destroying the capacity of Sri Lanka to produce their own food and in that way they might even add to the global diminishing of food production?

Yes, on the whole, because now the US and European Countries are producing much more than they can eat and they produce much for export, but at what cost?! If you look at the environmental cost of those countries; it’s very heavy. That is why they are giving us cheap food, maybe some cheap wheat and cheap milk and so on. They’re not giving it very cheap either. But that is done through a process of very heavily subsidizing their own farmers. That subsidising, you have to add to that the environmental cost of large scale farming with machines and so on that deplete the soil, destroys and leads to wind erosion and all kinds of destruction. Therefore we are moving towards a process of desertification all over, ultimately destroying the overall potential, because some countries want to make big profits, disregarding all this. Therefore, it’s to their own advantage. For instance, take the case of Cuba. Now Cuba was a country with large farms, but they also were doing agriculture very dependant on machinery and agrochemicals and so on, but Cuba, due to circumstances had no possibility of getting their chemical fertilisers, pesticides and petroleum and other things and machinery, when they got themselves cut off from the US market. They had big problems. Then the Sovjet Union supported them and they could manage. Then the Soviet Union cut off its aid. Then they had to manage on their own. They converted the whole country into other ways of farming, agriculture. Today they have broken down the large farms into smaller plots because they say smaller plots, smaller lands are much more productive, because this whole man-earth relation or farmer to land relation is much closer when it is in a smaller area. Therefore the farmer is much better able to look at the specific conditions of the land area that he is cultivating and look at its needs and the ways it works.

-          What then is being said is that more people have to engage in farming, but don’t you loose all other possibilities of advancing on another level. As we have been industrialising, we created more time for other things and so we could use that time for evolving, for example arts, literature, intellectual development, research and so on. So what will happen if you want to go back to small scale farming, then you will loose that, no?

OK, but, now, what will happen. All these people who were in farming were released from their farming not because they wanted to give them more leisure to do other things. It was because they needed more labour in the industries. All this enclosure movement and so on, in the West, was done to get cheap labour in the cities for industries and other services. Now, therefore they were displaced, reduced the number of farmers, made their farms large scale, using machinery, so that they could have access to labour, cheap labour for their industries they required. What is happening today? They’re expelling labour from industries. Cities have too many people in most Latin American countries. Are people happy in the cities? Now, there may have been a time when people came to the cities for better life, modern life, advanced things and so on, but in many Latin American countries, they come to the cities, not for luxurious life. They come as beggars, they come as destitute. If you look at Brazil and Mexico, and all these countries. They say cities have become anthills. People live on garbage. That is because they come to the cities because of poverty. They can’t survive. When they come to the cities they’re not employed properly, therefore they remain unemployed destitute. Now that is the problem in the world today. Whatever advancement, even in other areas like modernized cities, there is a huge problem of growing unemployment, because people are no longer needed.

-          Because the machinery is taking it over, but so what often is being said that now the challenge is to use all that human potential into a creative way, to educate them and increase creativity. Maybe we can go further, one step further.

OK, but my position is with all this modernisation and so on, people are not permitted to be creative at all. They have become enslaved by the system, much more. In fact, say, a person like me living in this poor country Sri Lanka is much freer to be creative. But if you live in Belgium, like you, you have to slave yourself much more to keep surviving. You have to serve your company somewhere and they decide on what you should do. Otherwise, if you don’t do what they want and get their employment you’re just rejected also. Then you become a destitute. You can’t survive.

-          We have a social security system.

Yes, but that is being eroded. They’re not continuing that either and people who are living on social security are not permitted to be employed otherwise. You have to go and sign your book or something every week. So, therefore the whole system is not something that makes people more creative and freer. The whole system is a system where everybody is enslaved within the system, but they use only people who are usable. The others are sort of dispensable and you have to disappear. Find your way of disappearing. That’s what you have to do. That’s why so many people, if you look at statistics, so many people in the world are hungry. They can’t survive. They can’t find their living and they’re unemployed, destitute. It is because the whole system is not, I agree when Karl Marx spoke about socialism. He spoke of the highest levels of productivity so that the necessary labour is easily reduced, so that they would be freer, but that’s under a very different system. When capital controls it, capital is not going to allow you to be creative, unless you are willing to serve the expansion of capital and expansion of capital today doesn’t require that creativity from human beings. It requires a certain type of creativity for their process of capital expansion. All others become a problem. All other creative people are people who question this whole process of globalisation. They’re resisting.

What is happening today? They have been branded terrorist. Any dissidence is no longer considered to be creative. They’re an obstacle to that system. Therefore this system doesn’t permit, as long as the whole system is governed by capital, it doesn’t permit the people to be creative, because the whole system requires enslavement of people under capital. People, human beings become useful, only to the extent they serve the process of expansion of capital, not otherwise. So, therefore this whole idea of freedom creativity is not achieved through this whole thing. I think in my view people only become creative in the process of resistance.

-          Can they become creative by all going back to farming, if I may exaggerate?

I say yes. I will now come back again to the Sri Lankan case. On my 10 perch home garden I can be tremendously creative. I decide on what to plant, where to plant it, how to do it, how I manage the soil. All this is decided by me and in my little community there would be 100 families who would be creatively doing it on their own field and that is the beginning of creativity and then I can do endless things. The 100 families can get together and decide and work out how they could create this area, much more creative and also they can be tremendously creative in a positive way, because all these years creativity meant how you conquer nature, how you take nature under your control. Creativity meant exploiting nature.

There have been other new sides of creation, but economically and also scientifically and technologically meant, the idea of creativity was to see how working of nature could be brought under control or could be destroyed, weakened. People are really realizing it. That is why people have now begun to think we have gone the wrong way. Now the potential for creativity is in recreating the potential of nature, understand how nature works, work with nature so that you, in your own effort to survive, you enrich your nature, not weaken it and that is I think the highest form of creativity that one could achieve. It’s endless.

The other thing is. One has to do some serious calculations about the overall productivity. If somebody hired or somebody rented out a whole land area, hundred times ten to twenty perches, the community that I live and if some businessman was given charge of that, he would have decided what to do on that land, depending on the type of income that he could get. If he could get the highest price for chilli, he would clear the whole thing and cultivate chilli. Now, is he helping in the creativity of things, no, he’s destroying it. Therefore my philosophy or my understanding is that human beings can be most creative when they utilise their own potential for their own benefit and the benefit of others, working in harmony with your surroundings, human surroundings and natural surroundings, not to deplete it and destroy it, but enrich it, realising that. Your survival requires that. I am not an artist, but I can imagine a very different type of creativity, art and whatever, with that kind of understanding because when you come to other things like art and so on. What is happening? Say, if you are a good writer or a filmmaker or some photographer or artist or whatever. Today your creativity is restricted by the fact that you have to sell your produce, even your creative things have to be sold and there is a greater tendency now to go more and more to creations that can get a bigger price and therefore that is destroying the whole way people appreciate things, your taste. What you enjoy today is not decided by you, but decided by the market. They go for the cheapest possible ways of doing it. Take for instance sports. What is happening to sports? Sports is like gambling, has some attraction. You watch a cricket match. There is some anticipation at every ball. So therefore it has the possibility of keeping your attention fixed there. Market businesses are using that to keep hold of hundreds of thousands of people, watching their screen, just to have the opportunity of advertising their coca colas and so on. That’s the whole purpose. Are sports helping us to become creative? Similarly with other things.

-          How do you link everything that you have been saying until now with your idea of Sinhala culture. Your work is very much linked to what you have been saying here in your story. How would you describe your work as being culture sensitive?

Even in the area of culture I would want to overcome the many distortions or many abuses that are being made of culture. For instance, what is described as Singhalese culture is very, is almost the same as what is described as Buddhist culture. Now, they say for more than 2500 what we claim to be Singhalese culture has grown under the influence of Buddhism. I don’t know whether we ever had anything else apart from what came from Buddhism in terms of culture. I appreciate my culture and the culture in which I was born, but very carefully avoiding all the abuses and misuses of that culture. Therefore I would say, for us, culturally, this idea of, you have many, many interviews, you hear people saying: “We need only what we need. If we can have our needs, it’s enough. We want not to become a problem to others.” Some people might call it a life of simplicity, life of being happy with what you have. Now, all this comes with the other understanding of impermanence. Now, if we understand that, that is the essential teaching in Buddhism. Therefore understanding of the nature of impermanence of things, is your way to liberation. If you understand that these things are nothing of this, nothing that we have, including our physical body and so on, is permanent. Then we overcome our attachment. If I overcome my attachment I don’t want to accumulate. I only want to survive. Survive for what? I know that my best efforts will not allow me to survive beyond the limit that I can survive. That is impossible. Therefore I survive for another purpose. What is the purpose for my survival? The only rational purpose is to help people, to help others to survive better, help others who will survive with me and after me. Therefore, in Buddhism, these things go hand in hand: your non-attachment, your non-greed and compassion. You become less greedy, less attached. The understanding of impermanence will make you freer to be compassionate towards others. If you are attached to your self you have less space to be concerned about others. Therefore my meaning of my survival is to be very meaningfully participating in the process of making others happier or removing suffering from others. So, that’s my culture. That’s the type of culture that I would like to live in, right?

So, therefore that agrees almost totally with all that I have said so far. You produce what you need, but you also produce what others need, including the animals, the plants and so on. But you don’t produce anything for your accumulation, because it is useless, it is foolishness. Therefore, how do we best survive now: without violating our obligation to be compassionate to others. That’s the way that we can reach highest form of happiness.

In your dealings with others, now, you want to be creative. Sometimes one might feel that this philosophy of impermanence and non-attachment doesn’t require creativity. Why do we create? If you are going to just be happy while you are there and then die. Why do you want to create? No, there is a meaning to your creativity because you are going to contribute towards something that is going to last permanently. Whatever you do now, will be transferred to others.

-          So, you believe in some permanence?

Yes, but that permanence or as Buddha said, impermanence is what is permanent. That doesn’t change. The whole nature of everything changing constantly, that is permanent, that is eternal. Therefore, say, for instance I talk to you. Now, I have worked very hard, I have read many books and studied and debated and learned and so on to say what I am saying to you now. When I say this to you, it just goes on. It’s no longer mine. When I talk to you like this, all my ideas, none of these things are mine, because I have acquired it from others.

-          But  you still have your ideas

Yes, I have those ideas, but I know that these ideas are impermanent. I will die in the next 5 years, so they’re not mine, because they were not created by me. These things come from outside. Something mixed up here, in the head, and a new combination goes out of it. That’s all. It didn’t begin with me. But I know that what goes out is going to go on multiplying like the idea. So I should also feel proud that all I say will be absorbed and taken as it is by you. It’s going to undergo change and it’s a good thing that it changes. Now, therefore, what is the meaning of my survival? I create the whole time certain things that are going to die, disappear. I also create certain things that are not going to die, they are going to go on multiplying. Rebirth! That’s the whole idea of rebirth to me. Every time things are born, they live for some time and they die and they get reborn

-          But this path to liberation is to get away from this rebirth, no?

No, the thing is that you need to get away from the rebirth caused by attachment. That’s the way how I understand it, but I can argue this from the very Buddhist teachings, because the Buddha says what is being born is neither you, nor somebody else. So what is being born in you now, I am dying, who is me, what is me. If I understand what this, my person is, it is not only the physical part of the body, within the limits of my skin, it’s not even an eternal law or something. There is something else; my thinking, my hopes, my aspirations, my moments of pleasure, my moments of sorrow: all that is part of myself. Therefore, what dies is only my physical machine and that transforms itself into some other thing. Worms are eating it, digesting it and it becomes fertiliser and they go on their way.

But, there are other things that don’t die, so what is the most rational way of living? You work towards the survival and continuance of yourself, the part of yourself that doesn’t die. Don’t get attached to certain things that die and that is totally Buddhist. That is the only way you can explain this whole idea of compassion. Compassion is the Buddhist aspiration as well as when you say: “Let all beings be well”, that’s their meditation. Now, if all beings are going to be impermanent, why should they become well? That is because there are certain things that don’t die. So you add your life to the others and it’s being reborn and reborn again. So, therefore there is a lot of meaning in it. Otherwise the Buddha need not to have lived for so many years. He lived up to the age of 70 or something, why? Because he had another thing to do, apart from understanding the impermanence and non-attachment and so on. He had to enlighten others about what is discovered, because that is something that is going to help people to liberate themselves. Therefore, that contribution of the Buddha is still surviving, it’s not dying. It’s getting multiplied. Even today, in this modernised world, you can’t kill it.

-          Although you see that young people here maybe become less interested in Buddhism, whereas in the West they’re becoming more interested in some kinds of Buddhism.

Yes, that’s why I say that people are not free. This whole thing, machinery, doesn’t allow them to be free thinkers. For instance, all the young people today live under a constant threat. Unless they find a job, they become useless. So their whole effort: learning or robbery, they can become master robbers, why? They have to find a way of surviving, a way of living. Another way of enslavement is the whole interpretation of success, happiness. Where is happiness? You go and eat Kentucky Fried Chicken, you feel that you’re better off than others, eating useless food. So there are interpretations. That’s all done by the market. So, therefore we have to have great pity. That’s why the Buddha had compassion towards all these misunderstandings. He wanted to liberate people. He gave the topmost priority of liberating people from this foolishness of not understanding reality. So, this whole thinking, teaching and everything was to get people out of that illusion of believing that things are permanent and happiness lies in other things, attachment, greed. That was his life task. That was his enlightenment.

Apply that to rice. Hundreds of people are saying that rice is our food, it’s our god and all that. Now, why should we produce? From this kind of background, I would say, we produce rice primarily to eliminate hunger and to achieve good health. Where should rice go? Rice should first go to those who are hungry. Therefore we are totally against people producing various top high quality organic rice, exporting it to the rich Western market there. And of course we have compassion to those people who are poisoned by that kind of food, but here there are people who don’t have the possibility of eating even poisoned food and they have to be fed first. If we are able to produce healthy rice, we have to first primarily produce rice to feed them, not looking at the money we can earn and that will give us much better technology to produce rice. How do we produce rice? It has to be produced at low cost. It has to be produced without poison. It has to be produced through a process that doesn’t make our soil less fertile. If we do that, I think we can produce enough to reduce hunger in the country first. Now we can’t do it because we are paying heavily for other poison and other things.

-          How do you think you will convince the society of your idea, because some other thinking has been introduced, this aspiration of the modern life.

Now, I think we have a big potential to convince this society, because the way society is being moved or the way society is being educated or pushed is taking a lot of our people nowhere. They just go and get stucked there and then they have to disappear. They are not absorbed meaningfully. Therefore there is this recognition that they’re not going anywhere. This comes from time to time in our society. That’s why young people, already in 1971, thousands of young people, who were getting educated, learning in university and some before university, were beginning to realize that even when we do our best in university, what happens? We are not going to be employed. We will not be able to earn enough to feed our parents. So what’s the use? It’s useless this education in my country. I have to change things in the country first. So, therefore they joined these movements and they said there is no other way, other then rebelling. They rebelled and got killed, 10 000 in 1971. A few years later 60 000. That’s because hundreds of thousands of young people are being taken on a kind of hill, that ends in a battle. They just fall, so when they go there and when they begin to see that, they have to think that there is some need for something else, and they will look at other things. Now, in this society with all the commercial propaganda, there is also a kind of philosophy that works within our people. They are familiar with the whole idea that things are impermanent. That is how people face sickness and death and all the calamities. Our people have a tremendous possibility of facing disaster, All these wars and so on. How did people cope with this kind of thing? The moment something happens, our people go back to their whole thinking, this is life. When the Buddhist monk comes with all his bad things, he will come and say: “That is what the Buddha taught. Nothing is permanent. If something is born, it is bound to die, so don’t worry.” This is how it is. This is very deep and in moments of crisis, people go back to this thinking. In Christian society, when people become totally helpless, they go to God. If you can’t save me in this life, at least save me in the next life.

-          It seems true that here many people don’t get absorbed after they studied at university. I think in Belgium most people get absorbed somehow, maybe not in the direction they want, but let’s say that about 10% of the people in Belgium are not being absorbed.

Ultimately, maybe a lot of them get absorbed somewhere, either in gambling places or selling drugs or whatever, or some people keep hoping that they will go to the Middle East someday. If there is a war they get absorbed in the army. There are different types of things.

The national plans envisage that there would be large inflows of investors, achieving a growth rate of 8% from the present 5%. That would provide much more employment in industry or services. But if we all are to find an employment in services like in Singapore, then Sri Lanka has to become another country, a very different kind of country, whether these things would happen is another question. So, I can’t give you figures about how many people get absorbed, but generally if you look at the repercussions that we experience in society, you see the whole modern wave that went on for 20 years and many decided to become suicide bombers, why? If you analyse it in depth, this is because they’re not absorbed into jobs. They’re not given equal opportunities for education. In the employment they’re not given opportunities. Therefore they say: “We want another country, because we’re not taken meaningfully into this country. If you look at the other rebellions, it takes a lot of courage from a person to join a rebel movement, knowing very well that the chances of getting killed are very high and thousands of people have joined such movements. If you look at the rates of suicides, they say that we have one of the highest suicide rates in the world. In Japan it is very high also, but the reasons are different. They aspire very high and if they can’t meet the highest target, then they’re not looked upon as important. So, in that frustration they kill themselves, but here it’s about survival. Farmers and agricultural communities their suicide rate is very high because they just can’t survive. Therefore, these are people who are not absorbed. If you look at the rate of malnutrition in the country, there is 60% of the children below 5 years malnourished. These are people who are not absorbed. This society has not catered to them. There are different ways and different degrees of our society not being absorbed. Many people are not fully aware of this. Therefore the reactions come up in different ways, but if people in the country on the whole begin to understand that they destroy 60% of their children when they are very young by giving them not enough food, people will react. What kind of society are we living at? Therefore these things are expressed in different ways.

Some say: “It’s too much for me. I don’t bother and look after myself to the best way possible, whatever way it is. I don’t look at morals or ethics. I just survive.” Many people take that option, even the very good-harted young people, they say: “I can’t solve all the problems. I compete and compete and compete and win finally. I become one among a few thousands, out of a few hundred thousands to enter university. I’ll do that. If I fail I’ll do something else.” So, there is all that demand of a more rational, workable, alternative approach. What remains is to help people to have this realisation, which is very difficult, almost impossible.

-          Many people in our country also feel powerless to the problems but our situation is very different, because many people don’t feel the urgent problem, as in your country.

People are going in that direction: “I can’t be bothered about the rest of society anymore. I have to look at myself, my own problem.” They are becoming more self-centred, why? Because there is insecurity. If you are sure of your job, you have the freedom and the time to look at the rest of the world and to devote your life completely. But when you have the problem of finding your next meal, you would seriously have to think about finding it. I have no problem about finding my next meal, I have the leisure to look at other things. That’s how it is.

-          So, how will you convince the people who don’t have to look for their next meal?

Look at the way the world is moving. There were earlier times when some people thought of a more rational society and a more just society and they became socialist, but those in other parts of the world are not confronted with that problem and they were well looked after. They had security. Therefore they were not thinking of those. Today, if you look at the numbers of people who are criticizing and opposing the whole globalisation process, the numbers have grown bigger and they will keep on growing bigger because not only the economically poor are now affected, but many others also. People are beginning to realise that the way we produce our food, many others will loose their lives early due to poisoned food. That is why this whole thinking about food sovereignty comes up, instead of food security. Why? People have to think of other things. What kind of food do we want to eat? Are we going to eat anything that is given to us? So, there is this big realisation. I mean people are beginning to realise what is happening to the global environment. Therefore they say that something else has to happen. At the earth summit they said: “You can’t continue business as usual. You have to change things.” So there is this realisation, but there is also a very strong machinery, led by capital and that says: “If you want to survive you obey capital. If you don’t obey and work within that machinery, then you’re not needed.” Because of the strength of that machinery things continue.

-          Also because people turn their heads away, because it’s too much and so they prefer to continue like this.

That is because people now don’t see very clearly that there is another option of this whole very widely propagated idea that there is no alternative. It is pushing people to just obey, therefore I oppose to the maximum possible that propaganda. The worst thing one can do is to say that there is no alternative.

-          That’s also eliminating creativity.

Yes, yes, the moment you say there is no other alternative then you’re dead. At least let people dream. It’s very good to let people dream. You should not be restricted by anybody in your dreams. That dream, if enough people begin to dream and if you are provided with the required material, potential for the right type of dream, suddenly things will begin to change. It’s bound to change.

-          And so we came back to a dream, the dream of the home garden. We’ll finish it here. Thank you very much for your time and inspiration.

     Wim