지난 7월, 프랑스 브르타뉴의 본 마브리Bon Abri 해안에 널린 조류.




2017년 봄, 유럽연합의 환경운동가, 학자, 로비스트 단체가 친환경 농업 관행에 대해 기술적인 토론을 하고 있을 때, 화면에 지도가 나타났다. 순간, 방 안은 쥐죽은 듯이 조용해졌다.


농업 로비스트가 반대했다. 관료들은 그에 투덜거렸다. 


그 지도는 유럽연합에서 이탈리아 북부 지방의 농민들에게 지불하는 보조금과 오염을 나란히 보여주었다. 서로 겹치는 걸 부정할 수 없었고, 근본적 질문을 불러일으켰다. 유럽연합이 해결하고자 하는 환경 문제에 제대로 자금이 조달되고 있는 건가?


참석자들은 그 지도가 단체의 최종 보고서에서 삭제되었다고 한다. 하지만 뉴욕타임즈는 유럽연합의 자체 경제 모델을 이용해, 유럽의 관료들이 보고 싶어하지 않는 것을 확인시켜주는 근사치를 작성했다. 보조금이 가장 많이지급된 지역의 오염이 가장 심했다.



유럽연합의 농업보조금                                        질산염 오염

Sources: Common Agricultural Policy Regionalised Impact (CAPRI) modelling system; data extracted by Torbjorn Jansson, at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

 



유럽연합의 지도자들은 자신의 친환경 보증서를 으스대는데, 그렇게 함으로써 사실과 낙관적 정책 입안 사이의 부인할 수 없는 긴장을 회피한다. 이번 달, 유럽의 지도자들은 기후변화에 맞서고, 멸종으로부터 생물종을 구하기 위한 야심찬 목표를 세웠다. 그러나 가장 큰 장애물 가운데 하나는 농민들을 지원하기 위한 연간 650억 달러(한화 약 75조 5040억 원)의 농업보조금 프로그램이다.  


유럽은 예산의 약 40%를 이 프로그램에 소비하는데, 뉴욕타임즈의 최근 조사에 의하면 유럽 전역에서 반민주주의 세력이 인수하고 있으며 그로부터 혜택을 얻는 관료들이 관리하고 있었다. 이에 대응해 유럽의 새로운 농업 장관은 체계를 강화하는 방법을 강구하고 있다


농업보조금은 환경에 심각한 영향을 미쳤으며, 유럽 전역에 상처를 남겼다. 썩고 있는 조류가 프랑스 북서부의 해안에서 치명적인 가스를 방출한다. 점점 줄고 있는 조류의 개체수는 전체 생태계의 균형을 위협한다. 농업에서배출하는 온실가스가 증가하고 있다. 


발트해에는 수십 년 동안 농장에서 유출된 오염원으로 거대한 죽음의 구역이 형성되었다. 



매일 대폴란드Greater Poland 지방의 이러한 농장들은 분뇨를 생산하며, 이중 많은 양이 과도한 비료와 함께 토양으로 들어간다. 




폴란드는 발트해에 접한 다른 어느 나라보다 농지가 더 많다. 대부분의 대규모 축산 농장은 생산을 장려하는 유럽연합의 보조금을 받는다. 





폴란드의 수로 대부분은 인근 농장의 토양에서 침출되는 질산염에 오염되어 있다.





이 수로는 두 개의 큰 강 -비스툴라Vistula 강과 오데르Oder 강- 으로 흘러간다. 폴란드에서 가장 긴 강인 비스툴라강은 질산염을 북쪽의 발트해로 나른다. 





발트해의 과도한 질소와 인의 존재는 조류의 성장을 촉진한다. 그들이 일으키는 녹조와 적조는 너무 방대해 위와 아래의 사진처럼 우주에서도 볼 수 있을 정도이다. 





조류가 분해되면 해저의 물속에 있는 산소가 고갈된다. 거대한 띠 모양의 발트해는 생물이 살 수 없는 죽음의 구역이 되었다. 




폴란드만 문제가 아니다. 빨간선 모두는 근처의 농장에 의해 오염된 수로를 나타낸다. 유럽의 보조금은 상황을 악화시킨다. 




이번 달 유럽 위원회의 우르줄라 폰 데어 라이엔 위원장은 2050년까지 유럽을 최초의 기후 중립적(climate-neutral) 대륙으로 만들기 위한 "친환경 거래(그린 딜green deal)"를 발표했다.  


그녀는 "이는 유럽의 인류가 달에 발을 내딛은 순간이다"라고 이야기했다. 


그러나, 그 달에 도달하려면 유럽은 농장을 지나가야 한다. - 그리고 보조금 프로그램의 혜택을 받는 수십 년에 걸친 강력한 이해당사자들이 현상을 유지하기 위해 노력해 왔다. 


반대는 이미 폭넓은 계획으로 모이고 있다. 전력 생산을 위해 석탄에 크게 의존하는 폴란드는 기후 중립적이 되기 위한 기한을 선정하지 않았다.


유럽의 관료들은 농업 예산을 "친환경화"하면 배출량을 줄이고, 초원을 보존하며, 야생 생물을 구하는 데 도움이 될 것이라고 했다. 그러한 노력이 너무 모호하고 미흡하다는 내부의 감사는 무시하고 있다. 수년간의 과학적 연구와 내부 문서는 그러한 개혁이 실패했음을 밝혀 왔다. 


최근까지 유럽의 농업 위원이었던 필 호건Phil Hogan은 많은 사람들이 친환경화를 "우리 모두의 기도에 대한 응답"으로 간주했다고 이야기한다. 


호간 씨는 "우린 이제 그게 작동하지 않았다는 걸 알게 되었다."고 한다.


이제 질문은 유럽의 정책입안자들이 농업 프로그램의 모순에 직면할 준비가 되어 있는지, 아니면 2017년에 삭제된 지도에서 일어났듯이 대중에게 공개하지 않고 숨길지의 여부이다. 


"그 지도는 '문제가 있다. 문제를 해결할 방법을 찾아보자.'라고 이야기했다."고 유럽 환경국을 대신하여 지도가 발표된 회의에 참석한 환경운동가 파우스틴 바데포세Faustine Bas-Defossez 씨는 말한다. "하지만 그들은 그에 관해 이야기하고 싶어하지 않았다." 



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네덜란드 노르트 브라반트- 증가하고 있는 유럽의 생물다양성 위기를 평가하려면, 회색 부분을 확인하라. 여러분이 하나를 찾을 수 있다면 말이다. 


땅딸막하고 부끄러움이 많은 농지의 새(farmland bird)는 과학자들이 지표 종이라 부르는 것으로, 인류와 자연 사이의 건강한 균형을 대표한다. 예를 들어 자고새(partridge)의 개체군이 20% 감소하면, 과학자들은 우려를 표할 것이다. 


그러나 네덜란드에서 30년이 되지 않아 자고새의 개체수가 90% 이상 감소했다. 영국도 비슷한 감소세를 겪었다. 


네덜란드에서 사라지고 있는 새들. 

Sources: Institute for Water and Wetland Research, Radboud University; Getty Images | Note: Bird populations before 1990 were estimated in 1950 and in 1975.




야생 생물 보호단체 버드라이프 네덜란드BirdLife Netherlands의 생태학자 프란스 판 알레비크Frans van Alebeek 씨는 "우린 붕괴에 관해이야기하고 있다."고 한다. "생태학에는 전체 체계가 갑자기 붕괴되는 티핑 포인트가 있다. 우리가 얼마나 더 멀리 갈 수 있는지 모르겠다."


오늘날 유럽의 농장은 카펫을 깔아놓은 것처럼 지평선으로 펼쳐져 있다. 하지만 광대한 아름다움은 잘못된 것이다. 나비가 사라지고, 곤충이 죽어가 생물을 지원하는 먹이그물을 풀어 헤치겠다고 위협하고 있다. 


자고새는 한때 도처에 존재하며 새끼가 씨앗과 곤충을 먹는 높은 생울타리에 둥지를 틀었다. 하지만 몇 년 동안 농민들은 이윤을 극대화하고, 많은 보조금을 받고자 더 많은 토지를 개간해 생울타리와 꽃 및 키가 큰 풀들을 작물로 대체했다. 비료와 농약을 많이 사용해 토양 오염이 악화되어 자고새나 기타 조류를 위한 먹이가 남아나지않게 되었다. 




생태학자들이 야생 생물을 되살리기 위해 실험을 진행하고 있는 네덜란드의 Almkerk 마을에서 관찰되는 왜가리.





버드라이프 네덜란드의 생태학자 프란스 판 알레비크 씨. 그와 동료들은 네덜란드에서 가장 집약적인 농업 지대 가운데 하나에 작은 농지를 임대해 생울타리와 꽃, 기타 특징을 추가한다. 





유럽연합 관료들은 야생생물에 대한 농업 정책의 끔찍한 결과를 약 209년 전부터 알고 있었다. 2004년, 과학자들은 조류의 개체수 감소와 "농경지 생물다양성에 미치는 심각한 악영향"에 대하여 농업보조금을 비난하는 두 개의 보고서를 발표했다


내부 보고서도 마찬가지로 우울했다. 2004년 문서는 새로운 유럽연합 회원국이 보조금을 받을 수 있게 되면 농경지의 야생생물이 감소할 것이라 예측했다. 연구에 의하면 그 예측은 정확한 것으로 밝혀졌다.


그 이후 보존 노력이 번번히 약화되었다. 2006년 유럽연합 대부분의 국가들이 야생생물에게 혜택을 줄 수 있는 토양법을 승인했다. 하지만 영국과 프랑스, 독일은 소수당의 연합을 주도해 이를 막았다


2011년, 유럽연합은 2020년까지 종의 감소를 멈추게 하고 복원시키자는 목표를 세웠다. 이를 위해 유럽의 관료들은 농민들이 초원이나 생울타리를 위한 작은 구역을 따로 마련하게 하는 정책을 승인했다. 


하지만 로비스트들의 압력으로 농민들이 이 구역에 특정한 작물을 재배할 수 있도록 법안이 변경되었다. 과학자들은 이 허점이 농민들이 보존 토지에서 계속 농사짓게 하기 때문에 정책을 파괴하고 있다고 한다. - 하지만 유럽의 관료들은 정책의 잠재력을 강조하며 그것을 성공이라며 환영했다




판 알레비크 씨는 "여기에 새가 있다고 상상해 보라. 여기에 나비가 있다고 상상해 보라."라고 이야기했다. "먹이도 없고, 숨을 곳도 없다." 




농업보조금과 지역의 조류 및 곤충의 감소 사이의 연관성을 조사하는 네덜란드 바허닝언Wageningen 대학의 생태학자 앤 판 둔 씨는 "이론적으로는 많은 성과를 거두었다."고 한다. "실제로는 너무 실망스럽다."


몇몇 실험은 희망을 보여준다. 


네덜란드의 생태학자 판 알레비크 씨는 평야가 펼쳐진 네덜란드에서 가장 집약적인 농업 지대 가운데 하나인 노르트 브라반트North Brabant 주에서 작은 농지를 임대하기 위해 동료 및 지방정부의 관료들과 협력하고 있다. 그들은 생울타리와 꽃, 기타 특징을 추가한다. 


여름철, 이 농장은 단조로운 작물의 대열을 깨뜨리는 빛깔과 질감으로 구별된다. 겨울철에 가장 눈에 띄는 차이점은 조류이다. 까마귀와 비둘기, 갈매기들이 하늘을 가로질러 날거나 생울타리를 부리로 쫀다. 


판 알레비크 씨는 이 농장의 자고새 개체수가 매우 안정된 한편, 곤충도 크게 증가했다고 말한다. 


그는 유럽 전역에 이러한 변화를 일으키기 위해 농업 예산을 책정하는 데 약간의 시간이 걸릴 것이라 한다. 그렇다 하더라도, 유럽연합은 내년도 생물다양성 목표에 미치지 못할 것으로 예상된다. 


최근 "큰 진전은 없었다"고 적힌 자체 보고서가 발견되었다. 



--------------------


브뤼셀- 지난해 말, 유럽의 관료들은 친환경 초강대국이 되고자 하는 야심을 보여주고자 기후변화에 맞서기 위해 미래의 예산 가운데 25% 할당하겠다고 제안했다. 그것이 환경운동가들이 환경에 가장 해롭다고 이야기하는 농업보조금을 진지하게 재고하도록 만들었을 것이다. 


하지만 상황은 그다지 좋지 않다. 

 



프랑스 브르타뉴의 돼지 농장.




10월, 농지에 분뇨 슬러리를 살포하는 폴란드의 농민.




유럽의 관료들은 보조금의 일부에 기후변화를 해결하도록 자동으로 꼬리표를 다는 농업 예산을 작성했다. 감사들은 이 회계안이 부적절하고 비현실적이라고 비판했다.


유럽의 지도자들은 그 방안을 지지하지만, 환경운동가들은 그걸 정치적으로 어려운 변화를 피하기 위한 "녹색세탁"이라 부른다. 


유럽연합의 자료에 의하면, 몇 년 동안 감소했지만 농업에서 온실가스의 배출량이 증가하고 있다는 것은 부인할 수 없다. 


농업은 유럽의 온실가스 배출량 가운데 약 10%를 차지한다. 배출량의 상당 부분은 먹이를 소화하며 강력한 온실가스인 메탄을 방출하는 농장의 가축이 담당한다. 비료는 아산화질소를 배출해 기여한다. 썩고 있는 분뇨는 메탄과 암모니아를 배출한다. 



유럽의 온실가스 배출

Source: Annual European Union greenhouse gas inventory 1990–2017 and inventory report 2019, European Environment Agency.





유럽연합 집행위원회에서 마련된 보고서에 의하면, 축산업을 직접 지원하는 것과 같은 일부 보조금이 상황을 악화시키고 있다. 농업 예산의 환경 조치가 배출량을 크게 감소시키지는 않을 것 같다고 한다. 


이는 유럽연합이 아마 2050년의 배출 목표를 달성하지 못할 것이라 밝힌 이번 달에 발표된 끔찍한 진행 보고서에서 울려 퍼졌다.


유럽 환경청은 "추세를 누그러뜨릴 만큼 믿을 만한 대응을 내놓을 시간이 촉박하다"고 했다. 


 


폴란드 북부의 농촌 숩코비Subkowy. 지난해 이 지역 전체가 "질산염 취약지"로 지정되었다.


 


발트해로 연결되는 폴란드 비스툴라 강의 하구.




농업의 배출량을 줄이려고 노력하는 국가들은 심한 저항에 부딪치고 있다. 올해, 네덜란드 국회의원들은 배출량을 줄이고자 가축의 수를 절반으로 줄이자고 제안했다. 농민들이 트랙터로 헤이그의 거리를 점거해 네덜란드 역사상 최악의 교통난이라 표현하는 사태가 일어났다.


메탄과 기타 오염물질에 대한 엄격한 규제에 실패했다고 밝힌 전 유럽 환경청장 야네즈 포토치닉Janez Potocnik 씨는 "나는 변화를 시도했지만, 언제나 '당신은 이 일을 수행할 수 없다'는 이야기만 들었다."고 한다.



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프랑스 일리언Hillion- 피에르 필립Pierre Philippe의 투쟁은 프랑스 북서부 해변에서 인간과 동물들이 죽기 시작하며 비롯되었다. 


녹색의 점액덩어리에서 사람의 시체를 건졌다. 승마자는 그의 죽은 말 옆에서 무의식상태로 발견되었다. 해변의 노동자가 혼수상태에 빠지고, 조깅하던 사람이 쓰러졌다.


응급의인 필립 씨는 그 이유를 분명히 알았다. 여름마다 조류가 브르타뉴 해변에 푸르른 점액을 뒤덮는다. 그것이 분해되면서 황화수소, 즉 몇 초 안에 죽을 수도 있는 유독 가스를 방출한다. 


필립 씨는 몇 년 동안 정부의 보건당국자들에게 위협을 인정하도록, 아니면 최소한 협의에 나서도록 설득하고자 노력했다. 그들은 거절했다. "그들이 문제를 인식하면, 간접적으로 책임도 인정하는 것이다"라고 그는 말한다. "그리고 그들도 그걸 알고 있다."


조류에 관해 이야기하는 건 농업에 관한 이야기이기 때문이다.



7월, 프랑스 브르타뉴 해변에서 하루에 수집한 녹색의 조류.




앙드레 올리브로André Ollivro 씨는 10년 전 지역의 보건당국에 조류에 대해 문의한 일을 기억한다. 





브르타뉴 지역은 프랑스 돼지고기의 절반 이상과 젖소 1/4을 사육한다. 가축 분뇨는 밀과 옥수수 밭에 살포되고,이는 오로지 가축의 먹이로만 쓰인다. 이 덕에 브르타뉴 지역은 프랑스에서 최대의 질소 농도를 기록하고 있다. 


그 질산염은 녹조류의 먹이가 된다. 지역의 농장에서 유출되는 관개용수는 바닷물을 오염시키고, 조류가 번성하도록 기여한다. 


해변 오두막을 소유한 앙드레 올리브로 씨는 10년 전 보건당국에 문의한 일을 기억한다. 74세인 올리브로 씨는 "아이들이 조류 근처에서 놀고 있다가 몸이 아프다고 했다."고 한다. "그 아이들은 어지럽고 메스꺼워 했다." 이윽고 썩은 조류더미가 너무 높아져 해변에 접근하지 못하도록 차단되었다. 


정부 관료들은 그와 이웃들이 책임져야 한다고 했다. "그들은 세탁기와 세탁물의 인산염에서 나왔다고 했다."


브르타뉴 농업국 대표 에드위지Edwige Kerbouriou 씨는 몇 년 동안 관료와 농민들이 농업 관행과 해변의 녹색 찐득이 사이의 연관성을 받아들이지 않았다는 사실을 인정했다.


몇 년 동안 소송과 정치적 압력이 계속되며 국회의원과 업계 지도자들이 그 관계를 인정하게 되었다. 질산염 법안이 엄격해지면서 비료 살포 관행에 변화가 일어나 질산염 유출이 감소했다. 하지만 관련 관료는 오염 수준은 여전히 높으며, 그 지방의 해안 대부분은 환경 목표를 충족시키기 위한 궤도에 오르지 못했다고 했다.


  



브르타뉴에서 계속된 소송과 정치적 압력으로 국회의원과 업계 지도자들이 농업과 독성 조류의 연관성을 인정하게 되었다.





브르타뉴의 농업 발전을 목격한 농민 앙드레 포숑André Pochon 씨는 지속가능한 농업의 접근법을 위한 탄원을 시작했다.




유럽의 환경 관료들은 질산염 오염 문제를 해결하기 위해서는 농민들이 새로운 투자를 하고, 생산 수준을 더 낮추어야 한다고 주장한다. 농민들은 자신의 이윤을 감소시키는 규제를 받아들이지 않을 것이라 이야기한다. 


현재 브르타뉴의 관료들은 조류가 썩어서 독성을 띠기 전에 굴삭기를 보내 조류를 걷어내고 있다. 올여름처럼 문제가 여느 해보다 심각해지면, 관료들은 해변을 차단하고 경고 표지를 게시한다. 


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발트해에서- 11월 어느날 아침, 배멀미가 난 해양학자 다니엘 락Daniel Rak 씨는 연구선 오세아니아의 동료들이 카메라와 센서를 발트해 바닥으로 내리는 것을 지켜보았다. 


장비가 다시 수면으로 떠올라, 실험실에 들어간 락 씨는 자신의 눈을 의심했다. 해저에는 생물이 살기에 충분한 산소가 없었다. 그의 배는 죽음의 구역에 있었다.


카메라는 황폐한 경관을 드러냈다. 벌레도, 조개도, 연체동물도 아무것도 없었다.


"모두 산소가 필요해 사라졌다."고 그는 말한다.




발트해의 황폐한 경관을 드러낸 수중카메라. 박테리아 군집만이 산소 없이 생존할 수 있다.



유일한 생물은 산소 없이도 번성하는 야광의 박테리아 군집뿐이었다. 해저에서 푼 흙에서는 썩은 달걀에서 나는 냄새가 났다. 


오래된 물이 담긴 욕조와 비교되곤 하는 발트해는 세계에서 가장 오염된 바다 가운데 하나이다. 1970년대 상트 페테르부르크 같은 도시에서 폐수를 직접 버렸을 때 상황은 더 나빠졌다. 그렇더라도 최근 몇 년 동안 바다의 일부 유역에서 질소와 인의 농도가 높아졌다.


유럽 환경청에 의하면, 발트해의 일부가 정상으로 회복되려면 200년 정도 걸릴 수 있다. 


발트해의 가장 큰 오염원인 폴란드는 프랑스와 스페인, 독일, 이탈리아에 이어 다섯 번째로 많은 보조금을 받는 국가이기도 하다. 폴란드 관료들은 어떠한 상관관계도 부정하며, 국가의 농업부 차관 흐르자르드 자루즈키Ryszard Zarudzki 씨는 보조금이 "농민들에게 환경 기준을 준수하게 하는 법적 의무를 부과한다"고 했다.


6년 전, 유럽 위원회는 질산염 오염을 제한하는 데 충분하지 않다면서 폴란드를 법정에 세웠다. 폴란드 관료들은자신의 국가가 불공정하게 선정되었으며, 덴마크와 스웨덴 같은 부유한 국가보다 단위면적당 비료 사용량이 더 적다고 강조한다.



폴란드 그단스크Gdansk 근처의 발트해에 접한 카크자Kacza 강 어귀.




연구선 오세아니아에서 수중카메라를 작동하고 있는 케저탄 데자Kajetan Deja 씨. 




하지만 최근 폴란드 정부가 조치를 취하기 시작했다. 지난해, 정부는 전국이 "질산염 취약지"라고 선언하고, 농장이 폴란드의 물을 오염시키고 있다고 인정했다. 


새로운 지침은 농민이 사용할 수 있는 비료의 양과 사용시기를 제한했다. 농민들은 이제 반 년 동안 분뇨와 슬러리의 누출을 방지하고자 사일로에 저장해야 한다. 


새로운 정책은 폴란드의 대폴란드 평야에 있는 대다수의 축산농장에는 영향을 미치지 않았다. 몇몇은 브뤼셀의 관료주의적인 침범이라며 그 요구를 비판했다. -그리고 폴란드의 경쟁 우위를 약화시키려는 음모라고.


"우리가 생산자가 아닌 소비자가 되어야 했기에 브뤼셀을 놀라게 했다고 생각한다."고 젖소를 사육하며 새로운 규정이 폴란드의 생산성을 하락시킬까 염려하는 60세의 농민 엘즈비에타 바그로우스카Elzbieta Bagrowska 씨는 말한다. 그녀는 "그 규정은 폴란드 사람들이 아르헨티나산 소고기를 먹고 아일랜드산 우유를 마시게 할 수도 있다."고 한다.


수십 년 동안, 유럽연합은 더 많은 먹을거리와 이윤을 생산하길 원했다. 오늘날에는 그것이 환경 개혁을 장려하게 한다. 지금까지 두 가지를 동시에 수행하는 건 불가능하다고 판명되었다.  

 

전 유럽 환경청장 포토크닉Potocnik 씨는 "환경을 파괴한 것에 대해 보상을 받는다면, 우리는 환경을 파괴할 것이다."라고 한다. "왜 안 그러겠는가." 



세계에서 가장 오염된 바다의 하나인 발트해.




https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/25/world/europe/farms-environment.html







 


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First, we needed a 4x4 of some sort, along with a driver willing to chance roads that are sometimes passable, sometimes not. The man we found struck us as the quietly skeptical sort, but after a few hundred rutted kilometers, any hesitations he'd been suppressing hardened into emphatic certainties. “The only people who drive on this road,” he told our photographer and me, via our translator, “are people who want to kill their cars.” Yet he gamely pushed ever deeper into Madagascar's tropical north, until our mud road descended a hill and was swallowed by a wide river. It was the end of the line for the driver. He seemed relieved.


Somewhere on the other side of that water, dozens of farmers would soon converge upon a regional vanilla market in the village of Tanambao Betsivakiny. Growers would negotiate with buyers working on behalf of exporters and international flavoring companies, and together everyone would hash out a collective, per-kilogram price for the crop. Most buyers would pay cash on the spot, and the farmers would hand over several tons of green, freshly harvested vanilla beans.


Those humble beans, whose essence is associated with all that's bland and unexciting, have somehow metamorphosed, butterfly-style, into the most flamboyantly mercurial commodity on the planet. In the past two decades, cured vanilla beans have been known to fetch almost $600 per kilogram one week, then $20 or so the next. Northeastern Madagascar is the world's largest producer of natural vanilla, so every boom and every bust slams this region like a tropical storm. When prices peak, cash floods the villages. When prices fall, it drains away.


Madagascar was largely integrated into global trade centuries ago. The island is bigger than France, with cultural traditions that vary by region, unique biological treasures, and a developing tourism economy. The capital, Antananarivo, is full of laborers, lawyers, bureaucrats, bankers, artists, entrepreneurs, intellectuals—everything a 21st century city of 1.5 million needs. Yet Madagascar is also one of the poorest countries on the planet. You see and feel its disparities most sharply in its more remote pockets, including in the vanilla-growing region of the northeast. The extreme isolation of those communities, their dominance over the international supply, the dramatic changes they undergo during price swings—all of it has turned this part of the country into a semicontained observation lab that exposes both the genius and the insanity of globalized commerce. Visiting one of the seasonal auctions where vanilla enters the global marketplace seems a logical first step to try to understand it all.


So we really needed to cross that river.


The water didn't look too deep; we spotted people wading out toward the other side, carrying baskets on their heads. We took off our shoes, rolled up our pants, and stepped in. The riverbed was lined with fiendishly slippery, cannonball-size boulders. We plotted a slow, wobbly course to the other side. on the far bank, someone told us the market was still a two-hour trek away.



The road on the way to Tanambao Betsivakiny, site of one of Madagascar’s many regional vanilla markets.




It was mostly uphill, naturally. When the spiraling dirt road plateaued, we found ourselves on the weedy edge of a village. A couple of young men with motorbikes accepted the equivalent of a couple of dollars for rides to shave a good half-hour off the trek.


If our arrival was accompanied by a whiff of self-congratulation, it dissipated as soon as we saw the farmers. Most had been walking far longer than we had, in flip-flops, with huge sacks of beans hanging from sticks balanced across their shoulders. Some of the bags weighed more than 40 kilograms. And for the farmers, this was the easy part. They'd spent months in the fields, closely monitoring their vines for any sign of a bloom. When they found a vanilla orchid in flower, they rushed to hand-pollinate it. Each flower's fertilization period lasts only a few hours each season; if they missed that window, the plant wouldn't produce beans. Then, as the beans matured on the vine, the farmers hand-stamped the pods with a personalized, Braille-like marking (the horticultural equivalent of a cattle brand), so thieves would have difficulty passing them off as their own if they tried to sell them. The farmers slept in the fields at night, machetes by their sides, guarding their plants through rain, heat, and the buzz of malarial mosquitoes. For many of them, an entire year's income depended on this auction.



Farmers present their harvests. Many of these men carried their beans to the market on foot.



It would take place in a simple wood-slat structure about three times longer than the village's typical single-family residence. For most of the year the building was the local schoolhouse. The furnishings consisted of a table, scattered chairs, and a rectangular chalkboard. Outside, hanging under the eaves, was a portable hook scale.


One at a time, the farmers entered the hut and emptied their bags of beans onto the floor. Government-authorized inspectors sifted through the beans, making sure they were all suitably large and ripe. They rebagged the beans and clipped the sacks to the scale outside, then logged the weight of each farmer's harvest in a ledger.


In the dirt yard outside the hut, several dozen men stood in tight circles, watching the weigh-in. They were the buyers, or collectors, as they're called here. Most had arrived that morning, using rafts to get their motorcycles across the river we'd forded.


The regional markets follow an established protocol, the men explained. After the weigh-ins, the farmers gather together and come up with a per-kilo asking price, then write that figure on the chalkboard. The collectors stare at the number for a while, then huddle up. They rub out the farmers' price and scribble a counteroffer. This back-and-forth is repeated until the figures match. When that happens, the buyers divvy up the beans, collecting however many tons each has agreed to buy. The process can take a day or a week. If this one stretched into tomorrow, most of the farmers and collectors planned to search for a friendly villager with a little extra floor space where they might curl up and sleep.


The year before, at a market much like this, one collector had gone rogue, forgoing the chalkboard system and negotiating directly with a village chief behind closed doors. When news of the man's attempt to sidestep the protocol spread to the other collectors, he was chased through the village, apprehended, and jailed.


This particular sale featured no spectacular foot chases or citizen's arrests. But it had plenty of unexpected intrigue and deception. The business is cruel, humane, comic, tragic, ingenious, and flat-out insane, often at the same time. As we struggled to untangle the drama playing out, we began to suspect that our original goal—to try to understand the vanilla trade—should be secondary. It seemed more important to simply observe this whole business in a particular way: with a sustained appreciation for how incredibly wild global trade, at its most elemental level, actually is.


Vanilla orchids are native to Mexico, and for a few hundred years after the Spaniards first brought the flowers back to Europe, no one could get the beans to grow anywhere else. In 1836 a Belgian horticulturalist figured out why: They emerge from the flower only after it's pollinated by one of two rare species of bees native to Mesoamerica. Five years after that discovery, a young slave named Edmond Albius from the island of Réunion (then called Bourbon) realized he could hand-pollinate the orchids by carefully manipulating the male and female parts of the plant. His ingenuity transformed vanilla into a cultivatable crop, and small plantations began popping up all over the world. The orchids seemed to grow especially well in Madagascar, 500 miles due west of Réunion in the Indian Ocean.


Vanilla, in its essence, is an adventure story.


For the next 150 years, vanilla played it straight, drawing little attention to itself. By the 1980s, Madagascar was producing about 30% of the world's supply. Government controls kept prices tethered pretty tightly, to around $50 or $60 per kilo for cured beans. “You had some fluctuations, maybe $10 up or down, but it was pretty stable,” says Craig Nielsen, co-owner of Nielsen-Massey Vanillas Inc., a flavor company based in Illinois and the Netherlands that's dealt in the beans since 1907. “Then, under pressure from the World Bank, which they owed a lot of money to, Madagascar was forced to abandon those price controls in the mid-1990s.”






That's when vanilla started to shed its inhibitions. Prices dipped for a year or two. Then, in 2000, a powerful cyclone flattened the northeastern part of the country. It takes three years for a newly planted orchid to produce beans, so harvests waned for the next few years, causing prices to spike, then collapse. International buyers reported that local exporters were asking about $600 a kilo for cured vanilla on a Monday and roughly $20 by that Friday. Warehouses were stuck with beans they couldn't sell for anything close to what they'd paid for them, and a couple of the biggest, most well-established vanilla dealers in the country went out of business.


For the past four years, prices have been riding high again, flirting with the $600 mark in 2018 and rarely falling below $400 since. (The going rate this fall was about $420 per kilo.) The spike is sometimes attributed to a 2015 announcement by Nestlé SA that the company would use only all-natural vanilla in its products instead of imitation flavoring. Other companies followed suit. The true impact of the decision is a matter of debate. In the past year, consumers have sued numerous food and beverage companies, Nestlé among them, claiming that some if not most of their vanilla flavoring still comes from sources other than beans. Spencer Sheehan, a New York attorney who's filed suits against more than 25 companies, contends that the flavor is often derived from the “other natural flavors” generically cited in the ingredients lists of various products. The plaintiffs are seeking monetary damages, but none of the suits has yet received class-action status from a judge. Regardless of the validity of those suits, few in the industry say demand for natural vanilla has changed enough to protect prices from another dip. Almost everyone thinks a significant price plunge is a matter of when, not if.


Because northeastern Madagascar is so impoverished when vanilla prices aren't high, banks and other financial institutions don't open a branch near many villages. Farmers are more likely to bury cash under their houses than to put it into an account. The market demands that drive the exaggerated price swings are wholly separate from their lives; almost no one here actually uses vanilla, which is viewed as a product only foreigners consume. The impermanence of cash flow, along with the near-complete disconnect from forces moving the market, means the farmers view international commerce from a much different angle than outsiders might. “Consequently, money in northeastern Madagascar is not perceived as a straightforward, interest-based sum accumulating over time in an orderly fashion,” according to a study published last year in American Ethnologist, the journal of the American Ethnological Society. Annah Zhu, the author of the report, wrote that money in the vanilla-growing region is instead treated as a “volatile material that comes and goes, imbuing the region with fantastical undertones of alternating abundance and dearth.”




That sporadic abundance has generated a new genre of local storytelling, almost folkloric in nature, that catalogs local examples of financial decadence. It's called vola mofana—roughly translated as “hot money” spending—and the tales that illustrate the concept are difficult to verify but easy to repeat.


It's said that one vanilla farmer was observed buying the entire supply of mangoes from a roadside stand; he paid the vendor 10 times the asking price, then joyfully smashed every piece of fruit on the road. People say chameleons have been spotted skittering wild through villages with money glued to their backs. one vanilla farmer reputedly boiled all his money in a pot and ate the soggy, globular mass. We heard about farmers who had smoked cash, rolling tobacco in it as if the bills were cigarette papers. Zhu, in her journal article, reported that at a festival, a man stepped up to a carnival booth, bought a handful of rings to toss at a cluster of bottles, turned around, and threw every ring in the opposite direction. “This is how you play with money!” he yelled.


I wasn't sure whether to believe these stories or not. Most were said to have happened several years ago to people who've since faded into anonymity. And most of the farmers we met seemed frugal, intent on building wealth rather than squandering it. Yet almost everyone has a story like this to tell. Zhu acknowledges some might be more legend than fact, but their pervasiveness makes them meaningful. Her point in gathering and repeating the tales wasn't to dismiss the vanilla farmers and collectors as simpletons dazed by the sudden collision of the modern and the traditional. Vola mofana stories, she says, don't describe an awkward phase of Madagascar's economic development; rather, the profligacy they recount can be considered a “tactical weapon” deployed by residents against the “erratic, nonlinear development that characterizes globalization today.” By treating money so cavalierly—either literally or figuratively—the vanilla farmers diminish the power the modern economic order can exert upon them. Actions that seem to defy logic actually “reflect and often resist the magicalities inherent in modern forms.”


A translation: Maybe it's not the farmers and collectors who've gone off the rails when confronting the modern economic system; maybe what's crazy is the modern system.


Farmers are sometimes told that if they produce better beans, the market will reward them with higher prices. But that's not how it works.


If a crop is projected to be weak and scraggly, buyers get antsy, eager to secure whatever they can get, as soon as they can. The farmers try to satisfy the demand, picking beans earlier than they otherwise might, and the auction dates tend to slide forward. Sometimes an early black market emerges, with beans trading hands under the table before the official markets commence. Prices drive upward, and the beans—picked too soon, with less flavor than mature ones—often turn out to be even worse than predicted. When the crop is expected to be healthy, all of that is turned upside down. The farmers feel less pressure to pick their beans early; they allow the vanilla to mature on the flower and develop a richer flavor, and prices generally tend to stay lower. It's what market economists call a “perverse incentive.”


“The worst vanilla, by far, that I've ever seen in my life was the stuff that sold for $650 a kilo,” says Josephine Lochhead, president of Cook Flavoring Co., a family business in California that's been dealing in vanilla for more than a century. “And the farmers think, Gee, I've worked on these beans for six months, sleeping in the fields through rain, babying them, and this year's beans are much better than last year's beans—so shouldn't I get more money for them than for the terrible beans I grew last year?”


The way money moves, traveling from the accounts of billion-dollar corporations and into the hands of the farmers, also follows a logic of its own. Madagascar's largest currency denomination is the 20,000-ariary note, worth a little more than $5. It went into circulation in 2017, a year after vanilla prices shot toward the lofty heights where they yet remain. The previous year, when the 10,000-ariary bill was the biggest to be had, international buyers scrambled at harvest time to get their hands on all they could find. They rushed to the big banks in Antananarivo and bounced around the branches of the northeast, only to be turned away.


Lochhead was one of those buyers. She couldn't figure out what was going on until she saw local reps from McCormick & Co. arrive. The American spice giant had anticipated a price spike and acted faster than anyone else, she recalls, withdrawing ariary by the crateful from banks in the capital, then reinforcing its stash at smaller branches. “No one else could get any,” Lochhead recalls. “We couldn't buy vanilla for three days, until the government printed more money and sent it up here. It was crazy.”


Whenever the price of vanilla spikes and international executives are confronted by Madagascar's infrastructural precariousness, they ask themselves, Why are we subjecting ourselves to this? Wouldn't it be easier to get our vanilla from someplace else?





 Zidane in his family’s vanilla fields. He and his father pollinate their vanilla orchids by hand. After the beans appear, they’ll sleep in the fields to protect the crop from thieves.




New vanilla cultivation projects have been introduced nearly everywhere orchids naturally thrive. But vanilla is stubborn. It likes to grow among other plants, and if you try to create a huge, easily managed, monocultural plantation, certain fungal diseases tend to spread quickly. “We've started farms in Fiji, in Indonesia, and we have one in Papua New Guinea,” Lochhead says. Those farms have worked, to a certain extent. “They just don't work as well.” In the Netherlands, teams of horticulturalists embarked in 2012 on a pilot project to cultivate vanilla in greenhouses. Earlier this year they ran out of funding and concluded their crop wasn't financially sustainable.


Connoisseurs describe vanilla from Indonesia as earthy and smoky; from Uganda as chocolaty; from Tahiti as fruity and flowery; from Mexico as hinting of clover and nutmeg. But the Malagasy stuff tastes like what people expect from really good vanilla: rich, sweet, creamy. Those subtleties might help explain, to a fractional extent, why Madagascar dominates the trade.


A much bigger reason is cheap labor. Since Madagascar let the free market take over, the country's share of world vanilla production has risen to 80% or more, according to industry experts. The broader price swings are partly responsible for that growth. Vanilla beans are delicate and incredibly labor-intensive, and no part of the planting, pollinating, cultivating, and curing process has been mechanized. Each vanilla bean will be touched by human hands hundreds of times—perhaps thousands—before it's exported.


It's a perfect illustration of the globalized economy's heat-seeking, laser-guided ability to stretch a resource to the limit. For those arguing that globalization is unreasonable and exploitative, the vanilla farmers of Madagascar have become a problem to solve. Various nongovernmental organizations have introduced campaigns to raise wages, stamp out child labor, and direct more profits to the farmers and villages carrying the industry on their back. Many flavor companies have gotten on board, too, creating the Sustainable Vanilla Initiative.


When the beans are bringing in hundreds of dollars per kilo, many countries in desirable latitudes can afford to deploy that much labor. But what about when prices tank? Wages in the other vanilla-producing countries are 10 to 15 times higher than in Madagascar, where the legal minimum wage for agricultural workers is 18¢ an hour. In those other places, vanilla plantations would hemorrhage money during downturns. “No one will invest in that,” Lochhead says. “How can you compete with Madagascar, where people work for $1 a day?”


In northeastern Madagascar there's widespread suspicion that middlemen—the collectors and local exporters—are sponging up more than their fair share of the cash flowing into the region. This year, Lochhead devised a plan to try to work around them. She and a former vanilla farmer named Dylan Randriamihaja formed a cooperative consisting of 63 farmers from four villages. Throughout the growing season, Randriamihaja visited the farmers, monitoring their techniques, making sure they complied with organic standards, and checking the quality of the beans.


The plan was that after harvest, the co-op members would take their beans to one of the little regional markets. The collective, negotiated price would still apply to their crop, but Lochhead would pay a premium of about 2% above the going rate, and they'd direct all of their beans to her. Lochhead would get as many as 15 tons of beans she could trust were organic and of high quality; the farmers in turn would pocket more money from her than they'd get from a collector. What's more, Lochhead wouldn't have to pay any collectors a commission for negotiating the sale, and—because Randriamihaja had an exporting license—the two of them could ship the beans overseas themselves.


Lochhead and Randriamihaja sent an assistant to the market where the co-op farmers gathered—the same one, across the river and up in the hills, that we visited. He'd oversee the sale and haul the beans back to Sambava, the city closest to the remote vanilla markets and the capital of the international trade.


That was the plan, anyway. But the vanilla trade did what it often does to a well-thought-out plan: It wrecked it. Or, rather, a mysterious man in a red hat wrecked it.


While the collectors milled around the market, Marcel Sama walked among them, sweating under a fierce sun. He was the emissary sent to the market by Lochhead and Randriamihaja, and he called the members of their co-op together for a meeting behind the auction building, away from the others.


He explained to them that he expected the collective sale price at this market to be close to $55 per kilo for the raw, uncured beans. (Raw vanilla beans generally sell for about one-seventh or one-eighth of what cured ones do, partly because beans shrink during the curing process.) Some of the farmers grumbled; they'd been hoping for a little more. Sama let them talk out their frustrations until the meeting ended in smiles and backslaps.


The weigh-in was finishing up, and negotiations were about to commence. Two young men grabbed two packed rice sacks from the cargo racks of their motorbikes and hoisted the parcels onto a pile of bagged beans. They gently draped two jackets over the bags, as if to hide them, but everyone knew they were full of cash. The men told us they'd hauled the money to the market on behalf of Symrise AG, a multibillion-dollar German flavor and fragrance company, which buys more Madagascar vanilla than anyone else.




An inspector logs the farmers’ harvests.




Another collector, a man in a red baseball cap and an olive green jacket, lingered at the perimeters of the market, keeping a lower profile as the other buyers began to discuss their collective bid. Most of them agreed that a bid of about $55 per kilo was fair. Sama was happy to hear it. But then the man in the red hat piped up, saying he'd be willing to pay $62 per kilo.


Sama couldn't believe it. It was too much. If the bid held, the co-op would have to pay its farmers about $65 per kilo—20% more than Lochhead had paid for several tons of beans a few days earlier at another market. Some of the other collectors indicated they might be willing to go higher than $55, but this bid seemed excessive. And the unbendable custom of the market is that all beans must sell at the same price. The man in the red hat indicated that this wouldn't be a problem: He would buy the entire inventory at $62 per kilo, if the farmers agreed. Even the members of the co-op couldn't resist such an offer.


There was just one thing. The money, the man explained, was still in offices on the other side of the river. It would take him several hours to get all of it hauled out to the market hut. As it was already afternoon, he asked them to give him until the next morning, when he'd return with the cash, first thing. It was a deal. Some of the farmers spent that night sleeping next to their beans, to make sure nothing was stolen.


The next morning, all of the farmers reconvened. But the man in the red hat was nowhere to be found. Hours ticked by. He didn't return.


By the next day we had rejoined Lochhead and Randriamihaja in Sambava. Sama called them to say the false bid had thrown everything off. Negotiations had started anew. The farmers were now angry—and empowered. They'd observed some collectors seriously considering matching the bogus bid the day before, and their baseline asking price was no longer $55 per kilo. When a few collectors agreed to the $62, Lochhead and Randriamihaja bowed out. The cooperative farmers sold their beans to others.


“It's frustrating, because the farmers can say our co-op didn't offer them a good price,” Randriamihaja said. “But I think they will come back to us. We will try again.”


The man in the red hat had been a saboteur, he guessed. But who sent him? Rumors floated around the market that the man worked for an exporter that didn't want cooperatives limiting its access to beans. “I think he probably was sent by a big company, just to upset the market,” Randriamihaja speculated. “It has happened before, several times. They want to ruin our reputations.”


In 2019 about 400 companies were licensed to export vanilla from Madagascar, and many are small and relatively new. Randriamihaja, who got his license three years ago, is one of those up-and-comers. Some people, particularly the established exporting companies, argue that some of these inexperienced dealers are diluting Madagascar's market with low-quality, poorly cured beans. They support ongoing government initiatives to cut the number to as few as 40 licensees.


“They say it's for quality reasons, but that doesn't make sense to me,” Randriamihaja said. “Those big companies are handling 600 tons a year, so how can they control the quality of that? We do something like 15 tons a year. We can provide a good, quality bean, because we're controlling them every day, through every step of the process.”


Lochhead nodded in agreement. To her, the license reduction scheme felt like a power play. “It's a racket,” she said. “A big boys' club.”







She and Randriamihaja now needed another way to get vanilla beans. They spent the next two days going to villages in search of vrac, the term for beans that have been partially cured. Vrac can be stored for longer periods than raw beans, and some farmers like to deal in it because it can provide income in the months after the harvest. Inside a one-room hut of split bamboo, Lochhead and Randriamihaja found an 80-year-old man named Farlahy Gilbert. He looked as thin and wizened as the beans he spread out for them to inspect. Lochhead cast a critical eye on his supply. She lifted a couple of the oily beans to her nose. “Ooh,” she said, wincing. “There's mold. That's bad. Smell it.”


Gilbert fetched another batch and poured it out for them. “It looks pretty wet,” Lochhead said. She guessed it was about 40% moisture. Gourmet vanilla vrac should be 32% to 35%. “Tell him to get this out in the sun,” she told Randriamihaja.


Their next stop was a hut right across the road, where a 34-year-old farmer named Be Olivier lived. “Now this is workable,” Lochhead said, kneeling down in front of the vrac the farmer had spread out on a coffee table for inspection. Her flowing white dress pooled around her legs, and she closed her eyes as she inhaled the sweet, heavy scent. To her, this was the best part of her business: the direct, sensory pleasure when things went right. “This,” she said, pulling a moist brown pod from the pile, “is the perfect vanilla bean.” She admired it, smiling, for an extended moment. “How much does he have?” she asked.


Olivier told them he had plenty to sell, but he wouldn't say exactly how much. “They will never tell you that,” Randriamihaja said. They feared theft.


By any international standard, Olivier was living in poverty, without running water or reliable electricity. But high vanilla prices had allowed him to accumulate some enviable assets in recent years. He'd grown up in a hut made of palm thatch and moved to one of split bamboo; now his walls were made of solid wood planks. And unlike most of the village's huts, his had two rooms. Where once his floors were bare earth covered by rugs, now he walked on smooth, red-painted boards. The chairs in the living room had cushions on them. And he had a television, powered by a single solar panel balanced on the peak of his corrugated roof and connected to the village's only satellite dish.


When we asked Olivier to verify the spelling of his name, he motioned to his 7-year-old daughter, who'd been watching from a bed in the adjoining room. He'd recently enrolled her in school, and when she spelled out his name for us, he smiled with undisguised pride. She was mastering things he'd never thought possible for himself.




Dylan Randriamihaja, vanilla farmer turned exporter, and Josephine Lochhead, president of Cook Flavoring Co., inspect bundles of vrac.




Randriamihaja could relate. He grew up in a crowded hut with six sisters and three brothers, the children of vanilla growers. Tiny fingers were valuable when handling delicate flowers, and he worked the fields for years. His parents rarely collected cash for their beans; more often, they'd trade them to visiting Chinese and Indian merchants for items such as blankets and sugar. As the vanilla market opened up in the mid-1990s, Randriamihaja encountered more international buyers.


A combination of curiosity and ambition drew him toward them. Slowly, to complement the Malagasy and French he spoke, he taught himself to read, write, and speak English. He'd practice with the few tourists he met at the Orchidea Hotel in Sambava. A natural conversationalist unafraid of throwing himself into new experiences, he decided his future might lie in the tourism industry. He traveled to Antananarivo, completed courses there, and returned to start a business as a guide.


The work was inconsistent, mostly because only the most intrepid tourists made it to his corner of the country, and after a few years he decided to return to the business he'd grown up in. He started farming and curing his own vanilla beans, selling them to local exporters. Five years in, he got a call from the proprietor of the Orchidea Hotel. An American was in town, he was told. She was interested in vanilla, and she needed help.







It was 2015, and Lochhead was midway through her first visit to Madagascar. For years she'd been buying its vanilla from afar, but she wanted to immerse herself in a trade she'd also been born into, to experience it directly and connect herself to its source. Things weren't going well: She was battling stomach bugs, and the niece who'd accompanied her was holed up in the hotel, shivering through a bout of malaria. Lochhead had hoped to explore the possibility of dealing more directly with locals in purchasing her beans, but she was in no condition to explore anything. “I was kind of overwhelmed,” she remembered.


Randriamihaja met her at the hotel, and they jelled. He became more than just a guide to the local industry, getting his exporting license later that same year and turning into something more like a partner. He listened to her frustrations and searched for solutions. When she said she needed a more reliable source of certified organic vanilla, he organized the cooperative and trained its members to make sure they followed the certification standards. Although the cooperative ended up selling its beans to other buyers this year, both he and Lochhead viewed that disappointment as a learning experience.


Not too long ago, he took the leaders of the cooperative to a regional bank branch to show them how the banking system works. He opened an account for the group and, over the course of multiple visits, showed them how money could be electronically transferred from one account to another.


“They didn't trust it at first,” Randriamihaja said. “It was very hard to convince them. But after the leaders saw that the money really was in there, that it wasn't a trick, and that they could get the money anytime, they were OK with it. So this is how we will pay them from now on.”


Recently, Randriamihaja boarded a plane and flew beyond the shores of his island for the first time. He traveled all the way to the U.S. to visit Lochhead's vanilla production facility in Paso Robles, Calif.—his turn to plunge into an entirely foreign landscape. From Los Angeles, he made his way north. He came to the banks of the Santa Clara River, crossed it, and ventured back toward the coast. Everything was exotic: the five-lane freeways, the baseball stadiums, the wineries, the arrow-straight rows of asparagus and cabbage stretching to the horizon. It was the adventure of his life, and it changed him.


Now, back in Madagascar, he was overseeing a team that was curing several tons of beans Lochhead had recently bought. The workers spread the beans on drying racks in his yard. At the front of his house, outside a guard station, an American flag now flew beside the one from Madagascar. In his office a stereo played country and western music. Randriamihaja wore a T-shirt that, against an outline of a map of America, said, “This Is Chevy Country.”







It would be difficult to come up with a more on-the-nose illustration of how globalization colors all it touches. But in Randriamihaja's office, the colors blur and bleed into one another. Is the image of him—in that T-shirt, listening to that music, under that flag—an example of how local cultures get subsumed by more dominant ones? Or is it a reflection of how one man celebrates the connections that have permanently broadened his perspectives?


It's both things at once, sort of like the poster Randriamihaja displays on the wall behind his desk. It advertises a campaign by the International Labour Organization to stamp out child labor in the vanilla fields. He backs that program and the intentions behind it. But he admitted his perspective is blurred by mixed feelings.


“I guess they could say I was a victim of child labor,” he said. Was it exploitation or opportunity? You could make a strong argument either way, he said. “To me, I was just helping my parents.”

Above us, the clank of hammers threatened to drown out the country music coming from the stereo speakers. on the roof, workers were busy adding another story onto Randriamihaja's house.




Workers lay out beans at Madagascar Spices




https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2019-economics-of-vanilla-markets-madagascar/

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인도에서 토종 벼를 보전하기 위한 운동을 참고합시다. 





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농촌경제연구원 박시현 씨의 보고서

 


Slash and burn farming in Lao PDR.pdf


Slash and burn farming in Lao PDR.pdf
3.3MB
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재미난 지도를 보았다.

기후변화에 따른 연도별 벼 불임률 지도.



 
지도를 보면, 그러니까 2060년 정도 되면 지금과 똑같은 벼 품종으로는 농사가 제대로 되지 않는다는 이야기이다. 농사가 되긴 되는데 평균 20% 정도는 이삭이 제대로 맺히지 않는다는 뜻이다. 저 북쪽이나 현재의 고랭지에서는 괜찮겠지만 말이다. 


그렇다고 절망에 빠질 이유는 없다. 

인간은 그리 호락호락하지 않으니 말이다. 

아마 이러한 기후 조건에 알맞은 새로운 품종을 육종하든지, 아니면 새로운 농법 등으로 난관을 타개하려 노력하겠지. 가만히 앉아서 위기를 맞아하지는 않으리라 예상한다. 

그도 아니면, 지금 품종으로 더 북쪽에서 농사지을 수도 있겠다. 물론 통일이든 남북 경제협력이든 하는 형태로 말이다. 

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북한에서도 우렁이를 이용한 벼농사가 실시되고 있습니다.

 

https://m.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20191114171100504?

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일본의 연구진이 네오니코티노이드 계통의 살충제가 수생 곤충과 플랑크톤의 개체수 감소에 영향을 미치고, 그것이 연쇄반응으로 일본의 대표적 여름 음식의 재료인 장어에게 악영향을 미쳤다는 사실을 규명했다고 한다. 해당 논문은 여기 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6465/620

지금까지 네오니코티노이드 계통의 살충제가 꿀벌의 군집붕괴 현상에 영향을 미치는 것으로 강하게 추정되어 왔는데, 그외에도 수생 생태계에도 악영향을 미칠 수 있다는 사실이 입증된 연구결과이겠다.

레이첼 카슨 선생의 '침묵의 봄'은 현재진행형이라고 할 수 있다.



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자료를 뒤지다가 흥미로운 도서 목록을 발견해서 알려드립니다.
일본에서 출간되었던 "여성과 농업"을 주제로 한 도서의 목록입니다.

최근 한국에서도 여성의 귀농귀촌 비율이 높아지는 것과 함께 여성의 사회적 권익 신장에 대한 많은 논의가 나오고 있는 시점이니 한국에도 꽤 시의적절한 내용이 많지 않을까 합니다.

필요하신 분은 주문하세요!





2. <농업은, 나의 직업이다! 시미즈 테루코 씨의 경우> http://shop.ruralnet.or.jp/b_no=04_440001194A/

3. <농촌의 결혼과 결혼난: 여성의 결혼관, 농업관의 사회학적 연구> https://www.amazon.co.jp/農村の結婚と結婚難―女性の結婚観・農業観の社会学的研究-内藤-考至/dp/4873788439




7. <그래, 잎사귀를 팔자!: 소멸 위기의 마을이 아래에서부터 재생되다> https://www.amazon.co.jp/そうだ、葉っぱを売ろう-過疎の町、どん底からの再生-横石-知二/dp/4797340657




11. <당신이 먹는 것이 곧 당신이다: 먹을거리 교육의 최전선을 돌아보는 여행> https://www.amazon.co.jp/人は食によりて人となる―“食育”の最前線を巡る旅-歌代-幸子/dp/4901032658

12. <농업, 농촌으로 행복해지자: 농촌과 도시의 공생을 위해> https://www.amazon.co.jp/農業・農村で幸せになろうよ-林美香子/dp/4896108124

13. <세계의 식량과 농업에 기여하는 여성의 역할과 공헌: 제18회 세계 식량의 날 심포지엄 보고서> http://shop.ruralnet.or.jp/b_no=04_440000622A/








21. <며느리가 경영주가 되었다: 쿠마사키 미호코 씨의 경우> http://shop.ruralnet.or.jp/b_no=04_440001198A/

22. <삶 속에 농이 있었다: 야마자키 요오코 씨의 경우 > http://shop.ruralnet.or.jp/b_no=04_440001197A/








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