"In this sense, agriculture is universal in the way that language is, but it has diverged between cultures, and defines cultures, with the same variety and difference that has marked the evolution of different languages. The reasons some of these cultures have gone extinct or are threatened may have little to do with their success at making food or providing other social goods such as jobs, feelings of self-worth, empowerment and education, and more to do with factors well outside the control of the farmer. Everything these cultures learned and did is also not necessarily less sophisticated or successful than anything in modern industrial agriculture. These agri
cultures are therefore not to be judged as failed; each has its own history and local criteria for success. Indeed, as argued in these pages, the diversity of agri
cultures is itself a strength of humanity, rather than, as often implied, an artifact of societies in need of rescuing through homogenization with American or European approaches to industrial agriculture. The diversity of agri
cultures adds resilience to world food production just as wheat genetic diversity adds resilience to global wheat production. Diversity predisposes us to survive the crises we have yet to encounter. Large scale industrial agriculture consolidating under the control of a small number of mega-corporations is a monoculture, not just a force creating monocultures."
