Redeeming Farming
by the sweat of your face you will eat bread
For most of humanity’s history, most people were farmers and lived in a rural setting. For us today, it’s hard to imagine how people used to live and work in the past. Sometimes, we see pictures of an idyllic life on the farm, with oxen pulling a plough and farmers feeding their five chickens.
But the reality was often a harsh one. Be it the summer heat or the winter cold, farmers had to work all day long in fatiguing, manual labour. Mostly working for their family’s bare survival, with no helping devices, it was common for farmer’s children and slaves to work on the farms, too. And, for the lack of knowledge about the soil, the plants and the nutrients they need, putting in more and more effort was often rewarded with less and less yield.
I believe there’s beauty in everything, but working hard in the field with nothing but your bare hands under the heat of the burning sun, for all the days of your life, struggling to make a living… Well, I don’t think it’s something most of us would want to experience.
Ancient perspectives
In the Bible’s famous account of the creation of the world and the fall of humanity, God predicts the following life-scenario for people:
“Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”1
What a pitiful destiny for Humankind! Man had just come out of the lush Garden of Eden, where he just had to stretch out his hands and put the good, nutritious fruit into his mouth. He lived in splendour, abundance and perfect harmony with God, Humans and Nature. And now he was “banished from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken”2.
History has, indeed all too often, proven true the sad prediction in Genesis. But was Man meant to live according to the curse, cultivating the ground in sorrow and despair all the days of his life, with no hope for a better future? Hadn’t God declared everything He had made in the beginning very good?
Yes, what God had initially created was good, but through sin and rebellion against God, this good order and harmony on Earth was distorted and suffering entered the world and every human relation.
Hope to come
So, according to the Bible, God was to send a Redeemer to the suffering people to take away Man’s sin and relieve him from the consequences of fall, that is, the curse. The coming of this Redeemer had already been predicted through ancient Hebrew prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and so on. Isaiah spoke of the coming Redeemer in the following words:
…he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.3
Much of the Western world were Christians who believed that the redeemer was Jesus Christ, who lived, was crucified and was resurrected 2000 years ago in Jerusalem. God’s desire was to restore people to the state in which they lived in Eden, though this process will be completed only when Jesus returns for the second and last time, to ultimately relieve all pain and suffering. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Christians saw themselves as a new creation, having received not only forgiveness for their transgressions, but also a new meaning for their everyday work and toil.
Jesus taught people to pray in the following words:
“your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”4
And he encouraged people to use their God-given talents, their abilities and their possession, to make the best possible use of them for the glory of God (Matthew 25, 14-30).
Using talents to relieve suffering
Many Christians used their Bible-inspired stewardship to promote technical, scientific and technological innovations in agriculture, with the desire to relieve the suffering people of their toil.
A great example is Cyrus McCormick. McCormick invented a mechanical reaper for harvesting and launched the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company. In his book The Book that Made your World, Vishal Mangalwadi recounts his story:
Having grown up on his family’s farm, Cyrus had despaired seeing people slave in the fields and had resolved to build upon his father’s failed attempts to find a better method for harvesting grain. McCormick was nurtured on the biblical idea that through godly and creative work human beings can roll back the curse of sweat and toil and re-establish their dominion over nature.” He believed feeding the world, made easier by the reaper, was part of his religious mission in life.
“A farmer using McCormick’s reaper saved one hundred dollars for every dollar he spent on his machine. In industrialized countries 2 to 5 percent of the population now cultivates more land than was ploughed when most people spent their lives growing food” – and this fact is also due to inventors like McCormick.5
Restoring Eden
From mechanising manual labour, over improving plant production systems, to gathering more scientific insights and applying them to farming, agriculture has always been subject to change, and hopefully, improvement. But the goal remains: to restore “Garden Eden” on Earth. To get better and sustainable yields, to preserve the soil’s fertility and to improve farming techniques, for the benefit of producers and consumers, while conserving our environment.
As for the critique that farming machines are environmentally destructive (they favour soil compaction and emit greenhouse gases):
Every good invention can turn out to serve evil causes if not applied with care. Problems that arise with ever bigger and heavier machines must be taken seriously – eternal growth is always detrimental.
And humanity will have to turn to renewable sources of energy if it is to flourish in the future. But the fact remains that, without the mechanisation of agriculture, most people would still be working as farmers under very harsh conditions (and employing slave or child labour, as was or still is the case in certain places!).
The following figure perfectly illustrates this: in the beginning of the 20th century, the harvest of wheat (per hectare) took 160 hours of manual labour. Today, it takes only 2 hours.
Beauty and abundance
As I’ve stated in the beginning, beauty remains. When fields of gold render an abundant harvest. When people, producers and consumers alike, find enjoyment in their work and contentment over its fruit. When farming practices improve and offer a life of dignity to farmers. When nature is restored and treated respectfully. When the human soul finds peace and hope for the future.
And even as we live in an imperfect world, even as new ideas and techniques sometimes fail, even as people do harm to each other and to nature, even as the world at times seems to have gone mad – there is hope. That one day, God will restore the Garden of Earth and the Garden of our hearts to its ultimate goal.
The River of Life
The Bible promises blessings for all nations of the Earth coming from God’s people – before Christ only from the Jews, centred in the temple of Jerusalem, and after Christ from Christians of the world.
The old Testament prophet Ezekiel symbolically described these future blessings in a beautiful vision. He saw a stream of fresh water coming from the temple in Jerusalem, which was continually growing into a large stream, rendering all its surroundings into lush, fertile land. When it entered the Dead Sea, the salty water became fresh, and all sorts of fish started living there. Fruit trees of all kinds were growing on both banks of the river. They could be harvested 12 times a year, their fruit serving for food and their leaves for healing.6
What a promise!
Where have you experienced a little piece of “Eden” or “heaven on earth” lately? What do you think, what can we do to see and promote more of it around us?
1 The Bible, Genesis 3, 17-19; 2 The Bible, Genesis 3, 23; 3 The Bible, Isaiah 53, 12; 4 The Bible, Matthew 6,10; 5 Vishal Mangalwadi, The Book That Made Your World (Nashville, Thomas Nelson), 2011; Chapter 17 – True Wealth: How Did Stewardship Become Spirituality?; 6 The Bible, Ezekiel 47, 1-12
