According to the book of Genesis, the epoch of mankind’s eternal separation from God is identified with two acts of mastication. As the famed fable is told and read, Eve, deceived by a serpent in the Garden of Eden, ignores God’s forewarning of death and picks and eats fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Eve then offers part of the fruit to Adam and he proceeds to eat as well. It is at this critical point that a now shamed Adam and Eve realize what they have done. Humanity is now removed from perfection and separated from God forever.

“ You won’t die! The serpent hissed. God knows that your eyes will be opened when you eat it. You will become just like God, knowing everything good and evil… She ate some of the fruit. She also gave some to her husband who was with her…At that moment their eyes were opened and they suddenly felt shame in their nakedness…The Lord God said to Adam, I have placed a curse on the ground…All your life you will sweat to produce food till your dying day…So the Lord God banished Adam and his wife from the Garden of Eden, and he sent Adam out to cultivate the ground from which he had been made.”

Genesis chapter 3 verses 4-23

For Christendom, this fable is extremely important because it explains why there is such thing as “sin” or immorality. It attempts to explain why mankind suffers. That is why I find this passage so fascinating. It attempts to be a fundamental answer that is applicable to questions such as: Why do people struggle? The answer being, “Adam and Eve messed up, screwed humanity, and now separated from God, we (people) are to suffer for as long as we walk this earth”. Whether you agree with this logic or not, a large portion of the population believes this to be truth.

What is intriguing about this tale is that it allegorically references an actual historical occurrence in human history that pre-dates the first writings of the Bible by at least 6,500 years: the inception of agriculture.

Agriculture is a relatively new development in the history of Homo sapiens, only existing for the last 10,000 years. Homo sapiens, also known as modern man, has walked this earth for the last 200,000 years. For roughly 190,000 of those years, Homo sapiens lived as hunter-gatherers, sustaining life within nature’s perfect cycle. Agriculture indicates mankind’s largest step away from nature. This step away from nature has been paramount in the formation of Civilization.

Allied with the fable of Adam and Eve, the narrative of agriculture serves as a benchmark in human history that denotes humanity’s separation from perfection (nature, Eden). Humanity has never been the same.

With the introduction of agriculture to humans, mankind begins the transition from being nomadic to sedentary. Sedentary groups expand at a much faster rate due to their access to domesticated plants and animals. These denser populations create new forms of labor through specialization. As these societies grew larger in size, governmental organization was established to facilitate decision-making. Societies now with a food surplus developed the first social elites, who did not engage in agriculture or trade directly but controlled their communities through monopolized decision-making. Land that once belonged to all now belonged to few.

As these communities continued to develop, so did their technology. This “Neolithic Revolution” was principle in the birthing of metal tools as well as the Bronze and Iron Age.

Agriculture has continued to develop rapidly with the advent of this new technology. Recently within the last 150 years, agriculture has industrialized; creating a system of cultivation that is unprecedented. Industrialized Agriculture has created a huge imbalance within the natural world with its introduction of a completely new biomass in the form of livestock and modified produce. This biomass has been tailored to operate within the constructs of the capitalist model.

The cornerstone technology of Industrialized Agriculture is nitrogen-based fertilizer. No longer do farmers need to rotate crops to help replenish nutrients lost in the soil from a previous harvest. Monoculture farmers can continually produce the same cash crop repeatedly, utilizing the nitrogen injected fertilizer to facilitate this process. This overuse of nitrogen in the soil has had an extremely detrimental effect. Nitrate-enriched groundwater makes its way to lakes, bays and oceans where it disrupts the marine life’s eco systems (Salton Sea). Nitrate-enriched water also makes its way to our homes through our tap faucets. Tap water is rendered toxic for human consumption in heavy agricultural areas, during fertilization periods. This process of over-cultivation, via nitrogen-based fertilizer, also seriously depletes nutrient rich topsoil, inevitably rendering a once yielding plot unusable.

This new fertilizer has also played a key role in contributing to the rise of Factory Farming. The genetically modified corn-based material that is feed to livestock is available because nitrate enriched fertilizer can grow the corn needed quickly and in vast quantities. Factory Farms are essentially monoculture farms specializing in one form of livestock. These farms are highly mechanized and oriented around mass production. Factory Farming has successfully lowered the monetary value of meat thus making meat more accessible due to its industrialization. Unfortunately this low fiscal cost of factory-farmed meat comes at an enormous expense to human and environmental health.  It is all connected, from the toxic amounts of methane and toxic waste released into our natural world to the hormone injected modified meat that is eventually consumed. Factory Farms exemplify mankind’s manipulation and exploitation of the natural world.

Adam and Eve once lived in a utopia (The Garden of Eden), one with God, living free from the afflictions that now plague humanity. “Current anthropology tells us that pre-agriculture foraging life did not know organized violence, sexual oppression, work as an onerous or separate activity, private property or symbolic culture”- John Zerzan. Humanity was once balanced with in the perfect cycle of nature. The removal from this cycle with discovery of agriculture was mankind’s departure from Eden. The creation of Civilization is humanities true bane.

Today, Civilization as we have created it has successfully removed humans from the natural order. Due to our industrialized advancement, food is no longer grown nor born anymore as so much as its manipulated and produced. Our technology has advanced so immensely that it has ostracized mankind from nature.  Civilized humans in the blink of an eye, historically, have lost thousands of years of senses acquired in the wilderness that were essential to our own survival as well as the earths. Separated from nature we have become its enemy. We are domesticated, afraid and separated from what we once called home for so long.

-Adam