What is Buddhist Farming?

It is clear that there are three key dimensions to a Buddhist farming practice. These are the:

1. Overarching commitment to decision-making and action that concords with Buddhist principles.
2. Implementation of a system of farming in line with these principles.
3. Particular commitment that, as moral agents, our actions do not cause suffering to the animals that share the farm with us.

The first requires a focus on acting skilfully with respect to suffering in each moment and not attaching to either our future aspirations and fears or historic achievements and failures.

There is no question that we will make both skilful and unskilful decisions. Sometimes they will be made purposefully, sometimes in ignorance, and sometimes in the absence of all the relevant information. They will, in turn, ameliorate or promote suffering.

Our aspiration is to cultivate the Path in all its dimensions to the best of our understanding in every present moment and in every present circumstance. Remonstrations for past failures of commission or omission (be they near or far) or aspirations for future successes will only lead to more suffering.

For the second, it is apparent that is possible to devise systems of farming that are consistent with a broader Buddhist life practice and in particular do not require animals to suffer. These systems are also capable of producing food and maintain functional ecological systems.

However, they will not be found in the agro-industrial world. Agro-industrial systems are highly problematic at best and, where they involve farming animals for human consumption, anathema to basic Buddhist philosophy[1].

Agro-ecological systems that do not involve the slaughter of animals for food, crop protection or other purposes provide a suitable starting point for Buddhist farming. These systems can be designed to incorporate animals to underpin their ecological integrity. Unfortunately, there are few existing examples to serve as models for the aspiring Buddhist agro-ecologist.

For the third, simple and objective standards exist to guide a farmers interaction with other sentient animals on the farm. Both the UNESCO Universal Declaration of Animal Rights (1978) and the Declaration of Animal Rights[2] written by Orian and Penzel (2011) offer such standards. Neither declaration precludes the interaction of humans and animals. The former provides for humane killing of where justified. The latter sets more stringent and detailed standards to ensure that human needs and desires do not cause suffering for animals.

For the Buddhist farmer the UNESCO standard would offer a minimum benchmark, with Orian and Penzel’s declaration providing a more refined goal. In either case a Buddhist agro-ecology would exclude animal slaughter for any reason except perhaps for compassionate and humane euthanasia in dire circumstances.

This allows a clearer statement of our intention as Buddhist farmers. We aspire to coordinate our ethical beliefs with our day-to-day actions by:

1. Acting skilfully in each present moment to ameliorate suffering caused by attachment, aversion or delusion.
2.  Letting go of our attachment to perceived past and potential impending failures and successes with respect to those aspirations.
3. Working to create functional and sustainable ecosystems that grow food for our community.
4. Encouraging animals to be integral components or our agro-ecology.
5. Ensuring that all animals on the farm are free to be animals, and to lead a life without fear of suffering at the hands of humans.

At present, though our farming practice meets much of this intention, some practices on the farm do not.

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[1] With respect to animals, this is a view clearly supported by Singer and Mason’s (2006) last chapter titled What Should We Eat, which judges all forms of industrial animal farming as unethical.

[2] http://declarationofar.org/declaration.html