Survival
Coming down to earth
Michael Brett-Crowther
The problems of the environment are the common currency of educated conversation today, and like the currency of baser metal they suffer from inflation. A great part of contemporary language is afflicted with teutonism, ponderous nouns tying up thought, or spoiled by the scrappy novelties of jargon. Words like ' biosphere ' and ' technosphere ' obscure as much meaning as they show. Yet even such words are helpful, better than no words at all about our common crises of survival.
There is, however, an Obvious 'lack in all the debating. The real questions, the bread and butter issues, of what food should be eaten or what chemicals should be cut out Of industry, what modifications in diet and manner of living should be made: these so personal matters are not the subject of legislation or even much public enquiry. The grand eighteenthcentury belief in a mechanistic universe of random individual liberty sustains much that is malignant.
One of the casualties of this politeness is Major A. Ramsay Tainsh, MBE, an industrial and business consultant of a surprising kind. He calls himself a Scottish Imperialist and 'represents much of that lofty brotherliness of the 'Indian Army man. Perhaps resignation would be the 'better word for his appearance of indifference. He has spent nearly thirty years in trying to get officialdom interested in food problems. There was the famous 'incident of his observation 'that foreign-born weevils bred faster in the tropics than the native-born. This worried the Americans so much in 1946 that 'they asked Mr Attlee to get Major Tainsh to rescind his order concerning the care and storage of grain shipped from the United States against the prospect of famine in Bengal. The major stood his ground and informed the agricultural ministers of the new Dominion of India of his view, with the result that all foreign ships bearing grain to India 'had to 'stop at the three-mile limit for disinfestation of 'their cargo; an embarrassment to the five principal exporting companies.
Tainsh takes the simple view that if vegetables are properly grown and food properly prepared, health follows. By health he means the psycho-somatic harmony within oneself and with one's environment. He tells the ironical story of the jobless miners in Wales during the depression, who turned to gardening. They grew vegetables and sold the 'surplus, so that soon they were making a profit and had then to give up their 'independence and well-being in order, to retain their government handout. The same disincentives operate today. Food organically grown is more costly than the plastic kind.'
A similar folly has made it practically impossible for 'his views on What he terms the Gross National Waste to gain currency. Ramsay Tainsh finds it interesting that people will talk triumphantly of building a new 'warehouse for storing rice and not consider that in Eastern climates the weevilproblem and the humidity require storage like the old Egyptian kind, that is, in sealed chambers underground.
Then, as third-world countries resent their dependence on foreign aid, they turn to building dams, thereby ensuring a greater waste of human life. For the artificial water bodies provide the perfect breeding grounds for water-born diseases and, as in the case of 'Egypt, stop the flow of silt, Fertilisers 'then become necessary, though they introduce poisons to land and water and cannot make up for natural nutrients. Unfortunately prestige, or personal and national pride, requires governments to compound their 'poverty further by these monstrous dam-building projects. Or they turn gleefully to the 'green revolution.' But Tainsh has found that this rice contains far more moisture than the unmiraculous sort, and so is more easily destroyed in time.
Likewise the self-respect of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation has made it impossible for him to get a proper hearing in that quarter. Whether among economists of Oxford or in the corridors of Overseas Development, 'Mr Waste ', 'as 'he is endearingly known, has enough command of the facts to maintain his equilibrium. But it is distressing to reflect that for so-called political reasons much good can be frustrated.
Ramsay Tainsh has invented a submersible pump which even the Intermediate Technology group has not taken up. Indeed, they have tried to produce a better alternative, but have failed. Other persons have asked for references for its construction and even gone so far as to express doubt that a pump could be constructed which could lift water from between seven and twenty-five metres. Yet the pump has already been proved in some of the drier parts of Portugal and Spain, bringing farms back to life. It is probably the most significant 'invention in water engineering since the Persian Wheel. It 'could easily transform village India,' so beloved of Gandhi, as did the canals of the Punjab. What it could mean for the Australian outback is just as 'hopeful; yet an official at the Australian High Commission contented himself with saying that it might be a very interesting 'solution to his country's water problems.
Indian officials still respect Tainsh's judgement, though they may find it impossible to enact his suggestions. The newly-formed Institution of Environmental Sciences has gained a formidable and fruitful member in the major. One hopes indeed that this whole body will have some effect on the Department of the Environment, a gadfly to our state of being. Meanwhile, Alasdair Ramsay Tainsh quietly works in Sweden, where his books have been published and he has some following. A man who by his own experiences was able to write a paper on 'How to 'Survive in the Jungle' can survive the neglect of sophisticates. And we at least live in a climate of favourable opinion. Some of the views of Ramsay Tainsh may yet fruit an hundredfold.
Previous page
