Reading the article in today's Telegraph by your Environment Editor brought home to me what a madhouse we live in (Farmers could make money by composting stores' waste, 3 July 2000).

Although the warning bells have been sounding clearly for more than 30 years, "economics" (the household of man) is still considered more important than "ecology" (the household of nature). The article makes this perfectly clear: only because of economic considerations is Sainsbury thinking of composting the 77,000 tonnes of waste food it has to dispose of each year, instead of dumping it in landfills, as it has done - seemingly with a perfectly good conscience - up until now.

If we adults are not capable of understanding the vital importance of putting ecology - the science that deals with the life-supporting ecosystems of our planet, Spaceship Earth - before pseudo "economic laws", instead of the other way around, as we currently do, we have no authority to teach our children anything at all - except perhaps to live for the moment and to make the most of the short time remaining to them.

While we strive and struggle for more and more material wealth, coming generations will be struggling for bare survival on a planet whose resources will be depleted and whose life-supporting ecosystems will be seriously damaged by our stupid and reckless behaviour.

When you think about it, it is hardly surprising that pseudo "economic laws" are driving us towards disaster: they are based almost entirely on man's lower nature (Homo sapiens, indeed!!) - on fear and greed - and on his admiration for power and material wealth. Thanks to modern science and technology, they have worked well in providing unprecedented riches and much genuine progress, but if we allow them to continue operating, they will destroy us and all we have achieved.

The article also reveals the sad and sorry state to which we have reduced our farmers, a subject taken up in another article in today's Telegraph, which quotes some insightful remarks by the Archbishop of Canterbury (Town and country must unite, says Carey, 3 July 2000).

It must be terrible being a farmer, working in an occupation held in such contempt, producing goods and services of such low value that he must beg whose doing more worthwhile and profitable work (making cars and aeroplanes, for example) for support. 

We learn at school to associate "progress" with developments from an agrarian to an industrial society, the proportion of the workforce employed in the two sectors being taken as a measure of how "advanced" a nation is, so is it any wonder that farming is held in such low esteem?

Agriculture is seen as just another industry, that needs to be made as efficient and profitable as possible. Social and ecological considerations, like animal welfare, are reduced to cost factors, that are only taken seriously when it becomes "economical" and cost-effective to do so.

The age-old relationship and interdependency between town and (local) countryside has been destroyed by non-sustainable cheap transport, misguided values, and pseudo "economic laws", No longer directly dependent on our own farmers, we are contemptuous of them. We fail to recognise theirs as the most basic and important of industries, deluded, as we are, into believing that the only dependency we have is on money. We buy our food from the supermarket - what does that have to do with our farms and farmers?!

Yet farmers have a doubly vital role to play in a sustainable economy: providing healthy food for (mainly) local towns, and maintaining  a diverse and healthy natural environment.

Re-establishing this sustainable, wholesome and experienceable interdependency between town and country is in everyone's interest. It just means changing a few so-called "economic laws", and adopting a more enlightened definition of "self-interest". That, of course, would amount to revolution, but considering that the alternative is extinction, we ought at least to consider it.