Two billion people cannot be relocated to cities. Yes, China’s rural population has fallen from 80 per cent in 1980 to 35 per cent – but China is unique. Even in neighbouring India, the rural population remains at 65 per cent, or 900 million people. The entire world’s manufacturing, construction and mining currently employ only 800 million people: clearly, the global peasantry cannot be absorbed into industry. We need to realise that, in the absence of exceptional levels of industrialisation, nothing can sustain large populations so well as the land. We need to stop seeing urbanisation as the main index of developmental progress, and realise that it is, in many cases, the sign of a major disaster: the destruction of rural life by big agriculture and industry, and the loss of irreplaceable human and ecological systems.
Maryam Aslany, The world needs peasants
