Category Archives: advocate

advocate, Fair Food systems, Food sovereignty, Local and regional food economies

La Vida Locavore: Food Sovereignty as Government Intervention: The View of Via Campesina and US Family Farmers

Republished with the permission of Brad Wilson – an ‘Iowa farmer in organic transition. Former farm organizer and farm policy staff for Iowa CCI and rep to regional Sustainable Ag Working Group. Wrote staff manuals on commodity title in 1990s. National Family Farm Coalition board.’

Originally published at the link below on 21st February, 2012:

La Vida Locavore:: Food Sovereignty as Government Intervention: The View of Via Campesina and US Family Farmers

Dominant Interpretations of Food Sovereignty

I find that, in the US, “food sovereignty” is often defined as having increased local and regional control over food systems, and politically this often includes national control for small countries, such as Least Developed Countries.  Along with this, small-scaled, even pre-industrial systems are often praised for having features of ecological, social and economic sustainability.  These virtues then compare favorably to the mega-industrial farm and food systems that are pushed by mega-corporations and the major mega-industrialized countries (that these corporations dominate) and the major international institutions (ie. WTO, IMF). This praise has been confirmed by recent international studies.Second, I find that advocacy for this view is typically represented in advocacy for general “principles.”  I have seen little in the way of specific policies and programs for specific decisions made by specific decision-makers  (ie. geared to US activists, with specific US decisions and decision makers to be influenced).In this view, then, the essence of food sovereignty is defined by general principles of local sustainability.
Alternate Views of Via Campesina and the US National Family Farm Coalition

While the dominant view is big on general principles and local, self-initiated sustainability, I find it to be weak on justice, especially farm justice, and weak on the kind of “issue” specificity that is needed for authentic organizing.In contrast, Via Campesina and the National Family Farm Coalition focus on farm justice (“farm sovereignty”?) in ways that focus directly on key, macro level decisions and decision-makers.  A good illustration of this can be found in the 2003 Via Campesina document, “It is urgent to re-orient the debate on agriculture and initiate a policy of food sovereignty,” which was a “Post-Cancún Release.”1This document emphasizes that food sovereignty is “urgent” and states:  “The first important step: we must centre the debate on food sovereignty and production rather than trade.”  General principles are then given:  “To engage in agricultural production that ensures food needs, respects the environment and provides peasants with a life of dignity, . . .”

Significantly, the principles sentence ends as follows:  “an active intervention by the government is indispensable.”  In other words “the first important step” is not about local things that we, or peasants or farmers, do ourselves.  It’s about government action at the macro level to achieve the principles of “food sovereignty.”  For the sake of US farmers and Via Campesina, it is crucial that this emphasis is not missed in discussions of food sovereignty inside the US as the US government is the most important one where “active intervention” is needed.  The next words are:  “This intervention must ensure:” which is followed by a list of 6 items.  Items 2-4 (half) are:

” • control of imports in order to stabilize the internal price to a level that covers the costs of production,
• control of production (i.e. supply management) in order to avoid surpluses,
• international commodity agreements to control supply and guarantee fair prices to peasant producers for export products such as coffee, cotton, etc.”

We see then that Via Campesina quickly moves from the general principles a list of specific actions that are needed by various government decision makers (ie. “supply management” and “fair prices”).

Though not specified, the specific decision-makers (for US advocates) behind these decisions include the following:

• US Congress and presidents, who decide whether or not we have price floors (and whether they’re set at fair trade levels,) plus supply management in the farm bill

• US presidential administrations and their trade negotiators, to favor allowing countries to prevent the dumping of imports and to develop methods of international supply management and price support.

The peasants of Via Campesina know the importance of farm prices, and of managing supply to help obtain them, but they have very little influence on the US Congress and President.  It’s essential that we properly understand Via Campesina on these specifics of what food sovereignty means, and mobilize the rest of the new US food movement, and bring in the broader (beyond family farm justice advocates) farm movement.

The US is the dominant global exporter of major farm commodities, and has often been about as big as OPEC in oil (cotton, wheat), or much bigger, (corn, soybeans), or otherwise the dominant price-setting force (rice).  Food Sovereignty advocates here must lead on these issues.  Via Campesina members who live in other countries must rely on US organizing to win justice in the US farm bill and in our highly influencial approach to trade.

A key place to start is with the Food from Family Farms Act of the US National Family Farm Coalition.2  This is the key farm bill policy alternative in the US that supports the kind of farm justice described by Via Campesina above.  My web sites are designed to do support these policies of justice.  I’ve collected the key resources to bridge the gap between farm justice peasants and farmers, on one hand, and those who think food sovereignty doesn’t emphasize government intervention, or who think farm justice is about subsidies, on the other.  (Note:  peasants from the global South often also do accurately understand US farm bill issues.)

The Farm Subsidy Myth

Food sovereignty advocates and potential advocates in the US especially need to understand that farm subsidies, though part of WTO are not the relevant policies that need to be addressed here.  It is very widely believed that farm subsidies are the key policies (in the farm bill and in trade agreements) that help to achieve the price goals of Via Campesina.  WTO documents strongly affirms that perception.  Unfortunately at least 4 kinds of data prove this hypothesis is false.4  WTO and  most US conservatives and progressives are wrong.  The subsidy hypothesis is not supported by the relevant data.

Again, the US farm bill achieves Via Campesina’s global goals of food sovereignty only when it includes supply management and price floors set at fair trade levels, as we had 1942-1952.  With these policies there is no need for any farm commodity subsidies, and there were none when we had fair trade price floors in the past.

Issue Specificity and Authentic Organizing

The specific US farm bill decisions and decision makers related to the Via Campesina document (described above) lend themselves well to authentic grassroots organizing inside of the US on behalf of Via Campesina and US family farmers.

At the recent “Assembly” of the US Food Sovereignty Alliance, in Oakland California, the family farm sub-group (ie. representatives of member organizations of the National Family Farm Coalition,) emphasized their direct experiences of injustice, with terms like “survival,” “despair” and “divorce.”  Another popular term heard from this group at the accompanying conference in California is “suicide.”  This emphasis reflects their long history of concretely fighting agribusiness and the current severe “dairy crisis” These terms were also big themes during the 1980s farm crisis, when large numbers of farms went quickly out of business, or were threatened with foreclosure.   The same applied during the CAFO crisis that was raging during 1990s, for example, as most diversified US farms lost their livestock value-added to CAFOs, due to huge, even multibillion dollar “implicit” (off the government books) subsidies from cheap feed (low grain prices,) to individual CAFO corporations.

US food and food sovereignty advocates wanting to focus on justice can learn from these groups to move quickly into pragmatic action.

Supply management and price floors are key food sovereignty issueds as define in grassroots organizing.  The late organizer behind National Peoples’ Action, Shel Trapp, for example, approaches the question of issues as follows:4

“When you find what appears to be an issue, three questions must be asked:

1. Can people be mobilized around this?
2. Is it specific?
3. Can something be done to change this situation?

If people cannot be mobilized around an issue, then you do not have an issue. A good way to “test” an issue is to call several people in your organization, talk about the situation and then ask:

Would you be interested in getting a few folks together to talk about this and see what can be done?”

An issue is something that people can get right to work on, with a potential to win concrete changes.  It involves a specific decision from specific decision makers. As we approach the 2012 farm bill, it is essential that food sovereignty advocates inside the US focus directly on the key “issues” of justice,  identified by Via Campesina, for example, in the 2003 document identied above.

Notes

1. Via Campesina, “It is urgent to re-orient the debate on agriculture and initiate a policy of food sovereignty,” 9/2/03, http://viacampesina.org/en/ind…

2. “Food from Family Farms Act:  A Proposal for the 2007 U.S. Farm Bill,” National Family Farm Coalition, http://www.nffc.net/Learn/Fact…

3. See my “Michael Pollan Rebuttal,” (including 2 linked videos at YouTube) for the 4 proofs:  http://www.zcommunications.org…

4.  Shel Trapp, Basics of Organizing, NTIC, 1986, http://www.tenant.net/Organize…

For further reading:

Brad’s “Farm Bill Primer,” “Food Crisis Primer” and “Issue Organizing” content boxes (lists of links), zspace, (http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/bradwilson);

Brad’s YouTube Channel & “Farm Bill & Food Bill” playlist: (http://www.youtube.com/user/FireweedFarm#p/c/A1E706EFA90D1767).

Brad Wilson, “Via Campesina with NFFC: Support for Fair Farm Prices,” zspace, http://www.zcommunications.org…

Brad Wilson, “WTO Africa Group with NFFC, Not EWG,” zspace, http://www.zcommunications.org…

Brad Wilson, “Most EWG Subsidy ‘Recipients’ Are Too Tiny to Be ‘Farmers,'” zspace, http://www.zcommunications.org…
advocate, Co-operatives, Coffs Coast, Fruit growing

Idealism and pragmatism – the Co-operative movement in Australia

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Co-ops in Australia

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate, Saturday 17th March 2012.

Co-operatives represent the ideal of business with genuine ethics, not just window-dressing and ‘corporate social responsibility’ statements. From the social perspective, it’s hard, at least in theory, to get more ethical than the workers in a business also being the owners, and running it for their mutual benefit, rather than to maximise profits for distant shareholders.

As is so often the case, theory and ideals often crash against the harsh test of real life conditions, and human fallability. The ideal of a co-operative commonwealth, appealing to people’s higher values rather than just naked self-interest, is a powerful one, but in practice co-operatives have fallen far short of the vision of the Rochdale pioneers.

The case of farmer co-operatives in Australia, whose history was the topic of a book published in 2006 by Gary Lewis, called ‘The Democracy Principle’, is instructive.

For farmers, co-operation had an extremely sound economic rationale, as Lewis explains. The more farmers jointly could exert ‘ownership and control of the inputs, supply, processing and marketing of farm products’, the more they were able to take control of their own destinies, as regards avoiding the fate of being ‘price-takers’; and so better ensure their own viability.

The Coffs Coast region was home to one of Australia’s premier agricultural co-operatives: the Banana Growers Federation. Operating transportation services and a single marketing desk on behalf of its members, the BGF enabled NSW growers on the Coffs Coast to rise to a position of dominance in the Australian industry. It wasn’t by accident that the ‘Big Banana’ was established here as a tourist attraction. At its peak in the early 1970s, the BGF boasted around 18,000 grower-members.

The Big Banana, Pacific Highway, Coffs Harbour
The Big Banana, Pacific Highway, Coffs Harbour

There were many factors which brought about the demise of the banana industry in our region, and amongst them we have to include the self-interest of some growers who abandoned co-operative principles to pursue their own self-interest through separate deals with buying agents, undermining co-operative unity in the process. It’s been said to me that although the blueberry growers now enjoy a similarly strong marketing position to that once held by the BGF, through the single desk operated by Berry Exchange, the same dynamic that so afflicted the banana growers may already be underway.

History records that in 2004 the BGF was wound up with a mere 428 grower members. The country as a whole is losing farmers at a rapid rate. The fall in the number of dairy farms across Australia has been steep: from nearly 82,500 in 1950, to 7,500 in 2010. A further drop is expected now, with the impacts of the supermarket milk price war being passed down the supply chain.

Could it have been different? We’ll never know, of course, but certainly many farmers, and their leaders, did themselves no favours, according to Lewis, by effectively abandoning any genuine commitment to ‘the democracy principle’, and broader community and social welfare, in preference to their own narrow self-interest.

‘Farmers generally were inclined to squeeze every last drop from their co-ops’, he writes, ‘and neglected to invest in them adequately or in anything not immediately enhancing the bottom line, such as education or federations. With few exceptions, it was a short-sighted and stingy movement.’

The building of an effective co-operative movement in Australia – whether by farmers, workers, consumers, or all three – has, it would seem, been stymied by parochialism, inter-state rivalries, individualism, unhelpful legislation, the lack of substantial co-operative financing, and the inability to build a strong national movement promoting ‘co-operative unity and a co-operative consciousness’. Ironically, Lewis concludes, these are ‘all of the things which co-operative idealists had long argued for and which had been comprehensively quashed by pragmatists’.

The flame of co-operative idealism, however, is not yet quite snuffed out. It’s being revived, amongst other places, in a small town in western Victoria called Girgarre. Next time we’ll look at what’s happening there.

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advocate, Alternatives, Co-operatives, Growth paradigm

Co-operatives – business as unusual

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Not Business as Usual

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on 3rd March 2012

The United Nations General Assembly, at its 65th plenary meeting on 18 December 2009, adopted Resolution 64/136, which proclaimed 2012 as ‘the International Year of Cooperatives’. This was in recognition of the role played by cooperatives in ‘promot[ing] the fullest possible participation in the economic and social development of all people’, as well as their growing emergence as ‘a major factor of economic and social development’ and their ‘contribut[ion] to the eradication of poverty.’

To talk of the ‘growing emergence’ of cooperatives as major economic players is somewhat misleading. Cooperatives as business entities have a history dating back to the 18th century in England and France. The modern ‘cooperative movement’ as a distint entity dates to the formation of the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers in 1844, in Lancashire, England. Building on the ideas of factory owner, social reformer Robert Owen, and Dr William King, the Rochdale pioneers were motivated by the simple philosophy of self-help: they wanted access to quality (i.e. unadulterated) food at a fair price; and so they opened a member-owned food co-op.

IYCLogo_original

Trying to learn the lessons of the failures of many of the earliest cooperatives in the first decades of the 19th century, the Rochdale Pioneers set down a series of principles, which have formed the guiding compass of the cooperative movement ever since. They constitute what’s termed ‘the cooperative difference’; what it is that distinguishes cooperatives from traditional, privately-owned and operated, businesses.

As restated by the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) in 1995, the key principles are as follows: open and voluntary membership, based on non-discrimination; democratic member control (one member, one vote); member economic participation, and reinvestment of the surplus to develop the cooperative and the cooperative movement; autonomy and independence, based on the value of self-help; education of cooperative members and the general public about the benefits of co-operation; co-operation among co-operatives – strengthen and build the movement; and concern for their communities.

From humble beginnings, the cooperative movement spread rapidly, and was widely embraced by farmers in Australia from the 1880s, beginning with dairy farmers on the NSW South Coast. However, for reasons I’ll look at it in a subsequent column, the cooperative movement in Australia never reached the high ideals or the vision of the Rochdale pioneers to ‘create a “Cooperative Commonwealth”, a democratic, social-economy rising from a decentralised network of consumer cooperatives (shops) linked to primary producer cooperatives through a giant wholesale trading entity creating capital to fund other cooperative enterprises in the services, manufacturing and tertiary sectors, coordinated and governed by a Cooperative Union, a grand “parliament”, of democratic organisations.’*

That said, the cooperative movement now numbers in the hundreds of thousands, and embraces over 1 billion members across the world, with over 100 million employees, more than all the transnational corporations ‘put together’, according to Dame Pauline Green, President of the ICA and currently in Australia promoting the International Year of the Cooperative. She adds that the  300 largest coops are together worth an impressive US$1.6 trillion.

The ICA’s aim is to make cooperatives ‘the fastest growing business model in the world by 2020.’ Encouraging trends, says Dame Pauline, include the 79% switch in deposits to the UK Cooperative Bank from the major high street banks ‘in the last two years’, a rapidly emerging cooperative renewable energy sector, and cooperatively-run schools. Dame Pauline speaks of a ‘cooperative renaissance’, led by ‘community-based cooperatives, people coming together and saying actually we can deal with this, we are going to lose our village shop if this goes on so let’s all fall in together as a cooperative and let’s keep our shop going.’**

What are the prospects for this renaissance in Australia? In a later column I’ll look at a project for a grower-worker-community-owned cooperative based out of a recently-closed Heinz plant in Girgarre, Victoria.

* This quote is from from Gary Lewis’ 2006 book, The Democracy Principle, which I highly recommend for anyone interested in the history of farmer coops in Australia. It’s held in the Coffs Harbour Library.

** The quotes from Dame Pauline Green are from an interview published on The Age’s “The Zone”, on February 27, 2012: http://www.theage.com.au/national/full-transcript-dame-pauline-green-20120226-1twcz.html.

advocate, Backyard Gardening, Community gardening, Self-sufficiency, Small-scale farming

Our shrinking trust horizon

The ‘trust horizon’, and what it means for the future

A version of this article appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on 11th February 2012

“Politicians typically make a bad situation worse, as quickly as possible. The [economic and political] systems that we have established have become sclerotic and unresponsive. Hostage to vested interests. They have no ability to adapt quickly to provide for changes that happen very rapidly… So I don’t look for solutions from there….There aren’t really any mechanisms for these large bureaucratic institutions to offer anything that will help…­­­What they’re far more likely to do is suck resources to maintain the centre, like a body that’s hypothermic, cuts off circulation to the fingers and toes to preserve the temperature of the core…Unfortunately for us, we’re the fingers and toes, we have to look after ourselves, nothing is coming from the top down.”

Nicole Foss, speaking with Italian interviewers in January 2012.  

Nicole speaks of the diminishing ‘trust horizon’: how large, centralised political institutions that have evolved over the last few hundred years are losing, and will continue to lose, their legitimacy; and with it, the ability to impose norms and rules that most people will accept. “The response these institutions typically have”, says Nicole, is “surveillance, coercion and repression”. Recent police actions towards the Occupy movement in the United States would seem to confirm this assessment.

The solutions Nicole proposes to the converging financial and energy crises – and she stresses that these are not solutions to maintain “business as usual”, which is “no longer possible”  – are grassroots, “from the bottom up”. The starting point is the recognition that the large centralised systems on which we have come to depend will, over time, begin to fail to “deliver the goods and services that we have come to rely on”.

Grassroots initatives, on the other hand, will work, according to Nicole, because they are based within the ‘trust horizon’.  “Where trust still exists”, says Nicole, “systems working within it can operate really quite well. The critical thing is that they’re small, they’re not bureaucratic, they’re responsive, they make the best use of very small amounts of resources, because there’s no enormous administrative overhead…It is amazing what can be done at a very small scale.”

Hearing this, I’m reminded of the concept of ‘square foot gardening’, popularised by Mel Bartholemew, who claims that his raised bed intensive method achieves the same yields as conventional gardening, but at half the cost, a fifth of the space, a tenth of the water, five per cent of the seeds, and two per cent of the work. Such claims might appear exaggerated, but there are impressive examples of substantial food production in small spaces with less inputs. And just last week, we learned that backyard chooks are producing as much as 12 per cent of the nation’s total egg production, according to the Australian Egg Corporation.

The Square Foot Garden
The Square Foot Garden

But there’s no time to lose in building local economies and social systems: “The key point is, we have to do it right now, because we don’t have a lot of time before we start to see centralised systems failing to deliver what they have delivered in the past.”

What’s the glue underpinning the newly configured trust horizons? Relationships and community. “It’s the strongest approach”, says Nicole. “We do need to do things at an individual level, because if we are on a solid foundation ourselves, we can help others. But we must build community: relationships of trust are the foundation of society.”

“So we need to know, and work with, our neighbours”, Nicole continues. “ We need connections, family and community, so that we’re less dependent on money. In many parts of the world where people have little or no money, their societies function entirely on barter and gifts, working together, exchange of skills – this works as a model, at a small scale. It’s this kind of structure that we need to rebuild.”

Nicole Foss will be speaking at the Cavanbah Centre, this coming Saturday, 11th February, from 12 pm to 2.30 pm. Gold coin entry, light lunch for $5.

­

advocate, Alternatives, Ecological constraints, Growth paradigm

The Master Resource

Nicole Foss – Energy:  the ‘Master Resource’

A version of this article appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate, 6th February 2012

This is the second of a series of three articles outlining the thought of Nicole Foss, who will be speaking at the Cavanbagh Centre in Coffs Harbour on Saturday, February 11, from 12 pm – 2.30 p.m.

“Energy is the master resource. There is no substitute for it. If your total amount of absolute energy is declining, you are going to have to face consequences as a result. Other societies have lived on an energy income, [whereas] our societies have been based on a massive energy inheritance, in the form of fossil fuels. We burn probably 400 years’ worth of the Earth’s primary production every single year. But production from that inheritance is peaking, and you cannot continue to increase the flow-rate from a finite inheritance, [especially] when what we have left is the difficult, expensive-to-produce fraction…We are having to re-invest a significant amount of the energy we produce into the process of finding more energy. So we have less available as a surplus- net energy, or Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI) –  to actually do anything with, and that is going to have major implications…”

This is how Nicole Foss explains ‘Peak Oil’. The key term is ‘flow-rate’, or EROEI. Fifty-to-eighty years ago, when the ‘super-giant’ fields and the ‘gushers’ were first discovered, the EROEI was 100:1. Now it’s reduced by 90%, to 10:1. To maintain our current level of societal complexity, Nicole argues, we probably can’t afford to go much lower than that; yet many of the currently available alternatives have significantly lower ratios.

Ethanol, for example, is estimated to have an EROEI of between 1.4:1 to 2:1; Nicole argues that corn-derived ethanol is in fact less than 1:1. Nuclear power has a slightly better EROEI at around 3:1, but comes with a host of other issues, as the events at Fuksuhima last March demonstrated so graphically. There is an abundance of coal, but if it is substituted en masse for oil and natural gas, then its EROEI will drop sharply; and of course we can hardly forget that burning coal is a major contributor to the warming of the global climate.

The EROEI of renewables like solar panels and wind power is a hotly debated topic, with some suggesting flow-rates of less than 10:1, while others say that the latest thin-film solar technology has an impressive EROEI as high as 40:1.

peak-oil

Nicole however argues that we currently lack the production capacity and the infrastructure to make a large-scale transition to renewable energy sources; and that because of dynamics in the financial system, we are running out of time to mobilise the necessary investments. In particular, she points out that there has been a ‘chronic under-investment in grid capacity’; and that a ‘monumental investment’ would be required to re-tool the grid in order to make it fit for the purpose of channelling distributed energy generated by solar PVs located on private homes and businesses.

The main message is that ‘there are no easy answers’, and we are going to have get used to the idea of ‘doing with less energy; business-as-usual in not going to be option, reality is not going to negotiate with us’. The ‘hydrocarbon age’ will be recorded as a  relatively brief blip over the long-scale of human history.

Energy is a ‘major driver’ of economic activity; , and indeed ‘there’s an almost perfect correlation between energy and economic growth’. It follows that as we move from an era of energy surplus to energy deficit, we are moving from economic expansion to economic contraction. While this will be driven by the logic of the global financial system  in the first instance, the energy constraints will mean that attempts to restart the motor of growth will constantly bump up against physical limits. There will be no ‘de-coupling’ of economic growth from available energy sources. What we’re faced with is ‘not a stasis, but a de-growth scenario’.

In the final article, we will look at the implications of Nicole’s analysis, for individuals and communities.

advocate, Alternatives, Ecological constraints, Growth paradigm

Nicole Foss and the End of Growth

New ideas about ‘progress’

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on 21st January 2012

 

“I don’t think anything remotely like business-as-usual is going to come back in our lifetimes, or probably ever again, quite frankly.”

These are the words of Stoneleigh, aka Nicole Foss. One of the world’s leading writers and speakers on the global energy and financial crises, the deep connections between them, and the implications for advanced economies such as our own, Nicole is travelling to Australia next month on a speaking tour. She will be visiting Coffs Harbour on Saturday, February 11, and speaking and answering questions for a couple of hours from 12 p.m. at the Cavanbagh Centre. The Advocate is sponsoring her visit, and will be running a series of articles exploring aspects of her thought over the next few weeks.

Nicole Foss, aka Stoneleight
Nicole Foss, aka Stoneleight

“Business-as-usual” means all sorts of things, of course, but here Nicole is talking specifically about economic growth. An expanding economy is the very definition of ‘normal’, which is why deep recessions, and above all depressions, are regarded as so awful. The idea that we are perhaps on the cusp of entering a prolonged – very prolonged – period of deflationary depression is extremely hard to contemplate with equanimity. Yet this is the no-holds-barred perspective that Nicole offers; and she does so on the basis of a sharp and clear analysis, with the sole motivation of helping individuals and communities inform themselves and prepare for the seismic changes she believes are now unfolding.

Buen Vivir

Let’s assume for a moment that Nicole is right. This raises all sorts of questions, but the one I want to look at briefly here is this: can the end of economic growth actually be a good news story? If you ask any politician of any major party in most parts of the world, the answer would be a resounding ‘no’. The terrible experience of the 1930s has been seared into our collective historical memory as something to be avoided at all costs, and with good reason.

And yet…as time has gone on, many are saying that the costs of growth now outweigh the benefits. More growth means more pollution, more waste. Having more ‘stuff’ doesn’t mean that we’re any happier. Bigger doesn’t always mean better – have you watched SuperSize Me? Maybe it’s time to start thinking in terms of quality, rather than quantity.

That’s what been happening on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, in Ecuador and Bolivia. The citizens of both countries recently re-wrote their constitutions, and in them they included some old wisdom from the Quechua and Aymara indigenous peoples of the Andes as the guiding principle for the new development paradigm they wish to follow. Sumak Kawsay is a Quechau phrase that translates as buen vivir in Spanish; which in English we might understand as ‘good life’ or ‘living well’.

In contrast to individualistic ideas of progress based on economic growth, buen vivir seeks balance and harmony, amongst peoples, and between humanity and nature, as its primary goals. In a recent article, Thomas Fatheuer notes that it is ‘sharply distinct from the idea of individual good life’; and is ‘only conceivable in a social context, mediated by the community in which people live’.

Interestingly, buen vivir is being embraced by two of the poorest countries in the world, whose main source of ‘wealth’ has traditionally been based on the extraction of their natural resources, minerals especially. That they are seeking to strike out on a different path at this point in time should give us pause for thought, as we seek to keep riding on the wave of the minerals boom.

Maybe buen vivir is relevant to us; maybe not. But at the very least it offers a positive story for the future.

—-

Nicole Foss and her co-writer Ilargi Mendoz (touring Australia with her) write at The Automatic Earth: http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/

Thomas Fatheur’s discussion of buen vivir can be read here: http://www.boell.de/publications/publications-buen-vivir-12636.html

advocate, Alternatives, Corporate control of food, Ecological constraints, Growth paradigm

Nature as a “free gift”

Nature as a free gift

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on 7th January 2012

Last time I discussed, in the spirit of Christmas, the tremendous and little-acknowledged extent to which our monetary economy depends for its continued successful functioning on countless daily acts of generosity, especially by carers and parents.

It also depends on the seemingly endless generosity of nature, which is almost always taken for granted. The idea of treating nature as a ‘free gift’ to humanity – our tendency to ‘treat as valueless everything that we have not made ourselves’, as the famous German economist and author of Small is Beautiful, Ernst Friedrich Schumacher, put it – has its immediate roots in the thought of the founding fathers of our modern market economy: Adam Smith, David  Ricardo, John Stuart Mill and Thomas Malthus. 

small is beautiful 1st ed cover m

Arguably it goes back much further than that, to the very founding stories of our Judeo-Christian culture: to a certain interpretation of the Book of Genesis, according to which God created the world, then created and placed humans in it, and gave them dominion over all living and non-living things. This is of course not the only interpretation of the creation story – another is that the role of humans vis-à-vis nature is not as ‘masters’, but as stewards – but it is the conventional and predominant one.

Treating nature as a ‘free gift’ has certain consequences. Most obviously, as Schumacher noted, it means that we ascribe no value (in monetary terms) to resources such as clean air and healthy soils. That’s dangerous, in a culture in which most of us understand something as ‘valuable’ only when there’s a price tag attached to it. It sets up an unhealthy dynamic between private riches, in various forms of property, and public wealth, in the form of resources that everyone, of necessity, shares.

According to the theory which underpins our market economy,  a monetary value can only be affixed to goods and services which are exchanged, because they are said to exist in a condition (either actual or constructed) of ‘scarcity’. Public wealth, on the other hand, is said to exist in abundance, and as such is not susceptible to monetary exchange.

The difficulty is that as private riches increase, public wealth diminishes. This dynamic is endemic to much of modern production, in agriculture as elsewhere. Coal-seam gas mining is a prime example: extraction of the resource brings profits to mining companies, but at the cost of depleting and polluting underground water tables.  

More than two hundred years ago the eighth Earl of Lauderdale, James Maitland, foresaw this destructive tension between an expanding sphere of private riches and a diminishing realm of public wealth. We live daily with manifestations of the ‘Lauderdale paradox’, perhaps the most severe of which is climate change. As the private wealth generated by our market economy has expanded exponentially in the past two centuries, the ‘liveable space’ provided by a stable climate appears to be rapidly diminishing for future generations.

You might think that the obvious answer to this paradox would be to put a price on the most essential aspects of ‘public wealth’; to treat them as ‘scarce’, and subject them to the laws of supply and demand. We pay for waste water to be treated; and from the middle of this year, we will be paying for the emission of carbon into the atmosphere, as the first step towards a full-fledged ‘emissions trading scheme’. But markets always produce winners and losers; and there are real questions as to whether an ETS will be an effective way to tackle climate change, much less a fair one. 

A lot depends on what we understand by ‘scarcity’; and, fundamentally, what our relationship to nature is, or should be. Many farmers, here and round the world, already see themselves as ‘stewards’, not ‘masters’, of the land they inhabit. There is a great deal of wisdom in such a perspective, and it points the way to a truly ‘sustainable’ future.

advocate, Local and regional food economies, Self-sufficiency

The Gift Economy

Christmas, and the gift economy

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate, 24th December 2011

“Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth peace, [and] good will towards men”.

So reads the King James version of the Gospel according to Luke, Chapter 2, Verse 14. Christmas, the season of peace and goodwill: ‘for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whosever believeth in him shall not perish but have eternal life’ (Gospel according to John, Chapter 3, Verse 16).

No, this column has not suddenly transformed into something utterly different. But whatever one’s spiritual or religious inclinations, Christmas does provide the opportunity for reflection; to take a step back from what normally preoccupies us through the rest of the year. Hence the subtle change in tone and content…

For most of us in Australia, as in many other countries and cultures with Christian traditions, Christmas is a time of relaxation, to be spent in the company of family and friends. It is also a time for the exchange of gifts.

These days, arguably the most important function of gift-giving – taking an admittedly cynical perspective – is to keep the tills busy and the consumer-driven economy ticking over. But of course there is a much deeper meaning and symbolism to the exchange of gifts. Every time we do it we’re re-enacting the original story of Christmas, in which the three ‘wise men’ bring their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to Jesus. There is, as the verse from John shows, the ‘gift’ of Jesus himself, to humanity as a whole; and his ultimate sacrifice.

And of course there is the embodiment of the Christmas spirit, St Nicholas; a 4th century A.D. Greek bishop and orphaned son of wealthy parents, who, so legend has it, often made secret gifts to help those in dire need.

This is why Christmas is a season of ‘goodwill’ and generosity, associated with giving. Many charities make Christmas appeals, asking us to extend this spirit of generosity beyond our immediate circle of intimates, to those ‘less fortunate’ than us.

Why, we might ask, is it only at Christmas that we’re expected to embrace this spirit of generosity?

But wait: what if many of us – perhaps even most of us – actually embody this generosity in many ways in our daily lives throughout the whole year? What if there in fact exists a ‘gift economy’ which underpins the money-based exchange eceonomy, and without which the latter would cease to function?

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

What forms does this ‘gift economy’ take? What, for that matter, is a ‘gift economy?’ According to Wikipedia (the modern-day fount of much knowledge!), it’s ‘a society where valuable goods and services are regularly given without any explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards’.

Think about that. This includes, for starters, all forms of volunteer activity. All donations to charities. All acts of friendship, when you share your home, your food, your labour, or your time, with your friends.  Shouting your mates a round in the pub is a manifestation of the gift economy.

But the gift economy extends further than this. It includes all parenting, and other forms of caring activities. What service could be more valuable to society as a whole than raising children, who in their turn will form the next generation of workers, performing all the essential functions to maintain and enhance our culture?  Yet as any father – and especially mother – will say, parenting involves a great deal of sacrifice. It is a permanent act of giving in every sense of the word.

Of course, as the time and money demands on all of us have intensified in recent decades, many aspects of parenting, and other caring activities, have been outsourced to the exchange economy. I remember as a young child all my grandparents living, and being cared for in, the family home by my mother, till their very last days. That would be a rarity now, I suspect.

But the gift economy goes still further, beyond the human realm. Our market economy treats nature ‘as a free gift’. Next time I’ll look at the implications of this. For now, Merry Christmas!

advocate, Corporate control of food, Cost-price squeeze, Demographic crisis, Ecological constraints, Food sovereignty, Growth paradigm, Local and regional food economies, Small-scale farming, Supermarket Duopoly

The poverty of farming in the Tweed

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The poverty of farming in the Tweed

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate, on 10th December 2011

Last time I introduced Tweed mango grower Mike Yarrow, whom I met recently while in Murwillumbah as part of a team working with the Tweed Council to prepare a strategy for sustainable agriculture.

Mike would like this process to be a success, but he believes that it’s ’30 or 40 years too late’, at least in the case of him and his wife; and other farmers of their vintage (Mike is 67), which is the vast majority of farmers in the region.

Your problem as I see it”, he told us, “is that we, the farmers, have reached the end of our working lives. There are no new young farmers.

The aging of the farming population is an issue that affects the country as a whole. By far the largest category of farmers in Australia is in the 65+ age bracket. In this as in other aspects of food policy, the Federal Government has made the complacent assumption that there is really nothing to worry about, and that what objectively appears to be a demographic crisis will simply correct itself over time. Projections issued after the Australia 2020 Summit in 2008 saw the age of the average Australian farmer peaking in 2011 at just under 55 years, and then gradually declining past 2030.

mangos

Yet no convincing explanation was given as to where the next generation of Australian farmers would come from. On the contrary, all the indications are that the decades-long trend of an aging rural workforce is likely to continue. According to Mike Yarrow, the heart of the issue lies in what he calls ‘the deliberately destroyed profitability’ of farmers.

In Mike’s view, successive Federal Governments wanted ‘to keep the lid on industrial unrest by keeping the gap between a worker’s income and the cost of living apart’. He recalls that when he and his wife arrived in Australia in 1974, petrol was 7 cents a litre, and the minimum wage was $1 an hour. Both have since risen about 20-fold, in line with general cost of living increases. A box of fruit, on the other hand, was $10 in 1974 – and hasn’t gone up much.

You could take issue with Mike; dismiss him as a conspiracy theorist; say that the Government has never intended to screw farmers; that it’s simply a case of the way the markets (and supermarkets) operate. But that’s exactly his point.

By de-regulating rural industries, opening Australia to cheaper imported produce, and generally ‘letting market forces rip’, the market has done what it always does. It’s a competitive system, and it produces winners and losers. In this case, the losers happen to be the majority of Australia’s farmers, and the big winners have been Australia’s two major supermarkets, whose market share has more than doubled since the mid-1970s.

You could argue that in delivering ‘cheap food’ for shoppers, the Australian public as a whole have also ‘won’ in this process.  Yet as five farmers continue to leave the land every day, and very few are stepping into their shoes, the question remains: who is going to produce our food for the rest of this century, and beyond? Agriculture may be less than 3% of Australia’s GDP, but to understand its significance only through an economist’s eyes is unbelievably naïve and short-sighted.

At a deeper level, Mike is quite right. The market system – capitalism – has always depended on ‘cheap food’, in one form or another, to drive its major cycles of expansion. In the Industrial Revolution, it was sugar from the slave plantations of the Caribbean. Last century, it was the mountains of corn made possible by hybrid seeds, agro-chemicals and cheap oil. This century they tell us agricultural productivity will be driven by ‘environmentally-benign’ GM technologies. Meanwhile, food prices are starting to rise, and food riots are becoming more common. Food is too important to take for granted, and so are farmers. We need to be asking some hard questions.

advocate, Cost-price squeeze, Local and regional food economies, Small-scale farming

Sustainable Agriculture in the Tweed

Sustainable Agriculture in the Tweed

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on 26th November 2011

The Tweed Shire Council is preparing a strategy for Sustainable Agriculture. This is part of the multi-faceted Northern Rivers Food Links project, in which the seven councils of the Northern Rivers, together with Rous Water, have been working together for the past three years on more than two dozen food security and sustainability initiatives. These include a source identification project, a Sustainable Food Directory, a sustain food website and ‘virtual marketplace’, the promotion of land-sharing to connect would-be growers with land-owners, a local government resource toolkit showcasing best case policy development across the region, and support for a number of community gardens and farmers’ markets.

Mount Warning, near Murwillumbah
Mount Warning, near Murwillumbah

The Strategy aims to set out a vision and a pathway in which the whole of the Tweed community can work together to ensure that agriculture remains economically and ecologically viable in the Tweed shire, contributing to the economic vitality and food security of the Tweed and beyond.

As I discovered through listening to the concerns of farmers and growers in the Tweed over a number of days, bringing the community together for this purpose will be no simple matter.

There is amongst many farmers a level of distrust and suspicion of the Council’s motives in preparing the Strategy. Specifically, there is a feeling that the Strategy may be used to further entrench existing restrictions on the subdivision of agricultural land.

For many farmers, in the Tweed as elsewhere, being able to sell part of their land is fundamental to their retirement plans. Restrictions on sub-divisions are seen as almost callous indifference to the huge burdens that farmers have been under for the past several decades.

This is a complex issue, because what typically happens with subdivisions is that they are purchased in five-acre lots by lifestyle ‘tree changers’ who spend a great deal of time mowing, slashing and fighting a largely losing battle against environmental weeds. After a number of summers spent that way, many urban refugees throw their hands up in despair, put their properties on the market, and gratefully return to the city. Sound familiar?

The one remaining agricultural machinery dealer in Murwillumbah confirmed this pattern. Whereas 15 years ago there were five dealers and most of the machinery sales were to commercial farmers, now it’s just him, and 90% of his sales are to lifestylers.

This pattern is resulting in the progressive loss of productive agricultural land, and so you can understand the Council’s reluctance to permit further subdivisions. But you can also understand the deep frustrations and bitterness felt by many farmers. These are the words of mango farmer Mike Yarrow, who has lived and worked in the Tweed since the early 1970s:

The core of our complaint [is] in relation to our deliberately destroyed profitability, which has left us at the end of our working lives – I am 67, whilst many [farmers] here are nearer 80 – with no super, no health insurance, no holiday houses by the sea, no life insurance, no income, no stocks, no shares…the list goes on…all we have left is our land, and many in places of power, or in the community, with no understanding of our deliberately induced poverty, call us ratbags for trying to take the only path out of this mess. I survive on a pension of $250 / week…

Mike has a quite sophisticated theory of what he terms ‘the deliberately induced poverty’ of smaller-scale farmers in Australia, and I’ll discuss that next time.

The Tweed Sustainable Agriculture Strategy Discussion Paper can be downloaded here: http://www.tweed.nsw.gov.au/Agriculture/default.aspx

The Northern Rivers Food Links project can be visited here: http://www.northernriversfoodlinks.com.au/

The Sustain Food website is here: http://www.sustainfood.com.au/