This paper
explores the evolution of the modern agri-food system and in particular, how it
has been shaped by the market economy, industrialisation and cheap fossil fuel.
It concludes that some of the principles of organic farming are incompatible
with the logic of the market economy and the industrial society. Therefore, the
organic movement should look for strategies that challenge the prevailing
paradigms, and build alternative economies.
Farming has been shaped by cheap fossil fuel and
the market economy.
Farming systems are largely shaped by the
ecological and social conditions under which they develop; they also influence
these conditions. It was the shift from a hunter and gather society to an
agrarian society that lead to the initial stratification of society in rulers
and oppressed, to private property and to the city and the state. The simple
agrarian equation was always that farmers must produce more energy as food than
the energy they spent on it. They must produce energy for themselves, for young
(reproducing the labour force), old and sick dependants, for some other
tradesmen and for the rulers, who offered protection against taxes or forced
work. For a long time this energy equation remained the same. Gradually,
through technical innovations, productivity could increase and new lands could
be tilled, thereby allowing a slow increase in population. All in all
productivity per worker didn't increase so much; slash and burn farming, almost
without tools, is mostly as productive as farming with oxen and a plough[1].
Three things, all linked to each other, changed this dramatically: the
emergence of the (capitalist) market economy, industrialisation and fossil
energy.
Industrialism caused a fundamental change in
social relations where the family unit ceased to be a unit of organised production
and becomes a unit of organised consumption. Industrialism was also a way to
largely expand exploitation of labour and nature. Through the combination of
the market economy and industrialism, externalisation of environmental and
social costs in time and place was possible - and profitable. This lead to that
producers which internalised costs, simply could not compete, be it peasant
farmers, artisans or corner shops. This was further augmented by that
industrialism also brought in fossil fuel and thereby, seemingly, broke the
ecological limits of the economy. The power in society shifted from those that
controlled solar collection on the ground (landlords) and human masses (the
state and landlords together) to those that controlled the new energy sources (fossil
fuel) and put them into work for trade or industrial production - the
industrial capitalist. It lead to the emergence of the modern society where
more and more aspects of life is regulated by markets; where "growth"
is seen as something inherently good or essential; where world population has
exploded, where nature is merely seen as a dumping ground and a store of raw
materials; and where one's wealth is built on exploitation of fellow humans and
nature.
Markets existed since a long time, but up to
some hundred years ago, societies were not "market economies".
Ancient elites didn't earn their money from markets but from conquest (robbery)
rents and taxes. The role of markets for distribution of goods was not
dominant, very little food was bought or sold, and there were no markets for
land or labour. Farmers were largely shielded from competition in the modern
sense. Grain didn’t become a fully tradable commodity until the end of the 19th
century in Asia. The big shake up came with the introduction of fossil fuel and
industrialisation. Improvements in transportation technology, in particular
steamships and rail-roads were both a driver and prerequisite for increased
trade. In 1870, a bushel of wheat cost 60 cents in Chicago and the double in
London. By the end of the century transport costs, and thereby the price
difference, had shrunk to 10 cents. Somewhat later, and in particular after
WWII, fossil fuel was also applied in the farm sector itself by the
introduction of threshers, pumps for irrigation, tractors and last but not
least fertilizers, adapting to the ways of the factory.
The introduction of markets affected every
aspect of the farm sector. Now, village life, culture and religion, which
earlier both controlled and assisted in farming, became "obstacles to
development", because they stood in the way of the market logic. Land,
water and forests were gradually transformed from commons to tradable
commodities. Farmers are no longer reproducing their production system. They
buy seeds and breeds in the market; they don't have to take care of the
reproduction of the soil, because they can compensate that with buying chemical
fertilisers. They don't have to take care of the balance between nature and
what humans take away. The total biological productivity per hectare remains
much the same, but we take a higher and higher share of that production, e.g.
by transforming grains to have less roots and straw and more kernel; by
exterminating weeds and wildlife in the fields and by not allowing the soil to naturally
regenerate.
The production per agriculture worker in the
most advanced economies have reached 2,000 tons of grain per man year, while in
historical times it was just a few tons; an increase in labour productivity by
thousand times. But in many parts of the world, the labour productivity is
largely the same as it was hundred years ago, while the price of food has
decreased tremendously[2]. The average value
produced by a farm worker is just above 100 dollars per year in the poorest
countries and some 40,000 dollars per year in France. And the gap in
productivity between the rich and the poor is widening
Table 1 Agricultural labour
productivity, US dollar per man-year
|
|
1990-1992
|
2001-2003
|
Agriculture as share of GDP
|
|
Low income countries
|
315
|
363
|
20%
|
|
Middle income countries
|
530
|
708
|
9%
|
|
High income countries
|
14,997
|
24,438
|
2%
|
|
France
|
22,234
|
39,220
|
2%
|
|
China
|
254
|
368
|
12%
|
|
Malawi
|
72
|
130
|
36%
|
Source: World Bank, World Development Report 2008
Labour productivity in modern farming can
largely be explained with the command of energy resources. The modern farmer is
de facto commanding a mass army of "energy slaves"; a barrel of oil
represents the energy of 25,000 hours of human toil i.e. 14 persons working a
year with normal Western labour standards. The energy efficiency in modern
farming is considerably lower than in pre-industrial farming systems. Our
ancestors would have starved to death if they had had as bad energy ratios as
our food system; in industrial countries between 10 and 15 times more energy is
used in the food system than what is contained in the food we end up eating.
With cheap global transports and a rather
liberalised trade, farmers in developing countries, having access to almost no
energy resources, are supposed to compete with colleagues in the developed
countries that use energy resources corresponding to hundreds of labourers.
Through perverse subsidies and various trade and food policies, economics and
rules are bent in favour of the farmers in rich countries. Despite a few
selected success stories with high value crops (horticulture) or other premium
products, such as organic, most farmers in developing countries are losing out
in the competition. Many of the least developed countries have gone from food
exporters to food importers in a few decades as a result of these unfair
relationships. The same development affects many small farms in developed
countries, who can only survive by going into “niches” such as artisan food
production or services such as educational farms. There are other troubling
aspects of our food system after the farm gate, such as the dominance of a few
supermarkets, enormous waste and the deterioration of food quality. These are
also linked to the depicted development.
We are in the stage of peak-oil; our wasteful
farming system and the use of fossil fuels cause climate change; water
resources are depleted; global population has exploded and our ecological
footprint is considerably bigger than the planet (and growing by the day). And
still, farming is shaped as if labour was
the main limiting factor and nature is for free. People in high income
countries consume up to 10 times more natural resources than those in the
poorest countries. 884 million people lack access to clean drinking water and
2.6 billion people do not have access to running water (UNEP 2010). The
differences between rich and poor are increasing over the years; the richest 2 percent of adult individuals
own more than half of all global
wealth, with the richest 1 percent alone accounting for 40 percent. Most of the
poorest are involved in farming.
How can anyone claim that our development model
is successful, when it fails on so many accounts?
Discussion and Conclusions
There are several features of organic farming
that is in contradiction to this development. Most importantly organic farming:
- is based on as closed cycles of nutrients as
possible, something that is impossible to maintain with large scale
international trade, and in general difficult in a commoditized food system
- builds on natural systems to regulate pests
and weed and supply crops with nutrients and is therefore not in favour of
system relying on the purchasing of inputs.
- is in principle against the use of finite
resources, e.g. fossil fuel and mineral fertilizers
- is committed to fairness, while market
imperatives such as competition, rent-seeking and economies of scale are
everything but fair, instead they lead to ever increasing gaps between rich and
poor.
Organic farming is essentially in opposition,
not only to the use of agro-chemicals, but to the whole system that is based on
exploitation of nature and of fellow humans. People like myself, have seen it
as urgent to transform the farming system into a more benign system without
necessarily challenging the prevailing paradigm. A vehicle for doing this has
been the "mainstreaming" of organic into mainstream (global) markets
and into government policies. That is still a praiseworthy effort, but it comes
with a price. I have been a farmer myself and know how it works in the daily
life. The power of the prevailing economic system and its ideology is
overwhelming. Ultimately organic farmers have to survive, and to survive within the market economy requires
submission to the logic of the market; it leads to increased use of inputs in
production, externalisation of costs, corporate take-over and business-as-usual
approaches. The farmers truest to organic principles are mainly small scale
gardeners producing for themselves and lifestyle farmers. They can be true to
the organic ideals not because of their moral superiority or higher skills, but
because of their autonomy from the market forces.
In theory, full internalisation of costs (such
as fees for nature resource use and waste) and compensation for ecosystem
services (such as carbon credits or landscape payments) would allow organic
farmers to compete "fairly" with non-organic. But the industrial
model is based on externalisation of
costs. This is also the reason for why there is such a resistance to internalisation
of costs from those that profit from the system, be it internalisation of
social costs or environmental costs. In a complex system such as farming,
internalisation of all social and environmental costs and compensation for
ecosystem services would only be possible with very extensive and
detailed regulations. Just look at the EU agri-environmental programs which are
just a very small step in that direction. Such a system would probably still be
neither fair nor efficient, and would in many ways represent a control of farms
more sever than under Soviet rule.
There are
two strategies to follow: One is the strategy for individual autonomy in the
same way as peasants have related to the market for centuries, by limiting
their dependency of inputs for production and reproduction of the system, such
as fertilizers, paid labour and credits. This "peasant strategy" is
not only a feature in developing countries, but is also prominent in many farms
in developed countries. It coincides with prominent aspects of organic farming,
especially the idea that production shall be based on local resources. It is a
strategy based on the understanding that a total integration in the market
system will be devastating. While autonomy can be appealing, it also easily leads
to isolation both mental and social. Therefore, pursuing individual autonomy
has limited ability to change the bigger picture.
Another strategy is based on building new
economic relations, which gradually can replace the capitalist market economy.
I am proposing systems in the tradition of cooperatives, communities and
villages; self-organised local and global societies. Models that break free
from the dichotomy between state and the market, which represents a false
choice we are supposed to make. It is about lifting autonomy to another level,
from a personal strategy to a local and global community strategy. In the same
way as the capitalist society developed parallel to, and sometimes in violent
opposition to, the feudal society, another society will have to grow,
stealthily, beside the market logic. It has to be combined with a change in
values and paradigm and aim at an economy where man's wealth does not result in
nature's poverty and the poverty of other people. It is incumbent on the
organic movement to actively research and test business models that can
contribute to such a new social economic order.
