Paticipatory Guarantee Systems - a nice governance model

In 2004, when I was the President of the International Organic Agriculture Movement, IFOAM, I had the pleasure to be instrumental in the first global meeting for the furthering of what is called Participatory Guarantee Systems for organic markets. Those systems developed primarily in Latin America as alternatives to the third party certification model, which has dominated the organic market place since the mid eighties. I have myself been very active in building up this third party certification model, e.g. as the founder of KRAV in Sweden and founding president of the International Organic Accreditation Services, IOAS. Because of that, I also knew its weaknesses and shortcomings....

The workshop was hosted by one of the pioneers, Ecovida.

Presently Ecovida encompasses 180 municipalities and approximately 2,400 families of farmers (around 12,000 persons) organized in 270 groups, associations and cooperatives. They also include 30 NGOs and 10 ecological consumers’ cooperatives as well as several professionals’ partnerships and supporting organizations. All kinds of agriculture products are cultivated and sold by the Ecovida members, for example vegetables, cereals, fruits, juice, fruit-jelly, honey, milk, eggs and meat. In 2003 the sales amount was 13 750 000 USD; 27 % of the sales was to free markets, 20 % for export, 19 % to the institutional market and 34 % for other markets like supermarkets, shops, agro industries etc.You can access more information (in Portuguese) about the Ecovida network on http://www.ecovida.org.br/

I was sick in malaria and spend all the time in a hospital in Porto Alegre instead of participating in the workshop. Nevertheless, or perhaps as a result of my absence(!), the workshop was a great success. And from then on PGS has developed a lot.
IFOAM defines PGS like this:

Participatory Guarantee Systems are locally focused quality assurance systems. They certify producers based on active participation of stakeholders and are built on a foundation of trust, social networks and knowledge exchange

PGS has got a lot of positive attention lately, and it has been recognised as a relevant and legal method for guaranteeing organic products in several Latin American countries as well as in India.There are several reasons for this: one is cost and bureaucracy involved in the traditional certification. But even more important is the ownership of the process and the results. To undergo impartial third party certification with its increasingly bureaucratic procedures, standardized globally, is a rather alienating process. The first organic certification bodies where either farmer organizations or established by associations working closely with farmers, also taking on a promotional and educational role. With the introduction of adherence to the ISO 65 norm, government regulation and internal professionalization of the service, the distance between the certification body and the "subject of certification" has grown tremendously. Organic farmers today always refer to certifers as "them", never as "us".

While there are some strong sides in a third party certification system it also has a lot of weaknesses. The PGS system also has it strong and weak sides. As things stand now, third party certification is the model preferred for the anonymous mass-market, especially when distance between producers and consumers are big and PGS is the choice for direct marketing situations.

For me the thing that makes PGS most interesting is that it is based on a different paradigm and a participatory model of governance. As such it merits attention not only as a method of guarantee of organic quality. The notion that we create credibility by having supposedly "independent" organizations doing "objective" and "impartial" assessment is at best just one way of creating credibility or at worst an illusion.

The PGS models certainly are not perfect. Also, it lies in their nature that they are different and not globally standardized. Some of them may be defunct, some of them may be inefficient or ineffective. But the idea behind them is sound and could be a building block also for strengthening local democracy and building new types of institutions.

P.S. IFOAM has a lot of valuable resources for Participatory Guarantee Systems. 

Where does the buck stop?

‘Passing the buck’ is an English expression. It means letting someone else take care of a problem or take on the responsibility. The former US President Truman famously had a sign on his desk saying that ”the buck stops here”. Clarifying that he was ultimately in charge.

Who is really in charge? Who is to blame? These are questions that come into mind when reading the European Court of Auditor’s report on the EU organic system. Some of their conclusions could have been drawn directly from earlier leaders of The Organic Standard...

The EU system is built on competing national certification bodies – in some countries up to thirty certification bodies – with oversight by a plethora of national and sometimes regional authorities, accreditation by national accreditors ( only one per country because they have been granted monopoly by the European Union) and oversight by the European Commission. The system has developed not based on the needs of the sector but on the needs and habits of the governments. That is the only reason why authority for approval of certification bodies follows the divisions of the governments. And it is why in some countries regional authorities are in charge and in most countries several authorities are in charge.

Because of an, unfortunate, reference to the EN 45011 (ISO 65) in the EU Regulation back in 1997, national accreditation bodies came into the game, bringing little added value, but increasing cost and increasing focus on rather unimportant procedures. As they were given a monopoly of accreditation, they also swayed the EU that they should have the monopoly of interpreting the EN 45011, a rather outrageous claim.

All of the actors in the system have resource constraints, and will only do what they are forced to do. Most of them also lack competency. Some of the authorities are even hostile to the organic sector despite it being within their mandate to supervise and approve the certification bodies. How does that make the certification bodies and producers feel? The EU has rarely conducted any supervision of what the Member States do. And the ‘transaction costs’ of keeping all in the systems up to date and informed are astronomical. But the biggest problem is that nobody takes responsibility. A concerned consumer in an EU country or a food processor that suspects you’re a competitor is cheating, has nowhere to go with a query because nobody is in charge.

This mess is likely to lead to calls for more controls and more supervision, probably by strengthening the Commissions oversight, and increased reporting upwards by all concerned. But that is the wrong way to go.

What the system needs is rationalisation and fewer actors. There are several options for this. By integrating organic controls into the normal food control system, like in Denmark, both certification and accreditation can be eliminated, and accountability is clear. The same can be accomplished by having a national monopoly for certification, like in the Netherlands. By recognising one international accreditation system for all certification bodies, such as the IOAS, certification bodies could operate freely within all the European territories. In any case, the national approvals of certification bodies are antiquated and could be abolished; a certification body is approved in one country it should be allowed to operate freely in the other countries.

This is not the place to make the blueprint for a new system, but any new system should be built on fewer actors and fewer layers and clearer lines of responsibility, and as much as possible responsibility should be at the ‘lower’ levels, i.e. with the producers and the certification bodies.

Are we consumers or citizens?

The video Story of Change is a nice attempt to make clear why Green consumerism falls short of inducing the radical shift needed. More than 20 years of the business model of "sustainable development" show how little can be accomplished by just relying on consumers and businesses to make the "right choices". For sure, to make the right individual choices are important - but not enough. And it is a dangerous illusion that we will select a good future by how we consume (i.e. shop). Gradually, the consumerist paradigm takes over also the political sphere and patients are treated as customers in hospitals instead of patients or citizens.

The video is perhaps a bit naive, but less naive than the idea that we will change the world by consumer choice.....





In the end I also wonder if "citizen" is the right term for what we ought to be. It has a connotation of nationalism (as citizenship is linked to a nation), and its link to the "city" as an organism is dubious, but that might be the subject of a later blog post.

The greatest single experiment in global geoengineering

Without knowing it, if you are a European, you might bear costs of over €500 per year for farmers’ use of Nitrogen fertilizers. According to the European Nitrogen Assessment, synthetic N fertilizer has been estimated to sustain nearly 50% of the world’s population, but its use comes with a very big prize tag. The report states that the increased level of reactive Nitrogen in the biosphere might represent the greatest single experiment in global geoengineering ever made. Similar concerns were already expressed by the Millenium Ecosystems Assessment and later echoed by the by now famous article about Planetary Boundaries.

And while this Nitrogen drives yields, a lot of the nitrogen ends up where it isn’t supposed to.The nitrogen recovery (kg N taken up by a crop per kg applied N) for cereals varies between 30% and 0% across Europe, indicating that 40%–70% of the fertilizer N applied is lost to the atmosphere or the hydrosphere.

From the perspective of the individual farmer the use of Nitrogen fertilizer is profitable. The return of one euro invested in nitrogen fertilizer is estimated to between two and five euro. But someone else pays a bigger bill. “Environmental damage related to Nitrogen effects from agriculture in the EU-27 was estimated at €20–€150 billion per year. This can be compared with a benefit of N-fertilizer for farmers of €10–€100 billion per year, with considerable uncertainty about long-term N-benefits for crop yield”  says the report.

This is no European speciality, it is likely the same or worse in many places. In the US the Mississippi, the Columbia, and the Susquehanna rivers together discharge approximately 1 million tons of nitrogen in the form of nitrate per year to coastal waters according to a report from H. John Heinz III Center. In Rwanda, erosion causes loss of almost 1 million tons of organic matter, some 40,000 tons of nitrogen, 280 tons of phosphorus and 3000 tons of potassium—more than the total use of chemical fertilizers according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development assesses that the fertilizer uptake efficiency is less than 30 percent for rice production in South and South East Asia. Globally the nitrogen efficiency in grain production has deteriorated drastically and rapidly. Around 1960, each ton of chemical fertilizer resulted in an increase of grain yield of 75 ton, while in the end of 1990 resulted in just 25 ton, a glaring example of decreasing marginal utility, as nitrogen fertilizer use increased tremendously in the same period.

What comes in - will go out....

In the end there is nothing really surprising in the report. It has always been clear that not only 40%-70% of the nitrogen is lost to the atmosphere or the hydrosphere. It is rather 100% that is lost, as also what is captured in the grain or the grass, ultimately also will leak away, as long as nitrogen is not accumulating in soils. But it isn’t doing that, on the contrary.

Read more:

Overloaded with Nitrogen and approaching peak phosphorus
Scarcity starts to bite
Nitrogen in the biosphere - a cliffhanger
Nitrogen fertilizers destroy soil organic carbon
Plows into Swords and Swords into Plows

The road to food security: What works and what doesn’t?

Considering that donors spend some US$ 150 billion per year in development aid, and that much of this is oriented to poverty alleviation and food security it is perhaps surprising to know how few thorough international reviews that have been made to assess  what works and what doesn’t work. The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs has now reviewed existing evaluations in the field and make a summary in the study A systematic review of the impact of interventions in agricultural production, value chains, market regulation.  One conclusion is that most evaluations and impact assessments are not solid enough to allow for any far-reaching conclusions. Of 365 evaluations screened only 38 fulfilled the quality criteria the reviewers had developed.

The review assessed four pathways to food security: increasing production; development of value chains; market reform and land security. Interventions based on access to credit; development of non-farm sector; social safety nets; stabilized prices, hygiene and sanitation were thus not part of the review.

Overall conclusions

Interventions improving land tenure security scored mostly positive, especially when combined with other interventions.

Interventions increasing agricultural production scored generally positive, except for sustainability.

Value chain development scored well on increasing trade, but the most vulnerable people did not benefit.

Market regulation reform interventions score lowest, due to the combination with reduced support to the agricultural sector in several African countries.

Success was most likely where different interventions were combined in a favourable national climate.

As I have been working a lot with value chain development I took a particular interest in that: Intervention in value chain comes out as one of the better strategies for improving food security. The report highlights that there is a big potential in the development of domestic value chains. For example, in Kenya approximately 500,000 smallholders produce vegetables and fruits for the domestic markets while only 11,500 smallholders were engaged in the export market. The export market involves many more large plantations with employees. They employ in total also around half a million people, who are food secure through their income. The evaluation also studied value chains built around GlobalGAP, Organic and Fairtrade.

Number of farmers producing certified products for export markets          

Standard	Worldwide	Developing countries	Africa
GlobalGAP (2007)	97,000		2,871
Organic (2009)	1,808,000	1,526,000	511,000
Fairtrade		977,000	589,000

source: IOB study 363, 2012

Clearly donors are disappointed with the very limited impact of all the efforts spent to train smallholders in GlobalGAP systems. There have been many donor financed projects for linking smallholder farmers in developing countries to organic markets in developing countries. For example the Export Promotion of Organic Products from Africa. In that programme, more than 120 thousand smallholders in Uganda and Tanzania were linked to organic markets in Europe, USA and Japan. The estimated earnings reached some US$ 30 million per year.  The review assess the impact of organic value chains as successful, but can’t conclude if the efforts have reached the most vulnerable or not. Successfactors have been linking of farmers to commercial exporters (as opposed tp supporting farmer to export themselves), group certification and efforts to improve quality. Also for Fairtrade it was unclear if the most food insecure people were reached and perhaps surprising the report states that, Fairtrade seems to have reinforced men’s role in household an cooperative decision making around cash crops; in one case women’s income had even declined. For the total household income, in four of six cases in Latin America, there had been no increase of household income with Fair trade: ”The low income for Fairtrade farmers is due to the competition between the Fairtrade crop and other farm and non-farm activities, the additional costs for inputs and (hired) labour, and the limited Fairtrade market - only part of the produce is sold as Fairtrade.”

On the opposing side to organic stands a strong drive to increase use of chemical fertilizers, and sometimes GMOs and pesticides. The reports says that the subsidised fertilizer schemes in Zambia and Malawi have been successful. However, another recent special review of such schemes, Agricultural input subsidies in Sub-Saharan Africa from DANIDA comes to a much less positive conclusion after studying such schemes in Malawi, Zambia, Ghana and Tanzania:

• Significant increases in agricultural productivity and food production is possible, and the potential for improving agricultural productivity by subsidising agricultural inputs exists. However the estimates are somewhat uncertain. Costs are very high, and given uncertainties it is unclear whether the programmes provide value for money.

• There is very little convincing evidence to suggest that outcomes are likely to persist after termination of the programmes. However, the subsidy programmes are designed to address the distortions created by market imperfections rather than the market imperfections themselves. When (if) the programmes are phased out, input use is likely to decline again.

It also concludes that none of the programmes managed to reach the poorest households

On the, rather controversial, effects of market deregulation, the Dutch review shows how market de-regulation in China and Vietnam, in combination with land reform, has contributed tremendously to growth and reduction of poverty. ”The impact of domestic trade reform alone was not evaluated, but together with the other pathways in Vietnam’s agricultural development, it contributed to the production increase, from a deficit of 27% in 1980 to a surplus of 40% in 1999. And for China:

In China, during the so-called household responsibility system reform between 1978 and 1984, national grain production increased from 305 to 407 million tonnes. Increases in efficiency increased labour productivity and reduced production costs and food prices. [... ] As a result, per capita grain consumption increased from 195 to 250 kg per year, and household income increased by 15% per year between 1978 and 1984. The efficiency gains in agriculture made labour available for the rural industry sector that absorbed about one third of the rural labour force by 1996. Poverty declined from 53% in 1981 to 8% in 2001.

On the other hand the report also points to that during the period of big de-regulation

In most African countries, the increase in food import was larger than the increase in agricultural export. The ratio of food import to agricultural export has worsened for all African countries plus Guatemala and Peru, remained the same for Guyana, and had improved for China, India and Chile (1970-2002). In the period 1995-2002, the situation was worst for Senegal which imported food worth more than three times their total  agricultural export. Farmer income from export crops increased in all countries. In contrast, farmer income from liberalised food crops decreased in all countries, except in Chile. Farmer income from food crops that were still protected increased in Cameroon, Nigeria, Morocco, China, India, Chile, Guyana and Peru.

That land reform the report highlights that land titling and solutions based on individual, private ownership may not be the best. As a matter of fact they are likely to benefit more those that are already better off, and exclude women and disadvantaged groups.

As the report points out, there is no silver bullet that by itself can guarantee food security. It stands clear to me that food security – poverty and equality are intrinsically linked, and that the reason for food insecurity is found in an unjust society and unequal access to resources, and therefore,  that the path to food security is to correct those injustices.

Trash Sustainability indicators

I was in a rather bad mood the other night and wrote something to a group of people, of which I am a member, about "A best practice reference document that addresses organic principles and practices in the broader context of global human society and its sustainability" Read more on http://www.ifoam.org/growing_organic/Best_Practice_Program/index.php

In the work to develop the document there is the idea to develop indicators for sustainability. I wrote the following:

The more I think about it the more I question the need for indicators in that SOAAN document.

As a project manager I work a lot with indicators. I think they work reasonably well as a tool for simple projects (like organise a conference in Lusaka, set up an information centre). Already in more complex project settings they are of much less value for project management. For reporting on development they are ok, but not for GUIDING development.

In general, I don't think most farmer are interested in complex set of indicators, They might be it in a benchmarking exercise with farmers in their own area, but benchmarking against a global standard is not so interesting - and also not really relevant. I have worked in all continents of the world in almost 100 countries and while some things are strikingly similar allover the place - many things are very different, and what is relevant in one place is of little relevance in another.

For me it is hard to understand all this energy that is put into indicators, indexes, metrics. The producers don't care. The market place doesn't care. LCA is a prime example of this. It is all interesting for researchers, but it is totally irrelevant in real life. No consumer base their shopping decision on LCA, no companies design their products based on LCA (well perhaps some have tried but they are probably bankrupt by now). And in the end the selection and weighing of indicators is purely subjective. What they do is to transform subjective values into seemingly objective measures....

NO successful entrepreneurs or innovator works based on systematic indicators (they do mostly have their own homespun indicators/rules of the thumb) or things like that. They hardly make business plans or have a budget. WHY are we so obsessed with this?

WHAT WE NEED MUCH MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE IS INNOVATION AND DEVELOPMENT!

I know that some of the reason is that people feel some kind of need to PROVE that organic is BEST or MORE SUSTAINABLE than other things. But why are we so obsessed with that? Industrial farming or GMO don't spread because they argue that they are more sustainable, alternatives also don't succeed or fail depending on how they score in idealistic measurements, and governments CERTAINLY don't chose sides based on a set of indicators. It is a very small group of people that keep this discussion alive.

In society in general, we have accepted that even if we respect science and scientists they are not necessarily the best managers of development. Instead we let incompetent democratically elected politicians decide. A technocratic world of social engineering is not what people WANT.

And as much as I am critical of laissez-faire liberalism, it certainly has a point in objecting to too much central control and planning. In the same way I object to the idea that our clever group should sit and develop all those nice indicators.

Make a good document, let indicators be developed site specific, for different purposes, with different sets, by those who think they need them - don't try to enforce them globally. A guidance document for how to make indicators could also be an output - and when I think about it, that should be the starting point even if you want the document should have it....

Best
Gunnar

One of the members of the group sent the link to this very interesting presentation by Frederick Kaufman.

What does sustainable really mean in an unsustainable economy?

There is renewed interest in sustainability issues, ahead of ‘Rio +20’, the follow up to the UN Environment conference of Rio 1992. What has been called ‘sustainable development’ for the last twenty years is now often referred to as the ‘Green Economy’. As before, one of the tools for its promotion are markets for ‘sustainable products’. And of these, organic products are one of the most prominent examples. Certainly, there has been a tremendous increase in the market for various sustainability schemes, such as organic and fair trade schemes, as well as others like the Rainforest Alliance, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), etc. In the most developed market segments some of these schemes are taking significant market shares. There is a tendency for  people to assume that sustainability standards represent something new, but that is not true.

Gandhi advocated the boycott of machine-made European clothing as it caused large-scale unemployment in India. He took to wearing hand-made cloth called Khadi  that was inexpensive and suitable for poor Indians. Most importantly, it showed Indians how to be self-reliant by a symbolic act. His arguments are similar to arguments used today of sustainability proponents. 

“Khadi is only seemingly expensive. I have pointed out that it is wrong to compare khadi with other cloth by comparing the prices of given lengths. The inexpensiveness of khadi consists in the revolution of one's taste. The wearing of khadi replaces the conventional idea of wearing clothes for ornament by that of wearing them for use. (Young India, 7-8-1924)”

There are still many issues associated with the schemes that need to be discussed. ‘Can you trust them?’ is one of the questions. On this matter ISEAL has worked hard to develop codes of good practice. And in the organic sector there are many layers of watchmen all watching each other over and above the constant criticism by competitors. Compared to other claims in the market  place, the credibility and integrity of sustainability schemes is generally high.

‘How sustainable is the production?’ is another increasingly common question. As the term  sustainable’ is often badly defined, or defined in hundreds of different ways, and everybody pays lip service to sustainability, it is very hard to respond to such a question. Even systematic and

standardised methods of measuring sustainability, like Life Cycle Analysis, are ultimately based   on subjective values and depend on how much weight is given to different parameters. The ultimate answers are not scientific but ideological.

‘Could the schemes be merged?’ is another common question. It is often the same clients that ask this question who are interested in the many facets of sustainability, and it is not so farfetched to believe that there could be benefits in merging them. But reality speaks a very different language, new  sustainability schemes emerge all the time. Those who call for schemes to merge do not really understand that the main role of a scheme is to be a marketing tool for differentiation.

Also, they don’t realise that consumers are different. For some environment is the most    important, for others personal health, fairness or animal welfare is more important. For the

ethical vegan it can hardly be acceptable to support a sustainability scheme that allows animal products; while anti-globalisation activists would probably not approve schemes built on free international trade.

Questions that are not asked often enough are:

• What is the role of a sustainability scheme in our world?

• To what extent can we rely on markets to shape our world?

• Under which conditions do they work and under which don’t they work?

• Will fair trade or organic schemes really change the bigger picture?

While Gandhi’s cloth was a forceful symbol for self-reliance, in the end not many Indians wear hand-spun cloth today. Perhaps buying organic products is more like a statement of how we want the world to be; a statement of what is good and sometimes even a statement of status, of being  hip.

Most of the sustainability schemes work purely as a marketing tool. Their need comes from the market place which relies on a pricing process that does not internalise social or environmental costs into the price of products. This means that some consumers foot the bill for what essentially   are market failures, while other consumers are free-riders – that is they get the benefits without contributing. What are the issues that are best dealt with by voluntary markets and what are best dealt with by regulation, or by a combination?

For example, in carbon offset trading the often-hyped voluntary markets (i.e. where a supplier claims to be carbon neutral by buying offsets) represents only around 10% of the total market value for carbon offsets, the rest is created by regulations. The organic sector in  Europe is as much driven by political endeavour as it is by the market, which results in measures such as direct subsidies, proclamation of areas dedicated for organic farming (nature reserves, water-protection areas) and public procurement. These issues should be discussed to a much greater extent within the ‘sustainability industry’, rather than the detail of a particular standard, or another layer of supervision

(leader in The Organic Standard, Issue 134)

Khadi means handspun and handwoven cloth. In 1918 Mahatma Gandhi started his movement for Khadi as relief programme for the poor masses living in India's villages. Spinning and weaving was elevated to an ideology for self-reliance and selfgovernment. Every village shall plant and harvest its own raw-materials for yarn, every woman and man shall engage in spinning and every village shall weave whatever is needed for its own use. Gandhi saw it as the end of dependency on foreign materials (symbolizing foreign rule) and thus giving a first lesson or real independence. Raw materials at that time were entirely exported to England and then re-imported as costly finished cloth, depriving the local population of work and profits on it. Gandhi also felt that in a county where manual labor was looked down upon, it was an occupation to bring high and low, rich and poor together, to show them the dignity of hand-labor. Thus Khadi is not mere a piece of cloth but a way of life. Readmore

Why oil price and grain price follow each other

This is a sad hoax, for industrial man no longer eats potatoes made from solar energy; now he eats potatoes partly made of oil.

(Howard T. Odum, Environment, Power, and Society, 1971)

Farming uses energy in many different forms: diesel for tractors and pumps; electricity for pumps, fans and indoor machinery such as milking machines, etc. Fertilizers represent a big energy use. Energy represents 90% of the production costs for nitrogen fertilizers, 30% for phosphorus fertilizers and 15% for potassium fertilizers. For production in the United States, energy costs represented 22–27% of the production costs for wheat, maize and cotton and 14% of the production costs for soybeans[1] (US CRS 2004). These figures do not include embedded costs in buildings, machinery, etc., so the actual share of the costs is substantially higher. In Argentina, energy costs were calculated to 43% of production costs in 2006 (Baltzer et al. 2008). In a situation with rising energy prices, agriculture prices will follow suit. This could also be seen in the case of food prices and in the case of the oil price hike in 2007–2008.[2] Increased energy prices influence food prices:

• by making the production more expensive;
• by making biofuel more interesting to produce and, therefore, reducing the production of food, leading to higher prices;
• through increased transport costs that directly reflect on food prices; and
• through reduced competition in the food sector (increased transport costs means that the pressure of global competition is reduced).

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[1]            Can be grown without nitrogen fertilizers as they bring about natural nitrogen fixation.

[2]            Other factors too were driving this, but increased oil price doubtless was one if not the main driver. 

(Extract from Garden Earth)

Paving farms

On our way to Bob Stewarts farm in Yorkville, Illinois, we see many newly "developed" areas with huge houses (sometimes referred to as McMansions in the US) with generous compounds. This on some very good agriculture land.  Bob tells us that he sold some land for that development and that he buys more land down in Farmer City, far away from the urban sprawl. It reminds me of the discussion in Brazil, where the expansion of soy beans is blamed from de-forestation, not because the soy beans are grown in the rain forest, but because soy production pushes cattle breeders from expensive fertile land into the cheap Amazon land. Ultimately, land resources are limited, and when we pave fertile land, some other land will be needed for farming. Also, most big cities are located in rich farm areas - which is why they became big in the first place, unless they were trading towns - and one acre of good land, may need to be replaced by three or four acres of less good land.

 During the past 30 years, much of America’s most fertile farmland has been lost to wasteful development. The National Resources Inventory   The NRI, conducted by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) in cooperation with Iowa State University’s Center for Survey Statistics and Methodology, is a survey of the nation’s non-federal lands that tells the story of farmland loss by the numbers. The most recent NRI, covering the 25-year period between 1982 and 2007, reveals that more than 23 million acres of America’s agricultural land have been lost to development—an area the size of Indiana. (www.farmland.org)

 I have called for an international soil convention several times before. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be on the agenda for the upcoming Rio +20 event.








Some earlier blog posts on land "development"
Your 200 square meters of concrete and asphalt
Paving the land - and taking it back again
EU farm land increasingly sealed
Time for a soil convention!

(The trip to Illionois was part of the process to write the book "keep your ear to the ground" for the SSNC)

 

The myth of the country of opportunity

"A closer look at those at the top reveals a disproportionate role for rent-seeking: some have obtained their wealth by exercising monopoly power; others are CEOs who have taken advantage of deficiencies in corporate governance to extract for themselves an excessive share of corporate earnings; and still others have used political connections to benefit from government munificence – either excessively high prices for what the government buys (drugs), or excessively low prices for what the government sells (mineral rights)."

writes Joseph Stiglitz in an article, about inequality in the USA.

In Garden Earth I write:

A widespread myth is that United States is the country of opportunity; the success of the individual is in his or her own hands. This was in particular repeated in conjunction with Barack Obama being elected as President, and by Obama too in his speeches. One is told that American society is a model for how people can be successful if they just work hard. Perhaps this was true[1] in nineteenth–century United States when conditions were very different and where there were almost inexhaustible natural resources waiting to be exploited (well, if one doesn’t consider that Native Americans, salmon and bison already used the space), especially compared to Europe, which was still half feudal. But the growth of the welfare state in Europe and the closing of the frontier in the United States changed this radically. Studies comparing the United States and Great Britain, on the one hand, with Canada, Germany and Scandinavian countries, on the other hand, show that social mobility is considerably higher in the Scandinavian countries and Canada and to a lesser extent in Germany than in Great Britain and the United States (Blanden et al. 2005). 

This pattern coincides with the level of inequality so that the countries with the lower equality show less social mobility. Unfortunately, many Americans still seem to believe the opposite and nurture the myth that the only thing that needed to get rich is hard work and dedication. Consequently, even if rarely spelled out as clearly, if one is poor one is to blame oneself. Those who ‘win’ are in some way seen as ‘better’ and therefore they have the moral right to their wealth. Considering that most wealth is just circulated among the already wealthy, this simply gives a moral superiority to those who are already rich. This also seems to be the message from Christian fundamentalists who have adopted the virtues of wealth and success as expressed in Proverbs 10:22 ‘The blessing of the Lord brings wealth, and he adds no trouble to it,’ instead of the dull and depressing moral of Matthew 19:24 ‘Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.’

I note that in comments to Stiglitz article as well as in many other articles on the same topic, many refer to that many have been brought out of poverty the last decades. That is certainly true. Unfortunately, the most impressive record for this poverty reduction comes from a dictatorship with no liberal-capitalist policies, China. A country where inequality is rampant and extend also into other spheres than economics.  

In have written many more posts on inequality. e.g. 


The monuments of the city are built on the backs of poor rural people
Location divide is more important than class divide today
Growing inequality, between people, between countries, between region, between urban and rural
Tale from the sandpit
Equality is good for growth, but growth is not necessarily good for equality

 

 

 

 

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[1]            For whites not subject to indentured labour; certainly not for the Native Americans or the African slaves.

The danger of predictable procedures

Days go by. Years go by. A new procedure is added to an old one, the system expands and it becomes more and more difficult to manage. Special systems are developed to manage the more and more complex system, and others are put there to monitor that the system to manage the system is systematically and consistently applied.

We all know the story. We have seen it. Some even claim that this increasing complexity
brought down empires. When the purpose is to protect citizens from ills it is even easier to accept that there is no end to what can be done and, therefore, has to be done. Airport security is a very clear example in point. However, now after a decade of ever increasing scrutiny and more procedures, not only passengers, but also security officials, question the wisdom of this. In a poll reported by The Economist, 87% of the respondents thought that changes implemented since 2001 had done more harm than good.

Kip Hawley, the former head of the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA), says in an article in the Wall Street Journal that the system needs reform. Two of the issues he singled out are also of particular relevance to the organic inspection and certification system. By checking a multitude of minute details, focus is easily lost
from the really important issues. Tests conducted by the TSA itself show that when officers are busy hunting cigarette lighters and pocket knives they may very well overlook
the dummy bomb parts placed next to them. And by making the system predictable and rigid, terrorists are helped more than deterred.

Organic operators are not airline passengers and the odd fraudster in the organic sector is not a terrorist; it is likely there are many more organic fraudsters in my plane than terrorists. Nevertheless, these observations may well hold for the organic inspection
and certification system. I have come across certification bodies, and regulatory authorities for which ‘annual inspection’ meant literally every 12 months, making it completely predictable when the next inspector will come. The minute detail that is recorded and made an issue of – largely a result of standards and certification requirements growing exponentially – substantially reduces the attention that is given to
more important things, and in particular to any kind of qualitative evaluation. The word ‘evaluation’ is probably missing from most audit forms.

Instead of helping, quality management systems used by certification bodies, aggravate the problem. The main tool for quality management is a standard operating procedure, which essentially means actions are predictable – for fraudsters as well as all other operators. Creativity and acting on a hunch or intuition are largely banned from such a system. But making imaginative, unprecedented effort can yield a lot more than following a prescribed course. For instance, in most cropping systems, there is a specific period when fertilisrs are applied. However, a few weeks after an application it is basically impossible to determine whether a fertiliser has been used or not. Despite this, most farms are never visited at those times. Certification bodies could redirect their effort one year to visit most or all farms at the critical time – or the time of sowing to detect treated seeds, or the time of insect attacks to determine use of a pesticide. But it would not be possible to conduct full inspection visits because that would be too resource demanding. Likewise,
to make a full, comprehensive (on site and crosschecking information) audit of a whole supply chain of products randomly selected (or based on a suspicion) in shops could disclose fraud in a way that routine audits hardly ever do.

There are many good and creative measures that can be taken to improve the organic certification system, and there are many good ideas among the talented people working within the system. But the attention of certifiers, accreditors and regulators is far too
often directed at the management of a system of ever increasing complexity. Unfortunately, when systems are too rigid they also drive away creative people, as they can’t flourish. In this way, the system produces people who believe there is only one right way of doing the job. And that is not a good starting point – neither for disclosing organic fraud nor for detecting terrorists in the making.

Published as Leader in The Organic Standard issue 133

Organic agriculture: the Swiss army knife

The strength of organic farming is that it is multifunctional, that is, it performs many different services at the same time, like a Swiss army knife – a popular multifunctional tool. But that also means for any particular issue seen in isolation, there will be a better tool. Organic standards developed mainly within the organic community, and largely by organic farmers and gardeners and small groups of activist ‘consumers’. Gradually other groups became engaged in the standard-setting process, for example, processors and special interest groups, such as animal welfare groups, social activist groups or environmental groups. Through regulation, governments also became active, getting engaged in several different roles. The government has the role of balancing the interests of different groups, to ensure that they are all fairly represented and considered. This can be a very useful role if performed correctly, especially in regard to ensuring marginalised groups are included in deliberations. The government, which has access to considerable expertise from within, can also provide technical expertise in matters of standards. Governments, often, use their regulations to manifest their power over the sector. This is achieved in many ways, for instance by making certification bodies accountable to the government and by setting standards that are not grounded in organic traditions. It is unfortunate when regulations are driven by this desire to assert power. The organic sector has little to gain from this kind of regulatory approach. Ultimately, it has little value for the government as well. The kind of very heavy-handed regulation that the Chinese government has introduced is likely to drive many stakeholders out of the organic market place, in a similar way that the Japanese regulation did some ten years ago. Clearly, governments have both the right and obligation to take action if blatant fraud is prevalent in the organic market place, which seems to have been the case in China, but this can be done in many ways. Preferably it is carried out in a partnership with the sector rather than as a dictate from the government. Governments are also stakeholders in the standards process, influencing organic (and other) standards in pursuing public interest goals, goals that are normally not pushed by any of the key parties. Such goals could be the development for the public good, such as improved biodiversity. It could also be about avoiding public ills, such as pollution from the handling of animal manure. Increasingly, organic agriculture is promoted as an option for mitigating climate change. And there are some reasons for this. Organic agriculture uses less energy than its non-organic counterpart, mainly because of the avoidance of nitrogen fertilisers, thus causing less carbon emissions. Organic agriculture also maintains or improves soil organic matter compared to non-organic systems, thus causing less carbon emissions and it can even work as a substantial carbon sink. But these broad statements are expressions of average performance; they don’t mean that all organic farms are good for the climate. Not all of them use little energy; some use fossil fuel for heating greenhouses and some use massive amounts of energy for pumping water or simply for intensive mechanical cultivation. Some organic farms do not work as carbon sinks, for example, intensive row crop cultivation is likely to be harmful for soil organic matter. The strength of organic farming is that it is multifunctional, that is, it performs many different services at the same time, like a Swiss army knife – a popular multifunctional tool. But that also means for any particular issue seen in isolation, there will be a better tool. And here there is an inherent danger or challenge. For the market place it is, perhaps, enough to make average statements, but when talk turns to economic compensation for a certain service, e.g. carbon sequestration or biodiversity conservation, it is not satisfactory to talk about average performance. By emphasising one aspect of the many sides of organic systems we may lose sight of its other valuable traits. This is a predictable risk when public compensation is introduced with the specific purpose of providing a particular ‘environmental service’ and if standards are tailored to provide that particular service. This effect can already be seen in the various private sector initiatives to make climate standards. The future for the organic sector is more in making the tools mutually supportive rather than increasing the size of the individual tools. This requires systems thinking rather than a narrow focus on one parameter. But the standards, with their increasing level of detail, don’t foster systems thinking at all. And the work of government administrations rarely does as well, as each department has its own very limited responsibility. What to do? Leader of The Organic Standard, April 2012

Very useful resource for agriculture

The Foundation on Future Farming and Biovision have recently launched the new website www.globalagriculture.org. The site makes the IAASTD’s findings available by topics and offers updated figures, background information, further reading and news and includes material on current topics such as land-grabbing and food speculation. Users can also browse and search the original reports. A special page reflects the discussion on food and agriculture on the road to Rio+20.

Thanks for this initiative! 

The dictatorship of intellectual property rights

"At the heart of the defense of modern day capitalism is the view that it is an innovation machine powered by competition and rivalry. In its ambit, the fittest survive and the leanest grow, goes the argument. In practice, however, it is precisely in the area of innovation that capitalism today affords private firms legal monopolies in the form of patents. And such protection is proving increasingly difficult to justify in the context of the huge investments being made by firms in acquiring and hoarding patents (not inventions) and financing litigation costs incurred to defend themselves against patent violation suits." writes C. P. Chandrasekhar in http://triplecrisis.com/patent-truths/

In Garden Earth: I write the following:

Shortly after a large-scale clinical trial in 1955, the first inactivated polio vaccine was being injected into tens of millions of people around the world—possibly the most successful pharmaceutical product launch in history. Asked why he had not obtained a patent on the phenomenally successful vaccine, Jonas Salk reportedly replied, ‘That would be like patenting the sun.’ A few decades later, this view seemed laughably quaint. (Alan Dove, quoted in Science Commons 2010)

Some problems are associated with the fact that nobody owns a certain resource, but certainly greater problems are associated with privatization of common resources such as knowledge, natural resources, innovations and technology. While there might have been secrets of the trade or knowledge that was monopolized also earlier, in no society this was done from the perspective of ownership. At a certain stage society started to protect intellectual property in order to motivate investments by assigning monopoly to certain people who, falsely or rightly, were seen as innovators or originators.
 

In England, patents in the modern sense originated in section 6 of the 1623 Statute on Monopolies, which described patents as ‘monopolies’ and exempted them from the general ban on royal grants of such rights. Mostly intellectual property rights have been established not on the basis of any idea of the ‘rights’ of the originator but rather on the basis of a utilitarian perspective that it is beneficial for society to assign such rights (compare with the discussion on privatization of nature’s resources).[1] It is by protection of the interest of the originator that they will be stimulated to be more creative, innovate and bring to the market new products. Gradually, over the course of history, this perspective was replaced by the notion that rights to control the use and dissemination of information are forms of ‘property’ rights[2] (Fisher 1999). 

The 1790 Copyright Act of the United States established a copyright term of 14 years. Copyrights acquired today will last for the life of the author plus 50 years. A less straightforward but equally important issue is the definition of a copyrighted ‘work’. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, a copyright owner enjoyed little more than protection against verbatim copying of his or her language. So, for example, in 1853 a federal Circuit Court rejected the claim of Harriet Beecher Stowe that a German translation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin infringed upon her copyright. Today the story is quite different and the kinds of works to which copyright laws may apply have also grown enormously: in 1884, the Supreme Court concluded that photographs could be copyrighted; in 1971, Congress decided that musical recordings should be shielded from copying. In 1979, computer software was added to the list of protectable works. Like copyright, patent laws were gradually extended. In 1842, hoping to provide ‘encouragement to the decorative arts’, Congress extended the reach of the patent statute to cover ‘new and original designs for articles of manufacture’. Until the early twentieth century, plants were considered products of nature and hence unpatentable. The Plant Patent Act of 1930 overrode this principle, extending a modified form of patent protection to new varieties of asexually reproducing plants. In 1970, Congress went further, reaching new and ‘distinct’ sexually reproducing plant varieties (Fisher 1999).

Half the costs are licensing fees

As the world is getting more and more complex, the tangling web of patents and copyrights is getting more and more impenetrable and it is reasonable to ask which of the original motives for these rights are still valid, if any. Innovation, art and culture all existed before intellectual property rights, and the empirical evidence for the value of them for society is largely missing. If the manufacturing of a product needs a number of components or technologies patented by others, it is a complicated process just to negotiate with all patent holders. Additionally, all the licensing fees have to be paid. One single microchip can ‘contain’ more than 5000 patents; for a cheap DVD player patent costs are as high as manufacturing costs (Wikipedia 2009). In practice, this could mean that good products never reach the market despite both demands from consumers and interest from manufacturers. In the words of economists, a clear ‘market failure’.

The use of the neem tree as a fungicide was patented by an American company, despite that neem has been used as a pesticide for 2000 years. A coalition of the Greens in the European Parliament, the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology and the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements sued the company to the European Patent Office. After a 10-year-long process, the patent was declared void (IFOAM 2005). At a certain time there were concerns over this kind of bio-piracy, that is, that companies would capitalize on indigenous knowledge. This led to the possibility of patenting that kind of knowledge. Even if the intention was good, it seems as if, ironically, these measures paved the way for exactly what should have been prevented, a privatization of these resources. 

Patent rights can mean that fewer medicines are produced and that they are produced for a higher price, because patent rights limit competition (remember the origin in England in the Statute on Monopolies). A special case is the antiretroviral drugs used for HIV/AIDS. For long the ‘giant pharma’ refused to let generic copies be produced and sold cheaply in low-income countries, which meant that millions didn’t get access to them, again a typical ‘market failure’. In this case, public relations of the pharmaceutical companies ultimately became nightmarish and they backed considerably. It is indisputably the case that a lot of pharmaceutical research would not happen unless there was some protection for the innovation. On the other hand, the research is not necessarily geared towards what is best for the patient or society. There is, for instance, much less interest in drugs that, once and for all, cure an ailment than in those that need to be administered for the rest of your life.

 As can be seen with malaria treatments, there is little private investment in it because the clientele is so poor—which is also the case for why so much public and charity money is spent on this. As well as being an argument for patent rights, the situation with medicinal drugs seems to provide at least equally strong arguments for publicly funded research and common access to the result. For example, the effects of antibiotics are threatened by resistant bacteria. To be able to still treat the growing number of infections with such bacteria, we need to develop antibiotics that are only used as a last resort (so that no bacteria develop resistance against them too). But there is clearly little commercial interest to develop a new antibiotic and then not use it actively. Only governments or other public interest organizations will do that.

(extract from Garden Earth) 


an article in New York Times  writes: 

Another huge barrier to independent inventors is, paradoxically, the system set up to protect them. “The patent system has become rather costly for a small inventor,” says James Bessen, a lecturer at the Boston University School of Law. “Go back 100 years, and patents were very inexpensive to get. You didn’t have to have a lawyer to get one. The system is working in a very different way than it did years ago, and that favors large corporations.”  

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[1]            Notably, in continental Europe, the perspective of a ‘natural right’ to the originator was more prevalent.

[2]            In a way, the same process has taken place with ownership of land, which was also a common resource that was gradually privatized.

local: the icing of the cake

" Until recently, local production provided the cake (the bulk of our needs) and what was imported was the ‘icing’ and cherry on top, nice to have but we didn’t depend on it. What cheap energy and globalisation has created is a situation where now the cake is imported from wherever in the world it can be found cheapest, and local production is just the icing."

Writes Rob Hoskins in a recent blog post about construction, but the analogy is about food and it certainly applies well to food!
 
Earlier, it was the faraway spices and tea that marked luxury, and was largely reserved for the privileged. Today local, organic and artisanal foods are luxury, things just some people can "afford" - because other products are comparatively cheaper. The of free-range chicken, which was the only way to keep chicken 100 years ago, and still the normal way among rural poor - is now a luxury product.

It is also illuminating that the rich, who largely became rich from the profits from the globalised markets, are the ones that to the largest extent are buying the stuff from those producers who work in ways that are less compatible with a global market with endless competition.