[p2p-research] debate on open agriculture

[Kevin Carson]

On 7/16/09, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:

>  There's no doubt that industrial-scale food production can crank
>  the largest amount of food Joules with the least amount of people.

At the point of production, you're probably right.  But if total labor
includes amortization of the capital outlays for machinery, the
long-distance shipping cost, the food processors' and grocers'
markups, etc., from the consumer's perspective it will likely be
cheaper in labor terms to "make" rather than "buy."

>  We're faced with an ageing demographics with people out of work.
>
>  A retired couple could occupy themselves quite well with a quarter acre,
>  or around 0.10 ha (50 x 50 m). In principle they could derive 100% of
>  their calories from that space, using high-intensity organic gardening
>  methods with no to very little mineral/synthetic fertilizer input.

And in the Third World, where surplus labor with no earning power is
even more of a problem, that goes double.  The person who was evicted
(or whose parents were evicted) from their own subsistence plot, and
who is currently living in a tent city or squatter's shack or in a
gutter in Calcutta, can't afford to buy the output of cash-crop,
export-oriented agribusiness no matter how "efficient" it is, because
he's a surplus laborer who can't earn any money at all to buy food no
matter how cheap.  Putting him back on his own land, land that was
stolen from him or his parents so it could be used to grow cash crops
for those who can afford them, where he can produce directly for his
own consumption, is the ideal solution.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html