[p2p-research] debate on open agriculture

[Kevin Carson]

On 7/16/09, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Centralization actually is quite efficient without qualification.  What
> follows below is a different set of political goals than efficiency which is
> typically taking as greatest output at lowest net cost.

> I agree with all of this again.  But it isn't going to happen if the primary
> social driver is efficiency.  You need to establish political systems that
> value full employment, low consumption of energy, etc. for some clear gain
> in comparative terms to how those gains could otherwise be achieved.

The problem is, there's no such thing as generic efficiency.  There's
efficiency in terms of whatever input you're considering.  Mechanized
agribusiness is more efficient in terms of labor at the point of
production, but less efficient in terms of output per land input.  And
I believe that if all labor inputs are considered in a make or buy
comparision, including the costs of marketing and distribution,
centralization is less efficient in overall labor (as opposed to labor
at the point of production).

One of the problems with American-style economic centralization and
mass production is (as Waddell and Bodek point out in Rebirth of
American Industry and Lovins et al riffed off of pretty effectively in
Natural Capitalism) that it maximizes efficiency at each separate
stage of production, without regard to how it affects the overall
production flow.  And the resulting sea of in-process inventories in
the factory, the warehouses full of finished goods, and the inventory
in the millions of "warehouses on wheels," more than make up for the
savings from those "efficient" machines that achieve their
"efficiency" by being run 24/7 to minimize unit costs regardless of
whether there's an order for their output.

Borsodi gave the example of the Minneapolis flour mills, which were
marvels of unit cost minimization and ROI, but required a product
designed to sit on the shelf for months without losing nutritional
value (because it had none to start with), because of the long
distribution time.  Compared not just to the actual milling stage
alone, but to all costs in the entire
production/distribution/marketing process as a whole, milling flour
from wheat berries in your own electric mill is far more
cost-effective.

> It's far from clear you will end up with these outcomes if you simply set
> objectives (like a cap and trade system).  As the original writer wrote (and
> I agree) decentralized agrarian systems are not very sensible ways to live
> in a modern world.  Technologies for harvesting trees by the dozens an hour
> in Minnesota or Norway make far more sense than hiring two guys in Brazil or
> Indonesia to swing an axe.
>
> I certainly wouldn't want to be amongst those damned to live on a 1/4
> hectare when Europeans and Americans get to eat strawberries in November and
> fatty fish in the Caribbean when they crawl off a huge diesel-powered cruise
> ship.  I'd want my shot at wealth like those enjoying the best the planet
> has to offer.
>
> So, you either compel people to give up the opportunity for improvement or
> you create incentives (income redistributions) for the political outcomes
> you want (and can convince others to want.)
>
> Decreasing amounts of microcredit are used for agricultural production
> globally.  It's not a very safe business--risks are high and production is
> quite variable.  Scale it up just a bit, and you get lots of credit from
> governments, but still relatively little business credit.  Yet China has
> booming shrimp farms (almost all smaller scale) and similar enterprises.
> These sell shrimp that are eaten in restaurants in Florida (or Georgia)
> where one sees billboards complaining about it.  But such systems give
> people cheap shrimp and lots of logistics people good jobs flying airplanes,
> working in airports, etc.  You can't just wipe that out without realizing
> you are compelling places to a lower standard of living.  If the trade-offs
> are worth it to informed citizens, they will lower their outputs in favor of
> the environment, etc.  The issue is one of education and politics...not one
> of technology.
>
> Protein production is very challenging and fish/sea creatures are the
> answer.  Asia is well ahead on this front...especially China.  But pollution
> is high and resource use is dramatic.  But why shouldn't they do it if they
> can make a good living?  Europe and the US will need to volunteer to be poor
> before developing countries will volunteer to not be wealthier.
>
> Ryan


-- 
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