[p2p-research] debate on open agriculture

[Stan Rhodes]

Kevin,

Regarding diffusion of skill, the trend I see: technology and knowledge
lowering barriers to entry so more people can choose from a larger pool of
interests, and go farther in their handful of interests.  The skills are
actually diffused in and across technology itself--shoulders of giants and
all that.  If you look at hobbies, they may be increasingly diverse between
people, but each person only has a handful.  There is variance, of
course--some people have wider "interest pools" than others--but I think you
can see the trend.  Even with incredibly low barriers to entry across a huge
pool of possible activities, I strongly suspect we'll see specialization in
only a handful per person.

So, while you say there might be rational economic incentives for diffusion
of skill in make-vs-buy, I'm not seeing those incentives with food or much
else, because the strongest economic incentive is for a person to specialize
in what interests them, with one or more of those skillsets being of high
market value--their breadwinner.  I strongly suspect that manufacturing of
the future will be similar, but I will save my alternate visions of the
future of manufacturing for some other time.

Regarding cities and food, the future will be far more dense than WW2 era,
not less dense, which is good, because increased density tends to correlate
with more power efficiency (less power used per capita).  I can't see many
victory gardens in Tokyo or Hong Kong.

While gardens aren't a very productive use of dense urban land, I could
easily see edible landscaping throughout urban greenspaces (which need to be
multi-purpose), and roof gardens (are they worth the cost and upkeep? no
idea).  However, I don't know if you have a garden (I do, and picked my
first eggplant this weekend), but, I would be hard-pressed to produce 40-50%
of in-season veggies.  Similar to the market gardeners you mentioned, we do
have full-time specialized garderners here, whom you can pay to come in and
take care of your garden for you if you live within their zone, and there's
even a pooled-backyard CSA.  I'm somewhat familiar with both: cool ideas,
but they won't produce much per capita, particularly as density goes up.  I
suspect, just as I see now, some people will specialize in growing some of
their own food, but it will probably only be a few specific varieties they
really like to grow and eat fresh.

In summary, I think you're saying this gardening skill diffusion and urban
semi-homesteading is possible, and I'm saying the rough logistical math
suggests it isn't feasible.  Human behavioral trends suggest the same.  Not
everyone will live in big, dense cities, but most of the 9 billion will.  I
may not like it, but the evidence seems very strong.

Btw, if you haven't seen it, you might be interested in some of the foodshed
work of Christian J Peters et al, some of which looks at food production
capacity per acre of New York state and estimates of acres needed per capita
were everyone eating really, really lean.  Mixture of good and bad news, of
course.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=cj+peters+foodshed&btnG=Search

-- Stan

On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 11:05 AM, Kevin Carson <
free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 7/17/09, Stan Rhodes <stanleyrhodes at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Kevin, expertise is another huge difference, in all industries, and so
> the
> > economies of scale created by centralization include the specialization
> of
> > experts and the efficiency gains they make.  Specialization seems to be
> > often ignored or trivialized in economic discussions on this list, which
> is
> > a mistake.  The gains of trade from specialization can't be reasonably
> > denied, so we should freely acknowledge them--from that acknowledgment
> > follows the highlighting of gains enabled by sharing knowledge.
> >
> > Given what I've seen and experienced with farms, I'm highly skeptical
> that
> > it's cost-effective for the majority of the population to make, rather
> than
> > buy, most of their food (some herbs, a couple tomato plants, sure).
> > Specialized producers with operations that are centralized to some degree
> > strike me inevitable--that trend doesn't concern me.  What concerns me is
> > the societal and governmental refusal to revise costs to reflect known
> and
> > measurable externalities.  Essentially, subsidized and condoned
> destruction
> > of common pool resources.
> >
> > Rising fuel costs will bring that destruction closer to home for those
> > people that can do something about it, politically, so I see some hope
> > there.
>
> I'm not sure we disagree on all that much here.  The real question is
> not whether economies result from division of labor, but the scale on
> which they top out.  Depending on the cost of other factors in the
> make-vs-buy decision, there might be rational economic incentives to
> the diffusion of skill.  Just as a guess, the WWII Victory Gardens,
> with some 40-50% of in-season veggies being produced at home, might be
> a plausible levelling off point after several years of skill
> diffusion.  For most of the rest of it, economies from division of
> labor might be maximized by market gardeners at the community level.
> At an intermediate scale, economies from division of labor and from
> full utilization of specialized equipment might be maximized within a
> neighborhood barter network.
>
>
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