[p2p-research] debate on open agriculture

[Paul D. Fernhout]

Michel Bauwens wrote:
> Dear friends,
> 
> May I propose the following vision for debate, which says that local
> agriculture will never be competitive with the industrial version?
> 
> I would like to publish some of your contributions on the p2p blog,
> 
> Michel
> 
> http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/3207/
> Postapocalyptic Gardens <http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/3207/>
> *Marcelo Rinesi* <http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/bio/rinesi/> Marcelo
> Rinesi<http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/bio/rinesi/>
> *Frontier Economy<http://www.frontiereconomy.com/2009/07/postapocalyptic-gardens/>
> *
> Posted: Jul 2, 2009
> 
>  Growing your own food might be fun, but it’s not the best survival
> strategy.
> 
> There’s a small but growing movement for locally-grown and even home-grown
> food in cities and suburbs. Some of the reasons behind this movement are
> aesthetic — indeed, ‘vertical farming’ buildings seen in recent
> architectural proposals can be strikingly beautiful — ecological,
> nutritional, recreational, and economic. Some of these reasons are
> unimpeachable, as gardening can be an intellectually, psychologically, and
> socially rewarding activity, but the economic arguments for it, which are
> usually the basis for the promotion of the activity as a mass endeavor,
> merit a closer analysis.
> 
> Home gardening as a significant food source for consumption and barter has
> been a regular fixture in many civilizations, and its resurgence, specially
> in the United States, seems to be tied to both the economic recession and
> the rising price of food. As the first trend has lowered wages, the
> application of personal time to growing food has come to appear a reasonable
> investment.
> 
> However, there’s a significant difference between growing food as a
> substitute for less productive recreational activities, and growing food as
> a substitute for time employed at work. In the latter case, it seems
> unlikely that an amateur, small-scale operation can produce food more
> cheaply, when all costs, specially time, have been properly accounted for,
> than a large-scale industrial operation. In any normal situation, working an
> extra hour gives you the additional income to buy more or better foodstuff
> than you can grow in that hour.
> 
> What some proponents of local food production argue, though, is that
> conditions are straying from what has so far been considered normal. In
> particular, they point towards the possibility of high energy costs and a
> deteriorated infrastructure pushing transportation costs to the point where
> locally grown food will be economically competitive by virtue of its
> proximity, as well as by the reduced benefit of energy-intensive physical
> capital to agricultural productivity.
> 
> In the context of such an scenario (which we believe unlikely, although not
> impossible if the transition to large-scale renewable energy fails), it’s
> important to note that even in the absence of cheap energy, small-scale
> agriculture has never been an economically efficient choice for individuals
> or societies. Most economic profits — and the best food — usually went to
> those who controlled large extents of fertile rural land, or energy sources
> like mills (powered by the wind or a river) or large groups of slaves.
> 
> Technology and society has, thankfully, changed since those times, but the
> economic lessons learned along the way remain. In an hypothetical post-oil
> dystopian future of very expensive energy and high transportation costs,
> growing food in a small garden will be less profitable, or in other terms,
> will lead to poorer nutrition, than owning a wind turbine or a dozen, a
> laboratory capable of producing antibiotics, or a network of solar-powered
> railroads.
> 
> We enthusiastically support green cities, but not a retreat to an economy
> confined to the local scale. A complex, distributed, specialized economy is,
> despite its larger requirements for coordination and management, immensely
> more effective than any collection of isolated or semi-isolated households
> and small communities could be, and whatever challenges we will have to face
> in the coming decades, we stand a better chance with more resources at our
> disposal, not less.

In the 1980s, I volunteered on an organic farm, been a cashier at an organic 
foods store, and was program administrator for NOFA-NJ's organic farm 
certification program for a season. NOFA is Northeast Organic Farmer's 
Association. My wife and I also wrote a simulation about gardening to help 
people learn more about how to grow their own food locally in a sustainable 
way. So, I've thought some about this issue. I've also long been an 
enthusiast for local efforts.

But, the fact is, the argument above, that trade is more efficient than 
doing everything yourself, is correct (up to a point).

The limitations of trade is that it encourages people to do big endeavors 
that pass on external costs to others (like pollution from pesticide runoff 
into groundwater, the cruelty suffered by animals in big factory farms, air 
pollution costs of cross-country trucking of lettuce, and so on -- all 
unaccounted for in the cheaper price). Organic originally was intended to 
mean supporting local production; many early supporters are upset it can 
apply to stuff trucked from one end of the country to the other when the 
product can be grow locally.

Another external cost of society is the centralization of wealth in the 
hands of a few large farm owners (including making it difficult for new 
farmers to get started because land is so expensive).

Another problem is the systematic risk introduced into the food supply by a 
few monocultures dominating most production that may be susceptible to a 
common disease or cause some common human health problem (like if 
bioengineered with new genes in them from shellfish or whatever). Another 
problem with conventional agriculture is it mines the soil and allows 
erosion, and unlike China, in the USA, human waste is not returned to the 
fields to replenish the soil (although rock dust could substitute perhaps). 
Mainstream agriculture also puts on too much nitrogen fertilizer which 
displaces micronutrients leading to weaker plants that are less healthy to eat.

These factors all create big risks to our society.

Most people accept that growing some grains like wheat in the Midwest is so 
much easier than elsewhere that it makes a lot of sense to do that. But 
vegetables and livestock are a very different story. They can be grown most 
anywhere. So, in that sense, agriculture is way too over-centralized in the USA.

Organic agriculture tends to be more labor and knowledge intensive, so it 
costs more right now (until agricultural robots get better). But in any 
case, we are talking about 2% of the labor pool versus (guessing) 4% if we 
went all organic, so that is not much of an issue, considering how many 
people want to farm but can't right now. In the long term, agricultural 
robots that already exist from cow milkers to grape vine pruners (see below 
links) will change how agriculture is done in the USA (and then globally), 
removing a lot of the tedium of it and improving the quality of the results. 
But, robotics assumes a significant industrial base (at least, right now; 3D 
printing may change that some).

I never tire of referencing Manuel de Landa's comments about the need for 
situation specific balances of top-down hierarchy and bottom-up meshworks in 
coming up with working systems. It seems like here is another example. 
Agriculture in the USA has tilted too far to the big farm hierarchy side, 
pushing external costs like cancer and diabetes on to the public, and 
centralizing control and profits in a few hands, and that should be fixed. 
How best to fix it, including by increasing peer production is an 
interesting issue with lots of possibilities, some local like peer 
production, and some global, like a basic income. So, it is not either-or. 
We can, and will, have both network aspects and local aspects in a healthy 
food system.

Networks have their good points and their bad points. Our challenge, as a 
society, is to get the most out of social networks while minimizing problems 
they can cause. It's not easy. But for agriculture, where bad weather is 
often a local phenomenon, networked agriculture may be important to prevent 
local famines.

Also, there are a lot of reasons people like to garden that have nothing to 
do with economics. It's exercise. It's fun. It's spiritual. It's 
educational. It helps others. It's beautiful. And so on. So, just do it. :-)

I hope local manufacturing may go the same route as gardening.

Agriculture was about 90% of the workforce in the USA in 1800, 50% in 1900, 
and 2% now. Manufacturing was 30% of the US workforce in 1950, and about 12% 
now (plus some imports, but overall produces much more). The end of work is 
upon us. The social and economic implications of that seem like a much 
bigger problem long term (especially as long as the right to consume organic 
food depends on having a job in a heavily automated economy that less and 
less needs any sort of human labor).

So, in that sense, the original issue raised (have a job in a network or do 
it yourself) is actually misleading. It may become, do it yourself if you 
have the land and capital and knowledge vs. starve if you are not on welfare 
(Marshall Brain's Manna book) vs. have some significant social change 
towards a basic income or a gift economy (one blending local production and 
network production).

Anyway, it's hard to analyze these problems in isolation. As above, robotics 
is changing the nature of agriculture in the USA. Were it not for cheap 
illegal immigrants and other trends like women joining the workforce, 
chances are we would have automated a lot more of agriculture decades ago. 
(Many people, including me, wanted to work on agricultural robots but there 
was no broad support for it.) Now that robots are getting so cheap and 
effective, they are getting even cheaper than illegal immigrants or 
desperate US Americans.

Some links to prove the point on robotics as happening now:
  "The Autonomous Grape-Vine Pruner"
  http://roboticnation.blogspot.com/2009/04/autonomous-grape-vine-pruner.html
"A robot with a sophisticated vision system and sophisticated arms is able 
to prune grape vines on a twig-by-twig basis."

Here is a GPS driven tractor a village could share for plowing and 
harvesting (although sharing equipment in agriculture is problematical since 
usually everyone needs it at the same time for the same seasonal reasons):
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iOXTHrU4RQ
Discussed here:
   http://www.farmingrobot.com/
   "Farming Robot - with great news and information about the evolution of 
farms to now include intelligent machines taking over much of the "grunt 
work". Don't believe us? Just have a look at our first of alternating videos..."

Still, robots allow other social arrangements. For example, dairy milking 
robots have been around for a while, and they allow one family to 
potentially run a large herd by themselves without as much early/late 
scheduling for milking.
   "VMS robotic milking" (There are other vendors of such systems; that's 
just a great video.)
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPqWpOxQmIs

More on milking robot systems here:
   http://www.robotmatrix.org/agriculture-robot.htm

Supposedly the cows like the robot milking better. They can get milked 
whenever they want and the machinery is easier on the udders. Record keeping 
is better too.

Here is a robot barn cleaner:
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bphBIwv5Vp8

Those special purpose systems seem to be working well, but more general 
purpose robots in the field are still under development, so there still 
remains a lot to do in that area of agricultural robotics:
   "Field Robot Event 2008"
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yD25hc9SvBQ
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryYMMQLlYa0

In general, continually improving automation and new materials and new 
designs (often resulting from collaboration through the internet) means a 
lot of our economic and social assumptions will need to be revisited, and 
not just in rural areas. But it is silly to make social policy on something 
like agriculture without considering technological trends and even current 
realities.

For those on Franz Nahrada's Global Villages blog, here is a related post I 
made a while back that touches on some of these issues:
http://globalvillages.ning.com/profiles/blogs/pictures-of-life-in-a-russian

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/