[p2p-research] debate on open agriculture

Thu Jul 23 05:38:25 CEST 2009

Thanks a lot Paul, very interesting.

I slated it for publication on August 3.

Kevin, I can put any additional insights on your side in the comments field,

see
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/paul-fernhout-for-a-right-meshwork-between-organic-and-industrial-agriculture/2009/08/03

Michel

On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 6:19 AM, Paul D. Fernhout <
pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:

> 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/
>
>
>
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