[p2p-research] the culture of the audit and the prefigurative politics of the local food movement

[Kevin Carson]

On 7/21/09, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Sam and Kevin,
>
> this is a really interesting essay that I will feature on the 28th with
> excerpts,
>
> however, extra comments would be very welcome, on food (sam) and
> counter-economic strategies (kevin)
>
>  See:
> http://etc.technologyandculture.net/2009/07/19/local-food-and-the-problem-of-public-authority/
>

It's an excellent article.

I would say that, contrary to the fears of those on the "progressive"
left who support the local food movement, genuine "free market
ideologues" (in the sense of those who want to remove all forms of
subsidy and regulatory restraint on competition from the marketplace)
are the worst enemies of globalization.  Globalization isn't some
autonomous force that has to be restrained by the regulatory state.
It is a state construct that depends on continuing state subsidy and
regulation for its survival.

Guthman's portrayal of the dispute as one of regulatory restaint on
globalization vs. a greenwashed, yuppified, "one meal at a time"
approach is an utter strawman.  The problem is that the present
structural position of globalized agribusiness results from the
presence of the state, not its absence.

Our only alternatives aren't a regulatory state and a "culture of
audit."  There is the third alternative of REMOVING the present
regulatory and subsidy regime's active supports to globalization.

We don't need the regulatory powers of nation-states to prevent the
globalization of food.  We need nation-states to STOP criminalizing
free commercial speech--e.g., restrictions on labeling food as
GMO-free, food libel laws, etc.  We need nation-states to STOP
stealing land from peasants and turning it over to local landed elites
for use in cash-crop plantation agriculture in collusion with global
agribusiness interests (that applies, especially, to the U.S.
government and its fraternal aid over the last sixty years to make
Latin America safe for Latifundia and Guatemala safe for United
Fruit).  We need nation-states to STOP subsidizing long-distance
transportation.  We need nation-states to STOP subsidizing irrigation
water to large plantations.  We need nation-states to STOP enforcing
the "intellectual  property" [sic] rights of Monsanto and its ilk.

Progressives' friendliness toward state-mandated organic certification
is especially problematic.  The cost of certification is a significant
addition to overhead cost for a small market gardener, which acts as a
barrier toward the smallest producers marketing their surplus as
organic as a supplemental source of income in addition to some other
wage job.  Like all other forms of mandated minimum overhead costs, it
effectively criminalizes small-batch production and requires all
market actors to operate on some minimum scale in order to make a
profit ("get big or get out").  The price premium on certified organic
vs. "no-spray" in my local natural food co-op, which amounts to about
50%, is instructive.  I have pushed them repeatedly to choose no-spray
over certified whenever possible, and to make it clear to customers
with a wink and a nudge that it's really the same thing without the
added tribute to the certification cartel, but their yuppie liberal
regulation="progressive" mindset seems to filter out the logic.

One of the main dangers (related to warnings by Paul Fernhout and P.M.
 Lawrence on this list) is that local government will use
"progressives" as useful idiots to relegate local, organic food to a
yuppie ghetto, through regulatory interventions (motivated by "food
safety," of course) that impose unnecessary additional overhead costs
on small producers.  Unfortunately, all too many self-described
"progressives" will only see that it's a regulation and that it's
promoted as a "public safety" measure, and conclude--immovably--that
anyone against it must be one of those awful money-grubbing "free
market ideologues" who want to turn the world over to Halliburton and
club baby whales to death with baby seals.

Our main countereconomic hope is to seize the advantage of Peak Oil
and mushrooming transportation costs and encourage the expansion of
local small-scale production as fast as humanly feasible, so that the
growth of small-scale production under the radar of the existing
regulatory authorities is beyond their present power to monitor, and
any attempt to propose expanded monitoring capabilities will be met
with an existing situation on the ground.  Given such a momentum and
fait accompli, any ostensibly "progressive" proposals to cripple
small-scale local agriculture can be attacked as a "new" and "radical"
proposal to take away the main source people are currently relying on,
and to force them to go back to queuing up to buy the limited amount
of rationed corporate produce from California that still gets through
with diesel fuel costing $12/gal.  This gets back to the
defensive-offensive arms race which PML and I were discussing--make
hay while the sun shines!

Regarding the issue of "elitism" (namely, the present high cost of
local food and its predominant appeal to yuppies), that high cost
results to a large extent from the fact that the market has been
skewed so heavily by government subsidies toward large-scale
agribusiness shipping stuff cross-country or internationally.  The
cost premium also reflects a temporary producer rent, as demand
continues to outstrip supply, that will be remedied as local market
gardeners respond to the price signal by bringing new land under
cultivation.  And it reflects a distribution system geared toward
corporate agribusiness; demand is not yet high enough, in most areas,
for an entire truckload to be taken up by an organic farm's shipment
to a particular grocer, so it must split the load up between several
separated destinations.  When the artificial encouragement of
plantation agriculture is removed, and the balance shifts back to
local market gardens as the primary source of supply, the price of
local stuff will come down.

As to industrial agriculture's superior  "productivity," it is more
efficient only in direct labor hours at the point of production, and
actually less efficient in output per acre.  And I would maintain
that, in many if not most cases, the superior labor efficiency at the
point of prodution is more than offset by distribution costs and
oligopoly markup.

-- 
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