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

[Michel Bauwens]

Hi Kevin,

I must admit that I'm partly on the progressive side here.

A minimal amount of regulation, that takes into account the issue of cost,
is in my view necessary.

For example, in the no-trust country where I live, you cannot rely on
self-declared organic nor on self-regulation of financially interested
parties; only a form of regulation that involves different stakeholders, and
perhaps checked by some public authority, would do the trick ...

Unless you live in a village where you know everyone, and you fully trust
the word of your supplier, could you rely on absolutely non-regulated
production, in my view,

Michel

On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 6:49 AM, Kevin Carson <
free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>
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