I’ll start at the end of my thoughts by saying that creative
approaches to growing food are welcome.
Capital economics contribute to that creativity, in some degrees. The destructive qualities of capital
economy, however, are predominant. So
that, in the end, controlling how people pursue food production probably does not
matter. Let folks be creative. Enjoy the fun while it lasts. Surviving will probably not be a very democratic experience.
I admit that I am relinquishing something to fate.
Here are a couple of fate factors:
1) The demand for food is only going to increase as global
population increases.
2) The demand for protein, especially in animal form (sea or
land based), is only going to increase as general global middle class incomes
increase.
3) Surface soil available for food production can only stagnate
or perhaps decline – land surface is a finite quantity – lo and behold.
On the surface soil factor, technology and climate change may
increase land areas available for production. At the same time, climate change
will adversely affect production areas. Probably a zero sum game. A decline in my mind. You can decide for yourself by reading
Chapter 10: Changes in Land Cover and Terrestrial Biogeochemistry in the USGCRP, 2017: Climate Science
Special Report.
People will choose to respond to these fate factors in different
ways. Examples abound. Some folks will (are) creatively producing food
and other plant products in metal shipping containers. Others in underground mines, or in old
chocolate factories, or on roof tops, or floating on ocean water. All the
power to them for creativity.
Technology to make creative food production possible, however,
is expensive and energy dependent. Technologically dependent production
systems require high degrees of stability. So those energy sources will
have to be reliable. Inevitably, they will also have to increase in
availability.
There is lots of stuff out there in the wilds of the internet,
indicating how fossil fuel consumption and emissions are generally
increasing. Check out the Global
Carbon Budget.
The thing about high tech food production, is that nobody is
growing garden foods on floating islands in calm seas (wherever they may find
them… good luck) without interesting supplies of portable energy. Of
course, in a classic sense, photosynthesis is the most abundant and free
mechanism for energy conversion; this can be achieved on floating islands or
anywhere. So go for it. Have your floating garden and capture
sunlight wherever you can.
It is the ancillary energy needs of high tech that have the
greatest impact. Fresh water accessibility, filtration, shipping,
packaging, chemical production, storage, cooling… all these elements and many
more will require diverse and intensive energy supplies. Vertical
horticulture production systems need energy to rotate their tables, pump water,
provide light and much more. In the end, technology dependent systems
require energy beyond photosynthesis in degrees that will far exceed land and
soil based production systems.
The principle concerns of the energy question are stability and
cleanliness and safety. These standards are hardly achieved today and,
apart from fanciful optimism, there is little evidence that they will be
achieved tomorrow. In a global sense, at least. Due apologies to the clean tech folk, who,
within their field are moving leaps and bounds forward to clean-where-used (watch
out for that old (ceterus paribus function !). Certainly, in some
specific locations on the planet, stability, cleanliness, and safety are being
achieved, with high percentages of access and utility. Examples are like
in Germany, some areas of the US, and spottily elsewhere. Just be sure to harbour
a measure of doubt when you hear all the good news.
Yes, there is plenty of evidence that “clean energy” and stable
access to clean energy is on the rise. A global perspective is necessary,
though. CO2 levels are now at their highest ever recorded. In other
words, continuing to increase. Why, if
renewable energy sources are comparatively clean?
Clean in Germany is made possible by unclean elsewhere, let’s
say most garishly in China, which produces many (most ?) of the materials and
equipment that go into clean energy technology.
Mining and mineral production are among the other culprits of dirtiness;
aluminum, nickel, and other metals and plastics that go into the production of
clean technology are not so clean themselves.
Stability of energy supply has been possible over the past 200
years or so with every increasing exploitation of fossil fuel sources,
increased nuclear, and now expansion into solar, wind, and water power.
Not much to say about safety.
On one hand, the argument goes that we are generally improving the
quality of life for humans around the planet.
That is, of course, a self serving argument – we like to pat ourselves
on the back for our accomplishments. An
alien arriving here might take a quick look at conditions and marvel at the
squalor, noise, and general insult of human artifice on the natural
condition. You know, that classic night
time view of the planet from outer space; all that light looks like a
festering canker. CO2 in the atmosphere
etc…. does not all seem so safe to me.
This “ever increasing” aspect of energy supply leads me to the
growth paradigm of capital economics. Capital economics is, in an
essential sense, the wonderful miracle of ever increasing production of
everything, including human population, measured by monetary exchange.
While some may say it is a chicken or egg discussion, I suggest that capital
economics is nothing more than a creed for a completely unplanned and
unprecedented historical anomaly, the exponential
growth of humans and human capacity to exploit their environs since, oh,
say the 17th or 18th century (fun graph).
My apologies for harping on these population and environment
facts. You will see them in other
articles that I have written. With zero
historical precedents – we are operating without a manual. I imagine myself staring inside the window of
a nice 2,000 square foot home with another 3,000 sq ft of garden space, family
of five sitting comfortably at the table eating dinner. A few guest arrive. Joey goes out to the garden to gather an
extra few carrots for the meal. Ten more
guests arrive. Nancy goes out to the
garden, digs an extra trench, plants a few potatoes, takes a bit of time, but
then she comes back in with more potatoes.
Meanwhile, a couple of babies were born in the house and 20 more guests
arrived. So an extension was built,
though while the extension was built, more babies and more guests. And Eric had to double the size of the
garden. In a few days, the house has
gone up a level or two, expanded its footprint, the garden was expanded again,
and the fruit trees cut down to make way for more garden space, so the roof was
turned to a green space garden, but the new babies in the house required a new
roof extension. No additional square
footage of space, stuck right at 5,000.
From a condensed time frame of human history, that explosion of growth
took all the time for me to step back from the window, look around a bit, and
maybe find time to have a snack.
Wow! Think of all the
methane produced by all those people.
But that is a digression on a point that could be a footnote.
My suspicion is popular acceptance of what may be some kind of
causal fallacy, the idea that capital economics, or rational thought, or
science begat the world we experience today.
I think of the pantheon of Greek gods and the myths surrounding
their place in the minds of humankind some two thousand years ago. The experience of nature and the world in
which we lived was described in ever expanding detail and complication. While great for stories told in suspended
disbelief, increasing complexity confuses us and fails to make sense out of
that which is happening around us.
Ptolemy is famed in this regard.
Believing that the earth was the centre of the universe necessitated a
complicated astronomy. Copernicus, Kepler,
and Galileo were a string of re-thinkers who saw things a bit differently. The 16th century result being a
somewhat revolutionized re-interpretation of how the universe functions. Clear thinkers that they were, the trio still
suffered political (religious) persecution for tossing the baby out with the
bathwater.
Yip, toss the baby out with the bathwater. That’s what you have to do when your
foundational premise is wrong. Hard
work, but you do have to start from scratch.
Which is a long winded way of saying that, perhaps, capital
economics, all the way from bizarre interpretations of Adam Smith through to
the Chicago School and Milton Friedman, is little more than an intellectual
circus. Horses and trapeze and clowns and lights and cymbals, all inside a
large canvas tent. Step outside the
tent. That is the conscious awakening experience
of ceteris paribus. Fresh air, sunlight,
and open roads for thought, any which way you would like to turn. I think there is something in human nature
that likes the ceteris paribus (ostrich with its head in the sand)
experience. Dazzled by the lights and
the clowns.
Being dazzled by our own belief systems is not fair to ourselves. Yes, we all need to make sense of our
experience. And a false premise is not
moral transgression. I am just
acknowledging that a belief system does not need to be true, per se. The belief system needs only to explain or
justify experience, limited contradictions notwithstanding. Contradictions are explained by additional
complexities within the belief system. Typically, most of us don’t take
the explanations too far and prefer to settle truth over a few extra beers and
not worry about it the next morning. For
those who do get into the details, they are simply trusted experts who earn a
living from maintaining obfuscation, elaborating byzantine arguments, and act
as self proclaimed bearers of burdensome truth.
Granted, economics is always a mirror of human production
systems. And certainly, in one manifestation, we are trade and exchange
creatures. We have a theory of economics
to explain this experience, in the daily routine measured through monetary
exchange. However, we are not homo economicus . Rather something more than a bit complicated
than that.
We are artisans.
Agriculture is a good example of our creative nature. Agriculture is, also, first and foremost, an ecological
system. Nothing in nature, including human experience, is strictly
speaking economic. We use economics only to describe an experience of our
presence in the cosmos. There are many
ways to describe our existence, the way we use mathematics to describe physical
phenomenon, or the way we use biblical literature (of all religions) to
describe our emotional and social experience of living. Back to capital
economics, whether it be the material benefit of growth (capital) or a moral
imperative to improve (grow), this perspective remains simplistic. For all intents and purposes, the evidence is
in that capital economy is a useless way to describe, measure, or evaluate
ourselves in an ecological system, or cosmology if you like, on a finite
planet. The earth is not growing. We do not have more water, more
carbon, or more of anything in agglomeration than there was here on this planet
many, many moons ago. Proportions change, obviously, but not growth only
exists with decline. I am not the first
to suggest exploration of a steady
state economy.
In reading about the growth argument for organic agriculture,
competition between soil based production and hydroponic production, creating
opportunities and new technologically sustained systems to enter and
participate in the market place has little if anything to do with any argument
about organic. New niches in so called organic production are just humans
proceeding with battling out their place in society, economy, politics, and
species competitiveness for finite resources.
I use the word battling not lightly. Humans have been
battling out access to and control over resources from, probably, the dawn of
time. There is every evidence that in recorded history that humans have
been battling over resource access with increasing intensity, coloured by
dramatic success and failures.
Organic is hardly the argument. All food production is
organic. At least as we understand from the scientific method of
understanding the material world.
Organic, carbon, is the foundation of life as we know it. However, the word organic infused with moral
and ethical value will be cause for argument, defense, and justification of
ways or interpretations of life. So be it. People like to argue. I only wish to point out in parallel, to make
an example, that the word God is pretty much exactly the same thing.
There are few philosophers and religious types who allow for God to be absolute
and universal; in the universal God there is little discussion to be had;
you simply raise up your hands and give up the ghost of defining God, let God be
God, and humble yourself to knowing that you will never truly know anything in
life. Once accepted, we can move on to
other discussions that could produce fruit. Yet, most of us have a propensity to argue
what God is, believing that we know, or can know, and from time immemorial have
used such a God to justify one battle after another. Same thing with
organic. If people are battling over the meaning of organic, they most
likely have ulterior motives.
My suggestion is to let people fight over ownership of organic. Battles will be won and lost. Perhaps that playground is inevitable. Let people create divergent brands of
organic, faith systems on what is truly healthy and fruitful and due its
rightful place in a market economy. Have your way, so to speak, so long
there is a market to buy it.
However, we still need to attempt to address fundamental
premises. And that attempt will need to
identify the big difference between what we like to believe and what is
reasonably true.
Questions arise.
Yes, more questions.
I know, please, I just want some answers.
Well, the answers, I suspect, are found hidden in the practice
and pursuit of questions. The answer is
trying to answer. The answer must be
unshackled from ceteris paribus and expose itself to what’s outside the doors
of the circus tent. Answers exposed to
sunlight and rain and fresh air morph, evolve, and dissolve in the hands of
time.
So be it. So here are
some questions.
Does organic address the world’s problems? Will a fixation
on soil and soil health save humanity from it own demise? What is
ecology? Will technology and growth and
innovation be our saviour and provide the world’s hungry mouths with wholesome
food? What is my perspective on
the matter – called standpoint epistemology – which simply recognizes that we
all have baggage behind our eyeballs, brains, hearts, and souls and that we
interpret the world through those lenses?
In an argument, both sides will always be right. Which is
why I suspect that the fears and concerns and aspirations of attentive human
beings will not be addressed by these singular types of questions. First,
I say attentive humans because there is really no way of knowing how many or
what proportion of human beings are conscious of the doubtful certainty of our
food supply system. How many billions of humans hardly think of the
matter? Just this past week I engaged in heated discussion with a post graduate
student, who is employed with the Federal government and has all the technology
in the world in his hands. His Christian faith is absolute that humans
have every right to exploit nature in their own interests, that the problems of
the world are only resolved through faith in Christ, that concerns for climate
change and population growth are distractions since all of us deserve to live
with the blessings that come through our hard work and earnings… in short, not his
problem and “I” deserve the world in which “I” live today. A classic
ostrich with its head in the sand, if you ask me. The point, though, is
that our next door neighbour, sharing our own language, same schools for our
kids, same road signals for our cars, can have diametrically opposed and even
completely alien belief systems. No hope in that for collective
resolution in addressing the world’s problems! And that small, anecdotal
personal experience extends infinitely around the globe. No clue
whatsoever what billions of people are thinking or where their energy and will
to survive will be steering us!
Enough said. Carbon is carbon. Organic is
organic. Humans are humans. As soon as you imply a moral and
ethical imperative, then there is no end to the infinite argument, conflict,
parting of ways, coalescing of ideas and sympathies, swirls and eddies of like
minded thinkers, explosions of anger and outrage, an endless cacophony of the
existence condition. No way out of this existence
thing. We are all in it, for better or for worse, even though there is
nothing in any way shape or form that we can do about it - existence. It
is somewhat wishful and pompous to think that after infinite years of
evolution, history, and cosmic universes of space, that our little species has
much control over anything.
To me, that boils the questions down to my own sets of available
rights and responsibilities. I call that
boiling down to right living, judging ourselves by ourselves, about how we wish
to live in this world during our blink of a journey through it. Our
choices do not make us right. Our choices, if we judge ourselves in their
making, make the days liveable. Pain, suffering, despair included. Joined
by some pleasure, joy, laughter, and the occasional sense of grace.
When it comes to food economics,
I like to eat well, with food grown by my own hands, from soils that I
have cared for. I enjoy and perhaps share the intensity with which others
seem to share those experiences. I believe that I also understand that
even others again have different experiences, joys to pursue, and crosses to
bear. I note, I think responsibly, that
few are truly wealthy and have significant choice in how they live in the
temporal, economic, and political world. Even for most Canadians the
choices are limited. With 80% + of the population living in cities, it is
not like many of us have choices for deep engagement in food production.
Just a fact and not much anybody is going to be able to do about that.
For most people in the world, especially with over 50% of the human population
now living in cities, and many of the majority of our 8 billion or so people
(soon to be a few billion more), daily decisions are largely restricted to
survival and the integrity of their families, with quite limited access to or
control over resources beyond some financial income, some modest skills, a few
tools perhaps, and not much more.
I consider myself blessed in this regard. Lucky.
Privileged. Wholly undeserving. And at best only moderately
unselfish.
For better or for worse, decisions on an ecological food
economy, given the historical context, will have to be radical and, I suspect
under the unusual historical circumstances, hardly democratic.
On with the battle !!!!
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