Food Sovereignty and the Collapse of Nations
Posted by Prof. Goose on July 25, 2008 - 9:00am
Topic: Demand/Consumption
Tags: democracy, democratization, farming, food, food sovereignty, peak oil, soviet union [list all tags]
This is a guest post by Aaron Newton, who is working with coauthor Sharon Astyk on the forthcoming book, A Nation of Farmers. Aaron contributes at Groovy Green; he also blogs at Powering Down. Aaron is a land planner and garden farmer in suburban North Carolina, seeking ways to transform the current course of human land use development in an effort to prepare for the effects of global oil production peak and its outcome on automotive suburban America. Aaron's post "The Four Day Work Week: Sixteen Reasons Why This Might Be an Idea Whose Time Has Come" has gotten a lot of national press lately as well.
In his book, Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia, economist and former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar, suggests that between 1966 and 1990, 80 million Soviet farmers urbanized stalling grain production and putting pressure on the government to use revenue from oil and natural gas production to buy grain from abroad. When fossil fuel production did not expand in such a way that provided increased profits for purchasing food the Soviets had to borrow foreign money to buy bread. Loans from the West came with strings attached. Those offering the credit demanded that the Soviets no longer use force to keep their states in line and political collapse, not famine, visited The USSR.
Interestingly Mr. Gaidar doesn’t seem to suggest that the collapse of his country happened because a large portion of the population moved from the countryside into the cities and stopped growing their own grain. Instead he seems to place the bulk of the blame for collapse on economics- on the inability of the Soviets to feed themselves not because there weren't enough people growing grain in that country but because of their inability to buy enough grain from other people to feed themselves because of decreasing oil and natural gas revenues. The idea that the Soviet collapse was due in part to the fact that the Soviet Union gave up on its capacity for food self sufficiency (food sovereignty) in an effort to pursue industrialization seems absent from his theory. All of this has interesting implications for the United States regarding our own food sovereignty as the rising cost of food means more people are priced out of a healthy diet.
Here in the United States about 40% of our population farmed for a living around the turn of the 20th century. By 1950 that number had dropped to 12%. Today fewer than 2% do the work of growing food in America as we too have industrialized and urbanized our population. The other 98% of us work at a job which provides us money that allows us to buy food from a small number of domestic producers and from others who grow it abroad. We have given up our own food sovereignty as a people and instead rely almost entirely on an economic system to provide us with meals.
Should we be pleased that the USSR shifted from a rural population towards a more urban population and were then unable to feed themselves leaving their leaders no choice but to consent to revolution in the face of a starving population and no way to pay for food? Maybe. But that is an oversimplification of the history of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Countries don’t collapse for any single reason but because of a host of pressures. However the agricultural situation surrounding the Soviet collapse suggests that America should be asking herself some questions. If the economic system in the United States, an economic system based on growth, runs up against a depletion of resources that physically slows or stops our ability to grow economically, will we face a similar collapse? Could our nation, like the Soviet Union, come to regret our willingness to hand over our food sovereignty? Will fewer jobs mean less food? If the American economy of growth falters, how will the 98% of non-farmers be able to buy bread? Are we in for a revolution when a certain percentage of the American people are unable to buy food?
I’m not talking about a revolution based on some sort of ideological difference like that between capitalism and communism. I’m talking about a revolution due to an increasing resource scarcity that chokes the life out of industrial agriculture. In an era of unprecedented growth and materialist prosperity, many people have come to believe that the grocery store aisles will always stay stocked, but there is only so much of the natural world we can convert into human resources. Mother Nature has her limits and infinite growth in our finite system is impossible even if short term growth seems to suggest that it is inevitable. Will our failure to recognize this fact visit our dinner tables?
Many Americans think that, unlike the Soviets, we have real choice in this country about what they eat. But our choices are made by grocery store managers, transported to us by truckers and grown a thousand and a half miles away. Our choices are harvested by migrant workers who are paid poverty level wages or worse and grown under contract by corporations whose practices destroy local communities and the biodiversity of healthy ecosystems. Just because we buy our food at the grocery store doesn’t mean we have any real control over how we fed our families. What we have is the illusion of control and in this regard we might be worse off than the Soviets in terms of susceptibility. In a country where most of our heavily lobbied congressional representatives support a farm bill that rewards the makers of cheap junk food to the detriment of our children and those who grow our fruits and our vegetables, can we really say that we have a choice in what we eat? How it’s grown? What chemicals are sprayed on it? Would an agricultural revolution not also give us back real choice?
Of course we have an alternative. The population of the United States of America could make an anticipatory change away from industrial agriculture and decrease our dangerous reliance on it? We can, as a nation, turn away voluntarily from industrial agriculture by rejecting a culture of hyper consumption and promote a culture of creation- not factory farming but local farmers meeting local food needs. We can embrace the freedom and stability of agricultural self sufficiency and local interdependency- the battle cry can be Food Sovereignty! And we can do it in advance of any possible economic troubles because of speculation, liquidation, inflation, or any other manipulative practices that might further distort food price and access. We can begin again to base our society on providing our own needs and the needs of our communities.
This sort of democratization of support systems could lead in turn to a stronger democratic system of governance with the population ruling over themselves not being provided for by the few. A population that can feed itself can express power over a ruling minority by withdrawing their dependency from the system of reliance by which corporatization and globalization have indentured all of us depend on far away others for food. We can grow it in our own front yards and buy it from the besieged family farmer down the road.
The ability of a nation to feed itself locally is important in establishing any attempt at addressing the crises currently facing humankind. Rapid resource depletion, population migration, global climate change, peak energy, a pandemic illness or any combination of these converging calamities could lead to more conflict and the possible collapse of our current system of living. Facing these issues can best be handled through a collaborative effort involving real education and a democratic approach towards problem solving. A swift move towards self sufficiency, along with a return to local interdependency, could go a long way towards mitigating our problems and stabilizing our democratic goals and aims. We could learn something from the Soviets. Not the notion that large-scale communism is untenable- we already know that- but the idea that giving up our ability to grow food locally makes us more susceptible to an economic downturn. Can we use this insight to regain control over our food and our governing institutions before the real want of limits sets in? We shall see.
The ultimate economic pragmatist is the farmer. Any transition toward vibrant local agriculture feeding people will only come about by local farmers realizing economic incentives toward doing so.
Only a small portion of the cost of food goes to the farmer, as most people know. As a grandson of a farmer, and a life-long organic food grower, I don't ever see a problem with the U.S. being able to feed the U.S. The crime of Ethanol from food is the damage it does to the worlds poor people. Also, increased corn production depletes soils. I've never seen this issue brought up to the general public, but it's a meaningful negative consequence.
A great way to support local production is to buy at farmers markets. A great way to leave a smaller carbon foot print is to eat vegetarian. (Well, O.K., vegan is better still, but how does one give up omelets?)
USA Today ethanol commentary published today:
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/07/our-view-on-ene.html
Hey DCMiller -- does the "DC" standard for "District of Columbia?" Just curious.
I too am the grandson of a farmer who epitomized the axiom that farmers live poor and die rich, except that he one-upped that with "died poor" too. Small farmers in northern NH in the 50s had a difficult row to hoe (couldn't resist), although I guess organic farmers are doing better now.
In my slightly-larger than 1/4 acre, over-wooded patch in D.C., I too have been trying to garden organically. I've managed to plant 3 kinds of berries, a dwarf pear tree, 2 super-dwarf peach trees and of course a fig tree. I compost and have a small worm bin in my garage, raised beds, rhubarb, starter-asparagus bed... a pretty unusual gardening effort for northern D.C. And yet I've been gardening for over 50 years and I've never had such poor luck. Partly I have the trees to blame (removed some before the D.C. ban), but 5 hrs/day is barely sufficient. But mostly it is a variety of other problems, everything from wildlife -- raccoons, squirrels, deer... (deer breached the 8' deer fence recently; I guess that's a compliment to the appeal of my back yard) to what I think is a noticeably warmer habitat in just 4 years. Plants that should grow well her are stressed. And in the past 3 years, there's been an invasion of the tiger mosquito (you can't hear her coming) and noseeums, from mid May to early November. The bugs make it difficult to work outside. The end result of all this is that my tomato yield last year could have been a poster child for the book "$64 Tomato."
All this rambling is to point out how difficult urban gardening --maybe any gardening-- has become, and I've been gardening for a long time. I wonder how newbies reacting either to high prices or simply the desire to "localize" will succeed.
Bob -- trying to live sustainably.
Hey Bob
DC is just my initials. Although coincidentally I has born at GWU Hospital.
I agree it can be difficult. But I imagine you would have a great crop if you felt the garden was fundamental to your survival. As far as education, there are probably enough of us gardeners around to get motivated newbies "up to speed".
As far as larger critters, a dog sleeping in the garden is a great deterrent. Also, there are a lot of calories in a deer.........
I know that Sharon contributes to the Yahoo discussion group RunningOnEmpty2. I think she has a blog also;
any other credits you could share??
Sharon's blog is at
http://www.sharonastyk.com/
(and she contributes on here as jewishfarmer)
This is an interesting article about upper end homeowners putting in vegetable gardens. In many cases they are--for now at least--giving the food away, but I can't help but wonder if they are primarily motivated by concern about the trend in food & fuel prices.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121693422880882375.html?mod=todays_us_we...
The Vegetable Patch Goes Luxe
July 25, 2008; Page W8
I believe the modest increase is home food growing is mostly a search for quality. Gardening has always gone in cycles. The current cycle seems to be driven by "foodies".
That was the case through 2007, but there's substantial anecdotal evidence that this year's jump in gardening was significantly larger than previous years, and that the extra was largely motivated by economics.
I know two people, not normally known for their vegetable gardening, who have taken it up this year.
In their cases they are not driven by the glamour of freshly-grown Rocket for yuppie dinner parties.
Westexas,
This fancipants food is indeed "backyard produce that has more in common with designer boutiques than the local farm stand".
All reminds me of Marie-Antoinette dressing up as a shepherdess:
http://www.postershop.com/Delort-C/Delort-C-Marie-Antoinette-Depicted-at...
Let them eat oregano.
Still, it's interesting that an increasing number of millionaires are following Rainwater's and Simmons' leads in establishing their ability to grow at least part of their own food.
http://www.energybulletin.net/11695.html
The Rainwater Prophecy (December, 2005)
We need to improve the level of redundancy in our current system to cope with outages -this is what the old 'victory gardens' where all about. If I where to design a technical solution with no redundancy in it my job would be on the line PDQ.
So IMO it's close to a scandal that we are applying 'just in time' delivery methodology to our food system in search for additional profit -I'm afraid it will probably take a large number of the population in a major city dying of starvation for us to see the error of our ways on this one.
In the meantime I will keep a very large sack of rice handy 'just in case', I wouldn't like to be roaming the streets and hedges looking for witchity-grubs come the 'great shelf emptying...'
Nick.
I see that residents in Decatur Georgia are not allowed to have gardens since they are not allowed to use city water due to drought. Home cisterns have become all the rage so they can use rain water. Wouldn't be amazing if we all started buying our vegetables from someone who grew them locally.
http://www.oilenergystockvideos.blogspot.com
I'm starting an organic micro-farm here in France and people are already coming to us for vegetables, even though we're not selling anything until next year. A restaurant rang today asking if we could supply them. Although I'm growing a lot of stuff for our own supply, little is ready and it's a bit embarrassing telling people we've nothing ready to sell.
Simply by word of mouth people have discovered what we are doing and come to us. Whereas I was expecting demand for local produce to increase as peak oil, climate change, etc. took hold, I'm a little overwhelmed by the demand that already seems to exist.
All I have to do is produce the goods (laughs nervously!).
That sounds like a very nice little job to me -the French place food quality high on their list of things worth living for so well done! (You might want to look into 'Aquaponics' and supply them fish too, I'm sure they would love a few Tilappia!)
Just back from Asturias in NW Spain -a better agricultural backwater you could not hope to find and its really nice too. I was impressed by the number of polytunnels, cows and chickens... No fear of food shortages anytime soon there...
Nick.
In other words, tens of millions of American people should ‘voluntarily’ decide to become farm hands employed or self-employed in traditional farms. Quite a tall order.
No doubt they might – but only if the option is hunger or starvation, not ‘hyper-consumption’.
In the UK, last year, 2007, saw vegetable seed sales greater than flower seeds for the first time since World War II and that trend is continuing.
Buying local food:
Here's a site for free software for anyone wanting to start a local food coop:
www.localfoodcoop.org
Here's how the one in Oklahoma operates:
www.oklahomafood.org
This set-up is now operating in Texas, Iowa, Western Kansas/Eastern Colorado(www.highplainsfood.org) and
probably other places I don't know about. Typically the coop returns 85 to 95 percent of the consumer
dollar to the farm/ranch producer.
It may be true that collapses aren't caused by one single factor. But the biggest factor that is dooming the US is the way television has been used as a weapon of warfare against the people. Disarm that weapon, and much progress can be made.
Does this news make you feel better? It's talking about live viewers of broadcast TV, so not including delayed DVR and cable.
TV viewers' average age hits 50
http://www.variety.com/VR1117988273.html
Unfortunately "old school tv" has been replaced with MTV and even myspace to an extent. Myspace isnt as bad because you have some interaction which keeps you slightly less mesmerized, but only slightly.
But MTV is absolutely horrid.... its not even music television... has nothing to do with music television. I cant figure it out... lol
I dont think we have to worry too much about industrial agriculture being choked off. People are going to shell out money to buy food. Bread and corn and potatoes are not that expensive, and they all make a good meal. Throw a small amount of meat and butter and milk and a few apples and oranges and watermelons in there, and you've got the cornerstone of dozens of great meals that can be made cheaply. If Americans mostly ate the foods I just listed, and prepared them at home, or ate at friends' and relatives' houses, then we could probably save a million barrels a day of oil. This disgustingly huge ... colossally huge trillion dollar food service industry has grown up around food, yet very little of it is necessary.
Pizza Hut? X
McDonald's? Ugh
Burger King? Blah
Applebee's? Bye Bye
Olive Garden? Poof
And all the hundreds of varieties of boxed food in the big grocery stores? Who needs it.
People will get back to the basics with food. And luckily, we have a lot to fall back on. A lot of graft to get rid of. Get rid of all this, and we'll have 20 times the energy needed to run industrial agriculture. Hate it all we want, we still must acknowledge that industrial agriculture is a far more efficient use of energy than all the Outback's and Chili's and Wendy's we see now. It is very very important to draw a line between industrial agriculture and the food service industry.
The only problem is, what are we going to do with 40 million unemployed if the food service industry collapses?
I've been waiting for signs of suffering in the "eating out" industry. When they start reporting a major downturn I'll know the recession is real.
I live in a part of VT where much of the local economy depends on second home owners, Leaf peepers,summer vacation rentals, and snow ski devotees. IN short tourists. I was out yesterday repairing our driveway part of which is shared with a neighbor. He happens to be a wine distributor and he tells me that orders of wine to restaurants is off substantially.
It's not a question of 'hating it' its a question of breaking through the mental delusion of associating manufacturing economies of scale (e.o.s.), that don't account for the 'externalities' to understanding that nature does not work this way. And so the perceived e.o.s. are rather the spending of the soils carbon reserves and a depletion of the inherent buffering ability of nature.
Another subsidy (in effect) for industrial agriculture is our health as Michael Pollan has pointed out years ago we spent about 5% on health care and 18% on food and now the tables are largely reversed. So the 'cheap food' policy was a trick to get us to offer up our health and the health of the environment for corporate profit.
The energy use stats of 10 calories of fuel oil to produce 1 calorie of food that Industrial agriculture uses, I'm sure don't account for the energy spent on getting and using chemo to treat your cancer as industrial food is a recipe for degenerative disease. As such the idea that large scale agriculture is more efficient is in short fantasy. The U.N. has done studies that reported that small mixed farms can be some 30 times more effictient than large agri-business. The fact that small mixed farms can't pay the bills is a function of the rigged market place that abuses them for their efforts.
It was ,in effect, in a similar way an answer to how do we get more now while at the same time ignoring the long term consequences of this behavior. The only solution to getting your slaves to pay you is if you can get them to spend their generational capital right now. Or as in the case of many farmers where I live (the ones left) subsidize our food by procuring off farm employment to pay the expenses that are not covered by the income from the farm.
The phoney accounting 3 card monty game of pretending that we have no connection with the bio-sphere other than as plunderers, has been revealed for those who want to see it.
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Translated their is only one known sustainable (for centuries anyway -then reversion to forests where applicable for a couple of centuries ley would be called for to have the trees remineralize the top soil)
form of agriculture known and that is small mixed farming, which organizations like the world bank and the w.t.o. have done a great job of destroying and continuing to actively destroy. The model of small farms in India is being replaced with the unsustainable, corporate destroy and screw the grandkids. Big ag-business, Big Pharma, and the other chemical companies tied in with big oil are 1/2 the PROBLEM. The other half of the problem is our predelection for slaves, that we stand by and allow to be sprayed with neurotoxins in the name of winners and losers.
So while food has become more expensive ( I predict that we ain't seen nothing yet) the plight of the small farmer increases, with increased costs.
Follow the money ss the 'subsidies' come down, the barriers to entry and lack of market access will remain for large numbers of farmers.With food shocks inevitable, 'consumers' will tire of hearing of the plight of the 'rich' farmers as their food prices and cancer rates soar (though its hard to greatly increase cancer rates from a rate of 1 in 2 ...Babies born with cancer?) which will exasporate things.
The solution for consumers to help slow this attack is to opt out of the convenience and cornucopia of the shopping centre (good luck with that). The 'convenience' is short term, the pain is real and long term.
Should enough people revert to gardens, I expect 'control' to enact laws and inspectors to help dissuade you from undertaking such a hazardous venture. Able to help you to read the application instructions on the label of your can of malathion and miracle grow to apply enough for a fee that will help make continued business as usual more appealing.
The readers of T.O.D. represent a small faction of awareness. Probably the single most revolutionary act (when everything is weighed and counted) that we can undertake is to plant gardens. And reject the continual propoganda coming from the machine.
This spring we could not find onion sets in any of the stores in the cities near where we live, they were sold out. A conversation with a local nursery owner offered the insight that in 25 years of business he had never seen sales of fruit trees like this year.
A positive perhaps unforseen consequence of this 'renaissance' to local food and gardening is the increased perspective about food and its production and issues like climate that go with it. To say nothing about the cost and the increased health benefits of forgoing a diet of malathion, diazanon and sevin.
There has been a push in suburbia to allow for a return to chickens in the backyard. No doubt people want eggs that weren't produced on offal slaughter waste.
The farmers that I know only expect a change with shortages. The cornucopia presented (representativeness heuristic)at the local shopping mart is powerful magic.
When the currency collapses,(the view from here) the path to a return to parity laws of the past, should be remembered. Perhaps the empire could coin the tomato as currency or perhaps the leaf?
Excellent short call to arms or ploughs, if you will. I'm interesting in your thoughts about possibility for smaller scale and organic farming. In a recent paper, researchers found that for the 10-year study period organic gave lower crop yield initially but rose to the level of conventional systems (of 1980's) in 5 years and stayed there. Energy use was c. 30% less for organic farming.
Could US produce a significant portion of it's food through organic practices and how might that transition happen?
As for the book you quote (which is hugely interesting and recommended, even though it's published by the Brookings Institute), I find other interesting parallels from the book:
and now the kicker
Now I don't know about you, and I'm certainly not forecasting the demise of the US, but there are striking parallels.
Foreign creditors weren't willing to bail out money printing Russia by funding their loans, esp. when it had no plan on how to fix the problem. Will the world fund loans for US? I think it will - up to a point at least as it has been doing now for three decades, but that's pure guess on my part.
Other interesting 'weak signals' to consider as the world situation now develops (again compared to the Russian early 90's situation):
Again, it's fairly ease to see partial parallels, although there are also very remarkable differences between now and then.
On a related note, I find it interesting that futurist Paul Saffo is quite convinced that the challenges we are facing in near future is going to "splinter" nation states into city states, because city is a more optimal size for decision making compared to a huge federal state like US. Splinter might be a too strong a word here, it's worth listening to Saffo's speech for more, if one is interested.
I wonder what the rise of city states would do to the food production worldwide? :)*
* a disclaimer to those who read things too literally: I don't advocate or necessarily believe in this position of city states. It's a mere thought game. Nothing more.
I think the lesson Gaidar is trying to teach us has to do with the strings that could be attached to international credit. Could the central bank of China insist that we withdraw our protection of Taiwan as a precondition for future purchase of T-bills? Could the Saudis do the same to our relationship with Israel? Could the Europeans insist we make massive cuts in our defense budget? Or repeal the Patriot Act because of its human rights violations? These are the real dangers of huge deficits.
Danger? Heck, most of those things would be benefits.
Pennsylvania, a state known for food production, once had many canneries. Not any more. I asked a local farmer about one abandoned cannery in Centre county, and was told that local farmers were unable to match Agribusiness pricing coupled with cheap transportation costs. Despite growing food near a cannery, the locals could not compete with California.
There's something wrong with this situation. Reliance on distant suppliers is going to come back and hurt us... very soon.
I'm thinking the same thing.....as I contemplate the jar of peaches I'm eating while I read through this thread. Importing food great distances has only been made possible by energy costs that are out of balance with the rest of the world's products. The peaches are from Dole, a US company last I knew. On the package it says they were grown in China, packed in Thailand and obviously shipped here after that. Who knows where the plastic jar containing 24.5 oz of peaches came from.........
To me, this doesn't make any sense at all for a jar of fruit which costs $2.09 at the supermarket. If the true cost of the transportation for those peaches from grower to packager, then across the Pacific to a West coast port and then from there to Michigan via truck were actually factored into the price I'd think that they should sell for more like double that. So, where are the subsidies that enable Dole to deliver a product like that? There's no way on God's green earth that $2.09 reflects the actual cost of bringing those peaches halfway around the world.
Methinks those days are numbered and we will begin to see a resurgence of locally or at least US grown and packaged food.
The responsiveness of a capitalist society to new needs seems to be the critical difference between westerners and the Soviets. I'm far from a political conservative, but I'm fairly positive about our society adapting rapidly to new sources of energy and transportation. There's more VC money chasing alternative energy ideas than there are ideas. The amount of money to be made on such things as inexpensive batteries for electric cars, or lower cost solar, is staggering.
Look at the oil business in Russia. They have hugh amounts of oil, but the Soviets couldn't get their act together to exploit the resource. Even to save communism. Now oil is driving their economy.
I see the decline of oil as "the" energy source as a major opportunity. I don't see the collapse of civilization. Although the city states of ancient Italy were pretty cool...... And if I'm wrong, I hope one of you guys will let me live in your attic.
"Look at the oil business in Russia. They have hugh amounts of oil, but the Soviets couldn't get their act together to exploit the resource. Even to save communism. Now oil is driving their economy."
But look at the economy that they have now. It is really a stretch to call it private enterprise. Or 'free'.
I would call it private enterprise. The mafia is private enterprise :) Greed and the quest for power apparently resulted in finding a lot more oil in Russia. From what I remember, the Soviets couldn't export much oil. They also couldn't grow enough food towards the end of that empire.
I would call it state capitalism. There was a lot of state capitalism in the US and UK during World War II, when the sense of patriotism and emergency stifled the corruption you would expect from such a system. The problem is the growing corruption over the years as the leadership becomes decadent - as we saw in the decay of the American defense industry over 50 years. Putin genuinely believes he's saving Russia from Western enslavement, but does Medvedev?
Outside of oil and gas, infrastructure and the military-industrial complex, Russian economy is indeed based on private enterprise. It is not free enough, over-regulated and corrupt -- by necessity. Yet it is private. The average person in Moscow lives in a privately owned apartment, buys at private stores, and most of her spending goes to private companies. Russia's success in reversing its oil output decline in the early 2000s was also due to privately-owned producers using imported technology.