Moving Beyond Market and Government Solutions

    My daughter got me a book for Christmas called "Animal, Vegetable, Junk" by Mark Bittman. It is a review of the history of how agriculture became an environment destroying profit center for middle men that delivers neither a living to farmers nor nutrition to consumers.  Of course, I agree with all that.

    The author points out that industrial agriculture is based on reductionist science that erroneously believes that we can manipulate complex systems by understanding their parts.  That thinking leads to believing that plants only require nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium and that humans only require carbohydrates, fats, and proteins (with a few added vitamins and minerals).   He refers to the alternative as "agroecology".  By this he means an agriculture that works with nature's processes to produce nutritious food for humans based on an understanding that sustainable food production is an emergent property of an ecological whole.

    Bittman goes on to talk about how peasant farming systems still feed 70% of the world's population and that agroecology is inherently more productive than industrial agriculture because it produces at least as much as industrial agriculture per acre with substantially lower input costs, other than labor costs.  It has the added benefits of producing nutritious food and not destroying the biosphere.

    So far we are on the same page.

    Bittman acknowledges that none of us knows how it will actually work to transform the food system to something that makes sense to people.  He suggests that we can do such things as put a tax on soda pop and require better labeling.  We might consider Bittman's view is the leading edge of mainstream thinking regarding the caution with which we should approach reductionist science and the power of what is known as "systems thinking".

    I like to encourage this deeper understanding of the scientific process.  As we begin to understand problems as "systemic" we begin to reduce the unintended consequences of applying technology as we have in the past.  However, the leading edge of mainstream thinking has not yet moved far enough. 

    Bittman's view misses an important point, as does the view of many other thinkers worried about the future of humans on this planet.  That point is that most of the systems that concern these thinkers are also parts of an even more inclusive system.  Without that understanding most people continue to propose market and government solutions that fail to reach the real issue.  That issue is the relationship between humans and the living things around them.

    ______________ 

    What most commentators miss, and what we share through the Living Systems Institute and the Agents of Habitat series, is that we cannot fix agriculture (or any other subsystem) independent of the larger complex system of which it is a part.

    The agricultural system is a part of the economic system which is a part of the system I call "the Living System on this Planet" (LSP).  The LSP is a pattern of interactions among the constituent parts of the economic system, the social system, and the ecosystem.  Any change in the practices of any of the parts has repercussions through out the whole LSP and is subject to the resistance to change inherent in each of those parts.

    For example, let's say we were able to devise a series of taxes and government support programs that effectively changed agriculture into an environmentally friendly version of itself.  It is hard for me to imagine how it might work but let's imagine a market system of food production that no longer needs chemical fertilizers or pesticides and produces nutrient dense foods.  Everything else being equal we would still be producing food for rich people.  The biggest portion of the human population would still be unable to find a job that pays a living wage and would still not have the capacity to produce food for themselves.

    I am not saying government programs can't be helpful.  They might be able to slow the destruction.  However, that kind of change to the agricultural system will be insufficient to create the stable, peaceful, and egalitarian world we wish for our great-grand children.

    As explored in the Agents of Habitat Series, a stable, peaceful, egalitarian world can only be based on a stable, peaceful, and egalitarian pattern of interactions at the scale of community and ultimately, beginning at the scale of neighborhood.  We will realize such a world when neighborhoods embrace their role as contributing members of a thriving ecosystem in which all of the participants are supported in their quest to be fed, safe, and loved.  We will develop an understanding that community includes all the living things around us.  We will embrace our role in the LSP.  We will be able to support that community in healing itself and producing an abundance of the food, shelter, learning, health, belonging, and purpose each individual human needs to thrive.

    I have called the process I am describing as "Community Sufficiency Technologies" meaning the know how to organize ourselves to provide for ourselves.  It is a process of investing in the capacity of people to do things on their own without needing to rely on the market or government.

    As I wrote in Lesson 5 of Agents of Habitat, A Welcoming Place,

    "When we assign responsibility for the condition of the world to someone else we give them our power to create it. Think of it this way:

• We will not change the way that government works,

• We will not change the way business works,

• We will not change the way ecosystems work, 

    We can only change what we control. We can change the way we interact with the individuals of the many species resident within our locality. If we make these interactions productive, so as to sustain them, the ecosystem will change, business will change and government will change in response."

    I am not saying that we should be silent about the abuses of business and government.  I am saying that, to effectively create change, we must demonstrate a viable alternative at the same time.  That alternative is for all the members of a community (rich and poor) to work together to heal nature and produce abundance.

    That is why we developed the technologies of deep mulch gardens and integrated closed loop production systems. They are a way to create an ecologically sound agriculture right where we live.  That is why we sought out ways for neighbors to work together to build habitat such as Bee Safe Neighborhoods, Neighborhood Plant Nurseries, and the Reinhabit Cooperative.  What we have done so far is only scratching the surface of what can be done to realize the full biological potential of the Living System on this Planet.

    As a final point, I want to discuss the compatibility of stable, peaceful, and egalitarian communities that have the capacity to provide for themselves, with global economic and nation state power.  I do not see international corporations or national governments withering away.  Rather, we will still be able to buy big screen TVs and electric cars, for example, and we will still want to pay taxes for things like roads and bridges, water systems, and protection from those not yet adapted.  What will be different is that no one who is part of such a community will have to take a job . . .

. . . and they will only take jobs, where the employer makes it worth their while.   By asserting our own power to provide for ourselves through healing nature, we effectively change government and business to become what we need them to be.