An Oasis

Agrarian Economy

Yesterday I attended two events at the Edinburgh International Book Festival; "Colin Tudge: Science and Agriculture" and later "Five Rounds with Monbiot." I might talk about Monbiot at a later time, but the first event was the one which made me think...

Science and Agriculture, was a discussion around the topic of feeding the world's fast growing population - a population presently of around 6 Billion of whom 800 Million are chronically underfed. Colin Tudge is a journalist and author, three-time winner of the Glaxo/ABSW Science Writer of the Year Award. His career as a science writer includes serving as Features Editor at New Scientist , his own science program, Spectrum, on BBC Radio and freelance writing for The Independent, The Times, Natural History and The New Statesman.

Tudge was basically promoting the view that nations should develop a self-reliance in feeding their own population, principally achieved by returning to the days of local supply of all types of foodstuffs through many more people working their own land (and therefore not descending in ever greater numbers on cities ill equipped to cope with the influx and the resultant social problems). My problems with this are twofold. Not everyone has money to buy 30 acres of land and to run a business around that land. Forced redistribution of land would be extremely troublesome, the nationalisation of land would be prohibitively expensive done at market rates and to simply redistribute the land would shatter a central tenet of a capitalist economy, namely property ownership. It is likely that once everyone had their 30 acres or whatever, many would simply sell it anyway. Secondly, our economy has moved from concentrating on the production of raw materials to one of adding value, whether that value is a physical or intellectual process. Growth would be impossible to achieve were we to revert to an agrarian economy and the lack of growth would lead to fiscal ruin.

There may be merit in self reliance in a purely agricultural sense, local food leads to local problems when and if they do occur. BSE would have been a minor incident, Foot and Mouth disease would have been a local problem and as such much easier and less costly to fix. But the trade off is expensive, localised solutions lead to inefficiency and therefore higher cost.

Some raw facts - In the UK 1% of people work in agriculture, in India that figure is nearer to 50%, the world population is forecast to rise to 11 Billion in 50 years, almost double the number of people alive now.

I was unsatisfied with Colin Tudge's proposal believing it to largely ignore the value of interdependence of nations and the fact that not everyone is cut out for farming, yet am also uneasy with the power which mega corporations yield over the ingredients of life. Should our basic foods be accorded a special status outwith the marketplace? When, if ever, is it OK to subsidise industry? Are the needs of the market the same as the needs of the people?

It may well be in the interests of profit seekers to keep wealthy western consumers alive, but is it in their interest to sustain others unable to pay for redder than red tomatoes or bread that stays fresh longer? Probably not and I don't much like that.

Posted by Paul at August 22, 2003 12:26 AM |