Unfortunately, judgments about economic sustainability depend a lot on
the prevailing economic system (which is why discussions on this issue
keep leading to comparisons of economic systems). To compute economic
sustainability, we need to assign values to various inputs and
outputs.
Under a market-oriented (rather than subsistence-oriented) approach,
only the marketable (ie, encashable) outputs of a total ecological
system are valued. An organic farm is so much more diverse and
therefore productive, ecologically speaking, than a single-crop
chemicalized farm. However, the latter might produce more of that
single crop than the former and thus appear more "economically
productive".
Furthermore, under conditions of competition (instead of cooperation),
a farm ran "more like a business" would be tend to externalize more
and more of its costs to remain competitive. The costs would still be
there, they would just not be paid for by those who created them. They
would instead be passed on to other social sectors with little voice
in decision-making, to the environment, or to future generations.
Because they are so economically and politically powerful, the big
corporations can externalize their costs more easily and thus appear
"more economically viable."
By their very mindsets, organic farmers consciously avoid
externalizing costs; also precisely by their very mindsets,
businessmen and CEOs would externalize their costs whenever possible
to improve their competitiveness.
Under a context of a competitive market system therefore, the stacks
are heavily loaded against the organic/ecological farmer, who will
tend to appear more economically inefficient and unsustainable than
the chemical/industrial farmer.
Roberto Verzola
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