I found your discussion really interesting. The idea of the human economy as part of
our ecology is so much more meaningful and honest than treating them as if they are
antithetical. I was struck, however, by the way that you focused only on easily
quantifiable things like finances, climate, etc. Where are the people? You don't
even mention people simplistically, say in terms of population levels and fertility,
let alone the influence of consumerism, globalization, war, social movements, etc.
These things cannot be neatly predicted, but they certainly can't be ignored either.
Economics and ecology are both guilty of ignoring sociology. You raise three
excellent questions - "What to sustain," "for whom," and "for how long," and then
devote 10 paragraphs to facts and figures about the ancient Babyonian economy and
climate change, none of which pertains to those three questions. You acknowledge
there are "human and conceptual" aspects of these questions, but that's as far as
you get. For those questions - the "why" instead of the "how much" - you've got to
go to culture and sociology.
Betsy
Bluestem Associates wrote:
> I suspect the challenge is far deeper than the medium-scale details
> discussed below. At the core of the problem, we don't know/can't agree
> on any of the following three:
>
> a) *What* we are trying to sustain
> b) For *whom* it is to be sustained
> c) How *long* must it stably persist to be considered "sustainable"
>
> That said, it would seem difficult to describe *any* system as
> sustainable based on what they are doing *now.* We simply don't know if
> it will last, or even work for more than the next ten years. In 1989, a
> Chinese historian, asked to comment on the impact of the French
> revolution of 1789, said "It is too soon to tell." As one very simple
> example, virtually every economic activity in the developed world today
> is mentally predicated upon a substrate of inflation (and inflationary
> expectations).
>
> Even a half-way attentive reading of economic history, however, makes
> it quite clear that there is an ongoing wave of inflation / deflation
> --- with an average peak-to-peak period of 235 +/- 50 years for the
> last 25 centuries or so. There are excellent (but temporally limited)
> data demonstrating the same phenomenon in the Babylon of nearly 4000
> years ago. For an approach to be sustainable, therefore, it appears it
> would have to persist successfully through at least a full inflation /
> deflation wave, and could only be described as sustainable ... in
> restrospect.
>
> We must, therefore, content ourselves with reasonable guesses. We must
> assume we're wrong. We need to build in a sensitive monitor to confirm
> whether or not we are on the right track (or the wrong one). And we
> ought to have a repertoire of alternate approaches to implement in
> response to emerging shifts.
>
> For example, such a monitor would need to evaluate *accurately* (not
> necessarily precisely) how a farm is responding to a shift in regional
> climate (say towards drier and cooler seasons) as well as how the farm
> is responding to a shift in economic climate (say to the high rates of
> *real* interest that characterise the early phases of a transition from
> inflation to deflation --- 'real' interest being the nominal interest
> rate minus the inflation rate).
>
> To have a reasonably good chance of persisting, a farm must be able to
> respond *ahead* of the main shift(s), respond to *multiple*
> simultaneous* shifts, and respond in a manner that does not jeopardise
> the system if the shift doesn't become entrenched, or even returns (if
> only temporarily) to previous conditions. Using the example above, the
> farm could be prepared to switch from beef (which prefer warmer,
> moister climates) to sheep (prefer cooler, drier climates).
> Simultaneously, the operators would need to be *de-financing* (getting
> out of debt) as rapidly as possible (selling land, renting it back;
> unloading machinery; whatever it takes ...).
>
> Pulling off a shift in emphasis while simultaneously effecting drastic
> debt reduction is not something a lot of folks can pull off. Yet that
> is precisely the type of approach that will ultimately determine which
> operations are actually sustainable. Only a part of this equation is
> agronomic.
>
> A big part is understanding that the farm/economic/biological system is
> one of DYNAMIC complexity. We have collectively tended to study these
> things to death from a perspective of DETAIL complexity. So a beef
> farmer might end up focusing on the details of increasing average daily
> gain by 0.1 lb/head --- and go farther into debt to do so (!) --- at
> the very time that effort would be vastly better applied in figuring
> out how to allow for a shift to sheep while getting *out* of debt. In
> this detail-focused approach, unfortunately (s)he is enthusiastically
> encouraged by universities, extension, product suppliers, and bankers.
>
> >SD: Anyone who is sustainable has to be economically viable. Right? Do organic
> >SD: farmers not need to make money to survive? The ecological part of
> >
> RV: There are farms which are moving towards ecological sustainability
> RV: (which is what I perceive to be the pinnacle/ideal of organic
> farming)
> RV: but they are not economically viable (and therefore outside your
> RV: sustainability circle) for at least three reasons:
>
> RV: [paraphrasing] ... ecological damage, institutional bias, (usually)
> only money is used as a measure
>
> Two changes in farm accounting procedures would make a big difference
> in management, right away.
>
> Firstly, each major aspect of the operation should be accounted as its
> own enterprise. As an absolute minimum, land ownership, machinery
> ownership, crop production, and livestock should be run as
> free-standing businesses. Most farmers are losing their backsides on
> machinery ownership (for example) and don't even realise it. Most
> livestock producers would be ahead of the game to concentrate on
> producing their own protein *well,* and buying starch (which is cheap
> --- read #2 Yellow Corn). Money-losing parts of the operation need to
> be tightened up or dropped.
>
> Secondly, farmers need to be taught to use the EBITDA type accounting
> increasingly prevalent in real businesses. That's Earnings Before
> Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortisation. This approach would be
> tremendously helpful in evaluating the enterprise-by-enterprise
> profitability of any farm undertaking a massive ecological restoration,
> a significant expansion, etc. One of the valuable aspects of this
> accounting approach is that (as above) it isolates financial
> components, making it substantially easier to determine where profit is
> being generated, and where it is being destroyed.
>
> I suspect it could also facilitate a clearer elaboration of just where
> true costs are being externalised --- and where they are being
> *internalised* --- which is the beginning of a much more realistic
> system of comparison. Misha's new outfit ought to be able to do
> something along these lines, I should think.
>
> Finally, we need to develop some sense of the "capital value" not only
> of things like soil organic matter, but system resiliency as well.
> Manufacturing and merchandising businesses usually have an accounting
> category for "good will" (basically, the difference between the book
> value of the company and its market value). To some degree, and for
> some time, "good will" allows a company to get away with a limited
> number of gaffes in the market place. In that regard it is somewhat
> similar to this factor of "resiliency," which allows a farm to buffer
> not only its inevitable gaffes, but climate and market shifts as well.
>
> In all this, however, I have to wonder whether or not the typical
> farmer can ever really have a chance. I know too many farmers who
> figure out whether or not they made a profit in a particular year ...
> at the time they do their taxes the following April. I'm just not
> convinced (based on sitting around a lot of kitchen tables) that folks
> like this can learn what they need to learn ... fast enough to survive.
>
> And right now, I'm also not particularly optimistic about what kinds of
> hands their land will end up in as they fail/quit/die one by one. This
> thing is a *lot* more complicated than planting cover crops or avoiding
> chemicals.
>
> I'm convinced (after 30 years of working on the agronomic side of
> things) that the real sustainability challenges for the next generation
> (or two) are not agronomic --- they're human and conceptual --- and my
> reading of history makes it very clear that if we don't figure it out
> at least half-way, our polity, culture, and civilisation are most
> decidedly threatened.
>
> This is why I keep saying that 'organic' doesn't have the answers for
> sustainability. At its best, organic is addressing agronomy and local
> ecosystems, which are two minor pieces of the sustainability equation,
> but 'organic' is not even nibbling at a majority of the stuff that
> really matters over the long term. We've got a lot of serious work and
> thinking to do, and it's an unfortunate waste of energy and intellect
> to squabble over low-leverage details.
>
> Bart Hall
> Lawrence, Kansas
>
>
>
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