AgPhysics

Below is a extract from the book “A Biodynamic Farm”. If you are interested in a copy of the full book you can purchase at http://www.agphysics.com/products-page/books–booklets/a-biodynamic-farm/

Chapter XII

One of the purposes of biodynamic agriculture is to lay the foundations for a healthier, more stable society. This requires seeing farming in the cultural perspective of human society. Second only to good farming practices and use of the BD preps, the concept of a threefold social order is key to establishing healthy BD farms. In other words we need to know where we are, where we are coming from and where we are going.

As a whole, society is made up of three parts–the economic, political and significance spheres. This parallels the individual who is made up substantially of guts, heart and head, and essentially of will, feeling and thought.
Such awarenesses do not enter the social mainstream all at once. Rather they evolve into it over the course of generations.
At the time of the American Revolution it was recognized that we were better off keeping politics and religion separate. Nonetheless there was a failure to see that science, philosophy, religion and the arts were all essentially significant in nature. Much worse, there was a failure to realize that economics must not dominate either politics or religion–that regardless of their integral working they must all three stand on their own.
This is fine idealism, but it is difficult to keep government from meddling with religious matters, to say nothing about keeping religious groups from meddling in politics–as witness the prayer and abortion issues. Moreover, military research threatens that science and technology will dominate political and economic events just as much as it threatens that political or economic interests will dictate to science and technology. Meanwhile, justified by Keynesian economics, governments enter into the economic domain and raise huge revenues on income and sales taxes, thus striking at the heart of economic activity. This ignores the fact that along with protection of life, the protection of property (and hence taxation of property) are the main political imperatives. As if to add insult to injury, governments make public education their domain even though the quest for knowledge, truth and the development of ability is essentially significant in nature.
Above all, economic forces influence the political sphere. Money determines the outcome of elections. It is unrealistic to imagine the press is free no matter that government and special interests do not (openly) interfere. Huge sums are required to publish and broadcast for mass consumption, and those who pay determine the agenda. Big companies with millions to spend popularize ideas like “bigger is better” and “cure your problems by buying a product.” The ideas of “small is beautiful” and “prevention is the best medicine” receive comparatively little press.
In political campaigns in a two or three way race the smart money goes to all the top candidates. Otherwise they would not be top candidates. Thus the election process does the bidding of those who have money. The so-called political issues that the press covers are little more than window dressing. The persuasion of the media is more all-pervasive than practically anyone imagines. Just by repeatedly portraying political leaders and credentialed experts as dealing with the world’s problems the masses are brainwashed into accepting that these people have the only solutions to our problems, while in reality they tend to be allied with the causes. The media would have us think that as individuals we are helpless and a man of integrity can not take his life into his own hands and address all issues in an immediate and everyday way through his choices of action or inaction.
Of course, it cannot be said that the economic sphere as a whole controls the political sphere, any more than it would be true to say the political sphere as a whole controls production and consumption, despite income and sales taxes. Relatively few people within the economic sphere exert any guiding influence, and even this for the most part is concealed, as follows.
Economics is made to seem so mysterious that most people throw up their hands and leave it to the professionals. There are complicated formulas for calculating gross national product, rate of inflation, money supplies, consumer price indexes, etc., so that the ordinary individual does not know what is going on. This allows the experts to run things unchallenged. This they do, starting with the reality that as the division of labor increases, we develop greater capacity to produce abundantly. Economists point out that this capacity to produce would upset the status quo unless by taxation it is held back and expended on such things as military or welfare programs. Thus the political lines are drawn so that those inclined to think they are liberal are pro social spending and anti-military. Those thinking they are conservative are pro-defense and anti-welfare handouts, as though there could be no one who did not approve of one or the other reasons for eliminating abundance. No one gets around to questioning why we must not be allowed to produce abundantly.
My first curriculum in college was business, and this cured me of a number of illusions. I quickly grasped the fact that as we developed faster and more efficient means of production we could produce far more than ever before. But, strangely, more and more American parents were both working for paychecks while getting deeper and deeper into debt. To unravel the counter-intuitive logic of this I learned how money comes into existence, how it disappears, how it relates to real wealth, the causes for inflation, what generates buying power, and the cyclical nature of economic upsets. In short I learned the game by which the status quo perpetuated itself.
Savings become worthless if not put to good use. But those who save would hardly do so if they had a use for the money saved. Banks put savings to work. Nearly all banks pay interest for savings left on deposit, while loaning this money out again at a higher rate of interest. The interest system by nature assumes that money on deposit or out on loan will double every so many years as interest is compounded. This ends up flying in the face of nature, to say nothing of Mosaic law.
Nature allows things to grow only to their limits. Then they must decline. Interest systems make no allowance for this, leaving it up to inflation and bankruptcy. Neither of these is satisfactory to its victims. Economies tied to the interest game typically go through massive inflations and bankruptcies every fifty-five to sixty years, and the last time we had this situation in America was the early nineteen thirties. Moses knew this thousands of years ago.
When money is loaned at interest, the money supply must increase if the amount required to repay loans is not to end up exceeding the total in circulation. In our present economy these increases in money supply are commonly generated by new debt, both public and private. The banking system not only lends out the bulk of its deposits, but, based on the estimated strength of loan portfolios, we have a central bank which pyramids lending even further. However, debt can balloon only so far before natural laws intervene.
Ordinarily loans are secured by claims on property as collateral. A certain percentage of defaults are expected, and if a loan goes into default the property is taken over by the lenders and sold. However, a time must come when defaults run high enough that there is too much property and not enough buyers. Then property in default is either not sold, or it is sold for less than the amount outstanding on the loans, and banks collapse. To keep the economy going without serious upheaval, the rate of bankruptcies must be paced so that it does not get too far out of hand. This is the job of the central bank, in this case the Federal Reserve, a private corporation given the aura of government authority.
On the other hand, raw material production is the natural counterbalance of this lending game. As most raw materials are agricultural, farms are the main starting places for generation of real wealth. Most other economic activities derive in one or more ways from agriculture. After all, money is not worth any more than what you can spend it for. Abundance of farm commodities is basic to a wealthy society, and if there is a serious shortage it may not matter how much money one has.
One of the things implied in this is that the monetary value of agricultural products is the chief measure of the economy’s earned income. If agricultural prices are kept as low as possible there is not much earned income. Who would favor this? As too much earned income would pay off loans and put the banking business into eclipse, this is the agenda of banks.
In a nutshell, whoever controls agricultural production controls the world economy. This is why the international dealers in grain (also the largest depositors in banks), under the guise of “free trade” have worked so hard to eliminate all obstacles to their manipulation of world commodity markets. This also is why worldwide elimination of broad based independent, self-sufficient, (family) farms has long been the intent of those who work to control the world.
At the turn of the twentieth century 90% of Americans came from family farms. People generated earned income and there was little debt. Now fewer than three percent farm. Correspondingly, today farmers generate little earned income and the American economy is awash in debt.
In fact, due to bankruptcies, the Federal Reserve is in the position of being the largest absentee landlord in America. Nor is the U.S. government an example of fiscal responsibility. It is over its eyebrows in debt to the Fed, a privately owned corporation. It is hard to imagine these debts all being repudiated. That is the sort of thing wars are made of, and we will have to consider that the wealthiest Arabs and Asians are amongst the largest owners of U.S. government debt paper. I’m unsure of the exact picture aside from the fact that most Arab and Japanese trade surpluses are locked into long term investments in a variety of stocks, bonds and lending enterprises, including U.S. treasury bonds.
Of course, Americans are by no means the only ones caught up in this colonialism of debt. We may be able to see it better by looking at the the global picture.
Asia was in large part colonized by force of European arms. But, Mohandas Gandhi showed the limitations inherent in this. To ensure that debt took the place of subjugation by force in Asia, the four thousand year old self-sufficiency of Asian family farmers had to be undermined. Large scale, debt ridden agriculture along the lines of the American model was the agenda.
In some parts of Asia the terrain and the political situations lent themselves to large scale farming. In some parts these did not. In the latter corrupt governments were fostered, the countryside chafed under its tax burdens, internal wars were fomented and family farms turned into wastelands.
Even as we bombed Viet Nam, Cambodia and Laos into oblivion, agricultural development projects were designed and funded in more favorable locations by the world’s largest lenders. Mechanized competition for the Japanese (and ultimately the Chinese) market drove the small scale family farmers of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Burma and elsewhere to either become cogs in a vast agricultural machine, or leave their land for city jobs.
Methods that depended heavily on industry, technology and the world grain trade were a requirement for approval of loans by the Asian Development Bank and Fund (which despite the name was an extension of world banking).
In Sri Lanka, for instance, the peasants rather naively embraced the new way and it became the thing to shoot your water buffalo. In the rich, mountainous district of Baggio in the Philippines this did not go over. So instead Baggio’s farms were flooded by a gigantic hydroelectric project.
Governments were influenced in a variety of ways to support the new agricultural agenda, which was heralded as a “green revolution.” While the agricultural loans were being handed out, many governments further entangled themselves in debt for a variety of military, industrial and social projects.
The new, large scale agricultural projects greatly reduced the number of farm workers required to produce large volumes, so they could not absorb any significant portion of the food they produced. They were forced to sell virtually all of their production to international buyers, flooding the market and weakening prices. Statistics showed that far more rice was entering trade channels than ever before. Hence it was claimed that rice production had greatly increased. But the millions of dispossessed peasants, now living in cities virtually from hand to mouth no longer had a year’s supply of rice at harvest time. They were lucky to have a week’s supply, and even then all of this came through trade channels. Where previously large numbers of peasants produced their own rice, now they depended on buying it. There was more rice traded all right, because far fewer people were growing their own. If anything, in reality there was less rice produced. So much for statistics and for what statistics can prove.
This same game plan was employed in Africa and South America. Coffee cooperatives were set up where fertilizers and toxic chemicals were a requirement for growers who wanted to sell their crops. Sugar plantations, fishing and forestry, palm oil, rubber, coconut and banana projects, all were designed, funded and set into motion by a world banking hegemony pursuing its colonialism. For the most part this was of no benefit either to the ecology or the people driven into the cities from the countryside.
There was a lot of propaganda about how the world bank and the international monetary fund were developing agricultural production for the benefit of the third world. But, the truth is this was a worldwide power grab–at the expense of rain forests, agricultural self-sufficiency, and most of all people and human dignity.
It might as well be pointed out that the peasants of Asia, Africa and South America, driven into the cities in search of jobs, have undercut American laborers. Large numbers of jobs have been exported overseas where people must work more cheaply.
This is what centralization of authority and the bigger is better mindset led to. It kept the production of wealth to a minimum, monetizing debt instead of production. Humanity was left with a precarious existence as wage slaves. Key to this process was the elimination of self-sufficient family farms, worldwide.
If we want to turn the tables we need to take a good look at the relationship between economics and agriculture. Then we may be prepared in the future to invent a society where people exercise freedom because they assume responsibility. Our alternative is to lapse into slavery and, ultimately, extinction. The really worthwhile things–quality nutrition, a healthy environment, personal initiative, the knowledge of doing something beneficial for all and avoiding useless and destructive activities–will be lost.

“We cannot be free if our food sources are controlled by someone else.”
–Wendell Berry

Economics and Agriculture

The production of food from the natural elements is the fundamental economic activity that supports everything else. Reciprocally, an understanding of economic realities goes hand in hand with creating an approach to farming that takes responsibility for how its actions affect the whole.
Of course, if we travel in conventional circles we might think that agriculture has little to do with economics. It is as though farmers should concentrate on sowing and harvesting, and leave economics to the Ph.D.s. Our faith in specialization tends to persuade us we should compartmentalize our treatment of both agriculture and economics.

Specialization

Specialization has its virtues. If one person grinds grain and another bakes bread, between them they can provide bread of consistent quality for a community of people herding sheep, making shoes, building, weaving, recycling junk and so forth. Specialization allows individuals to develop their unique talents, abilities and interests, saving much time, energy and materials in the process.
In a medieval township of one or two thousand people, the economic function of each individual was fairly evident. One saw production arise out of nature and consumption return this to nature.
With the advent of the industrial revolution people gathered into cities and concentrated on using their specialties to earn money. A lathe operator, for instance, might work from technical drawings without concern about optimum design. Nor need he worry about assembly, marketing, repair or recycling. Being a master at his specialty was sufficient to keep him occupied. The printing press designer did not run printing presses as an occupation. He had no need to get twenty hours worth of printing done in eighteen. He might never wish this or that lever or screw was easier to operate or harder to maladjust. He specialized in design and left it up to pressmen to run the thing.
Increasingly generations were born, educated, worked and died without understanding how their activities fitted into the economy as a whole. As they lost sight of how their contributions influenced society, they lost their ability to judge the benefits or dangers of their actions. The result was they performed tasks they would not have considered had they understood the consequences from start to finish. In short, specialization was a good thing that, taken to the extreme, ultimately became automatic, inappropriate, even hazardous.
For instance, at the beginning of the industrial revolution the English estate holders specialized in grazing sheep and producing wool. They implemented enclosure acts that sent the peasants off to the cities creating a surplus labor pool. This was exploited by mills that manufactured woolen goods for export. In the overall this was socially catastrophic, but an economic bonanza for a few.
Quixotically it gave rise to the English custom of maintaining closely clipped lawns around houses rather than well-tended vegetable, herb and flower gardens–an effort to copy the look of the affluent estates with their sheep trimmed grounds. Today, by way of trying to achieve this cultural ideal, Americans go to extraordinary lengths to maintain mock pastures, filling up landfills with the residues from riding lawnmowers and herbiciding the dandelions instead of growing food.

Environmental Consequences

Traditionally farmers have as close a connection as anyone to watching products arise out of nature and return as waste. They might not see what the governor or academic does with the fruits of agriculture, but at least they tend to know where and how basic commodities arise. Still, the industrial revolution, despite the obvious benefits of increased specialization, blindsided us with various disasters even in agriculture.
Bigger, heavier plows and other machinery brought on increases in soil erosion. Manures were concentrated more while recycling them received less attention. Imbalances, deficiencies, declines and catastrophes became increasingly common. The seed ran out in one district, the soil washed away in another, and a plague killed the crops or the livestock elsewhere. Traditions increasingly were ignored, or followed with insufficient understanding of why they existed.
During the latter part of the nineteenth century, in response to the widespread problem of declining fertility, a renowned chemist, Justus von Liebig, found that small amounts of the salts of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium boosted plant growth wherever these elements were in short supply. Producers of these chemicals embraced Liebig’s discovery, and little attention was paid to the fact that crops grown with these salt fertilizers tended to be watery, weak and subject to pest problems despite their large size or superficial vigor.
With the advent of World War II the production of nitrogen compounds commenced on a tremendous scale in order to meet the demand for explosives. After the war this chemical output was applied to farms, and chemical agriculture became the norm.
Chemical fertilization resulted in a sharp increase in insect and disease problems. In response to this the production and sale of toxic chemicals became big business. For the most part the decline in flavor, nutrition and goodness was glossed over. What was emphasized was quantity, not quality. Because they were themselves narrowly focused specialists, few consumers had any idea what was going on.
Fertilizer producers founded institutes and lobbied, passing laws favoring their wares. They set up networks for research and advice that assured the most widespread acceptance. Where once farmers had burned and pulverized stones, rotated crops, recycled manures and maintained a close contact with their land to achieve sound results, specialization made these things seem obsolete.
In reality, however, both agriculture and the economy were closed systems where everything arose from nature and inevitably in one way or another returned. The progression from heavier plows to salt fertilizers to toxic rescue chemistry was a classic case of the pitfalls of specialization. Blind to the overview, we eroded soils, impoverished root growth and microbial activity, polluted the air and water and seriously compromised the quality of our food supply. Hi-tech agriculture damaged the ecology at the same time that it locked farmers into a high-cost/must sell situation with a heavy load of debt.
In a village of one or two thousand people it would have been inconceivable to use such short-sighted methods of producing basic foods. But farmers no longer ate their own crops. Instead they purchased food from supermarkets, and out of sight was out of mind. Toxic agriculture became routine. The roles of earthworms, ants, wasps, bees and other contributors were ignored while one farmer specialized in corn and soybeans, another in rice and sugarcane.
Before World War II animal fats, though they would have concentrated toxic residues had these been in the food chain, were considered healthy fare. In the l990s, however, regardless of the cholesterol theory, toxic residues ensure that eating high fat animal products may be a prelude to cardiac by-pass surgery, kidney dialysis or a cancer operation.
To understand the extent to which specialization has us in its grip we might graph the share of the world economy devoted to medical treatment over the past hundred fifty years as compared to topsoil losses over the same period. While it might seem common sense that public health is closely related to the vitality of soils and crops, in today’s specialized world it is common to hear the medical associations denying any relationship between declining nutritional values, soil loss, agricultural toxicity and health problems.
Yet, it is no accident that we have a health care crisis simultaneous with the debasement of our agriculture. We have less humus in our soils than ever, too much crude nitrogen, and a deficiency of oxygen. We have bred most crops to depend solely on soluble chemistry rather than soil solids, and foods have declined in mineral content. We are malnourished, not only physically (not enough minerals), but also etherically (not enough oxygen), astrally (too much crude nitrogen) and egoically (insufficient carbon in our soils). How have things worsened so rapidly? Something must be driving society relentlessly into the ditch.
To gain an understanding of our situation we must see things as wholes in the context of larger and larger wholes, rather than isolated and compartmentalized as specialization encourages. In reality everything is interconnected and interdependent. We must learn to think holistically.

The Ultimate Specialty

Once money replaced brutality as the chief tool for securing ownership and control, it became the object of power. Accordingly there is probably no one more specialized than the specialist at handling money.
By virtue of holding only a small fraction of deposits, a bank can reissue the rest as loans, doubling and redoubling the money supply since in theory all the money is simultaneously still in the bank. This assumes that only a small fraction of the bank’s depositors will want their assets back at any one time, and to shore up this assumption we created a banking regulation agency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) which supposedly guarantees deposits. Thus, by issuing loans, banks create money out of nothing. This is compounded over time at some rate of interest. Accordingly a portion of the income from lending money is paid as interest to depositors. As more and more money is lent and interest mounts up, mature fortunes multiply themselves.
A serious flaw in this system is that if money is to represent wealth it must age and wear out just as do food, clothing, shelter and other items. It is not enough simply to have a medium of exchange, we need a medium of exchange that is grounded in reality–one that encourages exchange so that everyone gets a share, and one that wears out like all the things it represents.
Gold, for instance, may be a stable medium of exchange since it does not multiply itself when hoarded, but it is a false medium of exchange because it does not wear out.
On the other hand, raw materials, especially foods, wear out quickly. Even the most carefully stored grains are likely to last only a decade or so. The world’s wealth in these items needs to be replenished constantly. Their production is the basic, true measure of how much wealth exists in any economy. Thus, a dated currency, issued on the basis of raw material production and wearing out over a period of, say, ten years, would stimulate turnover in currency in all sectors of the economy. Before long we would treasure nature, out of which all products flow, instead of amassing savings to be multiplied by a carefully orchestrated need for loans. Then we would avoid the pitfalls of usury.

Usury

In modern times usury has come to mean the lending of money at exorbitant interest. Originally it meant lending at any interest. In the Mosaic tradition usury was forbidden because interest is based on doubling and redoubling mature fortunes, while for the ordinary producer and consumer everything money represents wears out.
Biblical scriptures, particularly Deuteronomy and Leviticus, which are basic to Jewish, Christian and Moslem traditions, prohibit usury as well as the confiscation of family agricultural lands for non-payment of debt. That is something to think about. Yet, this type of lending is firmly ensconced in the legal codes and political traditions of most of the world today.
Somehow, world around, laws have established usury and courts uphold it as socially virtuous and acceptable. Sheriffs enforce its imperatives with threats, if not actual violence. It is a policy we are conditioned to accept.

Debunking Political Myths

Many believe the voting booths and legislative bodies are a realistic avenue for citizens to voice dissent. And, perhaps they would be if consensus was pursued and citizens represented themselves. However, representative assemblies make it difficult for individuals to have any real voice unless they have plenty of money and influence. Legislative decisions depend on politicians who need campaign contributions to get elected, frequently spending enormously more running for an office than it pays in salary. For instance, roughly half a billion dollars was spent during the l988 US presidential campaign campaigning for a $250,000 a year job.
Needless to say, if the income from usury is in the trillions annually, a little can be budgeted for political influence, and those with this agenda can afford to back all the top candidates.
Dissent, though it may be voiced in legislatures, is routinely silenced by majority rule, no matter the elegance of its arguments. And, should the lone citizen think to protest in a court of law, his dissent is muzzled and shunted aside by well-practiced manipulations of the legal rubrics. Never mind the Magna Cartas and Declarations of Independence or any other traditions that misgovernment must not be borne.
Moreover, the scions of the media, schools and public institutions would have us believe this system is fair, just, reasonable and the best that has existed in all history. Of course, to suggest otherwise might imperil their job security.

Is the Press Free?

I realize many believe we enjoy freedom of the press, and that by proclaiming the truth the media will enlighten people so that they shake off their enslavement. However, publishing or broadcasting to the masses requires massive funding. The major media are controlled–frequently through advertising budgets or by way of donations to pet projects, charities or cultural pursuits rather than outright ownership. Editors who ignore the wishes of their benefactors seldom last long.
Moreover, propaganda techniques have progressed steadily since the days of the Third Reich. Marketing psychologists have developed sophisticated methods for evaluating the emotions evoked by audio and visual presentations. And, it is emotions that motivate people. Public relations are programed by top professionals who know how to find a way to sell practically anything to any audience. Public opinion is molded by those who pay for it.

What about Science?

Some suppose science at least must be free from mummery and manipulation. But, it too is controlled by funding, and as for those who fund their own investigations, there are strong arm tactics. Roger Gerdeman, an Iowa farm boy whose family funded his work to develop a turbine that took the heat out of air and used it for motive power, was kidnapped by persons posing as FBI agents. He was found wandering the streets of Mexico City, a mental vegetable, with his work lost or stolen.
Dr. Joseph A. Beasley, a Tulane medical professor who operated two clinics, researched and developed a vitamin cure for diabetes. This threatened drug revenues in eleven digits, and he soon found himself tried and convicted of technical improprieties in the use of federal grant monies.
Royal R. Rife, with the financial backing of a bearing manufacturer by the name of Timpken, discovered a way to cure cancer and various other diseases with economical frequency generators–whereupon he was charged with practicing quack medicine and hounded into seclusion in Mexico.
Wilhelm Reich, one of Sigmund Freud’s most renowned successors, funded his own research into the basic phenomena of life. After brilliant work concerning reversal of the law of increasing entropy, weather modification and the use of simple equipment to improve personal vitality, Morris Fischbein (simultaneously of the AMA and the Food and Drug Administration) brought Reich to trial for medical quackery. After being pilloried in the media, with his published works and experimental devices destroyed by court order, he died an untimely death in prison.
In this regard things have changed little since the days of Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake, and Galileo Galilei, who became a guest of the Inquisition for arguing that the Earth went around the Sun. People in power do their best to control anything which can penetrate to the truth of things, for they know it may rock the boat.
Scientific research, just as with any religious pursuit, has little hope of funding and recognition by the mature fortunes unless it furthers their influence.
Nor is revolution a hopeful avenue of dissent. What is left? Keeping abreast of developments and biding one’s time?
The likelihood is that the manipulators who currently pull the strings are essentially specialists of their own kind. They are so wrapped up in their specialty that there is virtually no way for them to perceive the ecological and economical needs of the whole.

Basics

A lot depends on controlling the means for basic production, most of which is agricultural land. For some time control of land has passed into the hands of the mature fortunes and out of the hands of those living on it or working it. So it is the wealthy and powerful who make the key decisions about land use, regardless of whether these are called modern corporate agriculture, FmHA requirements, international monetary fund guidelines, blatant absentee landlordism or agricultural collectivization. In so-called Third World countries, especially those deeply in debt, this trend has been a serious bone of contention for many decades. Yet, few Americans realize how much they themselves have become a dispossessed people. Partly this is a measure of how skillfully they have been manipulated.
There have been many refinements in the process of securing control of the land, and, of course, there have been blunders. Iran, for instance, epitomized a blunder. The Shah moved aggressively to collectivize farm land, moving people into the cities so rapidly that most remembered the independence and self-determinism of their former rural existence. When times got hard they listened to Khoumieni, who promised to turn the clock back.
The American media explained that the Shah had tried to modernize Iran too fast, but few knew what that really meant.
Iran was a culture which had grown its own food for thousands of years. When the Shah bulldozed the small farms with their goat pens, chicken coops and fig trees, feeding their population into the cities, Iran lost its diversified, self-sufficient base, becoming dependent on agricultural imports. Oil or no oil, the economic and ecological changes left people caught between wage slavery and unemployment with no family farm to go back to. Most could remember when it was otherwise.
By way of contrast the process has gone more slowly in America. The majority of the population these days were born and raised by wage earners in the towns and cities. They know almost nothing about living off the land even if they happen to own a little. Thus there is little perceived need for land reform here. In fact, many of those who do work the land maintain the illusion that they own their land and are free to do what they please with it despite their huge debts and dependence on methods that keep them on a treadmill. Whatever independence they might have they relinquish by seeking relief both financially and technologically in programs promoted by the central government.

Centralized Authority

The process is one of centralization of authority. But what are its premises? For one thing it assumes central authority knows what is best for individuals and what they should do. For another it must enforce its decisions. This means having the bureaucrat and the policeman looking over the citizen’s shoulder supposedly to make him be responsible. The US, though nominally free, has the world’s largest central government, the most laws, the largest enforcement organizations and the highest per capita prison population. This is a consequence of centralization. On the one hand, many people give up being responsible on their own initiative. On the other, many are penalized for attempting to assume such responsibility.
Historically centralized control results in land abuse. Long-range husbandry suffers while a dispossessed population waits to be told what to do. Workers have little say over their economic activities. If they refuse to perform because they think what they are told to do is inappropriate, unsafe, immoral or whatever, they are simply replaced. As “surplus population” they may starve, end up in prison or learn to do as they are told next time.
Government researchers tell us that environmental quality, self-sufficiency and long range environmental improvement are nice ideals, but very difficult to attain and sure to be poor business. But, how can this be? A pure, balanced and natural reaping of nature’s bounty is inferior to a toxic, wasteful and extortive approach?
On one hand billions are spent on development and deployment of environmentally destructive food production methods. On the other hand, sound economic environmentalism is left to scattered individuals who reap minimal economic gain while being treated like lunatics. The central authorities promote the belief that the only way we can produce sufficient food is by raping the environment and mortgaging everything. Is it a coincidence that this favors, amongst others, those who have profitable investments in toxic industries?
Propaganda pervades the media, the classrooms and the political arenas. The glitz, color, authority figures and subliminal cues are well-researched, clever and thorough. They go beyond either reasoned argument or simple paid advertising to emotional persuasion, since emotion is more compelling when it comes to peoples’ actions. Nearly everyone is conditioned to accept that toxic agriculture is the only way to produce food. In order to get along and not be branded as crazy most people have learned to accept the pillage and desertification of the planet, deplorable though it may be. The propaganda goes down all the more smoothly since at the cultural level the suggestion is implanted early on in life (via cartoons and comic books) that at some point our superheroes will emerge from deep cover and pull all our chestnuts out of the fire for us if we just have faith and go along with the authorities.
Yet, it makes no sense for producers to destroy their production base, endangering their own health and welfare along with future generations. Why is this viewpoint promoted? Who could benefit from the destruction of nature? Tropical forests are cut, temperate forests succumb to acid rain, ocean life is poisoned, the atmosphere is polluted and now we suffer from increased ultraviolet exposure, weather extremes and tectonic instability. Neither producers nor consumers can be said to benefit. Who does?

Who Benefits?

Classically it is the trader’s game to dry up abundance and endanger future production. All the better to cash in on goods set aside when there was a surplus, thus gaining a larger war chest and greater leverage in the next trading cycle. Since trading in money trumps all other trading games, money manipulators exercise authority over all aspects of trade.
Producers and consumers are kept as separate as possible. Producers are told there is too much and they must sell cheap, while at the same time consumers are told there is too little and they must pay dear. Both producers and consumers are at the mercy of the markets.
Suppose the American soybean harvest is in and is fairly abundant. The soybean trader cries, “Surplus!” playing those who must sell against each other. He may import foreign beans to drive domestic prices down, then turn around and export domestic production to drive foreign prices down. Ideally he tries to force farmers to accept less than their cost of production while they must meet current financial obligations. This practically ensures that in following years farmers can be pressured even more. And if a significant number of farmers are bankrupted the way is paved for a year of too little production. Then worldwide stockpiles will bring very high prices. The following year or two as soybean production increases in an effort to cash in on higher prices, the trader goes back to crying surplus. The last thing that is wanted is diversified farms that can absorb their own production unless or until they are offered a desirable price.
If there is a drought and the price of feeds go up, the poultry, cattle or hog farmers must sell off their livestock. This drives meat prices down at the same time feed costs soar, a production absurdity, but a trader’s delight. He can buy, buy, buy while producers must sell, marketing a portion of this surplus at a very healthy profit when prices rise again because of curtailed production.
In Robin Hood’s time the corn engrosser charged twenty shillings for a bushel of barley at planting time. The yeoman farmer had to go to the money lender who fixed the loan to be paid at harvest time. At harvest the corn engrosser paid only one shilling a bushel and the yeoman had to take it if he was going to keep the sheriff off his back. Frequently this meant going back in debt again at planting time. The corn engrosser, the money lender and the sheriff were all fast friends.
Virtually the same story is told about ancient Babylonia. Little has changed although hundreds, even thousands of years have passed. Producers succumb to this fleecing time and again. The salaried experts, funded researchers and farm specialists offer little of use to farmers in this position. Instead they offer more and more products for farmers to buy, locking them into larger crop loans and increased pressure to sell their production cheap. For the trader this is ideal. He prefers to see the farmer forced to sell as this is likely to increase his profits. Moreover, he can place his profits on deposit to earn interest as they are issued out again as loans.

Need for Parity

Reducing the profits of the primary producer not only handicaps his production position, it ensures he must go into debt if he is to consume others’ products. The world’s strong economies such as Japan and Germany try to ensure their farmers are compensated fairly well, and starvation is uncommon in these countries. Conversely cheap farm export countries such as Brazil and Argentina have weak economies and widespread starvation.
In the US during the forties, with the urgency of a war to fight, parity legislation was enacted to ensure that farm products brought prices to put them on par with non-farm products. Before long farmers and factory workers alike enjoyed increasing prosperity and diminishing debt, a real relief after the thirties.
Then in the fifties farmers again began to be shortchanged. The economy faltered while public and private debts grew again. The reason is that no matter what the primary producer’s output is, if he receives no pay for it he will buy nothing from any of the secondary producers, and so it will run through the economy. Nor would he produce at all the next year and the whole economy would halt. So he is always paid something, but if he receives low pay he will buy less than if he is well paid, and the effects will be felt, even multiplied, throughout the economy. If he is strung along just right he will go deeper and deeper in debt hoping for a good year to get him out, and again the same tendency will prevail, even magnify, throughout the economy as a whole. If he were paid well he would prosper, and that prosperity again would pervade the whole economy and diminish the need for going into debt toward zero, which is not what is on the agenda.
The speed with which money and goods change hands determines how much the basic producer’s earnings are multiplied in the economy. Things move so fast these days that even slight earnings can multiply many fold. But if the basic producer has no earnings there is no multiplication to be had, and if he ceases to produce, everyone throughout the economy loses. So, agricultural commodity prices are juggled well enough to tease the economy along without any real prosperity. It remains to be seen how long this can be kept up. The situation is pretty touchy, and global weather extremes alone could throw a monkeywrench into the works.

Remedy

Since the current scheme of things is established and upheld by legislation, government administration and jurisprudence, to say nothing of police, it would seem that remedy would have to be political in nature, a matter of clearing a path for the righting of wrongs. But, how can elected officials, judges, bureaucratic agencies or police resist the influence of money?
It is a sobering fact that John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln were both assassinated after issuing US currency that was not based on debt and payment of interest. Had either of these presidents lived long enough to convert us from currency based on government borrowing to currency based on how much we produced of basic commodities, they would have gotten the country out of debt. They never got the chance. And, in both cases their alleged assassins were killed before they could give testimony or defend themselves in court. It is unlikely they were the real killers.
Other social leaders such as Mohandas Gandhi, Malcolm X, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. have also been assassinated before they could address these issues. Considering the stakes of the game it seems unhealthy to buck the status quo.
But, if concentrating political authority in the hands of a president, congress and judiciary and its army and police yields no remedy, how are we to maintain a polite society? Scattered individuals cannot simply remain polite while society at large and particularly government itself becomes increasingly impolite. We must do better than this. Our environment and the community of living beings on the Earth (and ultimately throughout the cosmos) is at stake.
Many have suggested that we withdraw our support of the system as it stands. That may be done though it is difficult, but it is not enough. We must put our efforts behind a constructive program.
One of the highest priorities, aside from learning to see clearly and disentangle ourselves from enslavement, is to establish a true economic husbandry of the environment, particularly of agriculture.
This requires developing a personal integrity and farm integrity in relation to the underlying, all-encompassing unity of the Earth and the cosmos, and it requires that we act on our own authority. It also requires support and cooperation, a community effort. It cannot be done in a vacuum.
By engaging in the primary production of wealth, the farmer is in the best position to observe what is a wholesome harvest of nature’s gifts and a healthy recycling. It is his challenge to transform the world into one of health and bounty. To do this he must link up with the people who consume his products and contribute in their turn to the quality of life, culture and material wealth that make farming satisfying. Then others will want to join in his work. He must cease dealing with middlemen who reduce his labors to statistics in a global power game, and associate directly with those who desire what he can produce.
This requires reexamining the specialist’s view that concentrating on just a few things and doing them well is best. Such a view goes hand in hand with the idea that competition is best, and this manner of thinking has so far carried the day. It has led many farmers into specializing in producing just a few commodities on as large a scale as possible, and not only has this been disastrous for farm ecologies, but it has left these farmers vulnerable to market pressure as never before.

Putting Specialization into Perspective

In the broader scheme of nature diversity is best for survival, and cooperation between species benefits them all. It follows along these lines that a person with multiple talents and abilities is better equipped for survival, and a community made up of the most varied individuals, of the most diverse professions and positions is the best off.
As one neighbor who dairy farms observed, “I don’t know what we’ve got to do, but I know one thing for sure. We need to get more people out here working on our farms.”
I agree. If we did and people knew where their food came from and what went into producing it there would be an awakening and more cooperation.
I do not think it will be enough to merely certify products are organically or biodynamically grown, though this may be a step in the right direction. But, whether the farm enterprise is large or small I suspect it is key to communicate where the food came from, who grew it and how, and what is happening on that farm as a whole. With consumers identifying with the farms that feed them and getting involved with the way their food is grown, the middlemen no longer will enjoy an unfair advantage.