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Global action for development of the third society through the development ofsound farming



December 17, 1998

Below is a translation of a paper we recently have begun to release in
Sweden as a contribution to the forming of a united strategy for Civil
Society here. The development this very year has convinced us that the only
possible way for a sustainable development in the world is that Civil
Society - with its deep respect of human and biological diversity - can
find a united strategy, so that it will be a force counted upon in
negociations - along with TNC´s and G7 - a true third force. This requires
a strong and clear focus. Agenda 21 (the global action plan for sustainable
development agreed upon by most of the governments in the world in Rio de
Janeiro 1992) gives a broad base that everyone should be able to agree on.
This is our contribution for the focus. We are now acting, and we look
forward to hearing reactions and contributions from all of you on this:

IF AGRICULTURE IS DEALT WITH AS AN INDUSTRY BRANSCH,  IT WILL DIE.
It means the end of biodiversity and a general rural liquidation

Agriculture is dying. Between 1982 and 1992 the number of milkproducing
farms in Sweden was reduced from 40 000 to 20 000. Since the 1950ies the
number of milkproducing farms has reduced to almost half every decade. A
recent investigation in a typical region in Sweden shows that half of the
farms are estimated to be relinquished in the next ten years. The trend
seems to keep.

The underlying forces are very strong - an increasing price competition
from genetically engineered import products from countries with small
production costs, like the USA. The chairman of the farmers trade union of
Sweden and their industry group Mr Hans Jonsson recently wrote i an E-mail
to his members: "I dare a guess that in the future the chairman of Monsanto
will be representing the farmers in the USA and that those who work the
land will belong to the farm workers trade union. This development we see
also in Hungary, Brasil and China, where the big industry is taking over
more and more of the power. The farmers become tractor drivers for the
multinational industry."

Attempts to protect domestic and traditional agriculture against this kind
of competition are failing due to an increasing political pressure for free
trade. WTO - The World Trade Organization - is demanding the elimination of
trade limitations of for instance agricultural products with the aim to
open all national markets for international influence and competitive
products.

Agenda 21 and the Conventon of Biodiversity are major attempts to stop this
development. But Agenda 21 is still a bit unmature and is perhaps by many
more experienced as poetry. The thruth is that there is still no party,
that is putting power behind the words.

The social concequences of the  agricultural liquidation are  getting
increasingly extensive. They will change the whole image of the society
more than we normally imagine. It will lead to  much unemployment in rural
areas,  not only in agriculture.

WHAT HAS OPENED UP THE WAY FOR THIS VERY PROBLEMATIC DEVELOPMENT?

One very decisive factor is that agriculture is persued according to the
basic laws and rules that are valid for industry and trade but completly
destructive for agriculture.

THE SPIRITUAL BASE OF TRADE AND INDUSTRY

Trade and industry are striving for increased power through specialization
of its products and services. This is achieved through a permanent
development and change of the basis of the activities, of raw material
used, of technical methods, of organisation and cooperation forms etc.
Deeper specialization is necessary to give the enterprises increasing
competition strength. It brings simultaneously a growing need for and
dependency of being able to buy other specialized functions. And it leads
to a global network of specialized functions and enterprises, all dependant
of each other and others. The development creates the Economic Life to a
world organism and its diversity is the basis  for industrial development.

THE SPIRITUAL BASE OF AGRICULTURE

Agriculture works with given conditions, that cannot be developed or
changed. It is the living forces or life in  the soil, in the plants and in
the animals. Out of these agriculture is developed. The living forces are
bound to the place of the farm. In them the farmer has the points of
departure for his work. The biological diversity  that constitute the farm
is also the basis for the ability of agriculture to  develop and to adapt
to changing conditions.

The cooperating wholeness in i.a. a complicated mecanichal workshop line,
in which different suppliers in separate parts of the world contribute with
vital components to the end product, corresponds in agriculture to  the
"farm organism", that is the biologically working together of the entirety
of a farm and its surrounding nature. When agriculture is orienting itself
to this biological entirety, it finds its true being, the forces of which
are inexhaustible.
	
When agriculture is forced to orient it self to the periphery, to work in
industrial networks and gather for instance genetically onesided seeds from
the world market, then it stepwise looses its identity and its adequacy. It
more and more becomes an industry and its natural conditions disappear
gradually as is happening today and which is wiping out the nature of
agriculture and its living rural areas.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CONFUSION around the basic conditions for trade and
industry compared with those for agriculture

The confusion of the conditions of trade and industry with those of
agriculture, which now is being made, has made dramatic and strong-willed
attempts possible from big Transnational Companies, so called TNCs, to take
over the initiative of the food market. These TNCs account for the control
of over 70 - 80% of the world trade, direct or indirect  through companies
they control. They therefore have extremely large and growing interests to
guard.  With the power of their size they also govern individual states and
even overstates. The Times of 8/11 1998 reports how the police in England
now is making massive preparations to stop any form of protests from
British farmers against food import. There is also a furious fight going on
between Civil Society, in the shape of thousands of most diverse
organizations and networks over the whole world, and Monsanto concerning
its Terminator Project.  With this project Monsanto wants to world wide
introduce genetically manipulated seeds for i.a. grain that loose fertility
while growing and therefore force the farmer to buy new seeds every year.
	
This fight is from the part of Monsanto carried with threats of financial
problems with institutions like the World Bank and IMF if not the claims of
WTO, that all markets shall be held open for these products, are met. Even
political pressure is practised. Bill Clinton has written to Tony Blair
(UK) and urged him to work for that all obstacles to these kind of products
are removed. The true purpose probably is to get the power over agriculture
and food production and thereby be able to govern the development of
society in desired direction.

WHERE CAN THIS PROBLEM AT ALL BE ATTACKED?

Analysing this conflict from a social scientific point of view it is
evident that it is necessary to treat this problem where it arises - in
above said distortion of the real and true conditions for agricuture. You
can't carry on farming according to the principle of replaceable basis. In
trade and industry this principle creates a positive dynamic. In
agriculture the same principle kills by separating farming from its true
being.
	
The State as carrier of the rights functions of society, does not offer
TNCs sufficient resistance.  Since the state also carries different social
and cultural commitments, it is forced to adapt. It cannot put power behind
the words.
	
Only Civil Society and its in principle independant organisations have
qualifications to forcefully take on such a task,  which potentially is an
interest for all people. Pat Mooney describes in the last issue of
Development Dialogue in the chapter "Hope for a Third System..." different
ways how such a common function could be developed.

HOW CAN NEW CONDITIONS FOR AGRICULTURE BE REALIZED AND MADE VALID?

Already in the 1920ies the biodynamic agricultural method, developed by
Rudolf Steiner and the impuls of Howard for organic farming were founded.
The nucleus of the biodynamic method can be described as consisting of the
"farm organism", a holistic concept, which describes how every farm can can
be managed biologically selfsupporting according to the laws that are valid
for an organism. The description is adapted to the farmer and to his
responsability and the method can be said to be a continuation of the
agricultural know how, that during preceding centuries has developed in
Europe.
	
In the 1970ies a cooperation between different initiatives, which had
developed isolated from each other began with the establishment of  IFOAM
(International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements). Today
ecological and controled products are marketed and have conquered a place
in the shelves of the fixed assortment of the big chain stores.
	

Of especial interest is how slash and burn agriculture, which extensivly
still is applied by poor farmers in the tropics, can be converted to
biologically self supporting agriculture. On Hispañola,with Haiti and the
Dominican Republic, slash and burn has deforestated the island, from 80% to
15% in 70-80 years whereas the population has grown from 3 to 14 million.
Within some decades water supply is expected to end. Most farmers are too
poor to be able or to dare stake on chemical inputs. They show however a
spontaneous creative feeling for the farm organism concept, which they also
succesfully are using, i.a. in their coffee production for export.   This
can make possible a growing conversion to biodynamic methods and a
beginning reforestation in this kind of regions.

REFLECTIONS AROUND AN ACTION PROGRAM

The actions of RAFI (Rural Advancement Foundation International) reaches
organisations and people in the whole world around questions like "The
Terminator" and the "Gra-Mean Bank", which are questions that concern and
activate many.
	
The question about the independant character of agriculture and all
biological, economic,  social and cultural threats from its conversion to
an industry, in the hands of few actors,  should in the same way be able to
engage many people and motivate a stronger effort of Civil Society. After
all, the question concerns  the existential basis of all humans in need of
a sound food production. The inner structure of the problem is however
deeply incarnated into the body and structure of our society and it will
therefore need a lengthy fight to  overcome.
	
There are therefore reasons to ask whether this not is a question, that has
the capacity and quality to unite Civil Society.
	
This question is worth devoting great attention and a broad and deep discussion.


Järna, November 12th, 1998
The Rural Development Group 							The Anthroposophical Society




Håkan Blomberg	    	Hans von Essen		
Chairman	          		Project leader
	
	


At 19.28 98-12-15, Terry Harris wrote:

>
>What are rural regions going to do?  Protest or strategize.  Think clearly
>and solve the riddle.
>
>Let's put forward-thinking people on a project to design a strategy for
>development that accounts for issues that are critical to us all:
>[1] safety of our food supply (alternative food systems and other CSA
>strategies, see the work of Bill Heffernan Univ of Missouri)
>[2] retained role for the family farmer (some predict that farmers will be
>reduced to heavy machine operators on the payroll of - or under contract
>to - one of several grain processors left or one of the big five R&D
>agrichemical companies http://www.recap.com)
>[3] sustainable development strategies (industrial product manufacturing
>clusters, etc)
>[4] systematic migration of people (rural population trends, see Daryl
>Hobbs http://www.oseda.missouri.edu)
>[5] penturbian rural development land use planning (websearch on "Jack
>Lessinger" or "penturbia")
>[6] location independent workers (telecommuting support centers -- rather
>than move the people to the jobs, let's move the jobs to the people and
>let them live closer to their work station http://www.denverpost.com  [Dec
>8 "Summit tackles tech worker gap"])
>
>I am one of those forward thinking people, and I have been working on a
>development stategy that will be used in the information age to complement
>the existing industrial development model of planned industrial parks as
>sites for recruited companies.  I co-founded an organization called ICRA
>(Initiative for a Competitive Rural America) which created and is
>employing cyberdevelopment strategies.  This model has drawn the attention
>of rural development policy leaders and has led me to begin the formal
>study of this strategy as a doctoral student in Rural Sociology at the
>University of Missouri-Columbia.
>
>I would like to recruit like-minded people who believe that we can change:
>[1] the way traditional land use planning is taught (subdivisions, strip
>retail, shopping centers, rings around the city)
>[2] the policies of development incentives that make the conversion of an
>acre of farmland to an acre of industrial land so profitable to tax
>supported entities (in Missouri this conversion results in a pre-tax
>abatement revenue increase of 2400%)
>[3] the mindset of companies in thinking that their knowledge workers have
>to be in the office or that all of their employees have to be in the same
>town
>[4] the thinking of rural community leaders to understand that the
>consolidation of the agribiochemical and grain processing industries is
>already underway, and that without organized cooperative strategies, the
>future may be already beyond their control
>
>Give me your thoughts.  I have rural communities that have already
>participated in testing the cyberdevelopment model.  I would like to learn
>about the efforts of others, and how I might become involved (if I can
>help).  My intent is to create an economic incentive to pursue the virtue
>of organizations associated with NE FOOD, MESA, CSA-L, etc.  Your
>strategies can be part of a comprehensive and politically marketable
>change in the way developers think about the future.
>
>Thanks for your time in reading this material.
>
>Terry Harris
>Initiative for a Competitive Rural America
>1608 SE Long Place
>Lee's Summit, MO  64063
>
>icra@qni.com
>(816)525-8150