Peasant farmers offer the best chance of feeding the world. So why do we treat them with contempt?

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 10th June 2008

I suggest you sit down before you read this. Robert Mugabe is right. At last week’s global food summit he was the only leader to speak of “the importance … of land in agricultural production and food security”.(1) Countries should follow Zimbabwe’s lead, he said, in democratising ownership.

Of course the old bastard has done just the opposite. He has evicted his opponents and given land to his supporters. He has failed to support the new settlements with credit or expertise, with the result that farming in Zimbabwe has collapsed. The country was in desperate need of land reform when Mugabe became president. It remains in desperate need of land reform today.

But he is right in theory. Though the rich world’s governments won’t hear it, the issue of whether or not the world will be fed is partly a function of ownership. This reflects an unexpected discovery. It was first made in 1962 by the Nobel economist Amartya Sen(2), and has since been confirmed by dozens of further studies. There is an inverse relationship between the size of farms and the amount of crops they produce per hectare. The smaller they are, the greater the yield.

In some cases, the difference is enormous. A recent study of farming in Turkey, for example, found that farms of less than one hectare are twenty times as productive as farms of over ten hectares(3). Sen’s observation has been tested in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Malaysia, Thailand, Java, the Phillippines, Brazil, Colombia and Paraguay. It appears to hold almost everywhere.

The finding would be surprising in any industry, as we have come to associate efficiency with scale. In farming, it seems particularly odd, because small producers are less likely to own machinery, less likely to have capital or access to credit, and less likely to know about the latest techniques.

There’s a good deal of controversy about why this relationship exists. Some researchers argued that it was the result of a statistical artefact: fertile soils support higher populations than barren lands, so farm size could be a result of productivity, rather than the other way around. But further studies have shown that the inverse relationship holds across an area of fertile land. Moreover, it works even in countries like Brazil, where the biggest farmers have grabbed the best land(4).

The most plausible explanation is that small farmers use more labour per hectare than big farmers(5). Their workforce largely consists of members of their own families, which means that labour costs are lower than on large farms (they don’t have to spend money recruiting or supervising workers), while the quality of the work is higher. With more labour, farmers can cultivate their land more intensively: they spend more time terracing and building irrigation systems; they sow again immediately after the harvest; they might grow several different crops in the same field.

In the early days of the Green Revolution, this relationship seemed to go into reverse: the bigger farms, with access to credit, were able to invest in new varieties and boost their yields. But as the new varieties have spread to smaller farmers, the inverse relationship has reasserted itself(6). If governments are serious about feeding the world, they should be breaking up large landholdings, redistributing them to the poor and concentrating their research and their funding on supporting small farms.

There are plenty of other reasons for defending small farmers in poor countries. The economic miracles in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan arose from their land reform programmes. Peasant farmers used the cash they made to build small businesses. The same thing seems to have happened in China, though it was delayed for 40 years by collectivisation and the Great Leap Backwards: the economic benefits of the redistribution that began in 1949 were not felt until the early 80s(7). Growth based on small farms tends to be more equitable than growth built around capital-intensive industries(8). Though their land is used intensively, the total ecological impact of smallholdings is lower. When small farms are bought up by big ones, the displaced workers move into new land to try to scratch out a living. I once followed evicted peasants from the Brazilian state of Maranhao 2000 miles across the Amazon to the land of the Yanomami Indians, then watched them rip it apart.

But the prejudice against small farmers is unshakeable. It gives rise to the oddest insult in the English language: when you call someone a peasant, you are accusing them of being self-reliant and productive. Peasants are detested by capitalists and communists alike. Both have sought to seize their land, and have a powerful vested interest in demeaning and demonising them. In its profile of Turkey, the country whose small farmers are 20 times more productive than its large ones, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation states that, as a result of small landholdings, “farm output … remains low.”(9) The OECD states that “stopping land fragmentation” in Turkey “and consolidating the highly fragmented land is indispensable for raising agricultural productivity.”(10) Neither body provides any supporting evidence. A rootless, half-starved labouring class suits capital very well.

Like Mugabe, the donor countries and the big international bodies loudly demand that small farmers be supported, while quietly shafting them. Last week’s food summit agreed “to help farmers, particularly small-scale producers, increase production and integrate with local, regional, and international markets.”(11) But when, earlier this year, the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge proposed a means of doing just this, the US, Australia and Canada refused to endorse it as it offended big business(12), while the United Kingdom remains the only country that won’t reveal whether or not it supports the study(13).

Big business is killing small farming. By extending intellectual property rights over every aspect of production; by developing plants which either won’t breed true or which don’t reproduce at all(14), it ensures that only those with access to capital can cultivate. As it captures both the wholesale and retail markets, it seeks to reduce its transaction costs by engaging only with major sellers. If you think that supermarkets are giving farmers in the UK a hard time, you should see what they are doing to growers in the poor world. As developing countries sweep away street markets and hawkers’ stalls and replace them with superstores and glossy malls, the most productive farmers lose their customers and are forced to sell up. The rich nations support this process by demanding access for their companies. Their agricultural subsidies still help their own, large farmers to compete unfairly with the small producers of the poor world.

This leads to an interesting conclusion. For many years, well-meaning liberals have supported the fair trade movement because of the benefits it delivers directly to the people it buys from. But the structure of the global food market is changing so rapidly that fair trade is now becoming one of the few means by which small farmers in poor nations might survive. A shift from small to large farms will cause a major decline in global production, just as food supplies become tight. Fair trade might now be necessary not only as a means of redistributing income, but also to feed the world.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/foodclimate/statements/zwe_mugabe.pdf

2. Amartya Sen, 1962. An Aspect of Indian Agriculture. Economic Weekly, Vol. 14.

3. Fatma Gül Ünal, October 2006. Small Is Beautiful: Evidence Of Inverse Size Yield
Relationship In Rural Turkey. Policy Innovations. http://www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/policy_library/data/01382

4. Giovanni Cornia, 1985. Farm Size, Land Yields and the Agricultural Production function: an
analysis for fifteen Developing Countries. World Development. Vol. 13, pp. 513-34.

5. Eg Peter Hazell, January 2005. Is there a future for small farms? Agricultural Economics, Vol. 32, pp93-101. doi:10.1111/j.0169-5150.2004.00016.x

6. Rasmus Heltberg, October 1998. Rural market imperfections and the farm size— productivity relationship: Evidence from Pakistan. World Development. Vol 26, pp 1807-1826. doi:10.1016/S0305-750X(98)00084-9

7. See Shenggen Fan and Connie Chan-Kang , 2005. Is Small Beautiful?: Farm Size, Productivity and Poverty in Asian Agriculture. Agricultural Economics, Vol. 32, pp135-146.

8. Peter Hazell, ibid.

9. http://www.new-agri.co.uk/00-3/countryp.html

10. OECD Economic Surveys: Turkey - Volume 2006 Issue 15, p186.
This is available online as a Google book.

I was led to refs 9 and 10 via Fatma Gül Ünal, ibid.

11. http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/foodclimate/HLCdocs/declaration-E.pdf

12. International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), 2008. Global Summary for Decision Makers. www.agassessment.org

13. IAASTD, viewed 9th June 2008. Frequently Asked Questions. www.agassessment.org

14. Eg Terminator seeds.

Date: 15-06-2008

What is karma?

Sharon Stone claims the earthquake in China is the result of bad karma for its treatment of Tibetans. Is her definition - "when you are not nice, bad things happen to you" - correct?

Radiohead sings of the "karma police", called in to arrest those who upset Thom Yorke: "This is what you get when you mess with us." And Boy George warbles about a "karma chameleon", in a toxic relationship because he's not "so sweet" anymore.

Cause and effect, see. Actions have consequences.

And Sharon Stone, a convert to Buddhism, has claimed - to much criticism - that the earthquake that killed at least 68,000 people in China was bad karma for Beijing policy in Tibet. "I thought, is that karma - when you're not nice that the bad things happen to you?" she mused at the Cannes Film Festival.

Karma is an important concept for Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs. Translated from the Sanskrit, it means simply "action". Because karma is used in a number of ways and contexts - even among different branches of Buddhism - this can be confusing.

Dhammadassin, a teacher at the London Buddhist Centre, says that Stone's take on karma is common - glossed over as an outcome that is the result of something done in the past - or even a past life.

"This reduces the enormously complex matter of causes and their effects to a question of retribution meted out for unspecified previous actions," she says.

But the law of karma states that it's the motive behind one's actions that affects the outcome of that particular act.

"So an intentionally ethical action - for example to promote kindness, generosity, contentment - is more likely to have positive, beneficial consequences. An intentionally unethical one - to promote self-aggrandisement or greed - will be more likely to have unhelpful, even harmful consequences. Unhelpful, that is, for the positive well-being of either the doer or the recipient or both."

In a complex world, it's too simplistic to expect that a positive intention will always have a positive outcome as many factors are involved, she says.

Poetic justice

The idea of moral causation has long been held in India, but the doctrine of karma was formulated and explained by the Buddha, a spiritual teacher thought to have lived about 2,500 years ago. Some believe that he was a human who became enlightened; others that he was a god.

His teachings hold that whatever comes into existence does so in response to the conditions at the time, and in turn affects what comes after it.

Sangharakshita, the Briton who founded the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order in 1967, explains this with the following example in his book Who Is The Buddha? "Rainfall, sunshine, and the nourishing earth are the conditions from which arises the oak tree, whose fallen leaves rot and form the rich humus from which the bluebell grows."

Dhammadassin says that despite its simplicity, this example reflects the inter-connectedness of our world, "in which our views, attitudes, opinions and intentions all have a part to play in creating our actions and their consequences". And what many call karma is actually closer to the idea of poetic justice, she says.

Nor do Buddhists believe karma is the only cause - others are:

inorganic or environmental factors, such as the weather
organic or biological factors, like bacteria or viruses
psychological factors such as stress
and transcendental or spiritual factors (such as the sometimes powerful galvanizing effect of spiritual practice)
"The earthquake in China or the cyclone in Burma have much to do with environmental factors," says Dhammadassin. "To invoke karma is more to do with our desire to nail things down and find someone to blame. But that's not ours to do."

Date: 30-05-2008

Everyone seems to be raving about Todd Bentley and the Florida Revival at the moment. Am I the only one who groans and thinks oh no, not another Toronto Blessing or gold fillings episode. Why do these things always happen in the affluent parts of the developed world instead of amongst those of greatest need? Why is he not secretly healing the dead/dying children in Burma instead of striding about a stage in America peforming 'miracles' like a showman? He seems more like Benny Hinn than Jesus. Just because he has a few tatoos and piercings, people think he is a bit alternative, but I can't see anything new. I am sure the guy is sincere and has a genuine desire to share Jesus but I really don't recognise his methods as of Christ, even in a modern age. As for revival, it strikes me that this is just addition, not multiplication. God can do much more than this!

P.S. If you don't know what I'm spouting on about, visit www.freshfire.ca (or YouTube).

Date: 11-05-2008

Islam and the apostasy debate:

Despite the well-known Quranic injunction "There is no compulsion in religion", issues of religious freedom have persisted into the 21st Century.

A recent report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch (co-authored with the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights) throws a spotlight on problems in Egypt.

Suppose a Christian woman converts to Islam, for example when she marries a Muslim man, but later wants to convert back.

Joe Stork of Human Rights Watch relates what happened in one case.

"We had one woman telling us how, when she converted to Islam, it was 'Just hold on, when you've finished your coffee your documents will be ready'.

"But in trying to convert back to Christianity, she's had to go to court - she's been completely frustrated in those efforts."

Identity crisis

The problem was aggravated when the Egyptian state computerised identity documents over a decade ago.

Christians seeking to re-convert encountered bureaucratic hassle in getting their ID cards changed.

Another issue arose from the fact that the state officially recognises only three religions - Islam, Christianity and Judaism.

This put the small Bahai community in an obvious difficulty.

Human-rights groups have welcomed two recent court cases as steps in the right direction.

In one, Bahais were allowed to leave blank the entry for religion on their ID cards.

In the other, a group of Christians seeking to re-convert were told the state should acknowledge their change of status on their identity documents.

Root of the problem

Apostasy - the abandonment of one's faith - is not just a problem in Egypt.

In 2006 an Afghan Muslim who converted to Christianity was sentenced to death and fled to Italy.

A new penal code that has been drafted in Iran would, if ratified, formalise the death penalty for apostasy.

The late Ayatollah Khomeini famously denounced the author Salman Rushdie as an apostate for his novel The Satanic Verses - and said he should be killed.

So what is the root of the problem? Why do some Muslim scholars favour such a severe penalty?

Abdal Hakim Murad, a lecturer at the faculty of divinity at Cambridge University, says Islamic law is extraordinarily diverse.

"There's a few things on which everybody agrees - pray five times a day, fast in Ramadan - but, in terms of public law, on most issues there is no consensus."

So some scholars favour the death penalty; others say the punishment should be left to God on the day of judgement.

Dr Murad says he recently attended a conference of Muslim scholars from around the world - and only one took the hard-line view. The others said the death penalty should no longer be applied.

But, for now, the debate goes on - and individuals continue to suffer.

Acknowledgements: BBC News

Date: 20-02-2008