| Muck and Mystery Loitering With Intent |
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The direct benefits of modern agricultural technologies to humanity and the environment in the 20th century have been elucidated in numerous scholarly articles on agriculture by Indur Goklany. For instance:In this way Kendra Okonski defends a Tim Worstall critique of a Zac Goldsmith article in the Times UK. Worstall asserts:If agricultural-technology development had been frozen in 1961, we estimate, using data from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (see FAOSTAT 2003: apps.fao.org), that cropland would have had to increase from its present 11% to some 25% of the planetary surface to produce the same amount of food now.(Nature, vol 423, p.115)
THE COST of the food on your table has been falling since Neolithic times. Thanks to the onward march of technology — inventions such as fertiliser, the horse collar or exciting methods of turnip weeding — yields have been increased over the past 10,000 years, so reducing, for example, the price of each extra turnip produced.hmmm, what does falling cost of food production over the eons have to do with falling prices paid to farmers even when the costs of production do not fall? The cost of food isn't falling, as in the past, due to improvements in agricultural technology, it is falling due to improvements in retail techniques. Goldsmith is mistaken to lament the improvements in retail but Worstall is also mistaken.This may all come as a surprise to Zac Goldsmith. He wrote on this page yesterday that “farm-gate prices have dramatically fallen and in some instances farmers are paid less than the cost of production”. And, of course, the evil supermarkets are to blame.
We do have a problem in farming and it won't soon be solved by technology. If the price pressure was a result of some farmers adopting new techniques that produced more food on less land with lower costs then Worstall's assertion that "we are simply being told that we still have too many farmers" would make some sense. But this is not the case. The UK, for example, is simply importing more food produced in developing countries using more land and more farmers using more primitive technologies but far cheaper land and labor costs. Measured by Goklany's metric we are going backwards.
Neither Goldsmith nor Worstall admit the complexity of the situation. Each has a mono-maniacal hammer that serves as an all-purpose tool for reasoning. There are more factors in this complex system than agronomic techniques, retail methods, and international trade. There are also environmental, energy, water, climate and socio-political issues. To name a few. Modern ecologists speak of socio-ecological systems as well as socio-political systems.
Goldsmith and Worstall are doing plain old politics. It's a dirty job and though no one has to do it there's no known way to keep some people from doing so. But let's not confuse politics with useful systems analysis, or political punditry with insightful commentary.
If I’d had 1,000 or 1,500 words the things you talk about above would have been mentioned. In 400 it’s a little more difficult to give every side of the story.
"There are more factors in this complex system than agronomic techniques, retail methods, and international trade. There are also environmental, energy, water, climate and socio-political issues."
While we might disagree about the socio-politic aspects, and perhaps on exactly how we should account for the others, certainly, I’m all for making sure that they are considered. Rational pricing for example, making sure that externalities are included in actual production costs and purchase prices and so on.
I have one over-riding reason for anger with Goldsmith. He (rightly) is worried about the way in which we are using scarce resources (other of his views I find more objectionable but stick with this one). We also have a science which looks at the way scarce resources are used and allocated. This is called economics. Yet while worrying about the use and allocation of scarce resources he resolutely refuses to consider the science.
That’s what truly bugs me.
The environmental task ahead of us is not to simply do nothing (the caricature of free market thinking) nor to insist on a return to peasantry (a similar caricature of greenie thinking). It is, rather, to create the structures, create the legislation and regulation so that externalities are indeed contained within the price system and then allow markets to do their work of processing that information (as Hayek pointed out,the only system we have capable of doing so) and thus allocating those scarce resources to those who value them most.
Sorry, long comment. Longer than the piece in The Times. Which rather makes the point really.
Posted by: Tim Worstall at December 14, 2005 01:24 AMHi Tim,
That's not a long comment by Muck & Mystery standards, or some of the more interesting and insightful academic blogs I enjoy. But there is an issue with print pubs. How do you say true things about complex subjects when you have so few words allotted, a conception of audience that suggests simple expression is required, and an overriding need to be entertaining?
Your faith in markets is touching, but it is based on the assumption that we can "create the legislation and regulation so that externalities are indeed contained within the price system". Easier said than done, and far sooner. It will be decades at the very least before such a semi-miraculous event could occur, and since it depends on political efforts it is reasonable to doubt that this will ever happen. (See Moral Posturing in which Don Boudreaux discusses reality).
Time is a problem here. While we patiently whittle and bash our socio-political system into a more functional form - impeded in no small measure by various antagonists ranging from the insane to the uninformed to competing faiths with alternative grand solutions - 3 billion more people will be born. Given that billions are already underfed - stunting the bodies and minds of growing children, guranteeing future generations of workers too dim and weak to produce to potential - the true problem seems to be to figure out how to double food production with the resources we have.
Posted by: back40 at December 14, 2005 09:34 AMI really don’t think having faith in markets is "touching". They’re proven to work.
Take on very specific example of an environmental problem today. Fishing. It’ß a classic case of the Tragedy of the commons.
We know how to solve them. Just as we did with The Commons of long ago. Three countries that have thriving and sustainable fisheries (Norway, Ideland and the Faroes) all solved the problem in exactly the way that classical economics would predict would work. Ownership of the ficshing rights by the fishermen.
Law and legislation was required to create those property rights and to allow for their transfer but it can be done. If we weren’t in the EU and part of the CFP we could do it in a couple of years in the UK.
Insisting that we change our "socio-political system" first simply means that we’re not going to do it at all are we? There are simple and obvious things that can be done, the creation of markets in ecosystem services, as recommended by the UN Millennium Ecosystem Report.
Why wait to apply the best thing we have for the allocation of scarce resources?
Posted by: Tim Worstall at December 15, 2005 04:24 AMHi Tim,
That's a good example of minimizing the complexity of a situation, apparently due to faith in a single idea - the hedgehog allusion.
We don't know how to solve the overfishing problem. We know ways to attempt it, ways that are arguably better than we use now. I've even discussed it. More importantly, markets are only part of ITQs. Quotas are partly scientific, partly socio-ecological and often wrong. They are always wrong in the long term and so require continual adjustment. Even when they seem right for a target fishery the effects on the whole ecosystem are but dimly understood and worrisome. Even when the fishery prospers the rest of society is affected in ways that are dimly understood and equally worrisome.
I don't know who is insisting that we change our "socio-political system" first. Goldsmith? Certainly not me. It's not clear what you are trying to say here.
It is false that creation of markets in ecosystem services is either simple or obvious. It isn't certain that it will happen at all to a useful degree, and it isn't clear what has value or what the value might be. Much is disputed and it won't happen soon.
"Why wait to apply the best thing we have for the allocation of scarce resources?"
It isn't waiting so much as that the problem is very much more complicated than we can yet manage. We have begun to do some things and others are being discussed, but it will be a long and contentious process that can be captured or derailed along the way. That's what I meant by suggesting taking a look at Moral Posturing where Boudreaux notes that "grandstanding politicians, special-interest groups, arrogant environmentalists who are intolerant of commercial values, and well-meaning but misinformed voters will combine to generate policies that do more harm than good." He was speaking of climate change but it applies broadly.
The punch line from the original post: "Neither Goldsmith nor Worstall admit the complexity of the situation" is even clearer with farming than fisheries. Goldsmith is right that something is wrong, but his prescription is simplistic and politically motivated. Your's seems so as well. That's fine, politics is a popular sport, but it won't help with the problems in farming. That's a far more complicated issue.
I had a thought today while I was bucking 4 tons of hay into the barn. You tend to think about anything but what you are doing at times like that so that you don't simply quit and do something more rational and less painful. Politics is like a fist fight in the stands between hooligans while the game is being played on the field. The fist fight has a tenuous connection to the game, but it is not the game. It can in extreme cases affect the game, but never in a useful way. It changes the nature of the experience for observers, even sometimes comes to dominate their experience. That's a mistake, though an understandable one. Seeing the game behind the fist fight is more rewarding since it actually affects the standings and is really a more fascinating contest, at least to many of us.
Posted by: back40 at December 15, 2005 05:57 PM