The following article first appeared under the title "Capitalism, Labor, and Nature: An Exchange" in New International no. 13 in 2005. It was posted on Richard Levins' blog as "A Left Critic of Organic Agriculture" in 2009.
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| Richard Levins |
By Richard Levins, richardlevins.com, 2005(2009)
The series of four articles by Steve Clark (The
Militant, August 13, 20,27 and September 10, 2002) discusses a number of
questions about capitalism, imperialism and agriculture on which we can
all agree easily. But the focus of his polemic is against organic agriculture
and his rejection of the suggestion that its adoption in Cuba may be something
more than an emergency measure. It was in part motivated by a letter from Karl
Butts who was worried that the ending of a previous article in the Militant
seems to be giving "a certain political weight to the concept of organic
production being preferable to that where chemicals are used "and
that readers "may also come away thinking Cuba generally chooses not to
use chemicals in agricultural production."
I think he got it all wrong practically, in terms of the
actual technical advantages of ecological agriculture, and theoretically.
The adoption of ecological (and more narrowly organic)
methods of food production in Cuba started before the Special Period or its
rapid spread would not have been possible. It started as experimental projects
in a number of institutions because the researchers realized that
"modern" high-tech agriculture:
▪
undermined
its own productive base through soil erosion, compaction, and salinization,
reducing soil organic matter and nitrogen fixing capacity, increasing the need
for irrigation;
▪
increased
vulnerability to pests and disease, requiring ever bigger and more frequent
doses of pesticides;
▪
increased
vulnerability to the uncertainties of the weather and economy;
▪
poisoned
farmers and farm workers(for instance brain cancer is more prevalent in the
areas that use the herbicide atrazine);
▪
contaminated
the ground waters and soil;
▪
made
the farm dependent on external inputs.
Projects in ecological pest management, polyculture,
biofertilization, recycling of farm wastes, integration of crops and livestock
and the redesign of farm tools and machines were undertaken at many different
research centers. This is not "a reject[ion of] progress in agricultural
chemistry and technology in favor of so-called natural or traditional methods
of farming". It is a modern, scientific, dialectical activity of knowledge
creation using and testing critically the knowledge of the peasants along with
modern experimental, observational and mathematical approaches. When the
special period came, we had at least a starting point for a new technology. And
there is no doubt that it saved the revolution. But will this continue? Is it a
second best improvisation imposed by the economic crisis as Clark
believes, or a better production system? Nilda Perez and Luis Vazquez, in a
forthcoming book on Cuban agriculture deal with this:
"Everyone asks what will become of ecological pest
management in Cuba as we emerge from the economic crisis of the early 1990s. As
more foreign exchange becomes available for the purchase of pesticides on the
international market it seems logical to some that Cuba will return to an
intensive dependence on chemical inputs. Moreover, some think the current
program of accelerated reduction of pesticides is simply a short-term, stop-gap
answer to maintain production until pesticide imports are affordable once
again. But others-- and they are more than a few-- have a very different
analysis, looking seriously at economic, social, health and environmental
factors, and conclude that the agroecological IPM (integrated pest management--RL)
model developed to date is simply a better model…In light of recent history, it
is hard to believe that Cuba would return to the calendar sprayings of
the1960's and early 1970's or even to (chemical) dependence of the 1980s."
(Sustainable Agriculture and Resistance: Transforming Food Production in Cuba,
Edited by Fernando Funes, Luis Garcia, Martin Bourque, Nilda Perez and Peter
Rosset. to be published in the US by Food First).
In 1997, the Cuban Ministry of Science, Technology and
the Environment organized a "Rio + 5" national consultation
workshop to evaluate Cuban compliance with the Rio accords (Agenda 21) on the
environment. For each aspect of the national environment plan such as resisting
desertification, sustainable development of the mountainous regions, and
sustainable agriculture, achievements were listed, difficulties identified and
proposals made. One obstacle to the development of sustainable agriculture was
" the existence of the opinion, at various levels, that the practice of a
sustainable agriculture is only a consequence of the special period and is
destined to disappear when the present limitations make it possible and there
will be a return to the high inputs of fertilizers, pesticides, mechanization,
etc." Thus there were people who shared Clark's views, but this was
regarded as retrograde by at least the middle 1990's.
What makes agroecology a better model? Contrary to the
claims of the high-tech boosters, it is economical. For instance a comparison
of costs of biological and chemical control of pests in Cuba showed that in
horticultural crops biological control cost about 1/3 the cost of chemical
control, in grasses 1/8, in plantain 1/10, in rice 1/3.
The biological control included the raising and release
of beneficial insects, fungi and bacteria, application of extracts of
botanicals, enhancement of local natural enemies of pests and other methods.
One reason for the economical performance is that whereas spraying has to be
repeated regularly, once ants are introduced into a banana plantation they
spread throughout it in about six weeks and then protect the crop at least as
well as the repeated spraying does. There is still room for further cost
reduction as we move from input substitution to ecosystem design.
Intercropping of different kinds of plants in the same
field is partly for pest control but also has other advantages, and in the
right combinations is more productive than monoculture. We represent this
increased productivity by the LER (land equivalency ratio), the amount of land
in monoculture needed to get the same yield as one hectare of
intercropping. For instance one hectare of intercropped cassava , tomato
and maize yields as much as almost 2 hectares of these crops planted
separately. Finally, I want to cite the integration of animals with crops. For
instance 7-13 sheep grazing in a hectare of citrus grove produce some 343-596
kg live weight without harming citrus production, while horses can play a major
role in weed suppression in citrus. Geese did not work well-- they nibbled the
leaves of young trees.
Studies in the United States and other countries also
show that organic methods are usually at least as good as the high-tech,
especially when the weather conditions are unfavorable.
Contrary to the capitalist notion of efficiency through
specialized monocultures, the future of Cuban agriculture will be a mosaic of
land uses in which each area, besides providing some harvestable products, also
contributes to the production of other areas. Forests yield wood, charcoal,
honey, and nuts, modulate the flow of water so as to reduce dependence on
pumping irrigation water, are a refuge for beneficial insects, birds and bats,
and create special microclimates around their edges to a distance of about 10
times the height of the trees. Pastures produce livestock but also retard
erosion compared to row crops, produce manure and house swarms of pollinators
and predators, and so on. The sizes of these patches depends on the physical
conditions, the landscape, the mobility of the relevant insects, and similar
factors. So there is no absolute rule that large scale is economical and modern
while small is backward, nor is there an absolute rule that "small is
beautiful". The ecology dictates the sizes of units of production within the
larger units of planning.
Cubans and researchers in other countries have shown
that ecological and organic production methods can be more productive, more
economical and certainly more protective of the environment and the workers and
consumers than high tech methods considered as the most "modern" in
the capitalist world. Organic methods are being extended gradually as the
appropriate techniques are developed. There are now projects for the
development of organic production of sugar, coffee, citrus and other export
crops. The new methods have to be introduced gradually, with careful
preparation of technicians and farmers so that it will be done correctly. Not
any old combination of crops give good yield, desisting from spraying chemicals
is not organic pest control, and careless introduction of what seem like O.K.
ideas could discredit the whole program. Therefore at present most agriculture
includes a mixture of organic and semi-organic methods with progressive
reduction of chemical use, while urban agriculture is almost totally organic.
Roughly half of Cuba's vegetable production is organic, as is all the urban
production. Butts is right that chemicals are used in the production of sugar,
rice, coffee and indeed of other crops. But for all of them, there are programs
for the reduction of chemical inputs. Transplanting of rice and mulching of
sugar cane are weed control methods that reduce herbicides. Wasps are raised in
on-farm insectaries for use against the sugar cane borer. The whole strategy is
one of progressive reduction of chemical inputs as the alternatives are
developed.
Perhaps it is unfair to use data to which Clark had no
access. And yet the core of the Marxist methodology is to start with the
concrete and build theoretical argument from real experience. Clark got it all
wrong empirically and also methodologically and theoretically. Perhaps the core
error is his view of scientific and technical progress.
Science and technology have a dual nature: they are
certainly part of the general development of the knowledge and capability of
the human species. But they are also the specific products of particular
societies and meet the goals of the owners of those societies. This gives rise
to a pattern of knowledge and ignorance chosen by the owners of the knowledge
industry who recruit the scientists, set the research agendas and determine the
uses of science. It is necessary to acknowledge both aspects of this
contradiction and therefore both to appreciate modern science and to criticize
it. Marx and Engels were enthusiastic advocates of Darwin, yet also criticized
his Whig (that is, liberal) gradualism. The Science for the People movement in
the 1960s-1970s in this country and similar groups internationally have
struggled with this reality. Their perspective advanced from a criticism of the
misuses of science for war, to a criticism of the exclusion of working class
people, Afro-Americans and women of all races from scientific leadership, to
finally an examination of the very content of the science as it evolves
according to the needs of industry and the prevailing philosophies. In the end,
the struggle between high-tech chemicalized agriculture and ecological
agriculture is also between mechanistic/reductionist and dialectical
views of nature and of science.
But too often socialists fall into a passive
progressivism that sees only one side of the contradiction, imagines only one
pathway of progress along which things are either more advanced or more
backward. Then they imagine that capitalist technique can be adopted lock,
stock and barrel to socialist ends. This admiration of bourgeois technology
without also an active critique of that technology was one of the elements in
the disastrous history of Soviet industry.(These technical choices in turn
could of course be linked to evolving class structures in that country. The
uncritical admiration for capitalist pathways of development reached their
extreme in Brezhnev's reliance on the "scientific-technical
revolution" to save the Soviet Union). With this approach it is possible
to sneer, with Clark, at the use of animal traction as having been a novelty in
neolithic times and to misrepresent the critique of capitalist technology as
anti-science. The reality is that agricultural science and technology developed
to invent those production methods which can be commodities for sale to
farmers, and within the framework of capitalist reductionist philosophy.
The major steps in the advance of agricultural methods
were : the adoption of the industrial steam engine as a stationary energy
source for threshing in the 19th century; from the automobile industry the
differential gear that gave us the tractor for mechanization; from surplus
gunpowder productive capacity after the first world war to nitrogen fixation
and chemical fertilizer; from chemical warfare in the first world war to
pesticides, and finally with modern plant breeding a branch of research
designed specifically for agriculture. Plant breeders aimed at the creation of
hybrid seed not because that is the best way to improve yield but because
hybrid seed do not breed true, and farmers would have to buy a new supply of
hybrid seed every year. The particular pattern of research reflects the fact
that not all knowledge is equally commodifiable. A toxic chemical can be
bottled and sold to farmers whereas knowledge of predatory ants can at most be
sold as a Hints for Farm and Garden column.
Even within the framework of capitalist development, new
methods do not simply replace old ones. Rather the older forms that were
universal now become specialized and continue to evolve. There is still a role
for propeller aircraft, sailboats, hand tools. Modern medicine does not replace
herbal medicine but can incorporate it. And Cuban farmers have found that
animal traction has its place. Oxen have a different impact on the soil from
tractors and are able to work after heavy rains where tractors would only
destroy the soil. The idea is not to replace mechanization but to combine it
with animal use as appropriate. In my youth I farmed in the central cordillera
of Puerto Rico on land too steep for tractors or even oxen. So I have no
sentimental nostalgia for the back-breaking work of preparing a heavy clay soil
with a hoe nor yearn for neolithic simplicity. And I can tell the difference
between reverting to less effective technologies and inventing new ones that
incorporate past knowledge.
Every society develops its own way of relating to the
rest of nature and of conceiving of that relation. Cuban socialism is creating
its own ecology-- a landscape that brings agriculture into the cities and
industry to the countryside, designs a food production system that is robust in
the face of uncertainty, protective of peoples' health, preserves biodiversity,
water resources and soil, that recycles within the farm and regionally, and is
minimally dependent on external inputs. It is doing this in many ways-- through
programs against desertification and salinization, through reforestation,
integration of cropping and livestock, ecological agriculture, and is supported
by a creative network of professional and nonprofessional innovators. There is
a growing realization in Cuba that the rising standard of living to which we
all aspire will not be achieved by unlimited increases in the consumption of energy
and matter but in a rising quality of life in which a better relation with the
rest of nature is an important element. Ecological agriculture is one aspect of
an emerging socialist pattern of relating to the rest of nature, a new mode of
eco-social production.
The social role of organic agriculture in the United
States is quite different from that in Cuba. The present organic movement
represents a coming together of organic growers, looking for reduced dependence
on the corporations, some of whom are of urban origin and chose farming for
life style reasons, consumer co-ops and other groups concerned with quality
food, health advocates who saw pesticides as carcinogens and destroyers of
biodiversity, and agricultural scientists who would have liked to farm but
can't afford to buy land, who dedicate themselves instead to serving the
organic community.
In the northeast, NOFA (Northeast Organic Farming
Association) links small producers, artisans, consumer groups and innovators in
a generally progressive movement in conflict with monopolized agriculture. They
have been inventing ways of reducing costs so that the working people of our
cities can also get the better quality food they deserve. But as organic
farming becomes more popular, big investors become interested and there has
been a struggle within organic farming between capitalist commercial growers
and the initiators of the movement. Recently this conflict has focused on the
rules of certification of organic food. The USDA has taken control of certification
away from the organic farming organizations and has pushed for lower standards
more congenial to the big producers.
Clark rejects organic farming as an idealist solution.
But a solution to what? He sets up a straw petit bourgeois when he suggests
that organic farming under capitalism is offered as an alternative to
revolutionary struggle. It is "merely" a struggle for safer food
production and better quality food.
Finally, there is the question of the genetically modified
organisms (GMO's). Clark endorses them as a way to produce abundance in a
hungry world. He thinks he found a great inconsistency in the critics of
genetically engineered crops when he points out that critics of GMO's in
agriculture did not criticize the use of genetically modified bacteria to
produce insulin. The obvious difference between these two cases is that if
something goes wrong in the industrial production of insulin it is possible to
shut down the fermenters ands clean them out, but if things go wrong in nature
they cannot be recalled so easily. The issue is not one of principle,
"for" or "against" GMO's. Rather it is one of applying four
tests before accepting a technology:
1.
Is
it necessary?
In this case, is world hunger caused by the lack of food or productive
capacity? According to the UN's World Food program, there is enough food in the
world today for 12 billion people. Despite local and regional crop failures
that do cause hunger, the basic cause is that food is a commodity and that the
need for food is not supported by "effective demand", that farmers
are displaced by agribusiness aiming at high-value export crops, that people
are displaced from the land by wars and price squeezes, and that production is
aimed at profit, not feeding people.
2.
Would
the new technology do what it promises? Here the results are ambiguous. Initial successes in
laboratory trials are sometimes offset in the field when other factors enter.
3.
What
else does it do? We
know some of the obvious effects: tightening the control of the chemical
monopolies over food production and over farmers, promoting monocultures that
increase the dangers of pests. By building into the crops genes for pest
resistance the new varieties present the pests with pesticides even when they
are not a problem, encouraging a more rapid evolution of pesticide resistance.
The transfer of herbicide resistance from crops to weeds can produce herbicide
resistant weeds. And there are other, less probable but more disastrous
possibilities coming from the fact that introduced genes are mobile genes and
that when genes change their location in the genome their effects can be quite
different from what they did at home. The point here is not that any particular
introduction will cause a disaster but that the urge to patent and market
products in a hurry makes industry and their allies in government belittle
potential harm, not look for unexpected consequences and cover up hints of
harm.
4.
Are
there better alternatives? Here the answer is a definite yes. Even with so much less
research going into organic methods than chemical methods the results are
comparable. Ecologically sound agrotechnology is more stable, protects the
environment from pollution of ground waters and the air, protects farm workers
and consumers, reduces farmer dependence on the chemical companies and
therefore slows down the impoverishment of the countryside.
On the whole, Clark replaces a socialist view of the
complexities of scientific and technological development with a one-sided
liberal progressivist approach that accepts capitalism's claims that There IS
No Alternative. But a revolutionary movement has to challenge the destructive,
alienating nature of all aspects of capitalist society in order to build the
kind of movement that can liberate the working class and the whole of society.
Richard Levins; Harvard School of Public Health and The Institute of Ecology and Systematics of the
Cuban Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment
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