Author of Finding Lights in a Dark Age, Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future and A Small Farm Future
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Posted on April 28, 2014 | 20 Comments
Following on from a recent post of mine and from Clem’s comment therein about thinking of food and land in terms of private property with protections through the rule of law, I’ve been musing a bit on this issue and thought I’d mention a few things here that touch on it.
One of them is an interesting article by Guardian journalist John Harris called ‘The Tories own the future – the left is trapped in the past’. Leftwingers of the Twitterversity were quick to brand him a traitor to the left but I thought much of the article was bang on, even though I’ve got to say that it seems to me the Tories are trapped in the past too. Disclaimer: John is a near neighbour of mine here in Frome and a tireless campaigner for a relocalisation of the economy, but I don’t know him personally and carry no particular torch here.
I won’t dwell at length on all the implications of John’s article. What particularly struck a chord with me was his argument that the Conservative party is embracing a notion of trying to keep up in the ‘global race’, in which the industrious, the supple and the adaptable will be rewarded, while the lazy, staid and complacent will be punished. Witness Nick Clegg’s repeated derision for what he calls the ‘stop the world I want to get off’ view (OK, I know Clegg isn’t strictly speaking a Tory, but c’mon, let’s not split hairs). This plays to a common national self-image of hardworking, go-getting, self-reliance, in contrast to the moaning about welfare rights and protecting public services associated with the traditional left. It’s a more modern and globalised take on the way Margaret Thatcher pinched the working class vote from Labour in the 1980s by appealing to everybody’s inner shopkeeper (of course, there’s something of an affinity between shopkeepers and peasants, the latter being this blog’s favourite kind of people – shame that Thatcher lost touch with her inner peasant, and opted to help usher in neoliberalism rather than neopopulism).
One major problem, though, is that Britain’s chance of winning the global race, or even getting a sniff of the podium, is zero (some other nice articles in the Guardian recently, such as this one and this one have pointed out contrarily how working people generally are very well aware of this, and pursue other goals when possible). Ha Joon Chang’s book 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism explains why quite effectively. And David Harvey’s book The Enigma of Capital, which I’m currently reading and will post something about soon, explains why we probably shouldn’t be trying. Whatever the case, the Coalition’s lack of a Plan B means that we’re skating on thin ice.
In terms of my personal politics, I like the traditional left’s emphasis on civic amenities, its ethic of community-wide care, and its recognition that it’s morally wrong (as well as politically short-sighted) to condone major and persistent inequalities. But I’m also drawn to somewhat more rightwing sensibilities: shit happens, you have to make the best of it without trying to find somebody to blame and the best way to do it is to cultivate your self-reliance. I’ve found my current occupation as a self-employed farmer highly educative in relation to this latter set of values, and I think it would be good if a lot more people did it. I’m under no illusions that I’ve achieved a significant degree of self-reliance, but farming has certainly helped me both develop my capacities of self-reliance and appreciate my limitations in respect of them. To obtain protection from weather, clean water, a healthy and fertile soil, a stock of domestic animals and plants, fuel and machinery, and, ultimately, food and fibre for myself and money for other things by selling food to others is no easy thing, and it ties me to the labours of so many other people living and dead.
My suspicion is that many people with well paid jobs and grid-connected homes in thoroughly domesticated neighbourhoods who talk about the virtues of self-reliance really have very little clue about what that truly means, and how the kind of anti-collectivist policies they advocate render self-reliance impossible for a huge swathe of humanity. Many such versions of ‘self-reliance’ really are nothing of the sort: they’re a distorted culture of narcissism, as discussed with a remarkable prescience towards my analysis by the late American cultural historian Christopher Lasch in his book The Culture of Narcissism. And the pro-globalisation, anti-‘stop the world’ rhetoric represents an almost millenarian belief in ‘progress’ as an ideology, a kind of true and only heaven: a concept of mine again astonishingly prefigured by Lasch in his book The True and Only Heaven: Progress and its Critics. Harvey is also very good on the rhetoric of liberty, self-reliance and privatisation masking what he calls the “incredible centralisation of wealth and power observable in all those countries that took the neoliberal road”. But, as I say, more on Harvey soon.
So when, inevitably, we lose the global race, when we find that the global bus indeed has not stopped for us, what then? Harris talks of the demise of steady wage labour, the ageing of the population, and the increasingly problematic reach of the central state as key problems for the left to confront. It’s interesting to put them into the context of a relocalised food economy and a repeopled farming sector. I’m noticing youngish, well-educated thirtysomething people wanting to get into farming because they sense that it’s an issue for the future and because they can already see that the writing’s on the wall for notions of a steady and fulfilling career as employees in the information society. A young guy here in Frome is setting up a herb business, because there’s no other way he can find work. One of the problems for we latter day agrarian populists is that it’s difficult to argue for a mass people’s movement of farmers, when less than 1% of the population is in farming. But maybe running and then losing the global race will hasten the emergence of a repeopled farming community. It won’t be easy trying to wrest the farm estate from landed wealth, and then insulating ourselves from free trade ideology without thereby giving it back to the landed aristocracy by the back door. Still, I’m hopeful that these young people or later generations of them will succeed, be able to farm, and be able to judge the success of their on-farm actions in relation to their wider social projects, as per the ideas of Paul Richards I mentioned in another post.
Anyway, I think I agree with Clem’s instincts that private property with protections through the rule of law generally isn’t a bad way to go – not because private property is universally desirable, but because it’s a model that we understand well here and that has certain benefits so long as we make sure the legal protections are good and we don’t put the economists in charge. On this front, I had an interesting little discussion recently with Ford Denison on his Darwinian Agriculture blog about the ‘tragedy of the commons’ concept. As I suggested there, my feeling is that left-leaning enthusiasts of common property regimes are way too romantic about what those entail in practice, but right-leaning enthusiasts of private property regimes are way too romantic in their turn about the capacity of private property to deliver public goods – they also tend to mythologise concepts such as competition and efficiency, though both have their place. I subsequently came across Simon Fairlie’s brilliant historical analysis of common property regimes in Britain (after which Hardin modelled his influential but misleading ‘tragedy of the commons’ concept) and their destruction through enclosure. The ‘Private Interest and Common Sense’ section towards the end is especially thought-provoking. So yes, private property with protections through the rule of law undergirding a people-intensive farming sector is something I’d like to see, but as a way of delivering community welfare, not as an a priori economic ideology. The difficulties and contradictions of realising it is something I’ll try to come back to in future posts – and the unfulfilled promise of 19th/early 20th century agrarian populism in the USA touched on by Clem and Brian’s discussion is a key legacy to reckon with.
In the mean time, here’s a novel thought in answer to the Cleggist programme of trying to win the global race:
the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
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Amen, brother! Here I am killing a little time before a tornado laden storm system hits our valley. And, I thought, I wonder if Chris has posted a new blog?
Coming from a position over the years of left-of-the-totem-pole, I’ve wrestled with the farming self-reliance vs. the suburban pull-yourself up by the bootstraps delusion of the right.
I’ve settled on a definition of left-agrarianism. Private property and community, in moderation! Awkward when stitching on a banner and it doesn’t really resonate when chanting. But the left has not really tackled or dealt with issues of climate change and peak resources. They’ve disintegrated into pointless identity politics. Those politics only seem to have resonance in global economy on an upwards trajectory. We ain’t going that direction, I’m sad to say. And the right is equally wed to that trajectory.
Can one be a Wendell Berry-ite?
Cheers,
Brian
PS I happened to be in England in ’89 during something called the poll tax riots. Your recent London foray seemed a bit tamer. Perhaps that is a good thing.
On being a Wendell Berry-ite… absolutely, and why not? There are so many poorer approaches one might pursue. I imagine it would be really cool to farm across the road from Wendell – but perhaps even more interesting would be the chance to visit with him in the evening of long hot summer day over a glass of ice tea (or fermented barley beverage) all the while watching the cows stroll back across the pasture.
I will also imagine most of the folks I live among would not find such an evening’s activity very stimulating. Such is their loss, but it offers a segue to another thought – individual aspirations. And its my hunch you might have something like that in mind by saying ‘Private property and community, in moderation!’ Community (to me) offers both the chance (and requirement) to share in local efforts while enabling some freedom to pursue individual goals as other members of the community respect privacy as necessary.
Perhaps the measure is a balance between rugged individualism and ‘Hail fellow well met’.
Clem,
Thanks for the comment to what was a bit off the cuff. But your “hail fellows” gets to one of the core elements of the small farm resurgence. And that is the project of recreating or nurturing community. On my own blog I recently addressed in a light hearted fashion this notion in our culture that everyone wants to descend on our farm if “things fall apart.” That notion bothered me. We can’t wait until it is too late to nurture those seeds of conviviality or neighborly self-reliance.
Have you ever read any of the Distributists? A British lay Catholic organization that tried to create a new self-reliant British peasantry, as near as I can make out. Not my cup of tea. But I appreciate the impulse and their emphasis on small homestead ownership, family life and pubs. A recent anthology of their writings was issued “Flee To The Fields”.
We need more efforts to create fellowship in tandem with the small farm resurgence. In my mind that might be our best hope for getting through this coming century. We try a lot of experiments on our farm to foster those ties in the community. Neither of us attend church and that rules out the main way our neighbors interact. But we host a lot of backyard dinners, mushroom foraging forays, watching the full moon rise, bonfires, workshops, fence mending exercises with neighbors and plenty of sitting on the front porch with neighbors, fermentable beverages and banjos.
At the very least creating good will might limit needless aggression if things do get nasty. At the most optimistic they provide a seed of ethno-genesis. A self-myth, if you will, to help our valley society define itself and its relationship with its members.
Cheers,
Brian
Had not heard of the Distributists… will need to follow up on them. Sounds interesting. Thanks!
Had seen your blog post on folk descending on the farm if events go sideways. I wonder if they have a more comfortable (relaxed?) world view if they imagine your farm as ‘shelter from the storm’? [Dylan lyric seems to fit with other musical refs]
Church and children… either or both – do seem to be real community builders. Not sure how many folk I’ve come to know because they have children the same ages as our own. And now that the children have grown and married there are the extended families, and all their close friends. For my wife and I these folks are not in a close physical community (our valley – so to speak), but the group is getting pretty large.
Banjo pickin’ – great stuff. Unfortunately I can’t seem to carry a tune in a bucket. Hand clapping seems my only way to contribute to such merriment.
Yeah, I discovered the Distributists from Allan Carlson’s (a conservative writer) book Third Ways: how Bulgarian greens, Swedish housewives, and beer-swilling Englishmen created family-centered economies-and why they disappeared. The title alone was worth the coin for the book. But I was glad this blog of Chris’s mentioned Lasch. I was caught tight in the throes of my radical youth when I read some of his communitarian titles. I recall thinking that he might be on to something. But since he didn’t fit neatly in the left-right paradigm I embraced, I threw him out on the scrap heap.
It was many years later, after we started farming that the current blog topic hit home in a real way: real self-reliance vs. the suburban fantasy. Funny how the toil required to put food on your plate gives new meaning to the value of work. And, and these are linked, how having the power of life and death over livestock informs your compassion in a way that simple ideological cant never could. Something with your farming background as a kid you could probably speak to more eloquently.
As for the banjo’s, friends bring the musical instruments and handle the playing. I provide the homemade muscadine wine and mead.
After all, one must “play” to ones strengths.
The poll tax rebellion was very important to this country, it was a very serious two fingers up to power that led in a wiggly waggly path to the downfall of Thatcher. Chris, individual property rights protected by law with a strong culture of liberty, ethics and equality would be liberalism would it not? I’m not being flippant here, but, you know….Do they not have a song “The land the land” or something?
Tom,
During my one and only overseas trip I had a chance to tag along with a group in Edinburgh. There was a neighborhood network that came together when a deputy showed up to evict someone for non-payment of the poll tax. I was pretty impressed with the organization at a block level. I’m not sure we in the states have that sense of solidarity any more. My sense is that the plutaucracy has the best seat at the table and we are left looking for the crumbs.
My best,
Brian
No, the onus of the legal protection isn’t on protecting the property rights but on protecting the wider community from the consequences of the property rights. I’ll have to think a little more carefully about the political lineages involved – the above piece was fairly off the cuff, and certainly it’s hard not to be influenced by liberalism but there are other traditions I’m more drawn to that I think are compatible with the position I outlined, eg. civic republicanism, socialism, agrarian populism. Thanks for prompting me on this though.
Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems to me property rights can be protected by rule of law, and those without possession can also have recourse though rule of law as well. It may be a simple matter of which side of the coin one finds themselves on. Confidence in the execution of contracts is also quite significant – such that a contract can be considered property.
One of the difficulties in the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ conversation is the pasture is a commons, but the sheep are private property…
Yep, I agree – it’s just that the legal protection of private property rights gets a little too much of our attention these days I think (though of course it’s necessary), whereas legal protection against their consequences is under-emphasised. The Fairlie article I mentioned has a fantastic example of mixed private/common rights in pasture from Britain which touches on exactly your point.
I can’t seem to read one of your posts without then linking through to several others – you’ve cost me almost a full afternoon this way! 🙂
Thoughtful and thought-provoking, thanks for your efforts. Here, I could not help but think that the participants in this ‘global race’ fail to grasp that crossing the finish line seems clearly to represent more of a loss than a win.
Regarding the tragedy of the commons – I just happened to be rereading Greer’s analysis, thought it might interest you:
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2013/01/restoring-commons.html
Is it just me, or can anyone else see a tiny resemblance between John Harris and a young John Lennon and perhaps even the middle aged John Entwistle?
Does Mr Harris have any musical aptitude? This question popped to mind with your thought on Harris’ narrative:
“So when, inevitably, we lose the global race, when we find that the global bus indeed has not stopped for us, what then?”
Is the global bus somehow a ‘Magic Bus’ (Who)?
Is the global race an issue of ‘Baby You Can Drive My Car’ (Beetles)?
And now that I’ve gone to that much trouble remixing British Invasion with current concerns, can we also stitch in ‘We Don’t Get Fooled Again’; ‘Baba O’Riley’; ‘The Long and Winding Road’; and ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’…
This might not suggest who will own the future, but it makes a case for who has held a significant piece of the recent past.
Thanks for the comments above – my present workload precludes me from engaging with them as I should, but I found them interesting as ever. I’ll happily sign up to left agrarianism, and possibly to Wendell Berry-ism, though danger always lurks when we elevate individuals – look what happened to poor old Marx (I like his comment ‘whatever I am, I am not a Marxist’). And I really must read some Greer, as people keep pointing me to him. Clem, I don’t know if John Harris has musical aptitude, but he certainly writes a lot about UK popular music, so your suggestions are bang on target…
Forward thinkers such as yourself really feel the weight of history and the oppressive duty to neighbour. I’m very lucky, my hardy hard bitten Ukrainian ancestors knew a thing or two about establishing stable food systems for which I am hugely appreciative.
Green politics has failed, it can’t compete with the land grab for diminishing resources. If you watch children’s television not one program goes by without allusions to the major problems us adults have failed to grapple with. It is an entirely unfair burden to pass on to them, but unavoidable. Still, you can’t chant the mantra of self-sufficiency, austerity and personal productivity without going somewhat insane while looking at your near neighbours.
The topics are dizzying in their circular priority and do not match up to the inane wishful thinking of the powers.
In terms you’ll appreciate; The Association has to grow in in the shade of a resource hungry competitor. Only when that fair-weather organism collapses can it freely compete.
Not sure whether this goes under ‘Who owns the future’? or perhaps ‘Who farms the future’? but there is an interesting piece at:
http://proof.nationalgeographic.com/2014/04/30/finding-the-faces-of-farming-grains-and-groundnuts/
I believe this is a joint project of National Geographic and FAO. I found it interesting for its international flavor and for the fact that agronomists and plant breeders are mentioned. No soybean breeders this time, but I can be patient.
At the opposite end of Small Farm Future is one of the last pics: South Dakota wheat farmer Scott Dowling. According to the piece Scott farms 50,000 acres. And to put this in a certain frame of reference – our noble Vallis Veg estate would fit inside Mr Dowling’s little farm over 2,700 times. One can easily draw a rectangle to include Frome, Westbury, and Warminster (8 miles E-W and 5 miles N-S) which amounts to 40 square miles. Scott’s farm at 50,000 acres consumes 78+ square miles.
This is not intended to make anyone feel peasantish – though if one has that as a goal I suppose it could be used as evidence. To me it gives new meaning to broadacre…
He’s *definitely* not a kulak…
Geeze, no kidding. I’m feeling distinctly down scale.
Nice spot, Clem – perhaps he could do a guest feature on Small Farm Future?? Or maybe we could do a farm swap? Don’t think my morning walk around the holding would be quite the same.
50,000 acres = the global acreage available for about 11,000 people. Or room enough to settle almost 1% of Brazil’s landless workers!
In Manchester, the Kindling Trust identified that the small number of people able to get market far denying experience before starting a business was causing problems, they created Farmstart http://www.kindling.org.uk/farmstart, an ‘incubator’ for people to trial food growing businesses before going full-time. I am working on something similar, shared workspaces for food micro- & social-enterprises, one around growing and another a processing kitchen. Offshoots in Burnley is already well on with doing the same, currently building kitchens and taking the growing out I to the park with high value timber trees and plantings of winter wheat.
I have recently made a link to a group called Shared Assets. I wonder what you think of their vision for a new kind of commons? http://www.sharedassets.org.uk/policy/landing-a-social-economy/?utm_content=buffer62a9c&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
As I mentioned before, the National Trust inherited the movement to defend the historical commons, and took it middle class. We can create new ways to collectively own and manage shared assets, from the forestry commission woodlands to parks to reviving the legal obligation of councils to provide starter farms. It is not just about looking backwards, commons exist, we just don’t call them that, and have forgotten how to manage them in decentralised ways, to everyone’s detriment.
Interesting. I agree that commons exist by other names, and that collective land management is critical and needs fostering. In my experience it’s not always easy to do though, and can be a far from idyllic process. Alongside it I’d like to see a widening availability of private land for small scale farmers – I don’t really hold with the demonising of private landownership per se widespread amongst others on the left, though again preventing abuse and exclusivity in private ownership is no easy thing. Complex and interesting issues which alas I don’t have time to discuss in proper detail at the moment…but I’ll aim to come back to them again in the future. Thanks for commenting.