Our Farmers are Important Because…
Talking about the subsidies given to farmers… are they right or wrong? Given that the principles of globalisation are to promote free trade then why should governments subsidise farmers? I’ll give you something to consider…
Farmers are not itinerant workers easily replaced. Farmers are the sum total of socio-generational knowledge and experience with the specific land that they farm – and nowdays they’re incorporating into companies and getting university qualifications in agricultural science, making them even more valuable. Growing food effectively and efficiently takes a lot more effort and skill than poking some seeds into a hole and hoping that nature will run its course. Every farmer who leaves the land is going to be hugely expensive to replace… don’t look at Centrelink or other welfare queues to fill those employment demands in a hurry.
Second, food is no longer grown locally for local consumption. We’ve bought into the idea of growing food half a world away from the market, which ties food prices to petrol prices because transport by sea, road, rail and air consumes an ever-depleting resource. The early consumption of oil reserves is going to bite us – low food prices will inevitably become high food prices as fuel costs of bringing this cheap produce to market gets more prohibitive.
Growing food locally not only ensures that your population can sustain itself even when the world sees us as unpopular (commonly called war)… it means the carbon footprint of a tomato or potato or leek is minimised dramatically with local production for local markets. What we’re experiencing at present are unnaturally low prices that fails to look beyond the short term profits. In the longer term – I mean real life longer term not corporate 2-5 years – food will not remain dirt cheap and we will be forced to grow locally again. Recently I heard that if Europe’s highways and ports were to suffer a major issue they only possess three week’s food supply.
When you think about the gravity of that statement, it becomes obvious how fragile the globalised food economy is with regard to sustainable societal functionality. For anyone doubting that the glue of civilization is linked to food and shelter – I’d suggest you look at New Orleans post-calamity. Humanity, indeed civilization, teeters on our ability to feed the populations on a day to day basis – call it the Food Liquidity Principle. Once we fail to deliver our short term obligations on the ground then all bets are off. So, sustaining local primary industry is essential as a backstop – we do need to heavily subsidise farmers regardless of the economic inefficiencies of that process.
A third reason why farmers are important is because each and every government owes a moral obligation to their citizens to ensure the population can feed itself. The truth of that should be moot, but people will still argue that the bottom line over-rides any moral obligation. I disagree strongly. Your government has an inherent duty of care over your welfare.
So, without really stretching my head, I can say that a truely free market does not suit every country and every industry. Its not just about cheaper food and market efficiencies… its about the big picture.
The more I learn about globalisation the greater the dissonance that I experience between what I have to say as an MBA student and what I see as a thinking rational (ungreedy) human on the planet. I think we should pay our farmers to stay on the land if we have to… because we’re going to need them eventually. Think of them as rainy day food insurance…
… and God help us if we ever need to learn how to actually manufacture the basics again! Where would we start?
