Fred Magdoff

By Fred Magdoff - Climate and Capitalism, October 24, 2017

SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE VERSUS CORPORATE GREED
Small Farmers, Food Security & Big Business
by Alan Broughton and Elena Garcia
Resistance Books (Australia), 2017

Many people in the wealthy industrialized countries are aware that there is much wrong with the development of large scale agriculture systems dominating their farming scene, but they may not be able to explain the variety and depth of the problems nor their source. This type of agriculture, in which single crops or a small number of crops are grown over vast acreages, is expanding from the north to huge areas of South America, especially in Brazil and Paraguay, and the raising of farm animals under crowded and cruel conditions is also spreading from the United States to other countries.

Sustainable Agriculture vs. Corporate Greed dissects the problems that farmers face, some of the social and ecological issues associated with large scale farming (including the takeover of land from small and medium scale farms), the various organizations resisting these trends, and possible alternatives. While the authors are Australian and many of the examples they use are from that country, much of what is discussed applies to other countries and there is some attention to other parts of the world and the global scene as a whole.

The short book (just under 90 pages) is in two parts. The first, by Alan Broughton, is an overall discussion of the economic and social issues of contemporary agriculture mainly in the industrial countries. The difficulties that farmers face have been clear for some time, with a declining proportion of what people spend on food going to farmers. With the exception of short periods of time when raw commodity prices are high (usually resulting from somewhat tight supplies and financial speculation in the commodities markets), low prices force farmers to reduce costs as much as possible and for many the end of the story is selling out to large scale operations that have both physical economies of scale as well as financial economies of scale, allowing them to continue operating.

Hard times (low farm commodity prices), and new technologies encourage ever larger farms, as described in a recent Wall Street Journal article headlined “Supersized Family Farms Are Gobbling Up American Agriculture.” (October 24, 2017) The article, featuring a 30,000 acre (12,000 hectare) farm in Kansas, points out that “three-quarters of America’s farmed cropland is controlled by 12% of farms” and that 4 percent of U.S. farms (those with sales of $1 million or more) produce “two-thirds of the country’s agriculture output.” This has caused a major restructuring of farming, resulting in massive losses of farms. Because owners of a large farm (and their workers) spend less money locally than many small farmers once did, the economies of small rural communities decline.

The many problems associated with contract farming and poor working conditions of farm workers are discussed. Broughton also puts the prevalence of global hunger and malnutrition in perspective. He makes it clear that these are not the result of too many people or too little food, but rather the insufficient purchasing power of the poor and speculators driving up prices when food stocks are tight. The supposed benefits of “free trade” agreements and deregulation are debunked and their detrimental environmental and social costs examined.

The supposed greater efficiency of large farms is shown to be only true of labor efficiency. Large farms almost always produce more crops and animals per worker, as machinery and chemical inputs substitute for labor, as happens with mechanization of industrial production.

However, large farms do not have an advantage in terms of production of crops per unit area (hectare or acre). Small farms, using multi- cropping, good rotations, and other agroecological techniques can actually produce more food per hectare than large farms. With so many small farmers still producing about half of all food, helping them use agroecological techniques is an important task, keeping people from migrating to urban areas (where there are frequently no jobs) and creating more vibrant communities.

Fred Magdoff interviewed by Michael Ware - Socialist Worker, September 6, 2017

IS THERE reason to believe that global warming made Hurricane Harvey more intense than it would have been?

YES, ABSOLUTELY. The oceans are warmer, and the Gulf of Mexico in particular has warmed significantly--this year is the warmest of all.

The warmer the water, the more easily water can evaporate, and a warmer atmosphere can hold more water, so you have that aspect as well. Storms in general have been getting more intense--not just this particularly intense storm.

There's another factor as well: The poles are warming faster than the middle of the earth, causing less of a gradient between the temperatures in both places. This affects the atmospheric transfer--that is, the jet streams. One of the predicted effects of this is that weather patterns will slow down--things won't move as fast as they normally would.

This is one of the factors that made Harvey so devastating: it stuck around. It moved a little bit, but in a circle, and it made landfall again and again. I wouldn't be surprised if this is part of the reason why it stayed so long before it started moving out toward the Northeast. That's also an effect of human activity and global warming.

But the major factor is that there's more evaporation from the large bodies of water, the atmosphere holds more water, and we have more intense storms in general.

By Mark Karlin - Truthout, August 20, 2017

Is a world possible based on equitable needs, empathy and sustainable economics? Two authors believe so -- and that it would require the end of capitalism: Fred Magdoff and Chris Williams, who co-wrote Creating an Ecological Society. In this Truthout interview, Magdoff -- a professor emeritus of plant and soil science at the University of Vermont -- shares his vision of how we could move toward such a world. 

Mark Karlin: In summary, what would an ecological society look like to you?

Fred Magdoff: We know an incredible amount about how to use ecologically sound ways to produce what we need for a good life. Although we will learn even more as time goes on, we already know such things as how to grow high yields of food and how to create healthy soils using ecologically sound practices (without synthetic pesticides and fertilizers) and how to produce cleaner energy using renewable sources and how to store energy from intermittent sources such as wind and solar. We know how to build appropriate and flexible-use structures (making for easy repurposing), how to better recycle human wastes uncontaminated with industrial pollutants back to farmland and to raise farm animals humanely, how to harvest ocean fish sustainably and how to use aquifers sustainably.

Under capitalism, people are at the service of the economy, as workers and consumers of goods and services. In contrast, the economy of an ecological society will be at the service of humanity and its needs, which of course includes a biodiverse and clean environment with fully functioning natural flows and cycles. Instead of [being based on] the profit motive, decisions made about production and consumption of material goods will place emphasis on having positive effects on humans and the health of the broader environment.

The details of an ecological society will have to be worked out by the people as they are engaged in the struggle and the transition to a new society. But my vision is one in which people live in harmony with each other and the rest of the natural world. It is one of substantive equality and profound democracy, in which the people together decide what is needed for a good life and then ensure that everyone has access to these needs -- quality housing, food, clothing, health care, public transportation, sanitation facilities, clean water, clean air and so on. And we can't leave out access to varied educational, cultural and recreational possibilities, which, combined with meeting material needs, allow all people to fulfill their human potential, wherever their interests lead them. Workers will control the farms, factories, distribution centers, hospitals, etc. and, together with the surrounding communities, will decide what to produce and how to produce it, utilizing ecologically sound methods of interacting with the rest of the natural world.

It will be critical to operate in ways that maintain an egalitarian and democratic society. Transparency and openness need to be maintained. There are a variety of methods to help make that happen, such as simple processes for recall of unsatisfactory persons in positions of authority and regular rotation of positions within economic units and within social structures, such as community, regional and multi-regional councils. Continuing efforts will take place in schools and society at large to encourage pro-social traits needed in a cooperative society -- cooperation, reciprocity, sharing, empathy, treating all people equally and fairly (no favoritism) -- and to work to minimize the expression of traits emphasized and rewarded by capitalism (especially, greed, selfishness and individualism) and to eliminate the deep scourges of racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination and oppression.

By Seth Sandronsky - Progressive Populist, September 15, 2017

Review of - CREATING AN ECOLOGICAL SOCIETY Toward a Revolutionary Transformation by Fred Magdoff and Chris Williams, Monthly Review Press, 2017

A book for a future society of buen vivir, or living well, with nature and other people? Yes.

How to achieve sustainability with humanity and the planet? Start with context and vision to transcend the status quo of bio-sphere destruction.

Reform is a part of the revolutionary process, according to the authors. It is not an either-or binary.

The vision thing matters when it comes to the false consciousness of blaming other people for the system’s baked-in flaws. Dividing the working class to weaken it is elites’ go-to tactic.

We see that now. Look no further than President Trump directing whites’ class resentment against Mexicans and Muslims.

Memo to the Democratic Party. Move progressively or empower neo-fascism, a product of neoliberalism.

In Magdoff and Williams’ view, “systemic environmental and social problems are caused by and are intrinsic to capitalism.” To this end, they review the science and history of horticultural societies and climactic changes.

Ideas matter. “If we can’t even imagine a different way of interacting with one another,” write Magdoff and Williams, “the economy, and the resources we use and depend upon, then the struggle for a just and ecologically sound world recedes into utopian fantasy.”

How? In the final of the book’s four parts, the authors see nascent revolutionary stirrings such as Black Lives and the Standing Rock resistance against the Dakota Access pipeline as a revolutionary way forward.

De-personalizing social relations in an era of identity politics run amuck is on our to-do list of how to get to a more ecologically balanced way of living and working. About 40% of the book unpacks the causes and outcomes of our socio-economic order.

Magdoff and Williams contribute to a growing body of eco-socialist books. Two of note are The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth (2010) and Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System (2016).

To buttress the case that post-capitalist alternatives are possible, the authors share examples from nature and history to help us to grasp competition and division are peculiar to capitalism. The authors’ command of the science of ecology is not limited to Marx’s concept of capitalism causing a rift in the human metabolism with the earth.

The book’s second part explores the obstacles to creating an eco-society. The authors examine the ideas underpinning the rule of capital over people, e.g., that oppression and exploitation along the color, ethnic and gender lines are hard-wired into human nature.

The authors’ voice is measured. They lay out the facts of the eco-crisis and potential cures, minus cant and jargon.

This is no mean feat, given the current bleakness and darkness of the present moment. If anything, Magdoff and Williams understate ruling elites’ capacity to co-opt and oppress systemic resistance.

They write: “Ultimately, we need to create a movement large and formidable enough to challenge the entire power structure of capitalism, one that is capable of winning the army and large portions of the population that up to that point had been passive, ambivalent, or even antagonistic.” Such a herculean task merits extended attention and discussion, to which Creating an Ecological Society contributes.

By Fred Magdoff - Monthly Review, September 2016

Two weeks ago I returned from my fiftieth class reunion at Oberlin College in Ohio. The brief discussions I had there with environmental faculty and students left me feeling a bit dazed. So many good and intelligent people, so concerned, and doing what they think and hope will help heal the environment—this college has one of the best environmental education programs in the country. However, I was left disappointed and profoundly discouraged by the lack of discussion—or even interest in having a real continuing discussion and debate—regarding the root causes of our environmental disasters. Not just climate change, but also pollution of the air, water, soil, and living organisms, the loss of biodiversity both aboveground and in the soil, the extinction of species, and the overuse and misuse of both renewable and nonrenewable natural resources.

It is as though there is a flat tire with perhaps a thousand holes and people are working on the best way to patch this hole or that one. No one there seems to consider that the problem might be the tire itself—that the design and materials utilized are not appropriate to the way it is being used. And, if that is the case, then no amount of patching can solve the flat tire problem. It is of the utmost importance to be able to distinguish between symptoms (that most people call “problems” or “crises”) and underlying causes.

I ran into this confusion between symptoms and underlying causes time and time again in agricultural science and farming practices. Soils may be prone to erosion, store little water, grow crops that are susceptible to diseases and insect attack, become compacted, or have low fertility. Farmers (and extension specialists), usually think of and deal with these as individual problems—using pesticide applications, lots of commercial fertilizers, irrigating more frequently, using heavier equipment, and so on. In fact, I spent a significant portion of my career as a soil scientist helping to deal with the negative side effects of one of these responses—excess fertilizer use, especially nitrogen and phosphorus.

(As an aside, as I was preparing this talk, an unbelievable thirty-five tons of nitrogen in the nitrate form, worth approximately $35,000, flowed down the Raccoon River past Des Moines, Iowa, on the way to the Mississippi and the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico. This flushing of nitrate out of the soil by prolonged spring rains, partially the result of nitrate left over after last year’s drought [2012], was mainly a consequence of an ecologically damaging, but profitable, emphasis on growing corn and soybeans without an ecologically sound crop rotation.)

However, what I learned over time was that in reality these are symptoms of an unhealthy soil and a simplified approach to soil and crop management. The same is true of never-ending unemployment, inequality and poverty, the systemic necessity of perpetual growth, and pollution of air, water, soil, and organisms. As harmful as each of these is, they are all only symptoms—of an economic system that is essentially unmanaged. Of course large corporations and politicians that represent them try to manage national and international laws, regulations, and markets in such ways that it becomes easier for them to make more money. But with individual corporations and other private capital making decisions which consider only their own interests, the system as a whole alternates between periods of growth (that nowadays are pretty lackluster) and periods of recession. Addressing individual symptoms alone is not sufficient for the tasks we need to undertake—either to create healthy soils or to create an ecologically based and humane society.

One of the neglected issues regarding thinking and acting about the environment—perhaps the most critical of all—is, to borrow a phrase from the first President Bush, the vision thing. The environmental movement is lacking any kind of meaningful vision as to what a truly ecologically sound and socially just society would look like and how it might operate. I am not talking about a blueprint with all sorts of details, but rather an agreement on essential characteristics of such a system. Without a vision—including some conception of the essential parts of such a system, the chances of actually getting to such a society are essentially zero. Or, as James Baldwin put it in a commonly cited but still very appropriate passage, “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” It is my contention that we are not facing the root cause of our problems, and until we do, there is no hope of solving the social and ecological problems confronting the world.

By Fred Magdoff - NYC Climate Convergence, September 20, 2014

A. The Environmental Crisis

The "environmental crisis" is actually a number of crises, including the following:

1. climate change;
2. acidification of the oceans (related to elevated atmospheric CO2 levels);
3. pollution of air, water, soil, and organisms with harmful substances;
4. degradation of agricultural soils;
5. destruction of wetlands and tropical forests; and
6. accelerated extinction of species.

These crises have generally adversely affected the poor more so than the wealthy and will probably continue to do so.  This makes it even more important to advance the fight for environmental justice as an integral part of the struggle for environmental health.

B. Proposed "Solutions" Are Based on Hypotheses as to Cause(s)

C. Suggested Causes for the Crisis

The famous Walt Kelly "Pogo" cartoon -- "WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND HE IS US" -- explains most of the "causes" that have been suggested to account for the horrendous environmental crises.  Some of these are outlined below.

The cartoon's implication when used in the context of an environmental discussion (and I witnessed its use in that way by a leading environmental educator) is that each of us personally or all humans together are responsible for what ails the environment and us.

Here are a number of the common explanations for the environmental crises:

• There are too many people in the world and we need to rapidly lower the population -- usually this is reflected in a call for birth control in the poor countries of the world, especially in Africa.  But as an article headline in the Guardian from just a few days ago states, "It's not overpopulation that causes climate change, it's overconsumption."  The article goes on to state, "Africa's population growth is often linked to ecological risk -- yet the real danger lies in the west's infinite appetite for resources."¹  If you look into this issue a little more, you will find that World Bank economists estimate that the wealthiest ten percent of people in the world consume almost sixty percent of the resources.  Thus, you might conclude that there actually is a population problem: there are too many rich people living too high off the hog.  The problem is certainly not the poor of the world who consume so little and contribute infinitesimally to the use of resources and pollution.  Birth control among poor people -- access to which should be a human right -- does not help solve the environmental crises.

• It's just human nature -- we're too darn greedy and don't care about the future.  For those taking that position, there is clearly nothing that can be done.

• Some say that humans have developed a "domination ethic" and need a new set of ethics that somehow we can create and inculcate in the people in the absence of a change in the social and economic system.

• It's our philosophy that's the problem -- we are following a "perpetual growth philosophy" or "paradigm" and we need a new non-growth philosophy (I presume that we should study philosophy and come up with a new one).

• People aren't purchasing the right kinds of products -- if we all bought "green" products we could solve the problem = green capitalism.  This includes purchasing more efficient cars and green household gadgets, clothes, food, etc.  So continue shopping as before, just buy better products.

• The problem is focus of economists and pundits on growth of GDP.  If only economists would focus their attention on something else . . . like Gross National Happiness . . . then we could be guided in a better direction.  The whole concept that economic growth in a capitalist economy is somehow a result of people focusing on GDP is rather strange, to say the least.

• Industrial society is the problem -- we need to return to a pre-industrial society.  This will necessitate a lot fewer people (billions).  This is a variation of the theme that there are just too many people, but this approach has a different constituency than those who believe that there are just-too-many-people.

• The next suggested "cause" doesn't blame people and begins to see that perhaps the workings of the economy might be the problem.  This approach considers that the "externalities" of capitalism are the problem -- not the system itself.  These "by-products" of doing business as far as companies are concerned (that they do not pay for) become social costs that affect us all, that we all pay for.  Those who maintain that the externalities are the problem (instead of symptoms) feel that we should use market-based approaches, laws, and regulations to resolve the system's "externalities."  These includes a) campaign finance reform (to take away the power of money in politics); b) new business models; c) making products that will be more durable, versatile, and easy to repair, with components that can be reused or recycled; d) privatizing and marketing or trading "ecosystem services"; e) tradable carbon credits; f) carbon-offset schemes; g) using the "precautionary" principle in all economic activities, etc.

By Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster - Monthly Review, March 2010

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

For those concerned with the fate of the earth, the time has come to face facts: not simply the dire reality of climate change but also the pressing need for social-system change. The failure to arrive at a world climate agreement in Copenhagen in December 2009 was not simply an abdication of world leadership, as is often suggested, but had deeper roots in the inability of the capitalist system to address the accelerating threat to life on the planet. Knowledge of the nature and limits of capitalism, and the means of transcending it, has therefore become a matter of survival. In the words of Fidel Castro in December 2009: “Until very recently, the discussion [on the future of world society] revolved around the kind of society we would have. Today, the discussion centers on whether human society will survive.”1

I. The Planetary Ecological Crisis

There is abundant evidence that humans have caused environmental damage for millennia. Problems with deforestation, soil erosion, and salinization of irrigated soils go back to antiquity. Plato wrote in Critias:

What proof then can we offer that it [the land in the vicinity of Athens] is…now a mere remnant of what it once was?…You are left (as with little islands) with something rather like the skeleton of a body wasted by disease; the rich, soft soil has all run away leaving the land nothing but skin and bone. But in those days the damage had not taken place, the hills had high crests, the rocky plane of Phelleus was covered with rich soil, and the mountains were covered by thick woods, of which there are some traces today. For some mountains which today will only support bees produced not so long ago trees which when cut provided roof beams for huge buildings whose roofs are still standing. And there were a lot of tall cultivated trees which bore unlimited quantities of fodder for beasts. The soil benefitted from an annual rainfall which did not run to waste off the bare earth as it does today, but was absorbed in large quantities and stored in retentive layers of clay, so that what was drunk down by the higher regions flowed downwards into the valleys and appeared everywhere in a multitude of rivers and springs. And the shrines which still survive at these former springs are proof of the truth of our present account of the country.2

What is different in our current era is that there are many more of us inhabiting more of the earth, we have technologies that can do much greater damage and do it more quickly, and we have an economic system that knows no bounds. The damage being done is so widespread that it not only degrades local and regional ecologies, but also affects the planetary environment.