Why I Would Make A Terrible Businessman
I had a fit of ideology today. That's really a good thing, since it's been a while since I had one of those. A class of mine is reading "The Omnivore's Dilemma," which is a pretty awesome book. More about that in a minute. My buddy and I were talking yesterday and he said "Lets start a business." He was joking, making fun of that microsoft commercial where all the paper turns back into trees, but he got me thinking about that. The more I think about it, however, the more I realized I would make a truly awful businessman.
I don't care at all about economic viability. The whole idea of profitability coming before sustainability is one that has become insane to me. That fact makes me kin to about 2% of the people in the United States. Our culture has pretty much decided on capitalism and profits being the way to go. The more I learn about it, however, the more that I realize that the long term economic viability of something is entirely opposed to the long term ecological viability of the same thing. Take this apple I am eating right now.
(I really am eating that apple right now).
This apple is a Organic Granny Smith Apple, grown in Sedro-Woolley, Washington. This apple represents the struggle between economic and ecologic viability quite nicely. I paid $3.99 for 11 of these apples, making them about 36 cents a pop. Not to shabby. Also, its organic! Which means...not as much as it used to.
This is where the book I was reading comes in. The book has a whole chapter on Big Organic, and the difference between what the author calls "industrial organic" and small farms. This apple was most certainly grown in monoculture on a large acreage farm. Perhaps the grower used some of the "non-harmful" chemicals approved by the USDA. Also, remember that this apple was grown in Washington, so somebody had to stick it on a truck and drive the sucker all the way to Lexington, KY. Which means this apple has been as far west as I have.
Anyways, when you really look at the whole system, the inputs (monoculture, perhaps chemical fertilizer, petroleum) vastly outweigh the outputs (apple. 59 Calories.) This system is unsustainable.
A sustainable system would look like the one that organic looked like in the 60s and 70s (and is trying to get to again with the whole "buy local" phenomenon). Food is grown by small farmers in polyculture, by standards that dwarf the USDA's. No chemicals, no genetic modifiers, etc. The food also is grown locally. The food never travels more than, say, 200 miles at most. This keeps petroleum to a minimum, keeps nasty things out of our systems, and also is more ecologically viable thanks to the polyculture that it was grown in (when there are multiple crops grown in a field, it has been shown to be more productive.)
The problem with that model is that it is not economically viable. Grocery stores have a demand for more organic apples! The company that produced my apples has to up production, compromising on its ideology a bit, and grow more apples. Still more apples are demanded, which means more compromise. Pretty soon you are running an apple farm in Washington and selling them in Kentucky.
This problem replicates itself everywhere. Food, Labor, Education, every major problem the world faces (in my view) can really be boiled down to the problem of ecology vs. economy; in other words quality vs. quantity. I come down squarely on the side of ecology every time. I think its safer, for one thing, but more importantly, I think that in the long term only ecology is sustainable. The system is built on finite inputs (fyi- almost all non-organic produce is grown with petroleum derived pesticides). Pretty soon, these inputs will run dry, and our system will be shot. Our lives are predicated on the existence of cheap energy, and once that well runs dry, we don't have enough alternatives to feed everybody. So unless we do something, we could be facing a pretty large problem.
This got long and rambley. I learned from writing it. If you read it, you are awesome. Thank you.
I don't care at all about economic viability. The whole idea of profitability coming before sustainability is one that has become insane to me. That fact makes me kin to about 2% of the people in the United States. Our culture has pretty much decided on capitalism and profits being the way to go. The more I learn about it, however, the more that I realize that the long term economic viability of something is entirely opposed to the long term ecological viability of the same thing. Take this apple I am eating right now.
(I really am eating that apple right now).
This apple is a Organic Granny Smith Apple, grown in Sedro-Woolley, Washington. This apple represents the struggle between economic and ecologic viability quite nicely. I paid $3.99 for 11 of these apples, making them about 36 cents a pop. Not to shabby. Also, its organic! Which means...not as much as it used to.
This is where the book I was reading comes in. The book has a whole chapter on Big Organic, and the difference between what the author calls "industrial organic" and small farms. This apple was most certainly grown in monoculture on a large acreage farm. Perhaps the grower used some of the "non-harmful" chemicals approved by the USDA. Also, remember that this apple was grown in Washington, so somebody had to stick it on a truck and drive the sucker all the way to Lexington, KY. Which means this apple has been as far west as I have.
Anyways, when you really look at the whole system, the inputs (monoculture, perhaps chemical fertilizer, petroleum) vastly outweigh the outputs (apple. 59 Calories.) This system is unsustainable.
A sustainable system would look like the one that organic looked like in the 60s and 70s (and is trying to get to again with the whole "buy local" phenomenon). Food is grown by small farmers in polyculture, by standards that dwarf the USDA's. No chemicals, no genetic modifiers, etc. The food also is grown locally. The food never travels more than, say, 200 miles at most. This keeps petroleum to a minimum, keeps nasty things out of our systems, and also is more ecologically viable thanks to the polyculture that it was grown in (when there are multiple crops grown in a field, it has been shown to be more productive.)
The problem with that model is that it is not economically viable. Grocery stores have a demand for more organic apples! The company that produced my apples has to up production, compromising on its ideology a bit, and grow more apples. Still more apples are demanded, which means more compromise. Pretty soon you are running an apple farm in Washington and selling them in Kentucky.
This problem replicates itself everywhere. Food, Labor, Education, every major problem the world faces (in my view) can really be boiled down to the problem of ecology vs. economy; in other words quality vs. quantity. I come down squarely on the side of ecology every time. I think its safer, for one thing, but more importantly, I think that in the long term only ecology is sustainable. The system is built on finite inputs (fyi- almost all non-organic produce is grown with petroleum derived pesticides). Pretty soon, these inputs will run dry, and our system will be shot. Our lives are predicated on the existence of cheap energy, and once that well runs dry, we don't have enough alternatives to feed everybody. So unless we do something, we could be facing a pretty large problem.
This got long and rambley. I learned from writing it. If you read it, you are awesome. Thank you.