WE all remember seeing it in high school history class: the cartoon caricatures of 19th century world powers looming over a cake labeled "Africa," poised to carve it up (anybody out there got a URL for a copy of this cartoon? I’d appreciate it). And thus began the pre-World War I scramble for resources. At the beginning of the 21st century, as at the close of 19th, the story hasn't changed but the players have: China, South Korea, India, Qatar, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Dubai, and the US (to name a few) are seeking to protect their people's future as climate change begins to drastically alter the ability for these countries to feed (and power) themselves.
According to recent reporting in the Guardian Environment, China is an instructive case study: China has recently halted reforestation projects in “marginally arable land” on fears of food shortage. These reforestation projects would have helped offset increased carbon emissions from Chinese industrialization, slow desertification in southern China, and ease water shortages. How? Land that is not used for agriculture is allowed to rest, and by doing so becomes healthier again as the soil regains nutrients; less crop irrigation means that there would be more water in the system generally. Most forms of crop irrigation use water inefficiently.
China is facing triple pressure: rising food prices, the need to keep industrialization growing a pace, and changing ecological conditions due to climate change. In western China, according to a recent article in the Guardian, new industrial projects will cut into arable land. In other areas, desertification and failing soil will cut into agricultural production. By the end of 2008 China’s arable land has decreased to within 1% of the 120 million hectare land area needed for China to maintain food self-sufficiency. That’s why Chinese interests have secured land for food and biofuel crops in sub-Saharan African countries, and Asia too. There are over one million Chinese farmers in Africa.
Decreased arable land due to climate change will threaten every country. And the decline of fossil fuels will push up food stuff prices all over the world. Last summer the Philippines and India both restricted exports of rice to protect domestic prices and because they feared they wouldn’t have enough to feed their own populations. Environmental groups have launched “buy local” campaigns. The trouble is, many developing countries and emerging markets (I’m differentiating here between the 2nd and 3rd world) remain heavily dependent upon the export of primary products. If the “buy local” movement has its way and a carbon tariff is imposed upon imported food, these countries’ export markets will decline and their economies will suffer. In the run up to World War I not only did colonial holdings increase, but trade protectionism did as well. Protectionist policies designed to mitigate climate change in conjunction with a new resource stripping of Africa via land sales makes it difficult for Africa to reach full economic development in the future.
In the future, the largest global population increases will come from Africa, according to the UN. But given the state of most African economies, jobs do not and will not exist when Africa’s labour force begins to peak later this century. According to Oxfam, as a result of the global recession, 100 million more people slipped into “hunger” and of the now 1 billion people living in hunger worldwide, one-quarter are in Africa. If food prices are increasing, Africa is selling its arable land to foreigners, and it can’t feed itself now, how can it hope to do so in the future?
African governments desperate for cash will allow countries to buy up their resources now, in order to maintain political stability (which will attract future investment). But with climate change already beginning, will Africans have enough resources to reach full economic development themselves in the future? The G8 failed on their Gleneagles promises. This week in L’Aquila they have promised a new $20 million in food aid to Africa. Will they follow through this time? Likely not. G8 governments are heavily indebted and don’t have enough money to carry through plans for greener energy. Infrastructure throughout Europe and America need massive reconstruction if governments' plans to green energy are to be successful. Ironically, Africa’s lack of infrastructure has historically been a barrier to aid absorption and one of the reasons that the developed world has been reluctant to carry-through on promises to double aid to Africa.
As Africa is re-carved by emerging and declining economic giants, it isn’t another lost-decade of development Africa faces as the global recession carries on. Africa faces becoming the continent lost to climate change.
[This is a good place to stop, but anybody worth their salt studying the social effects of climate change will realize the migration implications—and I’ve already ranted enough, I think about missing the (immigration policy) bear.]
Please take note: my sources for this article are mainly from the Guardian articles linked above.
More on Missing the Bear
Check out my next two blog posts on Missing the Bear:
Meghan McCain: the saviour of the republican party?
Climate Refugees
Meghan McCain: the saviour of the republican party?
Climate Refugees
Missing the Bear-- when the media misses the target
My secondary blog is Missing the Bear: when the media misses the target.
First blog post: Eon at the Guardian Climate Change Summit
First blog post: Eon at the Guardian Climate Change Summit
The End of the Line
I went to see "The End of the Line" last night, at one of the premier venues in London. I posted a review to Newsvine.
Climate Change Campaigner's Biggest Challenge: Changing the Use Value of Money
Hay-on-Wye
28 May 2009
By Ann Danylkiw
“Clinton got it wrong. It's not, 'it’s the economy stupid,' it’s : the economy is stupid, stupid.” This, the final conclusion from Elaine Brook, the third of three panelists to discuss “How Green is your Money?” at the Guardian’s Hay on Wye literary festival Thursday. Brook, Alistair Sawday and Barbara Haddrill, an activist, a publisher, and travel book writer respectively, explained that the oft missed point of a “green economy” is re-evaluating valuation dynamics of modern economic growth.
Economic growth is commonly measured in national statistics as GDP or GNP, gross (domestic) national product—comprised of consumption (by far the largest proportion) plus investment (private) plus government spending (public investment) plus national savings plus parenthetical imports minus exports (usually vastly negative for developed countries like the US, UK, and EU and thus enviously positive for emerging economies like China and India). It lacks a coherent cost-benefit analysis of used environmental capacity or quality of life (though supposedly tackled by utility theory, the analysis utility provides is still wanting). These are topics tackled more recently by the New Economics Foundation, and many years ago by Marilyn Waring (MP, New Zealand). GDP says a lot about the volume and velocity of money flowing around an economy and very little about the way its people live.
Each panelist in turn makes their own experiential case as to why we, as individuals, must actively take positive decisions that force the economy to respond to a slower pace of life. Haddrill did so several years ago when she attended a friend’s wedding in Australia in a way that was compatible with her low carbon-lifestyle. “I saw being an environmentalist as a positive choice… I had the idea of slowing it [the trip] down so that the journey was the point, and not just the destination.”
Haddrill is a late twenty-something. In a loose hippie-style blouse and billowing brown trousers, her authority is classically statuesque: “The more I planned my travel, the more I thought about our addiction to flying and was it improving our lives? …What was it about—time or money? …All these people that have no time also say 'there is no way I could spend 7 weeks getting to Australia… its alright for you.' But why is it alright for me? I gave up my job and my life that I really loved and before I left really 80 percent of me probably actually didn’t want to travel ‘round the world by bus, boat, and train, but I did it because I made that choice and I believe we can always make that choice,” she insists.
Sawday speaks next. He is the typical perpetually “chillaxed” mid-lifer: gelled grey hair, plaid button up shirt, khaki trousers, loafers. Seeming almost like a new age preacher-man, he extols the virtues of authenticity, awareness, the political and social conviviality of the Slow Food movement—“through food, we can effect, individually, a small revolution if we buy a pig from the man next door who has grown it with love and isn’t particularly concerned about the profit and we eat it slowly and convivially with our friends, we are part of a small revolution.”
As a society, he urges, we must begin to favor people that take their time—“those that walk over those that drive,” artisans over mass production. And more importantly to acknowledge the affect the modern, faced-paced lifestyle has had on our society. He relates the time he stayed with the Amish community in Michigan, “they are intelligent about the way they view the outside world… they take a telephone and they realize that the telephone can completely disrupt and destroy their lives, but it is very clever. So they take it and put it outside their house, in a special box, and only use it between five and six in the evening, and never answer it otherwise… and the efficiency is still there… and so are the Amish.”
Elaine Brook, finishes out the trio of presenters and is the founder of a business network, Greenlinks. The view of the Green movement has evolved, in her view, “We have started with we have to want what we want now, but in a Green way—and that has moved to want something different that is Green. People have decided that they want something different and they just do it—and businesses respond!”
Brook, embodies the true spirit of a British woman—a charismatic explorer in her white linen suit, short blonde hair arranged to look casually swept back. Cheerily she recalls the years she spent living with Himalayan Buddhists, “an example of a real zero fossil fuel economy…people have really nice, big houses, a fantastic social life, they had enough to eat.” An ecologist, business woman, and activist, she says she had trouble “selling” the theory of zero carbon economies upon her return because for modern, Western societies there is no blueprint for people to relate to.
This vision of what Brook and the others suggest is very far from where we are today, but is nevertheless compelling. “I think it's possible to run a business with a lower expectation of profit and a higher expectation of community contribution. Every business is a real part of a community,” Sawday concludes; time and human contact, an awareness of the world around us—both our effect on it, and its effect on us.
As they finish there is applause, but yet a vapid sense of agreement. They make it sound so easy: make a positive decision and change the way you react to the global economy and the economy will respond via simple comparative statics. And it is an easy decision, for an audience almost entirely composed of grey hairs, twenty-something females employed by NGO’s, and white upper middle class couples. Granted this is crowd the Guardian Hay-on-Wye literary festival draws—but there is a lingering feeling that this is not the crowd that needs convincing.
28 May 2009
By Ann Danylkiw
“Clinton got it wrong. It's not, 'it’s the economy stupid,' it’s : the economy is stupid, stupid.” This, the final conclusion from Elaine Brook, the third of three panelists to discuss “How Green is your Money?” at the Guardian’s Hay on Wye literary festival Thursday. Brook, Alistair Sawday and Barbara Haddrill, an activist, a publisher, and travel book writer respectively, explained that the oft missed point of a “green economy” is re-evaluating valuation dynamics of modern economic growth.
Economic growth is commonly measured in national statistics as GDP or GNP, gross (domestic) national product—comprised of consumption (by far the largest proportion) plus investment (private) plus government spending (public investment) plus national savings plus parenthetical imports minus exports (usually vastly negative for developed countries like the US, UK, and EU and thus enviously positive for emerging economies like China and India). It lacks a coherent cost-benefit analysis of used environmental capacity or quality of life (though supposedly tackled by utility theory, the analysis utility provides is still wanting). These are topics tackled more recently by the New Economics Foundation, and many years ago by Marilyn Waring (MP, New Zealand). GDP says a lot about the volume and velocity of money flowing around an economy and very little about the way its people live.
Each panelist in turn makes their own experiential case as to why we, as individuals, must actively take positive decisions that force the economy to respond to a slower pace of life. Haddrill did so several years ago when she attended a friend’s wedding in Australia in a way that was compatible with her low carbon-lifestyle. “I saw being an environmentalist as a positive choice… I had the idea of slowing it [the trip] down so that the journey was the point, and not just the destination.”
Haddrill is a late twenty-something. In a loose hippie-style blouse and billowing brown trousers, her authority is classically statuesque: “The more I planned my travel, the more I thought about our addiction to flying and was it improving our lives? …What was it about—time or money? …All these people that have no time also say 'there is no way I could spend 7 weeks getting to Australia… its alright for you.' But why is it alright for me? I gave up my job and my life that I really loved and before I left really 80 percent of me probably actually didn’t want to travel ‘round the world by bus, boat, and train, but I did it because I made that choice and I believe we can always make that choice,” she insists.
Sawday speaks next. He is the typical perpetually “chillaxed” mid-lifer: gelled grey hair, plaid button up shirt, khaki trousers, loafers. Seeming almost like a new age preacher-man, he extols the virtues of authenticity, awareness, the political and social conviviality of the Slow Food movement—“through food, we can effect, individually, a small revolution if we buy a pig from the man next door who has grown it with love and isn’t particularly concerned about the profit and we eat it slowly and convivially with our friends, we are part of a small revolution.”
As a society, he urges, we must begin to favor people that take their time—“those that walk over those that drive,” artisans over mass production. And more importantly to acknowledge the affect the modern, faced-paced lifestyle has had on our society. He relates the time he stayed with the Amish community in Michigan, “they are intelligent about the way they view the outside world… they take a telephone and they realize that the telephone can completely disrupt and destroy their lives, but it is very clever. So they take it and put it outside their house, in a special box, and only use it between five and six in the evening, and never answer it otherwise… and the efficiency is still there… and so are the Amish.”
Elaine Brook, finishes out the trio of presenters and is the founder of a business network, Greenlinks. The view of the Green movement has evolved, in her view, “We have started with we have to want what we want now, but in a Green way—and that has moved to want something different that is Green. People have decided that they want something different and they just do it—and businesses respond!”
Brook, embodies the true spirit of a British woman—a charismatic explorer in her white linen suit, short blonde hair arranged to look casually swept back. Cheerily she recalls the years she spent living with Himalayan Buddhists, “an example of a real zero fossil fuel economy…people have really nice, big houses, a fantastic social life, they had enough to eat.” An ecologist, business woman, and activist, she says she had trouble “selling” the theory of zero carbon economies upon her return because for modern, Western societies there is no blueprint for people to relate to.
This vision of what Brook and the others suggest is very far from where we are today, but is nevertheless compelling. “I think it's possible to run a business with a lower expectation of profit and a higher expectation of community contribution. Every business is a real part of a community,” Sawday concludes; time and human contact, an awareness of the world around us—both our effect on it, and its effect on us.
As they finish there is applause, but yet a vapid sense of agreement. They make it sound so easy: make a positive decision and change the way you react to the global economy and the economy will respond via simple comparative statics. And it is an easy decision, for an audience almost entirely composed of grey hairs, twenty-something females employed by NGO’s, and white upper middle class couples. Granted this is crowd the Guardian Hay-on-Wye literary festival draws—but there is a lingering feeling that this is not the crowd that needs convincing.
Should Michelle Obama Lose Weight?-- oh Come ON!
The unfailing ability of feminists to discredit the potential of the new First Lady (and burn down our own agenda in the process)
The Huffington Post recently posted an opinion piece entitled “Should Michelle Obama Lose Weight?”[1] The very imposition of this question today is not only insulting to all women but utterly absurd! For only the second time in recent history the First Ladyship is occupied by a woman who has the potential to change the feminine paradigm in two ways: first, she can act to change the role of First Lady from passive (traditional feminine) support to an Office and in doing so, in a secondary capacity, shift the paradigm of the feminine roles as wife, mother, and hostess—thus, effecting the overall perception of women’s equity in society.
Examining the national visibility of recent first ladies
The Bush Ladies chose the paradigm of what I’ll call debutante society wives: pet cause promotion and charity work, not to be taken too seriously or make too much noise so as to obscure or threaten their husbands’ agendas/profiles. What they lacked, and what Hillary Clinton attempted and Michelle Obama has the potential to change, is to act in a more advocatory capacity. It is true that First Ladies aren’t elected, but they do hold an important nationally symbolic position.
Hillary Clinton was vilified via the media for attempting to play a more active role in her capacity as a national symbol: Clinton held health care meetings and was criticized for treating those meetings as government functions and told she could not continue because First Lady is not a government office—she had no authority to explore policy. However, de facto, the First Lady could be perceived as a government role by combining the important traditional, matriarchal role with the role of women as professionals. This role must be defined in practice, through evolution by example. Michelle Obama has the potential to do this. With Clinton, she shares several traits: highly educated, a professional (and successful one at that) and an advocate in her own right.
But despite the increasing number of women present in the media, the majority of the coverage of Michelle Obama has been limited to her fashion sense and her weight. To the extent that women in the media have a responsibility to effect the way other women are portrayed in society, women in media have tripped over themselves both when they failed to stand up adequately for Hillary Clinton during the campaign when her outfit was criticized as “inappropriate” because she showed too much cleavage and for portraying Michelle Obama only in the traditional feminine capacity. The Huffington Post article about Obama’s weight concluded something to the effect “Michelle Obama is a size 12, which is appropriate for her height,” and her health adds to her husband’s potential to set an example for America. What about her ability to set an example as the embodiment of modern American femininity? Alas, her superficial qualities are all that seem to be relevant—very seldom was she quoted on the campaign trail, deemed worthy only as arm candy for her husband’s campaign and speculatory rhetoric about how she will help the fashion industry survive the economic crisis.
Lady Obama’s Potential
It is curious in this age with women in the workplace all but a forgone conclusion, that the role of the nation’s First Woman remains “traditional” in the wife/mother/hostess sense. While her husband gets props for introducing an equal wage bill, Michelle Obama has the potential to take women’s equality even further through active advocacy. To place “active” in juxtaposition: passive advocacy can be understood to be what the Bush Ladies did: make statements about the importance of women’s rights. A prime example occurred in the last month of Laura Bush’s husband’s presidency: Afghani school girls were attacked with acid and Mrs. Bush responded by making a strong condemnatory statement. Where active advocacy would be more like Hillary Clinton’s health care meetings during her husband’s first term; the First Lady, in effect, becomes an active participant (as all Women are) in the perpetual forward motion of society, whether or not forward motion (i.e. reform) is delegated to the First Lady to further her party’s agenda, or one of her own. Why should presidential wives be side-lined when as non-political wives they actively shape society anyway?
Michelle Obama has the potential to transform the role of First Lady. Obama’s husband’s campaign broke paradigms (which are obvious and I won’t go into here because quite enough has been written about him), and the American establishment is primed for “Change.” Additionally, an important argument was made for Elizabeth Edward’s husband’s presidential ascendancy based upon her education and medical public policy prowess: “two for one,” argued some pundits. Lest we fail to make a big deal about Obama’s husband considering Mrs. Edwards for a cabinet position!
Drawing on honorable traditions of the wife as cultural preservationista and moral center, Michelle Obama has the potential to historically redefine this social feminine paradigm. This paradigm is of the wife as active partner in both society and marriage—where the roles in both cases equalize (finally) between men and women. Not only does Lady Obama stand as an equal with her husband welcoming foreign diplomats and domestic leaders to the seat of American government, representing the women of America, she does so as an educated professional and equal.
Dwelling on superficialities like weight and designer clothing is not only self-defeating for the evolution of American women but sabotages Obama before she has the chance to get going. Admittedly, Mrs. Obama has not yet made much indication of her agenda as First Lady, beyond her commitment to Military families. However, the point is worth making—the time has come to change the role of First Lady of the United States of America. The previous examples set by the First Ladies of the free world is more akin to the paradigms US Presidents have attempted to change through foreign policy than an example that feeds that foreign policy. Michelle Obama has the ability to rise to this challenge and it is our responsibility as Women (and men) of America to support her. So let’s please cease with this self-defeating superficial discussion of weight and clothing, shall we!
[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/irene-rubaumkeller-/do-you-think-michelle-oba_b_159639.html
The Huffington Post recently posted an opinion piece entitled “Should Michelle Obama Lose Weight?”[1] The very imposition of this question today is not only insulting to all women but utterly absurd! For only the second time in recent history the First Ladyship is occupied by a woman who has the potential to change the feminine paradigm in two ways: first, she can act to change the role of First Lady from passive (traditional feminine) support to an Office and in doing so, in a secondary capacity, shift the paradigm of the feminine roles as wife, mother, and hostess—thus, effecting the overall perception of women’s equity in society.
Examining the national visibility of recent first ladies
The Bush Ladies chose the paradigm of what I’ll call debutante society wives: pet cause promotion and charity work, not to be taken too seriously or make too much noise so as to obscure or threaten their husbands’ agendas/profiles. What they lacked, and what Hillary Clinton attempted and Michelle Obama has the potential to change, is to act in a more advocatory capacity. It is true that First Ladies aren’t elected, but they do hold an important nationally symbolic position.
Hillary Clinton was vilified via the media for attempting to play a more active role in her capacity as a national symbol: Clinton held health care meetings and was criticized for treating those meetings as government functions and told she could not continue because First Lady is not a government office—she had no authority to explore policy. However, de facto, the First Lady could be perceived as a government role by combining the important traditional, matriarchal role with the role of women as professionals. This role must be defined in practice, through evolution by example. Michelle Obama has the potential to do this. With Clinton, she shares several traits: highly educated, a professional (and successful one at that) and an advocate in her own right.
But despite the increasing number of women present in the media, the majority of the coverage of Michelle Obama has been limited to her fashion sense and her weight. To the extent that women in the media have a responsibility to effect the way other women are portrayed in society, women in media have tripped over themselves both when they failed to stand up adequately for Hillary Clinton during the campaign when her outfit was criticized as “inappropriate” because she showed too much cleavage and for portraying Michelle Obama only in the traditional feminine capacity. The Huffington Post article about Obama’s weight concluded something to the effect “Michelle Obama is a size 12, which is appropriate for her height,” and her health adds to her husband’s potential to set an example for America. What about her ability to set an example as the embodiment of modern American femininity? Alas, her superficial qualities are all that seem to be relevant—very seldom was she quoted on the campaign trail, deemed worthy only as arm candy for her husband’s campaign and speculatory rhetoric about how she will help the fashion industry survive the economic crisis.
Lady Obama’s Potential
It is curious in this age with women in the workplace all but a forgone conclusion, that the role of the nation’s First Woman remains “traditional” in the wife/mother/hostess sense. While her husband gets props for introducing an equal wage bill, Michelle Obama has the potential to take women’s equality even further through active advocacy. To place “active” in juxtaposition: passive advocacy can be understood to be what the Bush Ladies did: make statements about the importance of women’s rights. A prime example occurred in the last month of Laura Bush’s husband’s presidency: Afghani school girls were attacked with acid and Mrs. Bush responded by making a strong condemnatory statement. Where active advocacy would be more like Hillary Clinton’s health care meetings during her husband’s first term; the First Lady, in effect, becomes an active participant (as all Women are) in the perpetual forward motion of society, whether or not forward motion (i.e. reform) is delegated to the First Lady to further her party’s agenda, or one of her own. Why should presidential wives be side-lined when as non-political wives they actively shape society anyway?
Michelle Obama has the potential to transform the role of First Lady. Obama’s husband’s campaign broke paradigms (which are obvious and I won’t go into here because quite enough has been written about him), and the American establishment is primed for “Change.” Additionally, an important argument was made for Elizabeth Edward’s husband’s presidential ascendancy based upon her education and medical public policy prowess: “two for one,” argued some pundits. Lest we fail to make a big deal about Obama’s husband considering Mrs. Edwards for a cabinet position!
Drawing on honorable traditions of the wife as cultural preservationista and moral center, Michelle Obama has the potential to historically redefine this social feminine paradigm. This paradigm is of the wife as active partner in both society and marriage—where the roles in both cases equalize (finally) between men and women. Not only does Lady Obama stand as an equal with her husband welcoming foreign diplomats and domestic leaders to the seat of American government, representing the women of America, she does so as an educated professional and equal.
Dwelling on superficialities like weight and designer clothing is not only self-defeating for the evolution of American women but sabotages Obama before she has the chance to get going. Admittedly, Mrs. Obama has not yet made much indication of her agenda as First Lady, beyond her commitment to Military families. However, the point is worth making—the time has come to change the role of First Lady of the United States of America. The previous examples set by the First Ladies of the free world is more akin to the paradigms US Presidents have attempted to change through foreign policy than an example that feeds that foreign policy. Michelle Obama has the ability to rise to this challenge and it is our responsibility as Women (and men) of America to support her. So let’s please cease with this self-defeating superficial discussion of weight and clothing, shall we!
[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/irene-rubaumkeller-/do-you-think-michelle-oba_b_159639.html
Financial Crisis: The Final Harbinger of Bucolic Demise?
Antigo, WI—“I don’t know what its like to be clean,” farmer David Wilson of Grass Point Farms Cooperative chuckles, takes off his American Farm Cooperative cap, shakes and scratches his balding head before replacing it. Not twenty minutes earlier he had gallantly stepped in front of a stream of cow urine in the milking room. The sharp stench of urine dissipates a bit but lingers out of doors. “I’m beginning to think I’m crazy,” he sighs, "because I’d rather do this than earn $10 an hour and come home clean everyday, workin’ some job in town.” David works nearly 20 hours a day, 7 days per week on his family farm of 80 head herd of cross-Jersey cows for an income of less than $20,000—less than he’d make if he worked that $10 an hour job.[1]
The Wilsons are a rare breed of American: debt averse. Their farm is strictly family run: David, his wife Pam, and their 13 year old daughter Michaela. “We’ve never really struggled because we live the life that we live,” Pam shrugs and grins; she’s a jolly countrywoman with eyes that radiate warmth and confidence, “We’re awfully frugal.” Wilson explains that they have been debt free three times, the last for one month this August. For years they used short term debt to finance their operation, for example, to buy feed if there isn’t enough rain during the growing season, or the cost of commodity prices sky-rocket—both conditions Wilson has had to work with the past five years.
But in the contracting financial climate the Wilson family’s debt situation is likely to change. The Wilson’s position isn’t unusual for a small family dairy farm in Wisconsin, according to Dr. Paul Mitchell at the University of Wisconsin Madison Agricultural Economics department. In the past agriculture has been one of the few borrowing sectors where the borrower-lender relationship has remained tight. And agricultural banks like M&I and Wells Fargo, he explains have not had the exposure to bad loans that other banks have had, “The overall access to credit shouldn’t change. There might be a little more paperwork and demonstrations of credit worthiness than you had in years past—they’ll just have to do a little more work to get credit.”[2]
Dr. Costas Lapavitsas at the School for Oriental and African Studies in London disagrees. He explains that as the credit crisis deepens, the first casualties of the distressed credit market will be small and medium sized enterprises.[3]
“Big business can use open markets to obtain finance, it has been. Therefore banks as consumers have turned to individuals and to making money out of derivatives and other financial transactions of the type. Small and medium businesses across the world are facing problems with obtaining finance as a result.” If interbank lending doesn’t pick up soon, no matter how strong a position agriculture banks are in, it won’t matter and credit lines to families like the Wilsons will dry up.
But there is another dimension to the financial crisis that Wilson will have to be concerned about: futures prices. Farmers like Wilsons have been able to turn to derivatives in the form of futures and options to secure prices for their output. Dr. Mitchell explained that farmers have turned increasingly to these markets as prices have become more volatile since the 1990’s. Dr. Lapavitsas associated the rise of the derivatives market with overall price volatility in the market.
He explains that derivatives are “an outgrowth…of what has been happening in finance for the last two to three decades… It’s come out of the instability that has been created in the world of finance because of liberalization…. If you repressed finance… then all that world of financial innovation, derivatives, and everything that goes with it, will have much less reason to exist. There won’t be the price instability, for a start, upon which these things thrive.” Indeed, according to the “Dairy Situation and Outlook” from the University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension, futures prices for milk and cheese are at historic lows and expected to decline.[4]
In other words, in the future small dairy farms in Wisconsin will continue to dwindle but at an accelerating rate. Small independent farms make up the bulk of the farming sector in Wisconsin, 86% according to the Wisconsin Farm Bureau association. But they also have the least collective dollar output relative to agricultural corporations.[5] It is not just credit constriction that works against small farms, but the nature of the financial market itself which doesn’t allow much room for survival. There are regulatory changes to be made to ensure that families like the Wilsons can continue to live the way they choose.
David looks dreamily out over his green fields in the late afternoon sun. In the distance there is a grove of Pine trees. He leans closer to tell me that this year he is finally going to build his wife and daughter the home “they deserve.” The Wilsons currently live in a wooden version of a double-wide. David planted those pines when he and Pam married, with plans to use them for a house one day. His ability to do so will depend heavily upon the next steps a so far inept Congress and Treasury Department take to reform financial markets.
[1] Interview, David Wilson, Aug 2008.
[2] Phone Interview, Dr. Paul D. Mitchell, 17 December 2008.
[3] Interview, Dr. Costas Lapavitsas, 17 December 2008.
[4] Bob Cropp. “Dairy Situation and Outlook.” 18 December 2008. University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension. http://future.aae.wisc.edu/outlook/cropp_dec_08.pdf.
[5] “Wisconsin Agriculture Farm Facts,” http://www.wfbf.com/ag_links/ag_facts.aspx.
