Then the food conspiracy spawned a series of community gardens – also very successful. We made farm work fun in a way that it cannot be in working for wages or for profits.
Demechanization is not terribly difficult. The question is one of scale. I do not think that farming should be entirely demechanized, but we can move in that direction.
Of course, you cannot change farming totally until you integrate town and country more fully.
As for feeding people, U.S. yields per acre in agriculture are relatively low. Our system substitutes capital and other inputs for labor. We use little direct labor so yields per direct agricultural worker are high.
You can get some idea of the labor saving nature of the entire food complex by looking at the food budget as a share of GDP, but that measure is distorted by the low prices that farmers get, the shift to luxury foods, the exploitation of farm workers and a number of other problems.
The other problem is that the system that we have today is unsustainable in the long run.
Here is a short section from a new book that I just completed on Passionate Labor:
Farm Work vs. Gardening In order to understand the potential for transforming the economy, let me use a simple example that does not require much of a stretch of the imagination. Just think of the enormous contrast between farm work for wages and gardening as a hobby. Farm work is considered to be so abhorrent in the United States that we regularly hear that only foreign born workers are willing to perform it. Supposedly, citizens of the United States would never be willing to subject themselves to the life of a farm worker.
While farm labor may be among the hardest, most dangerous work in our society, many people regard gardening as a pleasant diversion. While the United Farm Workers Union represents mostly downtrodden workers, a good number of wealthy people are proud affiliates of their blue blood garden clubs. Over and above the time that they spend in their gardens, many gardeners enthsuastically devote considerable leisure time to conversing or reading in order to become better gardeners. In addition, many gardeners also willingly spend substantial sums for equipment and supplies to use in their gardens.
What, then, is the underlying difference between farm work and gardening? Farm work typically entails hard physical labor, but many gardeners also exert themselves in their gardens. The difference lies in the context of gardening. Gardeners, unlike farm workers, freely choose to be gardeners. During their free time when they work in their gardens, they want to be gardening. Nobody tells them what to do. Of course, gardeners are not entirely free to follow their whims. The rhythms of the seasons and the sudden shifts in the weather dictate some of what the gardeners do, but gardeners generally accept these demands beforehand.
As the psychologist, John Neulinger says, "Everyone knows the difference between doing something because one has to and doing something because one wants to" (Neulinger 1981, p. 15). We should also keep in mind that society respects gardeners. Our newspapers regularly print features of interest to gardeners. Some even have special sections to appeal to their affluent gardening readers. All the while, the lives of farm workers generally pass virtually unnoticed. After all, in our society, farm work is not respectable work. This respect contributes to the allure of gardening.
If we paid farm workers as well as those who labor on Wall Street and accorded farm workers the sort of dignity that college professors enjoy, parents might still try to steer their children away from farm work because of the frequent exposure to potentially lethal toxins. But then, if society esteemed farm workers, farmers would not and could not spray them with impunity.
Gardeners engage in a modest sort of passionate labor. They tend to take pride in their gardens. They work with care and joy. They can take pleasures in their surroundings and feel a part of nature.
Farmworkers take orders or, if they work by the piece, they must concentrate all their energies on picking an enormous quantity of fruits and vegetables, just to make ends meet. Recall how the short-handled hoe was designed to put a quick stop to any possible reveries about the farmworkers' surroundings.
Our goal in making society work for the betterment of all people would be to convert our economy from something that resembles a nation of a few farmers working a multitude of farm workers into a new kind of economy that resembled a community of gardeners, in which workers would have good reason to attack their jobs with a sense of care, price, joy and even exhilaration.
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Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901