Brown Stuff

Michael Perelman michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Tue Aug 10 12:12:42 PDT 1999


Doug Henwood wrote:


> And too much dismissal, Aronowitz-style, of technology
> in itself, without making any distinction between humane uses of
> science and capitalist uses of science.

of course.


> But a sociologist who was doing a diss on the organization of organic
> farming told me it requires lots more stoop labor than the inorganic
> kind. Maybe it can be done a different way.

Organic farming is more labor intensive. Stoop labor, to me, suggests both physical procedures as well as a certain type of social relationship. In this sense, gardening is not stoop labor.

It requires more direct physical work to prune a tree and open it up so that the insects do not become as much of a problem then to drive past and spray. I would rather do the pruning.

Second, agriculture is different from other types of technology. In agriculture, the field of operations changes. Whereas in manufacturing, the laws of physics are unchanging. For example, spraying today might be easier than pruning, but the insects will evolve to eventually defeat the spraying; or the spraying will select for another possibly harmful organism.

The old BT technology, selectively and sparingly using an naturlally occuring pesticide, was fairly successful. When Novartis uses genetic engineering to put the organism into corn, resistance will occur within 5 or 10 years, or even sooner.

On the other hand, you can learn to manipulate the environment more gently. For existence, before herbicides, weeder geese would work the cotton fields. It took a bit more labor -- not stoop labor -- to manage the geese, but you ended up with geese instead of toxic pollution.

This brings up the idea of polyculture, growing several products at the same time. Again, it is labor intensive, but the quantity of output expands -- mitigating your sociologist's observation.

Finally, since organic products sell for more, the stoop labor per unit of tomato may be higher, but the ratio for a dollar worth of tomato will be lower. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu



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