Sustainability: not easy, necessary

Paul Roberts at Mother Jones describes some recent complications of “organic” and other farming practices billing themselves as sustainable:

Many of the familiar models don’t work well on the scale required to feed billions of people. Or they focus too narrowly on one issue (salad greens that are organic but picked by exploited workers). Or they work only in limited circumstances. (A $4 heirloom tomato is hardly going to save the world.)

Such problems aren’t exactly news. Organizations such as the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (which despite its namesake is a real leader in food reform) have long insisted that truly sustainable food must be not just ecologically benign, but also nutritious, produced without injustice, and affordable. And yet, because concepts like local or organic dominate the alternative food sector, there is little room left for alternative models, such as Fred Fleming’s, that might begin to bridge the gap between where our food system is today and where it needs to be.

The problem according to Roberts: farmers today are too busy complying with nearsighted “organic” standards, or pursuing pie-in-the-sky schemes (i.e., the eat-local movement) that wouldn’t work on a regional, let alone a global scale. If sustainability could be thought of as a good, then not enough of it is being produced – even by farmers who pledge allegiance to the idea.

Let sustainability mean the knowledge and practice of farming methods which could be sustained for longer than, or with a smaller draw on the environment than modern industrial farming. Why, despite a few innovators mentioned in the comment thread, has there not emerged from alternative farming a significant amount of sustainable farm-craft?

One way to think of the problem is to consider alternative farmers a sort of producers’ club for sustainability. In classic club theory (Wiki), a club good is one the consumption of which is non-rivalrous, but excludable. Put simply, anyone in the club can consume the good to a certain point, at which congestion occurs (imagine tearing down toll booths on a turnpike in high demand); but not everyone can or is allowed to be in the club.

First, a simpler application of club theory to environmental concerns. Zipcar is a company which lets city-dwellers share cars for annual dues plus usage charges. At the moment, Zipcar is reported to be working fairly well – the cars are clean, in good repair, and, most importantly, available on demand. But imagine if all the residents of a metropolitan area signed on to Zipcar. In the evening rush hour, not enough Zipcar cars could be physically parked at the city center to accommodate all the aspiring drivers. Hey presto – congestion.

Applying club theory to sustainability in farming is trickier than applying it to Zipcars. Zipcars are tangible, but sustainability is not – and whereas the definition of a Zipcar is straightforward, I am sure many advocates of sustainability would balk at my attempt to describe it. Nevertheless, there does seem to be a club-good scenario contributing to the “sustainability shortage.”

Consider all alternative farming – organic, no-till/low-pesticide, local polyculture, and so on – one giant (sadly, not so giant) club. One purpose of the club is to produce sustainability. Entry to the club can be self-regulated, regulated by the government, or not regulated. Club members compete against one another in the market for foodstuffs; we can ignore for now the competition of alternative foodstuffs with “non-virtuous” industrially-produced ones.

Through this prism, the situation which Roberts laments unfolds as follows. Some club members are earnestly attempting to produce sustainability. Others, as barriers to entry are lowered (e.g. as “organic” standards are set to be easily met by ex-industrial farmers or farmers still relying on some industrial methods), are producing only the food, but not so much the sustainability. This latter group can often produce food more cheaply, and as a result depresses the profits of the sustainable group, limiting its efforts and preventing it from expanding.

What can be done? Roberts mentions subsidizing alternative farming (the good, sustainability-producing kind), but the club perspective suggests another possible solution. When clubs fail to produce their goods optimally, what is typically prescribed is control on entry, to limit congestion. (One might think of all the “organic” farmers just doing the bare minimum to qualify for the label as causing the congestion here.) I have mentioned earlier that entry to the “club” for alternative farming can be controlled in any number of ways. Currently, it is either not controlled (anyone can claim to “farm locally” or “sustainably” – or, by one euphemism, “eco-logically”), or it is controlled by the government, which sets standards that have little force to make farmers produce not just foods but also sustainability, as defined above. The one unexplored option is letting this “club” self-regulate entry – establishing associations of alternative farmers, probably under the aegis of the government, who could shut out would-be competitors not committed to sustainable farming. Whether this would work is highly speculative – but at this point, whether any model of alternative farming will work to feed the world is speculative, and an explicit club approach might be a reasonable thing to try.