This is Richard Wolff from Democracy At Work responding to another Ask Prof
Wolff question from our Patreon community. This one comes from Cynthia Mitlow.
And it has to do with a recent program, I believe, on “Economic Update,” the program that we produce
here at Democracy At Work called “Economic Update.” That program contained an interview
with the noted food writer and food historian Mark Bittman, and it focused on his book Animal,
Vegetable, Junk -- that's the title of the book -- with a subtitle,
“A History of Food.” It is a remarkable book, very much worth your reading if
you are interested in the history of how we got to be eating what we are eating today.
And it tells a really important story about the history of capitalism seen through the lens of
what we eat. And even if you don't believe that we are what we eat, it is an important insight
into the history of the system we live with and under. So now let me get to Cynthia's question:
what happened to small family farms? And what could or should happen if there really
were democracy at work -- which is after all what we advocate for. Well, the history can
be summarized in a very short sentence by the way Mark Bittman's book covers this material as well.
Small family farms were once the backbone of the United States. They were once that kind of
work that most people, one way or another, were involved in -- in the colonial period,
before we got our independence, and for a good while thereafter. But over the last century or so,
family farms, small farms were wiped out -- very few are left today, an infinitesimally small part
of our economy, and even a very small part of the agricultural economy -- the food production part.
That has been taken over in large part -- not a hundred percent but the bulk of it -- by
what we call “big capitalist enterprises in agriculture” or what our mainstream media clean
up to call “agribusiness.” Okay, these are huge corporations usually focused on mass monoculture.
They all produce -- you know -- many, many tons of wheat, or corn, or soy beans, or a whole variety
of other things, leaving precious little room -- except here and there -- for smaller farms,
let alone family farms. I, for example, think that's a big loss.
I think it did a lot of damage to our health, that's what Mark Bittman is particularly clear
about: what those huge businesses do is farm for a profit looking in every which way
to make more profit and if that means artificial fertilizer, fine. If it means chemicals that kill
the pests, fine. They don't want to spend a lot of time worrying about the side effects of these
pesticides, fertilizers, growth hormones, you name it, we all suffer and then the research gets done
about it. And everything is justified by “look at how we're feeding the world.” Yes, very
interesting, we're feeding the world in large part by also, and at the same time and unnecessarily,
killing it. And that's Mark Bittman's point -- I don't want to go over that here.
I'd like to concentrate on Cynthia Mitlow's other part of her question: what would we do
differently, if we were in a position to dictate it? Well, my answer here is also pretty short and
pretty sweet. I like family farms. I want them. I want them for many reasons. I like an economy
that has lots of diversity in it. I don't want big monoculture. I'm willing to have less choice -- if
I had to have that -- in order to have bigger choice about the kinds of farms around me.
I'd like the farms to be nearby. I'd like the food to be fresh. I'd like -- you get the picture?
I'd like a diversity of people, cultures, ideas, new ways of farming -- always developing -- which
is what small farms always did, and on and on and on. And I would argue that I'd like to make
the case and then I’d like for there to be a democratic decision in the society. What kind
of farming do we want? Maybe for some things we want big farms, and for other things we don't. And
then, we should make it happen the way we would like, not dictated by a handful of agribusiness
profiteers who sit, by the way, in the big city making all the decisions. I don't want that.
I want the different society and in my society -- and I'd like to make that case -- local farm,
local food, fresh food, small farms, interacting with relatively small groups of businesses. Yeah,
do I hearken back to something we associate with Thomas Jefferson -- what used to be
called Jeffersonian democracy? Uh-huh, I think there's a lot of wisdom there. It's not either/or.
If and when mass technology is something we want as part of a story, I'm here to listen.
But the notion that everything else has to go the way small farms did, namely disappear or becoming
marginal, because the big profiteers have to run the show, that's gotten us into a lot of trouble,
including the kind of food we eat which as Mark Bittman shows
is unnecessarily dangerous unhealthy and really bad for us -- even while it makes big profits for
a small number of capitalists. That's the problem with the food industry but, of course, that's
the basic problem with capitalism altogether. This is Richard Wolff for Democracy At Work.