Getting big is not beautiful! It is a method of dominating a market segment and maximizing profitability at the expense of the buyer. Eliminating competition that improves the welfare of the citizens does not happen when monopolies exist. Examples abound in the US economy.
I only read the first two paragraphs to see the Native Peoples, put on reservations and fed government food subsidies. What used to be an athletic, tuned to nature peoples became an alcoholic, obese, beaten people. Gradually they are regaining their climb back, but in the meantime the trust of gov., especially now, is justifiably low. And then, of course, they have their own problems with tribal corruption. (Back to the essay.)
It's not just our Government. We have Gates in Africa changing their cultivation practices to match ours. Now, having lost their nutritionally better practices, they are having problems with starvation.
We see capital consumption in so many areas: soil depletion on the agricultural side, debt increase on the public and private market side, and the bonfire of cultural capital in blue cities and states.
Yes, knowledge is power. But shared knowledge is even more power. If each one will teach one (or more), eventually that knowledge will spread and perhaps even turn the California tides. We can California Dream, anyway!
I have been involved in production agriculture my whole life. I have a PhD in Ruminant Nutrition and have balanced rations for beef and primarily dairy cattle. I’ve average herd size of dairies I formulated and consult for was 2000 cows. BIG IS NOT ALWAYS BAD. some of the most unsanitary operations I have been on were small. They lacked the ability to provide cow health and comfort.
"An Austrian-school economist has no quarrel with bigness as such. Scale that emerges from voluntary exchange and survives the test of profit and loss is simply efficiency made visible, and there is nothing to object to in it."
Here is where I want to Underline what's being said:
"The objection is narrower and more serious: not bigness, but bigness manufactured by subsidy and sustained by distorted prices. In that environment, neither managers, investors, nor policymakers can reliably distinguish genuine productivity from political favoritism, because the market's measuring stick has been bent."
Thank you for this valuable discussion. Surely transitioning from where we are to better outcomes demands informed decisions. Imo, some of our early transitioning is already passing unnoticed. Some consumer highly processed products are disappearing. Some fast food businesses are failing or undertaking substantial changes.
Imo one does need to reflect on what local production can achieve. We have seasons that delimit what local farms can produce. No tomatoes in December in No. Dakota. We import foods from Mexico, Canada to supplement our production. It seems to me we likely (in our planning for transition) need to recognize 'local' has to extend beyond our own local, particularly as applies to produce.
Another concern we may need to incorporate in our planning are crises. Supply line disruptions and failures. EMP. Attacks and sabotage. Floods. Droughts. Fires. Disease and insects. Building in resilience. Local capacities could save the day.
Your points here are well taken and needed to guide direction. Thank you for offering them. One hopes your insights will reach those forming policies and influencing directions. There is a lot on the line to achieving good outcomes.
The nature of American rulers (absurdly called “public servants”) has been as it is for too many generations: the needed policy and regulatory changes, sadly will only come about - to quote Charlton Heston - when power is wrenched from “cold dead hands” of elites who FIRST have been serving themselves. They will never relinquish one iota of their illegitimate, often absurd, non-consensual power. Agriculture is but one example of why this society is crumbling under the weight of bureaucracy.
Are there any out there ready and able to do the wrenching? Is the US of A now too Big to care? Complacency doth clothe, mock and slowly drain us... aren't we just 'fine' as we are? (read in sarcasm).
Dr. Malone, I appreciate your very useful description of the problem of modern agro-business and its consequences on human health. However there are big problems in couching the solution in Austrian School economics. The Austrian School of von Mises, Hayek, Milton Friedman, etc. is based on a materialist, oligarchic view of man as a beast, not as man created in the image of the Creator. British-inspired academia over the past 125 years has promoted the false dichotomy that one has to choose between either free market libertarianism (Austrian School) or liberal Keynesianism or socialism. In reality, the United States was built as an economic power on the basis of a third approach, going back to Alexander Hamilton, known as the American System. Today this is explicitly embraced by President Trump and members of his cabinet like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, among others. I highly recommend reading the in-depth report on the Austrian School by historian Robert Ingraham linked here. Among other things, it discusses the curious close relationship between Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes. https://www.prometheanaction.com/the-british-fraud-behind-austrian-economics-how-hayek-von-mises-betrayed-americas-economic-revolution/
Yours is a Valuable opinion. Worth reading, I believe, although the definition of the American System appears to lean away from agriculture - "His economic policies emphasized the importance of a diversified economy, including agriculture, but focused more on manufacturing and infrastructure development."
I vaguely remember Earl Butz. I was in high school and community college in those years; agriculture was not my focus. But I also remember a propaganda push (or was it just PR?) for the "green revolution" in India rendered in a slick magazine-style publication produced by the Rockefeller Foundation and featuring the work of Norman Borlaug. I was studying the history of India at that time.
I see this issue as part of the Corporate Problem. And that, in turn, is part of a larger problem on Earth that involves more esoteric processes. It makes us - in general - unaware that we are immortal spiritual beings who WILL BE (most of us anyway) our own grandchildren and will experience the consequences of the decisions we make today. This lack of awareness distorts the decision making process in favor of short-term gains over long range vision and planning.
I don't know if we can escape the centralization of production and access to resources, but we can escape that veil of unawareness that renders us much less "future smart" than we could be.
My current leanings regarding the politics of the situation is that government should move away from trying to regulate everything and move into providing more complete and accurate information to the taxpayers about how their money is being spent and what results are being obtained. If successful, this should lead to a more informed and sane marketplace.
Of course, any attempt to deviate from the Corporate plan (whatever that really is) will be met by resistance - up to and including the use of deadly force. But that's all Corporate really has. Their ideas, by and large, are second-rate. They rely on the sparkling minds of real intellectuals and if those minds turned towards the more basic realities of life on Earth, then we might stave off what seems today to be almost certain future doom.
Making certain "empty-calorie" foods cheap does NOT make people obese or diabetic. The people themselves must choose to eat those foods. While I totally agree that government must get out of interfering in the marketplace (not just in agriculture but in virtually all areas of economic activity), the bottom line in getting people to behave responsibly is to make them suffer the consequences of their own bad choices. Our system generally socializes/subsidizes the cost of failing to get a good education, failing to find a good marriage partner before having children, failing to take care of ones own health, and dozens of other failures. This is done in the name of "compassion," which (ironically) creates MORE misery by encouraging more and more people to commit the same failures. When we remove or mitigate the consequences of people's (moral) failures (and I'm not talking about bad luck or bad accidents here, which we - as individuals - should pitch in and help with) we teach and even encourage people to commit those failures in ever-increasing numbers.
Many people, especially in inner city food deserts, have no access to healthy food. When people are fed a steady diet of advertising junk food from the time they are kids, they believe whatever lies they are told about what they are eating. There is a lack of any meaningful, truthful nutrition education in schools. Remember the “food pyramid” that the USDA promoted for decades that school lunches and institutional meals were based on? People are waking up to the truth, but many struggle with literal addiction to processed food that was designed to be addictive and encourage gluttony. I don’t think this usually is moral failure by individuals, it is a moral failure of an agricultural system that is designed for short-term profits at the expense of people and the environment.
Will I ever trust the federal government again to do what's in the best interests of Americans and American ag? Yeah, when Pigovians fly.
Getting big is not beautiful! It is a method of dominating a market segment and maximizing profitability at the expense of the buyer. Eliminating competition that improves the welfare of the citizens does not happen when monopolies exist. Examples abound in the US economy.
I only read the first two paragraphs to see the Native Peoples, put on reservations and fed government food subsidies. What used to be an athletic, tuned to nature peoples became an alcoholic, obese, beaten people. Gradually they are regaining their climb back, but in the meantime the trust of gov., especially now, is justifiably low. And then, of course, they have their own problems with tribal corruption. (Back to the essay.)
It's not just our Government. We have Gates in Africa changing their cultivation practices to match ours. Now, having lost their nutritionally better practices, they are having problems with starvation.
We see capital consumption in so many areas: soil depletion on the agricultural side, debt increase on the public and private market side, and the bonfire of cultural capital in blue cities and states.
I normally would not read this kind of article because I have no power to change anything in farming - especially here in crazy California.
But I did read it and it was very clear and my understanding of the whole twisted system is much more complete now. Knowledge is power, right?
Yes, knowledge is power. But shared knowledge is even more power. If each one will teach one (or more), eventually that knowledge will spread and perhaps even turn the California tides. We can California Dream, anyway!
I have been involved in production agriculture my whole life. I have a PhD in Ruminant Nutrition and have balanced rations for beef and primarily dairy cattle. I’ve average herd size of dairies I formulated and consult for was 2000 cows. BIG IS NOT ALWAYS BAD. some of the most unsanitary operations I have been on were small. They lacked the ability to provide cow health and comfort.
A yellow highlighter point of the article:
"An Austrian-school economist has no quarrel with bigness as such. Scale that emerges from voluntary exchange and survives the test of profit and loss is simply efficiency made visible, and there is nothing to object to in it."
Here is where I want to Underline what's being said:
"The objection is narrower and more serious: not bigness, but bigness manufactured by subsidy and sustained by distorted prices. In that environment, neither managers, investors, nor policymakers can reliably distinguish genuine productivity from political favoritism, because the market's measuring stick has been bent."
Thank you for this valuable discussion. Surely transitioning from where we are to better outcomes demands informed decisions. Imo, some of our early transitioning is already passing unnoticed. Some consumer highly processed products are disappearing. Some fast food businesses are failing or undertaking substantial changes.
Imo one does need to reflect on what local production can achieve. We have seasons that delimit what local farms can produce. No tomatoes in December in No. Dakota. We import foods from Mexico, Canada to supplement our production. It seems to me we likely (in our planning for transition) need to recognize 'local' has to extend beyond our own local, particularly as applies to produce.
Another concern we may need to incorporate in our planning are crises. Supply line disruptions and failures. EMP. Attacks and sabotage. Floods. Droughts. Fires. Disease and insects. Building in resilience. Local capacities could save the day.
Your points here are well taken and needed to guide direction. Thank you for offering them. One hopes your insights will reach those forming policies and influencing directions. There is a lot on the line to achieving good outcomes.
The nature of American rulers (absurdly called “public servants”) has been as it is for too many generations: the needed policy and regulatory changes, sadly will only come about - to quote Charlton Heston - when power is wrenched from “cold dead hands” of elites who FIRST have been serving themselves. They will never relinquish one iota of their illegitimate, often absurd, non-consensual power. Agriculture is but one example of why this society is crumbling under the weight of bureaucracy.
Are there any out there ready and able to do the wrenching? Is the US of A now too Big to care? Complacency doth clothe, mock and slowly drain us... aren't we just 'fine' as we are? (read in sarcasm).
Dr. Malone, I appreciate your very useful description of the problem of modern agro-business and its consequences on human health. However there are big problems in couching the solution in Austrian School economics. The Austrian School of von Mises, Hayek, Milton Friedman, etc. is based on a materialist, oligarchic view of man as a beast, not as man created in the image of the Creator. British-inspired academia over the past 125 years has promoted the false dichotomy that one has to choose between either free market libertarianism (Austrian School) or liberal Keynesianism or socialism. In reality, the United States was built as an economic power on the basis of a third approach, going back to Alexander Hamilton, known as the American System. Today this is explicitly embraced by President Trump and members of his cabinet like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, among others. I highly recommend reading the in-depth report on the Austrian School by historian Robert Ingraham linked here. Among other things, it discusses the curious close relationship between Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes. https://www.prometheanaction.com/the-british-fraud-behind-austrian-economics-how-hayek-von-mises-betrayed-americas-economic-revolution/
Yours is a Valuable opinion. Worth reading, I believe, although the definition of the American System appears to lean away from agriculture - "His economic policies emphasized the importance of a diversified economy, including agriculture, but focused more on manufacturing and infrastructure development."
So maybe apples and oranges?
THE TRIFECTA of DOOM - Big Gov, Big Ag, Big Med. Money, Money, Money, I got greedlove in my tummy!
My momma bird is gone, abandoned her sweet nest. I won't say which day this occurred.
Loudly crying emoji (😭) shows a face with an open mouth and heavy tears, conveying intense sorrow or overwhelming emotions.
I vaguely remember Earl Butz. I was in high school and community college in those years; agriculture was not my focus. But I also remember a propaganda push (or was it just PR?) for the "green revolution" in India rendered in a slick magazine-style publication produced by the Rockefeller Foundation and featuring the work of Norman Borlaug. I was studying the history of India at that time.
I see this issue as part of the Corporate Problem. And that, in turn, is part of a larger problem on Earth that involves more esoteric processes. It makes us - in general - unaware that we are immortal spiritual beings who WILL BE (most of us anyway) our own grandchildren and will experience the consequences of the decisions we make today. This lack of awareness distorts the decision making process in favor of short-term gains over long range vision and planning.
I don't know if we can escape the centralization of production and access to resources, but we can escape that veil of unawareness that renders us much less "future smart" than we could be.
My current leanings regarding the politics of the situation is that government should move away from trying to regulate everything and move into providing more complete and accurate information to the taxpayers about how their money is being spent and what results are being obtained. If successful, this should lead to a more informed and sane marketplace.
Of course, any attempt to deviate from the Corporate plan (whatever that really is) will be met by resistance - up to and including the use of deadly force. But that's all Corporate really has. Their ideas, by and large, are second-rate. They rely on the sparkling minds of real intellectuals and if those minds turned towards the more basic realities of life on Earth, then we might stave off what seems today to be almost certain future doom.
This is an excellent essay and I wish that Robert Kennedy and the current Secretary of Agriculture could read it.
Making certain "empty-calorie" foods cheap does NOT make people obese or diabetic. The people themselves must choose to eat those foods. While I totally agree that government must get out of interfering in the marketplace (not just in agriculture but in virtually all areas of economic activity), the bottom line in getting people to behave responsibly is to make them suffer the consequences of their own bad choices. Our system generally socializes/subsidizes the cost of failing to get a good education, failing to find a good marriage partner before having children, failing to take care of ones own health, and dozens of other failures. This is done in the name of "compassion," which (ironically) creates MORE misery by encouraging more and more people to commit the same failures. When we remove or mitigate the consequences of people's (moral) failures (and I'm not talking about bad luck or bad accidents here, which we - as individuals - should pitch in and help with) we teach and even encourage people to commit those failures in ever-increasing numbers.
Many people, especially in inner city food deserts, have no access to healthy food. When people are fed a steady diet of advertising junk food from the time they are kids, they believe whatever lies they are told about what they are eating. There is a lack of any meaningful, truthful nutrition education in schools. Remember the “food pyramid” that the USDA promoted for decades that school lunches and institutional meals were based on? People are waking up to the truth, but many struggle with literal addiction to processed food that was designed to be addictive and encourage gluttony. I don’t think this usually is moral failure by individuals, it is a moral failure of an agricultural system that is designed for short-term profits at the expense of people and the environment.
Two hearts for this one.
I Like the dopamine hit when some neurons connect into aha