Organic consumerism

Canadian agronomist Vaclav Smil has shown that it is only thanks to the artificial nitrogen fertilisers that we have today that about 60 per cent of the world population are fed properly. And the inventor of high-yield plant breeding, Norman E. Borlaug, argues organic farmers could only feed the world if we all became vegetarians.

Producer or consumer-driven?

All this has not prevented the European Union’s 1992 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform, which favoured organic farming by setting financial incentives.

Another disturbing example of government intervention is reported from the Netherlands. In order to shore up demand, organic producers are encouraged by the government to form marketing co-operatives that set targets and form supply chains. The ultimate goal is of course to generate a more steady flow of income for producers. The program is supposed to replace traditional farm subsidies for individual farmers.

This is only one of many examples indicating that organic food is often producer-driven and prone to change the behaviour of consumers. The original organic movement was always highly political and mostly along those lines successful - not primarily through markets.

This has changed, of course, with the entrance into the market of the big retailers. It was only then that the organic market became much more consumer driven.

But the last laugh belongs to Adam Smith, because he provided the explanation of how mutual self-interest and choice, for millions of consumers, have diluted the organic ideology, eventually shifting competition from quality to price.

Do we have to worry about advocating consumer choices elsewhere, say in health care, which is equally loaded with esoteric produce. No, because we can expect any esoteric produce or service leaving its niche and going mainstream, will be purged by the market of any esoteric content.

Challenge to our academic institutions

Organic farmers and their customers have also pioneered direct relationships with consumers because biodynamics in some regards is a proselytising church and well known for aggressive campaigning.

For instance, it has been reported that biodynamic farmers are rejecting division of labour and increasingly questioning landownership or private property rights. Whereas other methods of agriculture originate from new research (such as no-till and integrated agriculture) the organic movement was always a faith-based grass roots affair with only marginal relations to agriculture research. After all even the proponents of biodynamics describe their underlying concept as “spiritual”. Yet if we look at their “science” it soon becomes obvious that spiritual means actually self-referential.

This is not to deny that these folks have already changed part of our academic institutions. Biodynamics, homeopathy and many other esoteric belief systems have penetrated academia and became accepted in our universities. Their success has already weakened the power of our academic credentials. Triggered by the demand for esoteric acceptance through fabricated evidence, a new type of systemic research has emerged. Framed within a social context this “research” necessarily involves special interests and reflects a new set of anti-industrial values or even different standards of rationality and meaning.

Christine Watson from Scottish Agricultural College argues that the general principle of scientific objectivity should be replaced by different criteria used only in individual research disciplines. Therefore organic farming remains inherently ideological and the majority of literature on this subject is written from a strongly committed point of view. So on the market of ideas in academia and elsewhere competition between organic and enlightened concepts of agriculture and food goes on.