Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Sustaining the Profitability of Agriculture
John E. Ikerd, University of Missouri *
http://web.missouri.edu/~ikerdj/papers/AAE-SASA.htm

* John Ikerd is extension professor of Agricultural Economics, University
of Missouri, Columbia. This paper was presented at the Extension
Pre-conference: "The Economist’s Role in the Agricultural Sustainability
Paradigm," San Antonio, TX, July 27, 1996.


Over most of the past century, profits from farming have gone primarily to
those who found ways to reduce costs first and expand production the
fastest. However, each new round of cost cutting technology has resulted in
increased production and lower prices, erasing initial profitability. Late
adopters have been motivated by survival rather than profitability and
chronically declining prices have forced the laggards out of business. A
relentless, never-ending search for new sources of profits has been a
necessity of survival.

This paper deals with profits from farming, not profits from the whole of
agriculture from input suppliers to retailers. However, American farmers
have utilized the same basic model as American industry, including
agribusiness, in their pursuit of profits. That model is commonly referred
to as the industrial model. The fundamental characteristics of the
industrial model are simplification, specialization, routinization, and
mechanization. Profits through industrialization are associated with such
economic concepts as division of labor, opportunity cost, comparative
advantage, and economies of scale.

Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, the foundation for modern economic theory,
was published in the early stages of the industrial revolution. Its
ultimate wide acceptance among economists was no coincidence. The economic
world view of Adam Smith fit perfectly with the world view of the
industrialists. The promise of greater profits provides a powerful
motivation for change. The idea that an "invisible hand" would
automatically transform individual greed into public good freed decision
makers to pursue their narrow self interests, confident they were serving
broader public interests as well. Each person could be rewarded most and
contribute most by exploiting their individual comparative advantage,
whether on farms, assembly lines, or boards of directors. Mechanization
removed the drudgery of the most routine tasks by eliminating the economic
opportunity for people to pursue such work.

Industrialization of agriculture has consistently lagged behind
industrialization in most other sectors, but the process accelerated
dramatically in the early 1900s. At that time the potential societal gains
from continuing the industrial revolution in the larger society were
undeniable. We were still an agrarian society. More than half of the people
of this country were either farmers or lived in rural communities, and it
took about half of our total resources -- money, time, and effort -- just
to feed and clothe ourselves. If we as a nation were to realize the
emerging opportunities of the industrial revolution -- to become the modern
society we know today -- we had to accomplish two things. First, we had to
free people from the task of farming to go to work in factories and offices
of the emerging industrial economy. Second, we had to free up income and
other resources spent on food and clothing so people could buy the things
these new industries were going to produce. In short, American agriculture
had to become more efficient. We had to make it possible for fewer farmers
to feed more people better at a lower real cost.

Industrialization allowed agriculture to fulfill its public mandate.
Through specialization, mechanization, simplification, and routinization
nature was bent to serve the needs of humanity. Farmers gradually harnessed
the vagaries of nature and transformed their farms into factories without
roofs. Fields and feed lots became biological assembly lines with inputs
coming in one side and commodities coming out the other. Economies of
large-scale, specialized production were achieved as the principles,
strategies, and technologies of industrialization were applied to farming.
Publicly funded research and education developed many of those new
industrial technologies and strategies and transferred them from the
experiment station to the farm.

Through industrialization, American agriculture became the most efficient
agriculture in the world, at least in terms of the dollar and cent costs of
production. This in turn made it possible for this nation to build the
strongest economy in world. The agricultural sector takes just pride in its
past successes. But the objectives of industrialization have been achieved.
The things that industrialization could do for America have already been
done.

Today, less than two percent of the people in this country today are
farmers. Today, as a nation, we spend only about ten percent, or a dime out
of each dollar, of our disposable income for farm produced food. Equally
important, the farmer gets only a single penny out of that dime, while nine
cents goes to the marketing and input firms. We now pay more for packaging
and advertising that we pay the farmer to produce the food. Future societal
gains from the further industrialization of agriculture must be squeezed
from the farmer's penny. Food would cost only ten percent less on average
if the farmer got nothing. It simply doesn't make much difference to
society any more whether there are more or fewer farmers or whether farmers
are more or less efficient.

Future profits of farmers must also be squeezed from the "farmer's penny,"
if they continue to use the industrial model. And, the more they squeeze
out, the less there is left to squeeze. Thus, farm profits simply cannot be
"sustained" through continued industrialization of agriculture. In fact,
farming cannot be sustained if we continue to industrialize agriculture.
Stewart Smith points out that if past trends were to continue until the
year 2020, there would be no farming sector remaining in agriculture
(Smith, 1993). The farming sector would be totally absorbed into the input
and marketing sectors.

American farmers must shift to a model or paradigm other than
industrialization if there is to be any hope of sustaining profits from
farming in the future. Agricultural economists must adopt a model or
paradigm other than the traditional economic model if we are to be of any
use to farmers in making this transition. The profit maximization model has
succeeded in virtually eliminating the potential for future profits from
continued use of that model by farmers.

The great transformation

There is hope for sustainable farm profits. Continued industrialization is
not inevitable. Peter Drucker, a time-honored consultant of twentieth
century industrial managers, believes were are in the middle of a great
transformation from an industrial to a post-industrial society. In his
book: The Post-Capitalist Society, he states: "Every few hundred years in
Western history there occurs a sharp transformation. Within a few short
decades, society rearranges itself -- its worldview; its basic values; its
social and political structure; its arts; its key institutions. Fifty years
later, there is a new world.... We are currently living through just such a
transformation." (1994 p. 1). Drucker contends the current transformation
began in the early 1970s.

A potential new paradigm for farming profitably in the post-industrial
century is emerging from the search for a more sustainable agriculture.
Sustainable agriculture has no universally accepted definition. However,
one thing is becoming increasingly clear. Agricultural sustainability will
require changes far more significant than simply fine tuning the
environmental and social constraints of the profit maximizing model of
economic efficiency. History will quite likely reveal the most significant
aspect of the sustainable agriculture movement to be the emergence of a new
mental model, mind set, or paradigm for decision making.

This new sustainable agriculture paradigm demands that we economists
rethink some of the fundamental assumptions of our discipline. For example,
the assumptions that all rational decision makers maximize profits and
thereby promote the public good are obsolete if not outright erroneous.
Such assumptions form the foundation for traditional economic analysis of
agriculture, whether related to farms, markets, or public policy. The
sustainable paradigm is about "balancing" rather than "maximizing."
Utility, in terms of quality of life, is viewed as a product of healthy
relationships, not just something achieved through acquiring more things.

The fundamental question of economics is the same for the new paradigm as
for the old. How can people, individually and collectively, best allocate
scarce resources to meet competing ends? The competing ends are the same:
alternative sources of satisfaction, utility, or quality of life. It's the
conceptual leap from utility to profitability that causes problems. The
fundamental economic law of diminishing marginal returns -- in consumption
and production -- are unchallenged. However, the nature of causality
between price and quantity and the feasibility of "holding other things
constant" are questioned. In short, the new economic paradigm for
sustainability is being build upon the same conceptual ground as the old
paradigm of economic efficiency. But the foundation of our old economic
paradigm is crumbling. Remodeling is not the answer. Sustainability
dictates that we rebuild from the ground up.

Evidence of emergence of a new paradigm abound in economic sectors outside
agriculture. While agricultural economists debate the characteristics of
future stages of industrialization, much of the rest of society is already
moving into a new post-industrial era of human social and economic
evolution. This post-industrial era in not just an extension of industrial
age thinking with new biological and information technologies. It is not
about producing more things more efficiently. It is about producing
different things, in different ways, for different reasons.

The industrial model of specialization, mechanization, simplification, and
routinization seemed appropriate for meeting the needs of its time. Adam
Smith's "invisible hand" seemed to guide market economies toward ever
greater economic efficiency during the industrial era. However, the
industrial era is giving way to a new era of human progress. The profit
maximizing model for economic efficiency likewise must give way to a new
paradigm -- a paradigm adequate to meet human needs during the
post-industrial century.

The industrial model made it possible for societies to rise above
subsistence living. It removed much of the drudgery from work and made
possible increased leisure time for pursuit of entertainment. But,
industrialization appears fundamentally incapable of sustaining human
progress. The economic benefits of industrialization have declined as its
ecological and social costs have risen. The goal of sustainability reflects
a new world view of sustainable human progress. Sustainable agriculture is
just one little piece of something far greater that is literally
transforming human civilization.

Agricultural economists have much to offer during this great
transformation. The fundamental question is whether we help develop a new
economic paradigm capable of meeting the challenge agricultural
sustainability or continue to drift toward increasing irrelevance as we
tinker with ideas whose time have past.

The end of the industrial era

No trend goes on forever. A couple of scientists recently proposed to the
world scientific community a list of their "Top 20 Great Ideas of Science."
Some of the ideas on their top 20 list were the first and second laws of
thermodynamics and the universal laws of motion. But, also on that list was
the proposition that "Everything on earth operates in cycles," physical,
biological, economic, and social (Science, p.1309). If this proposition is
valid, the industrial era will end. The question is not whether but when.

Paradigms, such as industrialization, become dominant because they are
found to be capable of exploiting new opportunities or solving problems
that previous paradigms could not solve. The industrial era was fostered by
a host of interrelated and complex developments, but among the most
important was accessibility to large supplies of fossil fuels. However,
those fossil energy supplies are being rapidly depleted by an expanding
global economy. In addition, industrialization has generated a whole new
set of unanticipated environmental and social costs.

Industrial systems historically have degraded their environment and
depleted their natural resource base. For example, industrialization has
transformed an agriculture created for the purpose of converting solar
energy to human-useful form, into an agriculture that uses more non
renewable fossil energy than it captures in solar energy from the sun. In
addition, commercial fertilizers and pesticides, essential elements in a
specialized, industrialized agriculture, have become a primary focus of
concerns for environmental pollution.

Industrial systems also degrade the human resource base. Henry Ford is
quoted as once saying the biggest problem in running a factory is that you
have to hire whole people when all you need is two hands. Factory farms
transform independent decision makers, into farm workers, people who know
how to follow instructions or directions, but not necessarily how to think.
Dee Hock -- founder, president, and former CEO of VISA -- states it very
bluntly: "Newtonian, mechanistic, command and control pyramids of power
were an anachronism of the Industrial age. They were not only increasingly
archaic and irrelevant, they were a public menace" (Hock, p.10).

Industrial agriculture, like industry in general, is management extensive
rather than management intensive. It allows fewer farmers to farm more land
and produce more livestock by using more capital equipment, hiring more
laborers, and purchasing more off-farm inputs. The new agricultural
mega-farms and feed lots are no less mechanical and hierarchical in
organization than are those deemed by Dee Hock to be anachronistic,
archaic, irrelevant, public menaces.

The focus of industrialization is on production rather than people. As
farms have grown larger and more specialized, agriculturally dependent
rural communities have withered and died. Larger farms meant fewer farms
and fewer farm families to support local schools, churches and public
institutions, and retail businesses. In addition, larger farms tend to
bypass local communities in purchasing production inputs and in marketing
their products. The fundamental purpose of agricultural industrialization
was to make it possible for fewer people to produce more. It takes
productive people, not just production, to sustain local communities.

The industrialization of agriculture made sense as long as displaced
farmers could find more productive employment in the larger economy.
However, the days of good paying factory jobs are gone. American industries
are reducing employment at all levels. Robots and computers are replacing
people and eventually will do anything and everything that can be done
without thinking. American industry simply doesn't need any more displaced
farmers.

The growing environmental and social costs of industrialization may have
more than offset its declining benefits as far back as two to three decades
(Drucker, Hoval). Great transformations take time. But there is growing
evidence that the industrial era is drawing to a close.

The post-industrial era

Alvin Toffler -- a futurist quoted by people with views so different as
Speaker, Newt Gingrich and President Bill Clinton -- points out that many
forecasters simply present unrelated trends, as if they would continue
indefinitely, without providing any insight regarding how the trends are
interconnected or the forces likely to reverse them. The professional and
popular agricultural press is filled with such forecasts for the future
industrialization of agriculture.

Toffler contends that the forces of industrialization have run their course
and are now reversing, that the industrial models of economic progress are
becoming increasingly obsolete, and that old notions of efficiency and
productivity are no longer valid. He contends that mass production is no
longer a symbol of "modern" business operation. The new "modern" model is
to produce customized goods and services aimed at niche markets, to
constantly innovate, to focus on value-added products and specialized
production. Toffler contends that mass production of basic commodities were
the trends of the past, not the trends of the future.

Some contend that large industries will simply tailor specialized products
for niche markets and continue the industrial trend. But the primary
advantages of industrialization comes from being able to produce large
quantities of the same basic things rather than from producing small
quantities of lots of different things. Large firms realize that the
profitable markets of the future are in the niches, but most also realize
that as they target these markets, they become increasingly vulnerable to
competition from small firms and independent producers. Thus, we see large
industrial firms begin to decentralize, downsize, outsource, and otherwise
begin to dismantle themselves to forestall their eventual competitive
destruction by more flexible, innovative, creative, dynamic, smaller
competitors.

Toffler goes on to state in his book Powershifts: "the most important
economic development of our lifetime has been the rise of a new system of
creating wealth, based not on muscle, but on the mind" (Toffler, p. 9). He
contends that "the conventional factors of production -- land, labor, raw
materials, and capital -- become less important as knowledge is substituted
for them" (Toffler, p. 238). "Because it reduces the need for raw material,
labor, time, space, and capital, knowledge becomes the central resource of
the advanced economy (Toffler, p. 91). Toffler also states that separate
and sequential systems that characterize industrial production are being
replaced with synthesis and simultaneous systems of production. Synergism
is replacing specialization as the primary source of new productivity.

Dee Hock states that "The most abundant, least expensive, most
under-utilized, and frequently abused resource in the world was human
ingenuity: the source of that abuse was the archaic, Industrial Age
institutions and management practices they spawned" (Hock, p.10). He
believes the era of knowledge and information-based human progress will be
fundamentally incompatible with the industrial model or organization.

Drucker, in his book: The New Realities, talks of the "Post Business
Society." He states, and I quote: "the biggest shift -- bigger by far than
the changes in politics, government or economics -- is the shift to the
knowledge society. The social center of gravity has shifted to the
knowledge worker. All developed countries are becoming post-business,
knowledge societies. Looked at one way, this is the logical result of a
long evolution in which we moved from working by the sweat of our brow and
by muscle to industrial work and finally to knowledge work" (1989, p. 173).

Robert Reich, U.S. Secretary of Labor, addresses future trends in the
global economy in his book, The Work of Nations. He identifies three
emerging broad categories of work corresponding to emerging competitive
positions within the global economy: routine production service, in-person
service, and symbolic-analytic services.

He calls routine service workers the old foot soldiers of American
capitalism in high-volume enterprises. These workers typically work for
large industrial organizations and live primarily by the sweat of their
brow, or their ability to follow directions and carry out orders, rather
than by using their minds. In-person service, like production service,
entails simple and repetitive tasks. The primary difference is these
services must be provided person-to-person.

Symbolic-analysts are the "mind workers" in Reich's classification scheme.
They include all the problem-solvers, problem-identifiers, and
strategic-brokers. He points out that symbolic analysts often work alone or
in small teams, which are connected only informally and flexibly with
larger organizations. Like Toffler and Drucker, Reich believes that future
human progress will result from symbolic-analysis, from mind work, rather
than routine production or in-person services.

Drucker points out an important, fundamental difference between knowledge
work and industrial work. Industrial work is fundamentally a mechanical
process whereas the basic principle of knowledge work is biological. He
relates this difference to determining the "right size" of organization
required to perform a given task: "Greater performance in a mechanical
system is obtained by scaling up. Greater power means greater output:
bigger is better. But this does not hold for biological systems. There,
size follows function. It would surely be counterproductive for a cockroach
to be big, and equally counterproductive for the elephant to be small. As
biologists are fond of saying, 'The rat knows everything it needs to know
to be a successful rat.' Whether the rat is more intelligent than the human
being is a stupid question; in what it takes to be a successful rat, the
rat is way ahead of any other animal, including human beings" (Drucker,
1989, p. 259).

He concludes that differences in organizing principles may be critically
important in determining the future size and ownership structure of
economic enterprises. Other things equal, the smallest effective size is
best for enterprises based on information and knowledge work. "'Bigger'
will be 'better' only if the task cannot be done otherwise" (Drucker, 1989,
p. 260).

But if all this is true, why are we currently seeing rapid
industrialization in some sectors of the agricultural economy, specifically
in hog and dairy production? In Joel Barker's book: Paradigms, he points
out that new paradigms tend to emerge while, in the minds of most people,
the old paradigm is doing quite well. Typically, "a new paradigm appears
sooner than it is needed" and "sooner than it is wanted." Consequently the
logical and rational response to a new paradigm is rejection (Barker, p.
47). New paradigms emerge when it becomes apparent to some people, not
necessarily many, that the old paradigm is incapable of solving some
significant problems of society. Aging paradigms may also be applied in
situations where they are ill suited, creating major new problems while
contributing little in terms of new solutions.

American agriculture provides a prime example of over-application of the
industrial paradigm. The early gains of appropriate specialization in
agriculture lifted people out of subsistence living and made the American
industrial revolution possible. But the potential societal benefits from
agricultural industrialization were probably largely realized by the late
1960s. More recent "advances" in agricultural technologies may well have
done more damage to the ecological and social resource base of rural areas
than any societal benefit created by more "efficient" food production.

Industrialization of agriculture probably lagged behind the rest of the
economy because its biological systems were the most difficult to
industrialize. Agriculture by nature doesn't fit industrialization, it had
to be forced to conform. Consequently, the benefits were less and the
problems were greater. It is becoming fully industrialized last, and likely
will remain industrialized for a shorter period of time.

Sustainable agriculture: the new paradigm

Joel Barker, in his book Paradigms, defines a paradigm as a set of rules
that do two things: (1) defines standards of success and (2) establishes or
defines boundaries and defined rules for behavior within the boundaries. He
uses the game of tennis as an analogy to illustrate these concepts. Tennis
courts are standard in size and out-of-bounds are clearly marked. The ball
must hit within these bounds to "stay in play." The ball must be struck
with a tennis racket, not the hand or anything else, and the ball is
allowed to bounce only once before it is returned over the net. Success is
achieved by consistently returning the ball over the net while making it
difficult for your opponent to do likewise.

In the sustainable agriculture paradigm, a sustainable human society is the
standard of success. A sustainable agriculture must be capable of
maintaining its value to human society forever, or at least for as long as
the sun continues to shine. One cannot prove empirically that one system of
agriculture is sustainable and another is not. It would take forever to
collect the necessary data. Thus, the science of sustainability must be
build upon logic. Logic, and common sense, leads to the conclusion that to
sustain human life on earth agriculture must be ecologically sound,
economically viable, and socially responsible.

Any system that degrades or depletes the productivity of its resource base
will eventually lose its ability to produce, and thus, is not sustainable.
Likewise, any system that pollutes or poisons its environment in the
process of producing will eventually lose its net value to society and
likewise is not sustainable.

Economic viability is necessary to maintain control over resource use,
regardless of the economic system employed. A system that lacks economic
viability eventually must sacrifice control over its resources to some
economically viable alternative. In common sense terms, if farmers cannot
stay in business, their farming systems are not sustainable. However,
economic viability and profitability are not synonymous. Economic profits
imply that returns exceed opportunity costs -- that resources are put to
their "highest" economic use (Levins, 1996). Economic viability requires
that only returns to resources are sufficient to maintain control over
their use in an ever-changing, dynamic environment.

A sustainable agriculture must also be socially responsible. The
fundamental purpose of agriculture is to provide for the basic needs of
people. Thus, an agriculture that fails to provide an adequate supply of
safe and healthful food and fiber and a reasonable cost is not sustainable.
However, people also must be provided opportunities to participate as
productive members of society. We must produce something to earn money to
buy the things we want and need, but we should also have an opportunity to
realize satisfaction from the productive employment of our abilities.
Quality of life is as much a function of working and contributing as it is
of loafing and consuming. Employment in any given sector of an economy need
not be proportional to its production. But displaced farmers with no
alternative employment are no less a cost to society than is an aquifer
polluted by agrochemical or a sediment-clogged stream. A socially
responsible agriculture must do its part to provide opportunities for
people to contribute as well as consume.

Finally, sustainable systems must be ecologically sound, economically
viable, and socially responsible. All three are necessary and no one or two
of the three is sufficient. A system that lacks ecologically soundness
cannot sustain its productivity over time, no matter how profitable or
socially supportive it may seem in the short run. A system that is not
economically viable will not be employed, no matter how ecologically sound
or socially responsible it may seem. And a system that is not deemed to be
socially responsible will be discarded or destroyed by the society it must
support, no matter how profitably or environmentally friendly it might
otherwise seem to be.

These are the standards of success. The sustainability game is like
old-fashioned pinball. The only thing we win is the privilege of playing
another round. We can judge how well we are playing the game, but success
is a process rather than an outcome -- a direction rather than a
destination.

The traditional paradigm of economics is fundamentally incapable of
addressing the issue of agricultural sustainability. The standards for
success are different. The boundaries and different. The rules of behavior
within those bounds are different. Different standards, different bounds,
and different behaviors imply different paradigms.

Traditional economic models are based on the assumed goal of profit
maximization. The environment and society are external to the decision
unit. The sustainable agriculture model treats ecological soundness,
economic viability, and social responsibility as three inseparable
dimensions of the single goal of objective of long run sustainability. All
three are "inside" rather than "outside" the bounds. The bounds of
sustainability are the laws of nature, including human nature.

Sustainability is a function of balance as much as level. This concept
becomes apparent if one assumes a theoretical long run, dynamic global
equilibrium situation. Ultimately, global quality and quality of human life
must be balanced with global resources, and global economic activity. Any
attempt to increase one without enhancing the other two will create an
unstable and less sustainable situation. When the three are out of balance,
enhancing the performance of one relative to the others may increase
sustainability. But when the three are in balance, one cannot increase
without decreasing the others. Increasing one but not the others makes the
system unstable and less sustainable.

Traditional economic models clearly consider the natural environment and
larger society to be "external," or out of bounds. Externalities are
internalized by demands of society -- imposed by decree -- not by choice of
the decision maker. Success in the traditional economic model is measured
in terms of profits and growth. Within the limits allowed by nature and
society, the economically rational decision maker may take a wide range of
actions. Almost anything that is possible and legal is encouraged if it
leads to profits and growth.

The rules of behavior are different for the sustainable paradigm.
Sustainability requires thoughtful, purposeful human intervention in the
development process. The earth cannot sustain the level of population and
per capita consumption that might result from the thoughtless pursuit of
narrow self-interests. The natural ecosystem must be "managed," not simply
treated as a mine or a sink, in order to sustain its productivity.
Sustainability requires that we make decisions collectively for the
collective good of society as a whole. Dignity of work may affect our
quality of life as much or more than how much "stuff" we are able to buy
and the leisure time we have to use it. Quality of life is the product of
how we relate to each other -- economically, politically, and socially
within and between generations. The quality of human life cannot be
sustained without caring and sharing in addition to working and making
"stuff."

Willard Cochrane, a pillar of the agricultural economics profession, states
that "we must replace the philosophy of extreme individualism with a
philosophy of community responsibility," if we are to reverse the current
slide toward economic collapse and social chaos. By community
responsibility "we mean the willingness of each individual to consider the
needs of all other members of the community; we mean the willingness of
each individual to support the actions designed to meet the needs of all
other members of the community; we mean that individual members must
recognize Mother Earth as an integral part of the community and to respect
her nurturing role in it; we mean that each and every child must be taught
in the home, the church and the school what his or her rights in the
community are and what his or her responsibilities to the community are; we
mean, finally, that the Golden Rule must be our guide to human conduct in
the community" (Cochrane, p. 36).

The challenge to agricultural economists

Barker points out that successful old paradigms often collect a host of
avid, but unwitting, advocates. Advocates of traditional economic thinking
tend to spontaneously apply their paradigms to any issue that arises. We
fall back on the paradigms we were taught as if they were based on
irrefutable truths of the universe. However, Donald McCloskey, in an
article "The Rhetoric of Economics," argues convincingly that the official
methodology of economics is modernism. He further contends that "Modernism
is influential in economics, but not because its premises have examined
carefully and found good. It is a revealed, not a reasoned, religion"
(1984). The post-modern era is begging for a post-modern paradigm of
economics.

The traditional economic model of functional separation, profit
maximization, and economic efficiency is consistent with the principles of
Newtonian physics (see Capra, 1982 ). The community, farm, and farmer are
modeled as a machine with many complex and interrelated, but separable
parts. If a part breaks, you have to fix it or replace it, but the machine
can be made to function again. The direction of cause and effect are
definite, if not readily discernible. The objective is to achieve maximum
output relative to input through purposeful tinkering with causes and
effects.

The sustainability model is much more consistent with the principles of
quantum physics. The community, farm, and farmer are modeled as living
biological organisms, each a whole in itself, but also made of a complexity
of inseparable wholes" (Savory, Kirschenmann). If a critical part "breaks"
the organism gets sick or dies. If it gets sick, it may heal itself if the
illness is corrected in time. If it dies, it cannot be revived and made to
function again. The nature of cause and effect is never completely
definable. Everything is connected to everything else. Cause and effect are
circular rather than one way. Purposeful change requires thoughtful
intervention rather than tinkering. The objective is to sustain the health
and productivity of the system over time. Continual change, regeneration,
is a fundamental part of that process.

In biological models, individual elements must conform to their ecological
niche. Big farms will be sustainable only if their "niche" is equally
large. It is readily apparent that many of today's large farms are
degrading both the natural and human resource base as they have expanded
beyond their ecological and societal niches. It will take "mind work," not
physical or economic muscle, for farmers of the future to find a niche
where they can carry out their function by means that are ecologically
sound, economically viable, and socially responsible. The vast majority of
those niches will likely be smaller than today's large, "industrial-sized"
farm.

The sustainable agriculture paradigm is consistent with the visions of
Toffler, Drucker, Reich and others of a post-industrial era of human
progress. Sustainable agriculture is management intensive, rather than
management extensive. Sustainable systems must be individualistic,
site-specific, and dynamic. Thus, sustainable farming is inherently
information, knowledge, and management intensive.

The future will require not only more thinking, but will require new ways
of thinking as well. In the Post Capitalistic Society Peter Drucker states:
"In the knowledge society into which we are moving, individuals are
central. Knowledge is not impersonal, like money. Knowledge does not reside
in a book, a databank, a software program; they contain only information.
Knowledge is always embodied in a person, carried by a person; created,
augmented, or improved by a person; applied by a person; taught by a
person, and passed on by a person. The shift to the knowledge society
therefore puts the person in the center."

Productive people are clearly the key to sustaining human progress during
the post-industrial era. The ability of farmers to think for themselves, to
shape their own destinies -- not just apply technologies and strategies
developed by others -- will be the key to sustaining agricultural
profitability. Agricultural economists are social scientists -- people
scientists -- thus, we clearly have a potentially important role to play in
developing the new post-industrial paradigm for farming. As social
scientists we at least should be willing to question whether we have a
responsibility to the people who farm and live in rural communities as well
as to the consumers of food and fiber. The post-industrial paradigm of
sustainable agriculture will continue to evolve over decades, if not
centuries, into the future. The fundamental question is whether
agricultural economists will help develop a paradigm capable of sustaining
farm profitability, or instead will become irrelevant as our logical role
is assumed by others who are less bound to paradigms of the past.

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* John Ikerd is extension professor of Agricultural Economics, University
of Missouri, Columbia. This paper was presented at the Extension
Pre-conference: "The Economist’s Role in the Agricultural Sustainability
Paradigm," San Antonio, TX, July 27, 1996.