I reflected on Michael Pollan's story in The Omnivore's Dilemma, the one about the farm in Virginia where everything is interconnected in complex and important ways to produce happy, healthy animals in a sustainable way. There are probably many ways to build farms that interlink the care of the land (and the planet) with the feeding of humans, and this is but one example.
What struck me was that while the farm's chickens were very much in demand, it was not possible to respond to the market signal of rising price by shifting production more toward chickens. Everything on the farm was interconnected in more or less fixed proportions, so more of one thing really meant expanding the whole operation, possibly producing more of some other products that were not in high demand.
Imagining a town surrounded by farms engaged in sustainable agriculture of this type, I began to think, well, the people in the town would have to sort of want what they have, except when there was a chance to start up a whole new complex of farm operations with a whole new mix of products.
It might not be bad at all, but it is really very different from a system where more demand calls forth more production, that is, the market system.
We could settle into wanting what we have, enjoying a lifestyle that would gradually evolve into being traditional, getting to know one another, talking things over, exploring possible changes together, and allowing things to shift ever so slowly with changes in taste or knowledge of nutrition or requirements of climate change.
Living here in the small town of Belfast, Maine, the sense that this could happen is very real. It would not be a market system. What would it be? And how would it respond to changing wants and shifting conditions of production? Probably it would be good to explore the answers to these questions by allowing that kind of agriculture to grow up around our small towns. Something post-industrial might emerge, carrying with it some of the pre-industrial, for good or ill.
I suspect that values have a lot to do with how it might evolve, so naturally, I want Unitarian Universalists to be right there helping it happen. Will we do it?
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That was a great book. The section on the interconnectedness of the Virginia farm was amazing. It all made so much sense. However, that farmer had control of his own little ecosystem. Getting any size group of humans to see the sense of one particular idea or system is very challenging. The larger the group, the less well it goes. I suppose that's why communes, kibbutzes and cooperatives work and why communism didn't. You don't have to be a communist to see the 'profit' in cooperation, but you do have to have a broader view to your neighbor and to the future.
Let's all keep trying to patiently uncover that view.
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