Welcome to JP Melville's review, experience, and statement on foreign aid and the international development industry. A conservative faith in family. A love affair riding the riotous tensions between money, personal freedom, the majestic travesty of our specie's ecological footprint, and economic politics. Selected writing of both prose and poetry, anecdotal travel log to rhetorical essay, dating back from the 1980's to the present. Enjoy!

Monday, 20 February 2012

Collected Notes #5 - Bio-economics

Will and Wishful Thinking

It is always surprising how many people think that the changes that have taken place in agriculture in the past generation or two are the natural effect of some immutable law of agricultural economics... There may indeed be imperatives that will determine the look of agriculture - but they will be the product of biological, not economic, law.  An economic system is only a way of organizing productive resources so that they accomplish economic purposes.   It is a function of custom, culture, and social values - but it is not above the laws of ecology.  We cannot have any kind of agriculture we want; our agriculture must conform to biological law.  But we can have the kind of agricultural economy we want.

Quote from :
Marty Strange -  The Economic Structure of a Sustainable Agriculture - 1985

Anything else to say, folks?  On with it now!

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