Validation and Economic Development
Does economic development necessarily correlate to a correct understanding of effective and holistic systems?
Economic development is required to fully outfit the infrastructure needed for a system to become embedded in a society. For instance, computers were once incredibly expensive to obtain and use in business or individual settings. As economic development (funding, grants, consumer purchasing etc.) funneled into these computer systems, the cost for these products decreased dramatically. This is the beauty of the free market and human ingenuity when operating in a good way. The problem with the free market is that humans are easily enslaved to their desires. On top of our proclivity to enslavement, if we grant that the population is not enslaved to their desires and consequently fail to create demand for something useful, we are still often blinded by incorrect presuppositions as to what we should even be funding or developing.
This brings us to the discipline of Permaculture and the products that Permaculture systems produce. It is hard to put a price tag on soil health (especially micronutrients in the soil that we fail to recognize as important). If there is no priority on these sorts of things it is easy to fall into the same train of thought as the rest of society. It is particularly tempting to think this way in a capitalistic society where, we would hope, capital investments go where the most value and need is at. However, as I pointed out in the first paragraph, this isn’t always the case. Economic development =/ true value. There are tons of failing systems that we subsidize and prop up. Conventional agriculture is one of them.
People in the West continue to go to the grocery store and purchase subpar products. The reason is, as pointed out above, we are enslaved to our own sinful desires and gluttony. We are also blinded by presuppositions about what we even think food is. Most in America aren’t even aware that they are literally buying garbage (i.e. NOT FOOD). Seed Oils, for instance, are trash byproducts from Big Agriculture. Humans have had the capability to extract seed oils for millennium, however, we didn’t1. We didn’t because humans have always understood that nutritionally these products aren’t in the category of “food”. They are like tree bark, not useful for human consumption. However, through Crony Capitalism2, economic development was forced into creating agricultural systems around soy, corn, and seed oils.
Most of you reading know this to be the case. This isn’t news for some of us. However, if this is news to you, the last few articles from Heritage Permaculture can help give context to some of the claims I am making. If you would like to read any of them to catch up, I have attached them here.
Why do these articles support the claims I am making above? Because the topics discussed in them are some of the vital things we must understand to create correct and harmonious economic development, rather than what we have seen. This article is intended to be a continuation of the ones released the past couple months. If we want to see a change it has to start with us and our economic choices. If the principle I laid out above, that economic development =/ true value, then we should not follow the herd in this area. We need to be consistent people that recognize these grave facts and put our money where our mouth is. One day we hope to see a food system in America that accords with God’s good design for food. In the meanwhile, don’t expect drastic changes until the public’s perception of healthy food systems catches up to what we have all been preaching for years.
—Heritage Permaculture Team
You visit the earth and water it,
You greatly enrich it;
The river of God is full of water;
You provide their grain,
For so You have prepared it.
You water its ridges abundantly,
You settle its furrows;
You make it soft with showers,
You bless its growth.
—Psalm 65:9-10
I grant that humans have historically extracted oils from plants, but they were plants that were actually designed for such use. Examples are olive oil and coconut oil. Not all extracted plant oils are for human consumption.
This is Capitalism “gone wrong”. I think Capitalism is good but when it is guided by a correct understanding of the world through virtuous people.