Mandated Agricultural Failures

International Standards and Technology impose more burden than benefit.

Readership: All
Theme: Political Shenanigans
Length: 1,500 words
Reading Time: 5 minutes + 11:29 minute video

Readers have probably seen the stories about recent events in Holland, Sri Lanka, and other countries, but not much has been said about how all these events are related.  This post will attempt to connect the dots and construct a frame of reference that may be helpful to the reader’s understanding of these issues.

Environmental Mandates in Underdeveloped Countries

Over the past few years, many countries around the world, with an especially large number of South-Asian and South-East Asian countries, are making extremely intense efforts to improve their agricultural industries, reduce pollution, and construct various infrastructures (roads, water, power generation systems, electrical grids, etc.).

Many of these projects are planned, funded, and managed by Western entities such as IEA, WHO, and the World Bank.  Many others, predominantly those in Africa, are supported by Chinese tech firms and brokerage investments. As part of these agreements, specific goals are implemented in an effort to match what is being called “international standards”, which is a nice way to describe a carbon copy of the wealthy, materialistic, post-industrial, technologically advanced West.

Many countries enter into these international agreements in good faith and for many reasons.

• They’re seeking to establish good business relations and trade with foreign countries.
• They wish to build a stronger tourism industry.
• Some are facing dire situations.  For example, the water pollution and water shortage in Bangladesh are problems addressed by these projects.
• So called “developing” nations are inspired to go along with these programs because they’re star struck by the dream of making their own country as materialistic, sophisticated, and technologically advanced as the U.S. and Europe.

For example, the Indonesian government is playing by the international guidelines with an eye on health and environmental preservation.  The Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture Regulation No. 43 of 2019 concerning Pesticides (MOA Reg. 43/2019) stipulates that pesticides should be classified based on their hazard level, which are further divided into prohibited and non-prohibited hazardous pesticides.  Prohibited pesticides cannot be used as determined by their active ingredients or additives or based on test results.  These prohibitions and standard tests are based on international criteria such as those set out by the Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the World Health Organization Joint Meeting on Pesticide Residues, and the Stockholm Convention (article 10 (2) of MOA Reg. 43/2019).

Farmers are busting their donkeys in a diligent effort to make it work.  Sri Lanka also joined Indonesia in this experiment, with similar outcomes, except that the Sri Lankan economy is so small that it cannot shoulder that kind of debt, resulting in a crisis situation.  Whoops!  Well, not every culture is worthy of “democracy”. Countries deserve the governments they have, and all that, right?

Some countries are, in effect, offered investment funds on the condition that certain environmental protocols are adhered to, such that the environment improves and does not degrade, which for some nations, is an impossible task.

Image Source: S. A. Sarkodie, Vladimir Strezov, “Effect of foreign direct investments, economic development and energy consumption on greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries”, Science of The Total Environment 646:1 (2019) 862-871.  (DOI)

Some governments (e.g. Indonesia, Malaysia) recognize the disconnect and are paying farmers subsidies until sustainability can be achieved.

OTOH, less developed countries that don’t join these programs are placed at a disadvantage.  They can’t receive investment funding, they can’t get preferred trading deals with foreign countries, and they cannot depend on foreign help to address dire emergency situations.  Without this regular economic activity, cooperation, and influx, their economies languish as others surge on.

Where is all this money coming from?  Uncle Sham, of course!  Japan, China, ASEAN, and Holland (!!!) are also big players. Fiat loans are given freely, and the responsibility to pay them back in real cash falls on the little people.

Little do they know that it’s all built on debt – debt that will soon transform their ancient societies into fawning pawns of the Western PTB.

This is the 21st century version of colonialism — economic entrepreneurship and political alliances, not done by force of arms, but through the lure of $$$ and “modernization”.

Environmental Mandates in Developed Countries

Holland appears to be an extreme outlier, compared to all the other nations in these various agro-economic renovation plans.  This is because Holland is a country that is already well developed, perhaps more so than many other European countries, so they don’t possess the starry eyed dream of obtaining all the trappings of American wealth.  The Dutch have less to gain, and more to pay for all of these experiments.  In fact, Holland is one of the top five countries making foreign direct investments. And since they’re already liberalized, they’re not strongly averse to protesting.

American farmers are not exempt from the pressure either.  Although they have long been following U.S. guidelines regarding fertilizers and pesticides, they are increasingly faced with technological problems related to farm machinery which are increasingly being controlled by cloud-based computerized operating systems.  When these systems break down, and they frequently do, then farmers must call a technician to come to their farm and pay large sums for their services.  The frequency and ubiquity of this problem is forcing many farmers to demand ownership rights and user policies that would allow them to modify these programs and how they are implemented in their equipment.

Farmers Are Hacking Their Tractors Because of a Repair Ban (2020-3-4) Length: 11:29

If the technological bottlenecks prove to be too slow in corraling the beast of burden, then a spate of explosions at oil/gas facilities or pipelines and mysterious fires at food processing plants should do the trick.

Conclusions

So far, all of this sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?  There’s just not much to criticize.  Poor countries are getting investment funding for all sorts of projects that will make life better and more humane for everyone.  The poor are being westernized and democratized.  Right?  Demarxocracy is prospering.  Soon the Liberal Utopia can be (almost) instantly realized!

The underlying problem here is that all these high technology, natural, “green”, new, or return-to-nature methods didn’t come about naturally as a natural result of the natural development of a green partnership between business and industry themselves, but were mandated into place by carrot-on-the-stick policies outlined by thinkbanks and imposed by governments enviously eyeing incentives offered by the World Bank.  As such, there is a major disjoint between the theory and practice, and this disjoint looks quite different for each country. In some countries, farmers continue to trust their governments and are doubling down to make ends meet out of service to their country. In other areas of the world, farmers are drawing a line and shoving off the grand flying flaxseed.

So the real news is not the riots or fuel shortages (move along, nothing to see here), but that all of these worthy projects are experimental in nature, and like most other environmental and social issues, it looks much better on paper than it does in practice.  But tedious facts don’t make a heart tugging liberal news story that could draw public sympathies.

Of course, foreign bankers and the cognitive elite know much more about farming in Indonesia (or wherever) than Indonesian farmers do.  So we must be ejumacated and told that…

• It will take some time for “organic” farming to produce the total yields that nasty chemical farming did in the past.
• It will take some time for farmers to reformulate their agricultural strategies and techniques, and it will take some more time for them to recoup their losses.
• It will take some time before “green” energy can produce enough power to support the grid (unless we “cheat” by redefining natural gas and nuclear energy as “green”).
• It will also take some time for 92.54% of the human population to die off.

So we must be patient!

Illustration by Nicolás Ortega for Foreign Policy.

In the meantime, we must swallow the Paper Marxism (in the form of agreements, contracts, fiat loans, mandates, policies, promissory notes, proprietary computerized equipment, environmental regulations, etc.) in the hope that the bureaucracy will keep everyone dutifully employed running this juggernaut, and everything will eventually work out for the benefit of those at the helm.

If only those #@%& farmers would stop blocking traffic, playing with goats, rioting, etc. and do it the right way this time!

Related

1. Inside Indonesia: In search of sustainable farming (2010-9-5)
2. Mongabay News: For Indonesian farmers used to ‘instant’ results, going organic is a tough sell (2021-11-2)
3. Foreign Policy: Sri Lanka Organic Farming Crisis (2022-3-5)
4. Patriactionary: Hoorah, Holland! (2022-7-3)
5. Okrahead: Hunger Yes, Games No – Part 1 (2022-7-4)
6. Patriactionary: Holland heating up! (2022-7-4)
7. Patriactionary: Go, Dutch! (2022-7-5)
8. Practical Eschatology: The Peasants Are Revolting In The Netherlands (2022-7-6)
9. Sp!ked: A people’s revolt against eco-tyranny (2022-7-6)
10. Vox Popoli: Dutch Uprising (2022-7-6)
11. Practical Eschatology: Things Heat Up In The Netherlands (2022-7-7)
12. Vox Popoli: The Dutch Farmer Rebellion (2022-7-7)
13. Okrahead: Hunger Yes, Games No – Part 2 (2022-7-8)
14. Patriactionary: Inspiring Dutchmen! (2022-7-8)
15. Patriactionary: Farmers rising up in Italy, Poland, too! (2022-7-8)
16. Gunner Q2: The Centrally Planned Starvation Of Sri Lanka (2022-7-12)