A call to arms

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the global credit crisis. About Malawi. About food production. About energy. About change.

Malawi is a mono-crop culture. They grow maize, and they grow a lot of it. This becomes a problem because there is no crop rotation and no fallow. There is only one rainy season and very little irrigation. When you have a small plot that you need to feed your family with, and you live in a staple-food culture (nsima, made from maize), well, it’s obvious what you are going to plant. The government has tried to fix this situation by subsidizing fertilizer, and in reality, its working. Maize yields are up this year and it is unlikely that there will be a food shortage. However, a problem may exist because much of this fertilizer is petro-chemical based, i.e. it comes from oil. With the market tightening for oil, it is likely that we will be seeing farmers’ dependence on fertilizer as a constraint to long term growth. A bag of fertilizer costs around MK9000 per 50 kg bag. (When subsidized, farmers can buy it for MK500). Ten years ago, it cost MK6500 per ton. In the long term, farmers may be fighting a losing battle. So, while I understand the rationale behind subsidizing fertilizer (people need to eat), I am also concerned that the problem is being avoided, being pushed into the future.

We, in the West, are not so different in our thinking. This credit crisis has shown how fragile our economy is. In reality, it likely points out how our growth rates over the past years have been largely fraudulent. We have gotten by on borrowing and consuming and borrowing rather than producing. We’re trying to fix this with changes in taxes, tweaks to borrowing rules, changes to regulation and corporate bailouts. Perhaps we’re doing the same that Malawi is doing. Look at the environment. We continue to pollute, continue to drive large vehicles, live in large houses, and degrade the environment. Most of us are environmentalists until it encroaches on our comforts, which we somehow believe we deserve. We appear to be pushing our problems into the future rather than facing them. We are going to need a dramatic shift in the way we live.

Which brings me to this idea. I was reading a document written by Donella Meadows on Leverage Points, where to push to affect change. Number 12 on her list is constants, parameters numbers (such as subsidies, taxes, standards). Tweaking these, she argues, are the least dramatic ways of producing change. She says that changing parameters can be important in the short-term, but rarely change people’s behaviour. Number 1 and 2 on her list deal with paradigms, and creating paradigm shifts. Changing the way people behave or think about things is bound to have dramatic effects.

Perhaps, in Canada, we need to have a paradigm shift. We need to rethink about how we want our economy to work, about how we want our Canada to work. Perhaps in Malawi, Malawians need to rethink about maize as a staple food. Perhaps there needs to be no staple food. Or irrigation needs to be increased, so that in the current ‘dry’ season, nitrogen-fixing crops can be planted (maize is nitrogen-consuming) and thus better maintain soil quality without the use of fertilizer.

I’m no expert on farming or planting, so perhaps my words shouldn’t be taken so seriously, and I know I’m severely simplifying the problem.
But I think, regardless of where we are and what we’re doing, we need to be open to change so that we take into consideration both the current and future effects of our behaviour. Who knows, if future generations will look back on us and admire our ingenuity, or scoff and wonder at our stupidity?

Change will not come easy, but if this is a call to arms, discipline is necessary.