Kirschenmann: On the propagation of bad ideas

By FRED KIRSCHENMANN, Leopold Center Distinguished Fellow

There is an ecology of bad ideas, just as there is an ecology of weeds, and it is characteristic of the system that basic error propagates itself.

When you have an effective enough technology so that you can really act upon your epistemological errors and can create havoc in the world in which you live, then the errors become lethal.

-- British anthropologist and author Gregory Bateson, 1969

The cacophony of crises to which we have been subjected recently has given new meaning to the term sustainability as it relates to our food and agriculture enterprises. Just a few short months ago, farmers were planning their next season on the assumption that they would be selling corn for $7 a bushel and that the increasing demand for corn might push prices even higher. So landowners began increasing rental rates, equipment and fertilizer prices spiraled upward, and seed became more expensive – all of which began to eat into the projected “gravy train” – the “golden era” many had predicted for farmers.

All of these development left farmers with more expenses and greater risks. In a September 2007 presentation at Grinnell College, Ohio State University ag economist Carl Zulauf said that farmers’ current input costs (not including increased land rent) already had gone up 22 percent when compared with average input costs over a five-year period from 2001 to 2006. Farmers have absorbed these higher costs and now dry corn is selling back in the $3 per bushel range. In the Northern Plains where cold weather has prevented the corn from drying down in the field, farmers are harvesting corn at 25 percent moisture and local elevators are only paying $2.20 per bushel for the wet corn. The high cost of propane to dry the corn leaves them little choice.

I doubt that anyone can argue that this scenario is “sustainable” for farmers.

Meanwhile, food prices have increased around the world, creating severe hunger problems in some regions where people spend more than 80 percent of their income on food. The result has been a "food crisis," and in many circles farmers were being blamed for it. Farmers may be part of the problem but they are hardly the cause of it.

The underlying circumstance that often leads to such crises was explained by noted British anthropologist in a paper that he presented at a conference in 1969. In his paper, “Pathologies of Epistemology,” he argued that we can never know anything absolutely – that we always harbor many false propositions, which can be false even when they seem to work and we all share them. Accordingly, we easily can become committed to such false propositions and find it very hard to let go of them.

Bateson further observed that when such false propositions are combined with powerful technologies, the result sometimes can lead to “lethal” errors. These observations are particularly relevant to understanding the core cause of our current crises.

The central propositions that have guided our thinking for several centuries are that:

humans are separate from nature;

we are in a struggle against nature and must therefore invent technologies that enable us to exercise control over nature;

maximum efficient production, short-term monetary return and unlimited growth are the most effective means by which we can accumulate wealth and ensure security; and

the most efficient ways we can achieve those goals are through specialization, simplification and economies of scale.

While those propositions seemed rational at the time they were crafted, and they worked relatively well under certain conditions, it may be time to reexamine them for potential systemic errors. The melt-down in many parts of our economic system may well be due to the facts that these propositions left us with a brittle system that is not very resilient in the face of shocks and disturbances, and that they have led us to deplete our natural resources to a point which now threatens the carrying capacity of the planet.

Consequently, it may be wise for us to follow Bateson’s advice and examine the epistemological ideas which underlay our current paradigm. We need to explore more sustainable propositions that are grounded in ecological economics, resilient production, long-term monetary returns, and a food and agriculture system that is redesigned to mimic nature and is more self-renewing and self-regulating.

If we perpetuate epistemological errors and use our powerful technologies to reinforce them, we may find that our current crises are only the beginning. And if we persist in this epistemological pathology we may create even more “havoc in the world in which [we] live.”

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Kirschenmann: On the propagation of bad ideas