Viewpoint: Polan Lacki

Wrong Diagnoses and Demagogic Solutions Are "Paralyzing" the Initiatives of Farmers

An article by Polan Lacki
Translation by Andrea Mulei

It is deplorable that in Latin America we have wasted more than 50 years devising the wrong diagnoses for rural problems and telling farmers that the following exogenous factors were, or will continue to be, the main causes of their problems: 

-  colonialism and imperialism
-  the politics of adjustment "taxes" by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank
-  neoliberalism, globalization, and the World Trade Organization
-  the lack of policies, commercialization guarantees, abundant cheap credits, refinancing, and cancellation of debts
-  the lack of internal subsidies and protective measures against the importing of agricultural products
-  the value of the dollar and the price of tolls
-  the subsidies and protections that wealthy countries offer their farmers

This approach does contain some truth, and is very profitable in electoral terms. 

Nevertheless: 

  A.  Are the eliminable causes of the problems of farmers and the feasible solutions of being put into practice really those just mentioned?  Or is it that these "external enemies" are an excellent justification and excuse to hide our inability to eliminate, by ourselves, our "internal enemies," utilizing the tools of the technology, of administration and rural organization, and of professionalism?
 
  B.  When farmers choose their union leaders and national authorities, is it done to continue, ad infinitum, identifying supposed culprits and proposing utopian solutions?; or is it done to adopt realistic measures that can be put into practice, even though it may not yet be possible to eliminate those external factors? 

  C.  When farmers, through their taxes, pay the salaries of the officials of farming support institutions, is it done so they can continue formulating diagnoses of causes that are remote, in both time and space, for the reason why we are underdeveloped?; or so that said institutions become significantly more efficient in correcting the inefficiencies of agribusiness? 

  D.  Before attributing the fault to third parties, ought we not “take care of our own back yard" like for example, correcting the distortions described below, especially keeping in mind that these can be avoided or eliminated independent of what occurs, or ceases to occur, with those "external enemies"? 

1.  In each hectare of land, Latin-American farmers produce on average: 
     3,189 Kgs of rice; 712 Kgs of beans; 3,288 Kgs of corn; 13,561 Kgs of potatoes; 2,090 Kgs of wheat. 

We do not seek scapegoats; these very low performances are the consequence of basic errors, easily fixable, like for example: 

• utilizing seeds that are genetically degraded or contaminated with pathogens
• not performing germination tests
• not inoculating legume seeds
• not adequately regulating the seed drill
• not conducting floor analysis
• not adopting methods for crop rotation and diversification
• not eliminating weeds before they damage the crop
• not avoiding losses before and during the harvest, etc. 

Deficiencies in the area of livestock mean that:

• producers obtain on average less than 1,200 liters of milk per cow each year;
• the first pregnancy occurs at 33 months of life, but could occur before 19 months;
• the interval between parturitions is 22 months, but could be 13 months;
• extraction is 19%, performance being only 60 kilograms of meat per hectare each year,
• young bulls arrive at their target weight at 50 months of age but could do so before 25 months. 

Similar to the agricultural situation, these zootechnical warnings reflect a failure to adopt practices that are just as fundamental, like for example: 

• lack of care including the protection against bad weather
• not disinfecting the navel
• not supplying colostrum in the first hours of life
• not adopting preventative measures against illnesses and parasites
• breaches of hygiene in the equipment and the milking
• loss of heats,
• lack of recording and inspecting production and reproductive activity,

In particular animals are often underfed or badly fed for long periods of the year. Inadequate or insufficient diet, is by long way the most important cause of the modest performance of our livestock. 

Contrary to what is often suggested, these errors are not themselves due to the supposed exogenous factors mentioned in the first paragraph of this article; they are due to the hard fact that the majority of producers -- not by their fault, evidently -- do not possess the fundamental know-how that is necessary to avoid or correct such errors. 

2.  Many farmers still practice mono- or bi-cultivation and consequently obtain incomes only one or two times a year. 

It is for this reason, and not for lack of political decisions, that they keep themselves so dependent on rural credit; if they diversified their agricultural production and integrated it with livestock production which was also diversified, they would be able to generate "balanced" food for the family and the livestock, besides income, during each of the 365 days of the year. 

With this approach, so simple but highly efficient, they would become less dependent on credit and less vulnerable to other adverse external factors (climate, market, blights, etc).  Pragmatic solutions, as in diversification of production, should be emphasized in agro-technical schools and agrarian science departments instead of expecting the economists of the Central Bank or the parliamentarians of the National Congress to resolve the economic problems of farmers. 

It is preferable to eliminate the causes of excessive dependence on credit than to counteract its symptoms or consequences utilizing constructed compensatory credit with such inefficiency. 

3. The majority of the rural producers, while complaining about lack of resources, maintain large scale unused investments in land, machinery, and plant equipment that yield low performances and remain under-utilized a great deal of the time. 

If the producers formed groups to collectively operate and utilize some investments (those that are high cost and utilized with low frequency), they would be able to reduce this disparity that raises, unnecessarily, their fixed costs. 

With the savings obtained, they would be able to acquire the supplies that they need (but would have to only purchase what is necessary so as to avoid wasting resources) in order to increase thier performance and reduce the cost per kilogram produced. 

An identical problem occurs with the livestock; the cattle raisers are used to keeping excessive numbers of poorly fed animals instead of a smaller number which are properly fed and consequently more productive. 

This under-utilization and idleness do not take place for lack of political decisions, or because of colonialism or neoliberalism, but because the farmers have neither been trained nor qualified to practice the kind of collaboration that would increase their production and improve their property administration; again, the cause of the problem and its solution do not lie in the Department of Economy / Finance, but in the rural educational system, both formal and informal.

4. The poorest of rural producers are accustomed to producing items of low economic density that coincidentally are consumed by low income urban residents, for example:  potatoes, yucca, sweet potatoes, squash, corn, rice, beans, etc. 

Producing these "items consumed by the poor," even if the production was efficient and obtained high performance per hectare, would yield very limited revenue for these crops. Increasing the profit margin would require large scale production, an advantage that small farmers do not have.

It is therefore necessary to train them to produce items that are diversified, more sophisticated, and of greater economic density, for example: 

• organic or hydroponic crops
• vegetables produced in greenhouses so they can be grown out of season
• fruits, flowers and ornamental plants
• mushrooms, asparagus and other more sophisticated vegetables
• sprouts to be transplanted
• smaller animals, honey, fish, native chickens and eggs
• herbs and spices, medicinal and aromatic plants, etc..

These products can then hopefully be sold at a higher price. 

With this restructuring of production, they would cease selling a lot to earn so little and would instead shift to selling a little but earning a lot.  The correction of this inefficiency should be taught by agronomists and zootechnicians directly in the farms, instead of continuing to ask economists of the World Bank or the IMF to resolve it over in Washington. 

5 & 6.  As much in the acquisition of supplies as in the sale of their surpluses, farmers act in individual manner.

It is due to this lack of collaborative spirit and practice, and not so much because of globalization nor the IMF, that they adopt procedures in total opposition to their own interests, like for example:  in the purchase of supplies, farmers acquire them at retail price with high added value and at the final link of the supply chain; but in the commercialization of their own surpluses, they turn 180 degrees and do the exact opposite by selling them at wholesale, without added value, at the first link of the supply chain. 

Cooperative spirit, solidarity, and the practice of collaboration – which are necessary so that farmers themselves can revert this double distortion – must be taught to the children in rural primary schools instead of continuing to blame the WTO or wealthy countries that subsidize and protect their farmers. 

Being realistic and objective, the unnecessarily high prices of supplies and the unnecessarily low prices of crops are due, to a large extent, to excessive use of middlemen; and this, at the same time, is due to the fact that the farmers have been neither trained nor qualified to set up their own businesses. 

Instead of begging that the supermarkets, agricultural enterprises, or intermediaries pay them fairer prices for their crops, farmers should require that the rural educational system teach them how to organize themselves so as to eliminate the superfluous links in the crop supply chain. 

These six are the main problems that are fixable, by the farmers themselves, which affect the great majority of these farmers and with great frequency. They are the main eliminable causes of farmers’ problems, and they are the possible solutions. 

The problems, causes, and solutions are principally within the farms themselves, in the rural communities, in the three levels of formal agricultural education, and in the rural extension services.

It is not worth losing more time seeking answers in Brussels, in Geneva, in Washington, or in Tokyo.  If the rural educational system provided rural families with even just the competencies (knowledge, skills, and approaches) that they need to begin correcting these six inefficiencies, these families would do it and would thereby:

• reduce the costs per kilogram produced
• improve the quality of and add value to their crops
• increase the selling price of their surpluses
• become self-sufficient in terms of food supply, for both the family and livestock
• be assured of generating income each of the 365 days of the year

If they did only this, they would have greater profits, they would be more competitive, and furthermore they would become less dependent on aid from their governments and much less vulnerable to the factors that they cannot control (climate; market; lack of credit, subsidies, and protections of wealthy countries; etc). 

In short, their main problems would be resolved, by the farmers themselves, independent of what is, or is not decided, by their own governments, by the governments of wealthy countries, by international agencies, etc. 

If this is how it really is, why not do what needs to be done? 

Everything said thus far shows that we are driving rural producers to the fate of "paralysis" when we exaggerate the importance of supposed exogenous factors of agricultural development that are outside the reach of the farmers and even of their respective governments.

In the meantime, we are underestimating the urgent need to carry out a profound reform of the rural education system - something which is in the immediate reach of even the most impoverished and under-financed governments.