E se la cosa migliore che potessimo fare per i nostri figli fosse semplicemente lasciarli in pace? Jay Griffiths spiega perché le attenzioni dei genitori stanno rendendo infelici i nostri figli.

Mi sentivo un complice riluttante di una tortura. L’eco degli strilli della vittima risuonava tra le mura dipinte. La porta, sebbene completamente chiusa, non riusciva a fermare le urla di panico. Un bambino, solo e imprigionato in una culla.

Anche la madre del bambino era visibilmente scossa, pallida e in lacrime. Anche lei era una vittima, preda dei sostenitori del pianto controllato, o metodo Ferber; un metodo spietato, crudele per entrambi.

Pianto. Controllato. Queste parole denunciano l’obiettivo odioso: la prepotenza usata per controllare i sentimenti di un bambino. Alla madre avevano detto il contrario, che era il bambino a cercare di imporre il proprio volere sulla madre, ma tutto quello che potevo vedere era un bambino di un anno che impazziva per l’abbandono. Una madre americana ha scritto significativamente su internet: “Il metodo Ferber vale il mio mal di testa o è che sto veramente torturando mio figlio? Mi sembra una punizione crudele e fuori dall’ordinario.”

L’idea è che ai bambini si può “insegnare” a smettere di piangere lasciandoli piangere da soli. Di quando in quando un genitore va a controllarli, ma senza prenderli in braccio né stare con loro. Con il tempo, il bambino impara che piangere non porta consolazione e smetterà di provarci. I genitori sono incoraggiati a limitare a certi attimi il tempo trascorso a controllare il bambino. Il sistema funziona? Certo. Non è questo il problema. Il problema vero è: perché incoraggiare una cosa del genere? Perché c’è chi la accetta? Cosa rivela riguardo le priorità del mondo moderno? E come fa a fornire risposte al problema dei bambini infelici?

Abbracciati, stretti e serviti, la maggior parte degli infanti, nel corso della maggior parte della storia, hanno conosciuto il mondo lontano dalla solitudine. Tra le popolazioni Maia di lingua Tojolabal del Chiapas, in Messico, durante i primi due anni di vita i bambini stanno sempre vicino alle loro madri, che sono sempre pronte a calmarli con un giocattolo o il latte, perché non si sentano infelici. Tra le popolazioni Aché, nomadi della foresta del Paraguay, i bambini fino ad un anno passano la maggior parte della giornata a contatto fisico con la madre o il padre, e non toccano mai terra né vengono lasciati soli se non per pochi secondi. In India e in molte altre parti del mondo, i bambini possono stare nel letto della madre fino all’età di cinque anni.

Per molti genitori, le ragioni per adottare il pianto controllato possono essere riassunte in una parola: lavoro. I genitori che vogliono una vita di “routine” sono accaniti sostenitori del pianto controllato, dice Gina Ford, britannica, nota sostenitrice del metodo. I bambini che sono stati obbligati alla routine, commenta, si adattano facilmente anche alla routine della scuola e, si presume, saranno più malleabili come forza lavoro.

Eppure, in tutto il tempo che ho trascorso nelle comunità indigene non ho mai sentito gli strilli di paura e rabbia dei bambini sottoposti al pianto controllato. Se un bambino viene saziato spesso, commenta lo scrittore Jean Liedloff, quando sarà un bambino più grande vorrà tornare al contatto materno solo in caso di emergenza. Crescendo, questo bambino acquisirà più fiducia in se stesso, non per la scarsità di contatti durante l’infanzia (come dicono i sostenitori del pianto controllato) ma esattamente per l’opposto: per la loro abbondanza. All’età di circa otto anni, i bambini Aché, che da infanti non sono mai lasciati soli, sono già in grado di trovare la strada tra i sentieri della foresta e riescono ad essere molto indipendenti dai genitori. Nella Papua Occidentale ho visto bambini cresciuti a contatto con la famiglia diventare fieramente e orgogliosamente indipendenti.

Crescendo, il desiderio di libertà dei piccoli sembra diventare insaziabile. Di recente mi è capitato di dare lezioni di scrittura, a Kolkata, a bambini che per qualche tempo erano stati rinchiusi in una scuola in cui erano ben accuditi e generalmente felici. C’era una sola cosa che desideravano ardentemente: la libertà. “Vogliono la libertà che hanno conosciuto nella strada,” ha detto un insegnante, “andare ovunque in qualunque momento.” Nonostante i problemi della strada, come la povertà, i maltrattamenti, la fame e la violenza, i bambini “continuano a fuggire”.

Una volta lasciata l’infanzia, i bambini degli indiani d’America tradizionalmente sono liberi di vagabondare dove vogliono, tra i boschi come sull’acqua. “All’età di cinque anni sono già adulti, raggianti di salute e… affamati di libertà,” scrive Roger P. Buliard in Inuk, parlando della fanciullezza degli Inuit. Più o meno all’età di sette anni, il giovane comincia a maneggiare il coltello, vuole il fucile e la trappola, e da quel momento comincia ad “andare con gli adulti, condividendone il coraggio”.

Una volta trascorsi alcuni giorni a caccia di renne con i Sami, e vidi come i bambini erano liberi non solo quando si trovavano all’esterno, ma anche quando erano dentro la capanna estiva. Frugavano alla ricerca di qualcosa da mangiare, una fettina di renna cotta o un pesce appena pescato o una scatola di gallette, scegliendo cosa prendere; questo evitava quella grossa fonte di conflitti famigliari: l’ora del pasto.

Una delle caratteristiche della fanciullezza in molte società tradizionali sembra essere l’autonomia alimentare. I bambini Alacaluf della Patagonia imparano presto ad arrangiarsi; si servono di una lancia fatta con una conchiglia e a quattro anni sanno già cucinarsi il pasto. I giovanissimi Inuit usano la frusta per catturare le pernici bianche, mozzandone la testa con un guizzo del polso. Viaggiando tra le alture della Papua Occidentale, nel territorio degli Yali, mi capitò spesso di vedere piccoli dei villaggi che partivano in gruppo, carichi di archi e frecce, a caccia di uccelli e rane, che poi arrostivano sul fuoco fatto da loro stessi.

In Inghilterra un gioco ambientalista chiamato Wild About Play chiedeva a dei bambini quale era la cosa che più avrebbero voluto fare all’aperto, al che risposero raccogliere e mangiare frutti selvatici, e fare il fuoco per arrostire qualcosa. Questo è il segno dell’indipendenza che i bambini dimostrano dappertutto: badare al proprio cibo e alla propria persona. Apparentemente, i bambini europei e americani hanno un rapporto insolito con il cibo: primo, diventano autonomi tardi; secondo, hanno problemi con il mangiare.

Quanto alla libertà fisica, qualche anno fa trascorsi una giornata con dei piccoli degli Zingari di Mare, i Bajau, che vivono in palafitte costruite lontano dalla costa dello Sulawesi. I bambini sapevano tuffarsi e nuotare, maneggiare le barche e pagaiare; bagnati di acqua di mare giorno e notte sembravano una via di mezzo tra l’uomo e la lontra. Chiesi loro come vivevano l’infanzia. La risposta fu immediata: “I bambini sono felici perché sono molto liberi.” Se la felicità è il risultato della libertà, l’infelicità dei moderni bambini occidentali è sicuramente causata, almeno in parte, dal fatto che sono i meno liberi di tutta la storia.

Fui colpito dalla chiara felicità dei bambini Bajau: rimasi con un centinaio di loro per tutto il lungo pomeriggio e non ne vidi uno piangere, o imbronciato, infelice, frustrato. Non riesco ad immaginare un pomeriggio con cento bambini europei o americani e non sentirne neanche uno piangere.

In Europa, c’è un paese che sembra aver onorato la relazione tra libertà e felicità infantile in una maniera che gli Zingari di Mare avrebbero compreso: la Norvegia. Una terra di laghi e fiordi, un paese che ha codificato in legge l’antico diritto di andare liberamente in canoa, remare, veleggiare e nuotare, e di passeggiare dappertutto (tranne i giardini privati e le terre arate), una legge conosciuta come Allemannsretten, “il diritto di tutti”, il diritto di vagabondare.

Nel 1960, lo psichiatra americano Herbert Hendin stava studiando l’incidenza dei suicidi in Scandinavia. La Danimarca (assieme al Giappone) aveva l’incidenza più alta. La Svezia era un po’ più giù. E la Norvegia? In fondo alla lista. Hendin era incuriosito, soprattutto perché sapeva che Danimarca, Svezia e Norvegia avevano culture simili. Qual era la ragione di queste differenze drammatiche? Dopo anni di ricerche, arrivò alla conclusione che questa ragione era nell’infanzia. Se in Danimarca e Svezia i bambini crescevano irreggimentati, in Norvegia erano liberi di girovagare. In Danimarca e in Svezia si faceva pressione sui piccoli affinché intraprendessero una carriera con un obiettivo, e molti finivano per sentirsi dei falliti. In Norvegia questi avevano più libertà; non erano tanto guidati; più semplicemente erano lasciati liberi di guardare e partecipare e fare esperienza. Crescendo, i bambini norvegesi non acquisivano un senso di fallimento ma di indipendenza.

Lo studio dimostrava che i piccoli danesi erano iper-protetti e dipendenti dalle madri, e non erano liberi di andare dove volevano. L’esperienza comune dei piccoli svedesi era fatta di separazione e abbandono quando avrebbero avuto bisogno di vicinanza; crescendo, poi, finivano per essere iper-controllati quando avrebbero avuto bisogno di maggiore libertà. I bambini norvegesi giocavano all’aperto per ore sotto la supervisione degli adulti, ed era improbabile che la loro libertà subisse restrizioni. In tenera età ricevevano più vicinanza degli svedesi, ma crescendo le parti si invertivano ed erano più liberi delle controparti danesi e svedesi, e questo forse fa capire che il segreto di un bambino felice sta in questa vicinanza seguita dalla libertà.

Purtroppo nei decenni seguenti il lavoro di Hendin la Norvegia divenne più centralizzata e urbanizzata e l’esperienza infantile cambiò. Oggi i bambini norvegesi passano più tempo a casa in attività sedentarie, come guardare la televisione o un DVD o giocare con il computer, che all’aperto. L’incidenza dei suicidi oggi è molto più alta.

In Europa così come in America, molti giovani oggi sono a tutti gli effetti agli arresti domiciliari: nel Regno Unito l’80% si lamenta perché “non ha un posto dove andare”. Sono le quattro del pomeriggio, hai un paio di sterline in tasca e poco più. Ti sei fatto la tua giornata e vorresti stare con i tuoi amici. I cheap cafe chiudono tra un’ora, il ristorante non te lo puoi permettere e nel pub non ti lasciano entrare. A tutti quelli che ti ascoltano spieghi che non vuoi dare fastidio; solo ti basta un posto asciutto, ben illuminato e sicuro, dove passare un’ora a chiacchierare. Così te ne vai sotto la pensilina dell’autobus, in un parcheggio, davanti alle vetrine dei negozi. E ti mandano via come un appestato. Il Regno Unito è apparentemente all’avanguardia nell’insegnare come non si trattano i giovani.

Un progetto di mettere su un canestro da netball in un parco dell’Oxfordshire fu bloccato “perché i residenti non volevano attirare ragazzini”. Nel Somerset occidentale, una bambina di otto anni è stata fermata mentre andava in bicicletta per la sua strada perché un vicino si era lamentato delle ruote che cigolavano. Un sondaggio rivelò che due terzi dei bambini avrebbero voluto giocare fuori casa, il 50% era stato sgridato per averlo fatto, e il 25% di quelli tra gli undici e i sedici anni erano stati minacciati di percosse perché… perché? Perché giocavano fuori, facevano chiasso, davano fastidio.

La cosa più triste è che funziona. Un bambino su tre raccontò di aver smesso di giocare per strada dopo aver ricevuto l’ordine di smettere. Se c’è una parola che riassume il modo in cui sono trattati i bambini oggi, questa è recinto. I bambini di oggi stanno rinchiusi a scuola e a casa, rinchiusi in macchine che li portano avanti e indietro tra l’una e l’altra, prigionieri della paura, della sorveglianza e di orari inflessibili.

Nel 2011 l’Unicef chiese ad un gruppo di giovani cosa avrebbero voluto per essere felici, e le prime tre risposte furono: il tempo (soprattutto con la famiglia), le amicizie e, significativamente, “lo spazio aperto”. Gli studi dimostrano che quando i bambini vengono lasciati giocare liberamente tra la natura, il loro senso di libertà, indipendenza e forza interiore accresce. Quando sono circondati dalla natura i bambini non solo non sono stressati ma hanno una maggiore capacità di riprendersi da eventi stressanti.

Ma lo spazio aperto in cui i bambini possano giocare si riduce costantemente. In Gran Bretagna, i bambini hanno un nono dello spazio aperto che aveva la generazione precedente. Anche il tempo disponibile si è ridotto. Meno del 10% dei bambini passa qualche tempo nei boschi, in campagna o nelle brughiere, contro il 40% di una generazione prima. I bambini più piccoli spesso sono tenuti dentro perché gli adulti temono per loro, mentre quelli più grandi sono tenuti dentro perché gli adulti temono di loro.

In Amazzonia, ho sentito di bambini di cinque anni che maneggiavano il machete con destrezza e precisione. In Igloolik, nell’Artico, ho visto un bambino di otto anni prendere un coltello e macellare un caribù ghiacciato senza incidenti. Nella Papua Occidentale, ho visto ragazzini di dodici o tredici anni con una tale capacità fisica e una tale sicurezza che, quando gli chiesero di fare da messaggeri, percorsero tutto il sentiero tra le montagne in sei ore; roba che io avrei fatto un giorno e mezzo con le guide.

Non è solo una questione di capacità fisiche: la libertà a cui i piccoli Inuit erano tradizionalmente abituati li aveva resi “individui autonomi, generosi e dotati di autocontrollo”, per dirla con uno degli Inuit che mi è capitato di conoscere a Nunavut, in Canada. Questo dava loro coraggio e pazienza.

I piccoli hanno bisogno di tempo libero illimitato, ma questo tempo è scarso per molti, che vivono una vita parcellizzata tra quattro mura, la giornata suddivisa in orari prestabiliti che vanno dalla sveglia al sonno, ogni ora controllata da genitori preoccupati dal fatto che il loro figlio possa restare indietro in quella corsa al successo che è la vita fin dalla culla. I genitori amano i propri figli, non vogliono che siano dei perdenti nella vita, per questo li spingono ad impiegare efficientemente il proprio tempo. La società instilla un’ansia del futuro che può essere calmata solo sacrificando il gioco e la serenità nel presente, e i bambini ne sentono gli effetti sotto forma di affaticamento e depressione.

In molte culture tradizionali, invece, i bambini sono considerati i migliori giudici dei loro bisogni, compreso come passare il tempo. Nella Papua Occidentale un uomo mi raccontò che da bambino “Andavamo a caccia e pesca e tornavamo a casa solo quando sentivamo i grilli.” Nel tipi dei bambini dove James Hightower, un meticcio cherokee, passò grandissima parte della sua fanciullezza, si poteva giocare fino alla quattro del mattino. “I bambini indiani non erano come quelli civilizzati,” rammentò, “che hanno un’ora precisa per mangiare e una per dormire.” (Nella sua bocca, la parola “civilizzati” non è un complimento).

“Quando stiamo lavorando non abbiamo tempo per occuparci dei piccoli,” mi disse una volta Margrethe Vars, una donna Sami che pascola le renne. Si fermò per fare un tiro alla sigaretta, e le sue parole, ad imitazione dei suoi genitori europei, uscirono letteralmente fumanti: “Ti sei lavato le mani. Adesso vai a mangiare.” Fece la faccia triste: per come la vedeva lei, la libertà per un bambino non è solo un diritto ma una vera e propria liberazione. Quando l’estate si allungava fino a diventare una sola lunga giornata, i piccoli Sami prendevano a passare la “notte” svegli, e questo senza che nessuno si preoccupasse perché i genitori erano dell’opinione che fossero i piccoli a decidere come impiegare il tempo. Così nel primo mattino – brillante di sole estivo – vedevi questi piccoli che partivano a manetta con il quad, andavano a controllare le renne, scherzavano o dormivano.

“Qui noi dormiamo quando siamo stanchi e mangiamo quando abbiamo fame,” disse Vars. “In altre società, invece, i piccoli sono molto programmati. Hanno orari per tutto: mangiare, dormire, prendere un appuntamento e vedere un amico…” Rabbrividiva all’idea di una pianificazione dettagliata. Lo stile di vita dei Sami ha dato grandi risultati positivi; non solo ha ridotto i conflitti su questioni meschine, ma ha anche prodotto qualcosa di intangibile e vitale. I piccoli venivano su più autonomi, meno obbedienti alle pressioni dall’esterno.

Le popolazioni Wintu della California hanno un rispetto così profondo per la volontà autonoma che questa si riflette anche nel linguaggio. In inglese, la frase “portare un bambino” da qualche parte implica un senso di costrizione. In lingua Wintu non si dice così: si dice “sono andato assieme al bambino”. “Ho controllato il bambino” diventa “ho controllato con il bambino”. Gli Wintu non riuscirebbero a costringere nessuno neanche se lo volessero: il linguaggio che non glielo permette. Quando un piccolo Wintu chiede “Posso?” non sta chiedendo il permesso ad un genitore ma una delucidazione, vuole sapere se le regole generali permettono di fare una certa cosa, così che non si senta alla mercé di un adulto che impone regole che possono sembrare capricciose e arbitrarie.

Facciamo un passo indietro per un attimo. Cosa significa lasciare che i piccoli facciano a modo loro? E fare tutto quello che vogliono? Non sarebbe un disastro totale? Certo, ma solo se i genitori eseguono la prima metà del trucco. Nel lessico culturale del mondo moderno, l’ostinatezza, la volontà caparbia di fare qualcosa, è spesso interpretata banalmente come comportamento da marmocchio, egoista. Ma volontà non significa egoismo, e gestirsi autonomamente non significa ostilità verso gli altri; al contrario. I piccoli degli Ngarinyin, in Australia, tradizionalmente crescevano senza ordini o coercizioni, ma imparavano a socializzare fin dalla tenera età. Questa è la seconda metà del trucco. La socializzazione dei piccoli serve a stimolare la consapevolezza e il rispetto per la volontà e l’autonomia degli altri; in questo modo, quando con la crescita diventa necessario, imparano a tenere a bada i propri desideri al fine di mantenere buone relazioni. Perché una comunità funzioni, un individuo deve, all’occasione, sentire il bisogno di frenare la propria volontà, ma, è questo è di importanza cruciale, non deve essere qualcun altro ad obbligarlo a fare così.

Inuit e Sami hanno la necessità evidente di fare in modo che i piccoli sappiano regolarsi da soli. Gli adulti si tengono a distanza con tatto e riservatezza. Il bambino “sta imparando da sé” è un’espressione comune tra i Sami. Ai piccoli dei Sami viene insegnato a controllare l’ira, le emozioni, l’aggressività e la vergogna. Gli Inuit insistono, con cauta enfasi, a sostenere che i bambini devono imparare l’autocontrollo. Il piccolo non deve essere controllato da qualcun altro, nessuno deve sovrapporsi al suo volere, ma deve imparare a guidarsi da sé.

La volontà è la forza motrice di un bambino: lo sprona da dentro, al contrario dell’obbedienza che costringe dall’esterno. Per chi vuole dominare la volontà di un bambino “obbedienza” è la parola d’ordine, perché teme la disobbedienza e il disordine e crede che se un bambino non è controllato è il caos. Ma queste sono false contrapposizioni. In verità, contrapposta all’obbedienza non è la disobbedienza ma l’indipendenza. All’ordine non si contrappone il disordine ma la libertà. E l’autocontrollo, non il caos, si contrappone al controllo.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

I felt as if I were an unwilling accomplice to torture. Echoes of the victim’s screams rang off the varnished walls. The door, tight shut though it was, could not block the cries of panic. A baby, alone and imprisoned in a cot.

The baby’s mother was visibly disturbed, too, pale and tearful. She was a victim herself, preyed on by exponents of controlled crying, or Ferberisation – that pitiless system, cruel to them both.

Controlled. Crying. The words speak of the odious aim: a bullying system controlling the feelings of a baby. The mother had been told the situation was the reverse, that the baby was trying to force her will on the mother, but all I could see was a one-year-old demented by abandonment. One American mother wrote poignantly on the internet: “Is Ferberisation worth my heartache or am I truly torturing my child? It seems like cruel and unusual punishment.”

The idea is that babies can be “taught” to stop crying by being left to cry alone. A parent will occasionally check on them, but will neither pick up nor stay with the infant. In time, the baby will learn that crying doesn’t bring consolation and will cease the attempt. Parents are encouraged to schedule and limit the time they spend checking on the baby. Does the system work? Of course it does. That is hardly the question. The real issue is why would such a thing be promoted? Why would it ever be accepted? What does it reveal about modernity’s priorities? And how does it suggest answers to the riddle of unhappy children?

Cuddled, snuggled and tended, most infants, throughout most of history, have known the world unlonely. Among the Tojolabal-speaking Maya people of Chiapas in Mexico, children in the first two years of life are always close to their mothers, instantly appeased with toys or milk, to prevent them ever feeling unhappy. For infants under one year of age among the Aché people – forest nomads in Paraguay – most daylight time is spent in tactile contact with their mother or father, and they are never set down on the ground or left alone for more than a few seconds. In India and many other parts of the world, children may share a bed with their mother until they are five.

Many parents’ reasons for using controlled crying can be summed up in one word: work. Parents who want “routines” are keen on controlled crying, says Gina Ford, a famous British advocate of the system, and she comments that babies who have been forced into a routine will later adapt easily to a school routine and, one presumes, be more malleable to a workforce system.

Yet whenever I have spent time in indigenous communities, I have never heard anything like the shrieks of fear and rage of the controlled-crying child. If an infant is satiated with closeness, commented the writer Jean Liedloff, then as an older child he or she will need to return to that maternal contact only in emergencies. Such an infant will grow up to be more self-reliant, not because of the scarcity of early contact (as the controlled-crying advocates argue) but precisely the opposite: from its abundance. By the age of about eight, the Aché children, who as infants were never alone, have learned how to negotiate the trails in the forests and can be fairly independent of their parents. In West Papua, I have seen how infants are held close and grow into children who are fiercely, proudly independent.

When children are older, the desire for freedom seems unquenchable. I recently gave a writing workshop in Kolkata for street children who had been temporarily corralled into a school where they were clearly well looked after and, in the main, happy. They thirsted for the one thing that the school would not allow them: freedom. “They want the freedom they knew on the streets,” a teacher said, “to go anywhere, any time.” In spite of the troubles on the street – poverty, abuse, hunger and violence – the children “keep running away”.

Once out of infancy, Native American children were traditionally free to wander wherever they wanted, through woods or water. “By the time he is five, he is grown up, beaming with health… delirious with liberty,” writes Roger P Buliard in Inuk, describing an Inuit boyhood. By about the age of seven, the boy handles knives and wants a rifle and a trap line, and from then on he “travels with the men, as hardy a traveller as any of them”.

When I spent some days reindeer herding with Sami people, I saw how the children were free not only out on the land, but indoors in the summer huts. They rummaged around for food, finding a strip of cooked reindeer meat or a freshly caught fish or a tub of biscuits, deciding what and when they would eat: a situation that averted that major source of family conflict – meal times.

Autonomy over food from a very young age seems a feature of childhood in many traditional societies. The Alacaluf children of Patagonia fend for themselves early, using a shellfish spear and cooking their own food from the age of about four. Very young Inuit children may use a whip to hunt ptarmigans, lopping off their heads with a flick of the wrist. Travelling through the highlands of West Papua among the Yali people, I often saw village boys going off together, bristling with bows and arrows, to hunt birds, catch frogs and roast them in fires they would build themselves.

Meanwhile, in England, an environmental play project called Wild About Play asked children what they most wanted to do outdoors, and the answer was to collect and eat wild foods, to make fires and cook on them. This is the sign of independence demonstrated by children everywhere, controlling their own food and their own bodies. It seems that modern Euro-American children have two unusual food-related experiences: first, they don’t have early autonomy with respect to food; and second, they do experience eating problems.

As for physical freedom, a few years ago I spent a day with children of the sea Gypsies, the Bajau people who live off Sulawesi in stilt houses set far into the water. The children were swimmers and divers, boaters and paddlers, rinsed with seawater night and day until they seemed half-human, half-otter. I asked what their childhood was like. The answer was immediate: “Children have a happy childhood because there is a lot of freedom.” If happiness is a result of freedom, then surely the unhappiness of modern western children is caused in part by the fact that they are less free than any children in history.

I was struck by the obvious happiness of the Bajau children: spending the whole long afternoon with about 100 of them, not one was crying, cross, unhappy or frustrated. I can’t imagine spending an afternoon with 100 European or American children and not once hearing a child cry.

In Europe, one country seems to have honoured the relationship between freedom and childhood happiness in a way that the sea Gypsy children would have understood: Norway. A land of lakes and fjords, a country that has enshrined in law an ancient right to canoe, row, sail and swim, to walk across all land (except private gardens and tilled fields) in a freedom known as Allemannsretten, “every man’s right”, the right to roam.

In 1960, the American psychiatrist Herbert Hendin was studying suicide statistics in Scandinavia. Denmark (with Japan) had the world’s highest suicide rate. Sweden’s rate was almost as high, but what of Norway? Right at the bottom. Hendin was intrigued, particularly since the received wisdom was that Denmark, Sweden and Norway shared a similar culture. What could possibly account for such a dramatic difference? After years of research, he concluded that reasons were established in childhood. In Denmark and Sweden, children were brought up with regimentation, while in Norway they were free to roam. In Denmark and Sweden, children were pressured to achieve career goals until many felt they were failures, while in Norway they were left alone more, not so much instructed but rather simply allowed to watch and participate in their own time. Instead of a sense of failure, Norwegian children grew up with a sense of self-reliance.

Danish children, the study showed, were over-protected, kept dependent on their mothers and not free to roam. For Swedish children, a common experience was that, in infancy, just when they needed closeness, what they got was separation and a sense of abandonment while, in later childhood, just when they needed freedom, what they got was far too much control. Norwegian children played outdoors for hours unsupervised by adults, and a child’s freedom was “not likely to be restricted”. They had more closeness than Swedish children at an early age, but then more freedom than both Danish and Swedish children at a later age, suggesting that closeness followed by freedom is likely to produce the happiest children.

Unfortunately, in the decades since Hendin’s work, as Norway became more centralised and urbanised, childhood altered. Norwegian children now spend more time indoors in sedentary activities, such as watching television or DVDs and playing computer games, than they do outdoors. The suicide rate is now far higher.

In Europe and America alike, many kids today are effectively under house arrest, with 80% of them in the UK complaining that they have “nowhere to go”. It’s about four o’clock in the afternoon, you’ve got a couple of quid in your pocket but not a lot more. You’ve knocked off for the day and you’d like to be with your mates. The cheap cafes will be closed in an hour, you can’t afford restaurants and you are not allowed in “public” houses. You tell everyone who will listen that you don’t want to cause trouble – you’d just like somewhere that is dry, well lit and safe, where you can hang out and chat. So you go to bus shelters and car parks and the brightly lit areas outside corner shops. And then you are driven off as if you were vermin. The UK seems to be leading the way in how not to treat children.

A plan to erect a netball hoop on a village green in Oxfordshire was blocked “because residents didn’t want to attract children”. In west Somerset, an eight-year-old girl was stopped from cycling down her street because a neighbour complained that the wheels squeaked. In one survey, two-thirds of children said they liked playing outside every day, mainly to be with friends, but 80% of them have been told off for playing outdoors, 50% have been shouted at for playing outside and 25% of 11- to 16-year-olds have been threatened with violence by adults for… for what? For playing outdoors, making a noise, being a nuisance.

Saddest of all, it works. One in three of the children said that being told off for playing outside does stop them doing it. If there is one word that sums up the treatment of children today, it is enclosure. Today’s children are enclosed in school and home, enclosed in cars to shuttle between them, enclosed by fear, by surveillance and poverty and rigid schedules.

In 2011, Unicef asked children what they needed to be happy, and the top three things were time (particularly with families), friendships and, tellingly, “outdoors”. Studies show that when children are allowed unstructured play in nature, their sense of freedom, independence and inner strength all thrive, and children surrounded by nature are not only less stressed but also bounce back from stressful events more readily.

But there has been a steady reduction in open spaces for children to play. In Britain, children have one-ninth of the roaming room they had in earlier generations. There has also been a reduction in available time, with less than 10% of children spending time playing in woodlands, countryside or heaths, compared with 40% a generation ago. Younger children may be enclosed on the grounds that adults are frightened for them, and older children because adults are frightened of them.

In the Amazon, I’ve seen five-year-olds wielding machetes with deftness and precision. In Igloolik, in the Arctic, I’ve seen an eight-year-old take a knife and carve up a frozen caribou without accident. In West Papua, I’ve known youngsters of 12 or 13 with such physical capability and confidence that, when asked to be messengers, they completed a mountain run in six hours – a journey that had taken me and the guides a day and a half.

This is not only a matter of physical competence: the freedom that Inuit children traditionally experienced made them into “self-reliant, caring and self-controlled individuals”, in the words of one Inuit person I met in Nunavut in Canada. It gave them courage and patience.

Children need wild, unlimited hours, but this time is in short supply for many, who are diarised into wall-to-wall activities, scheduled from the moment they wake until the minute they sleep, every hour accounted for by parents whose actions are prompted by the fear their child may fall behind in the rat race that begins in the nursery. Loving their child, not wanting them to be lifelong losers, parents push them to achieve through effective time-use. Society instils a fear of the future that can be appeased only by sacrificing present play and idleness, and children feel the effects in stress and depression.

In many traditional cultures, however, children are held to be the best judges of their own needs, including how they spend their time. In West Papua, one man told me that as children, “We would go hunting and fishing and just come home when we heard the crickets.” In the children’s tipi where part-Cherokee man James Hightower spent so many hours of his childhood, games might be played until four in the morning. “The Indian is not like civilised children,” he recalls, “having a certain time to eat and sleep.” (In his mouth, the term “civilised” is not a compliment.)

“When we’re working, we just don’t have time to be bothering the kids,” Margrethe Vars, a Sami reindeer herder, told me. She broke off to drag on her cigarette, so her words, imitating European parents, literally came out smoking: “Have you washed your hands? Now you must eat.” She pulled a face: to her, children’s freedom was not only a right but a relief all round. As the summer stretched out in one long day, the Sami children would be up all “night”, and no one minded because every parent shared the view that children were in charge of their own time. So the early hours – bright with midsummer sun – would see the children revving up quad bikes, watching the reindeer, tickling each other or falling asleep.

“Here we sleep when we are tired, eat when we are hungry,” Vars said. “But for other societies, children are very organised. Timing is everything: when to eat and sleep, making appointments to visit friends…” She winced at the thought of the micromanagement. The Sami way produced powerfully positive results, not only in the reduction of petty conflict, but also in something intangible and vital. Their children would grow up more self-reliant, less obedient to outside pressure.

For the Wintu people of California, so deep is their traditional respect for the autonomy of the will that it suffuses the language itself. In English, if you “take a baby” somewhere, there is a sense of implicit coercion. The Wintu language cannot say that: it must phrase it as, “I went with the baby.” “I watched the child” would be, “I watched with the child”. The Wintu couldn’t coerce someone even if they wanted to: language won’t let them. When a Wintu child asks, “Can I…?” they are not asking for permission from an individual parent, but for clarification about whether wider laws allow it, so a child does not feel at the mercy of the will of a single adult with rules that can seem capricious and arbitrary.

Take a step back for a moment. Letting children have their own way? Doing just what they like? Wouldn’t that be a total disaster? Yes, if parents perform only the first half of the trick. In the cultural lexicon of modernity, self-will is often banally understood as brattish, selfish behaviour. Will does not mean selfishness, however, and autonomy over oneself is not a synonym for nastiness towards others – quite the reverse. Ngarinyin children in Australia traditionally grew up uncommanded and uncoerced, but from a young age they learned socialisation. That is the second half of the trick. Children are socialised into awareness and respect for the will and autonomy of others, so that, when necessary as they grow, they will learn to hold their own will in check in order to maintain good relations. For a community to function well, an individual may on occasion need to rein in his or her own will but, crucially, not be compelled to do so by someone else.

Among Inuit and Sami people, there is an explicit need for children to learn self-regulation. Adults keep a reticent and tactful distance. A child “is learning on his own” is a common Sami expression. Sami children are trained to control anger, sensitivity, aggression and shame. Inuit people stress that children must learn self-control – with careful emphasis. The child should not be controlled by another, with their will overruled, but needs to learn to steer herself or himself.

Will is a child’s motive force: it impels a child from within, whereas obedience compels a child from without. Those who would overrule a child’s will take “obedience” as their watchword, as they fear disobedience and disorder and believe that if a child is not controlled, there will be chaos. But these are false opposites. The true opposite of obedience is not disobedience but independence. The true opposite of order is not disorder but freedom. The true opposite of control is not chaos but self-control.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, Por que os pais deveriam deixar seus filhos em paz.
• Italian, Perché i Genitori Dovrebbero Lasciare in Pace i Figli.

Destacando a China como exemplo, a BBC News informa que “o índice de preços de alimentos da Organização de Alimentos e Agricultura está em seu mais alto nível desde quando criado em 1990. À medida que os preços dos alimentos sobem,” acrescenta o artigo, “aumenta também a pobreza.” Só nos primeiros poucos meses deste ano alguns mercados asiáticos testemunharam aumento de até 10 por cento nos preços locais de alimentos, mudança que potencialmente poderá fazer quase 65 milhões de pessoas mergulharem na pobreza, de acordo com algumas estimativas.

Embora observadores e comentadores sejam lestos em importunar governos para que ajam, fazendo todas as usuais alegações de “fracasso do mercado,” o problema mundial de alimentos é consequência de intervenção do estado.

Como observou o professor de direito Siva Vaidhyanathan (a respeito das leis de propriedade intelectual), “As indústrias de mídia de massa têm interesse em criar escassez artificial por quaisquer meios jurídicos e tecnológicos a seu alcance.” E o mesmo é verdade dos fornecedores de produtos de comércio em larga escala cujo interesse é assegurar que a nutrição de que precisamos para sobreviver venha-nos por intermédio deles.

Em umas poucas fazendas gigantescas, subsidiadas pelo estado e protegidas pelo estado, atacadistas e varejistas podem controlar unilateralmente o suprimento, podem exigir em pagamento qualquer preço caprichoso que determinem. Essa propensão — indústria cada vez mais cartelizada com cada vez menos “competidores” — é endêmica no capitalismo de estado, mas estranha a mercados genuinamente livres.

Os livres mercados dividem e moderam o poder de mercado mediante negarem proteção e privilégios especiais e abrirem a competição a amplo sortimento tanto de entrantes quanto de métodos. Apenas onde ameaças em potencial ao monopólio corporativo são tornadas impossíveis por força de lei — por meio de, entre outros obstáculos, de padrões de “segurança” e “proteção ao consumidor” — podem os “capitães de indústria” de nossos dias ascender ao domínio do mercado.

É com demasiada frequência assumido que os gigantescos conglomerados que povoam o panorama do capitalismo sofrem com regulamentações pretensamente visante a saúde e proteção. Essas regras, todavia, funcionam sistematicamente para proscrever a barraquinha de produtos da fazenda levantada na rua, o pequeno produtor local que não tem condições de singrar os meandros arbitrários e injustificados erigidos pela classe política.

Elites poderosas fazem lobby e dão as boas-vindas a novas leis que restrinjam as opções do consumidor, impedindo-o de “recorrer a outro fornecedor.” Hoje em dia, o preço que pagamos pelos alimentos é bastante independente dos custos reais de produzi-los. Onde as pressões naturais de um mercado legitimamente livre empurrariam os preços para baixo de modo a refletirem o verdadeiro valor do produto, as restrições do capitalismo de estado à competição tornam possível às grandes empresas extraírem lucros oriundos de monopólio.

Em mais outro distancimento da disciplina do mercado real, o transporte subsidiado pelo contribuinte significa que a maioria das pessoas obtém seu alimento proveniente de centenas ou milhares de quilômetros, em vez de centenas ou milhares de metros, de distância. Quando o preço do petróleo aumenta, aumenta também o preço dos alimentos. Com tão poucas alternativas para o lixo produzido em massa pelo agronegócio robustecido pelo estado, não há nenhum motivo real para dar-se ao impotente consumidor qualquer coisa parecida com bom produto por bom preço. Não é preciso dizer mais no tocante a “proteção ao consumidor.”

Em lugares como China e Sudeste Asiático governos entregaram a ricas companhias terra cultivada por produtores rurais havia milhares de anos, terra que alimentava as famílias e as comunidades deles. O estado e seus protegidos não têm como reivindicar essas terras recorrendo a qualquer padrão bem-fundamentado de propriedade, mas a ética do estado nunca se afastou muito da máxima segundo a qual o poder define o direito.

Os custos ascendentes e a escassez de alimentos, crescente crise no mundo inteiro, são criação do estado, fenômeno que existe completamente sem relação com o que podemos, seriamente, chamar de “forças do mercado.” Os anarquistas de mercado removeriam as restrições e a coerção da produção de alimentos e permitiriam que as trocas voluntárias alimentassem o mundo.

Em vez de anelar por um paraíso utópico, os anarquistas de mercado argumentam que, sem escassez criada pelo estado para ricos buscadores de renda, as pessoas ao redor do mundo seriam capazes de fornecer boa alimentação para suas famílias mediante fração do trabalho que realizam nos dias de hoje. Podemos ou ficar esperando que os membros da elite da classe política “resolvam” um problema que criaram, ou podemos permitir cooperação e genuíno livre comércio em escala humana, para atendimento das necessidades das pessoas.

Já vimos como as soluções políticas funcionam. É hora agora de a sociedade sair do sufoco do estado.

Artigo original afixado por David D’Amato em 13 de maio de 2011.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.

Resaltando a China como ejemplo, la BBC reporta que “el índice de precios alimenticios de la Organización para la Agricultura y la Alimentación de las Naciones Unidas llegó a su máximo nivel desde que fue creado en 1990″. “A medida que suben los precios”, el autor de la nota afirma que “también lo hace la pobreza”. Sólo en los primeros meses del año, algunos mercados asiáticos han experimentado subidas de hasta diez por ciento en los precios locales de los alimentos, lo que según algunas estimaciones, potencialmente podría sumergir a 65 millones de personas en la pobreza.

A pesar de que muchos observadores y comentaristas no dudan en exhortar a los gobiernos a que actúen, postulando los típicos argumentos de “falla de mercado”, el probelma alimenticio mundial es una característica de la intervención estatista. Tal como lo observó el profesor Siva Vaidhyanathan (respecto a las leyes de propiedad intelectual), “Las industrias productoras de contenido tienen interés en crear escasez artificial a través de cualquier medio legal y tecnológico que tengan a su disposición”.

Y lo mismo se aplica a proveedores de alimentos básicos cuyo interés es asegurarse que dependamos exclusivamente de ellos para la nutrición que necesitamos para sobrevivir. Si unas cuantas empresas agroindustriales y un puñado de mayoristas y minoristas, todos subsidiados y protegidos por el estado, pueden unilateralmente controlar la oferta, podrán también exigir que se les pague cualquier precio que se les antoje. Ésta propensidad a crear industrias cada vez más cartelizadas con cada vez menos “competidores” es endémica del capitalismo de estado, pero no es una característica de los mercados genuinamente libres.

Los mercados libres, al contrario, dividen y moderan el poder de mercado negando protecciones y privilegios especiales y abriendo la competencia a una gran variedad tanto de entrantes como de métodos. Solo cuando la fuerza de la ley neutraliza las amenzadas potenciales al poder corporativo (con, entre otros impedimentos, estándares de “seguridad” y “protección al consumidor”) es que los capitanes de industria pueden ascender a las cumbres del poder en el mercado.

La idea de que los conglomerados monstruosos que caracterizan al capitalismo corporativo le temen a las regulaciones de salud y seguridad, es un lugar común. Sinembargo, éstas regulaciones son las que impiden la proliferación de chiringuitos de alimentos en cada esquina, que florezcan los pequeños productores locales que no pueden hacerle frente al costo de saltar sobre la madeja de obstáculos arbitrarios e injustificados que la clase política les pone en el camino.

Las élites poderosas hacen lobby a favor de nuevas leyes que restrinjan las opciones del consumidor, impiediendo que la gente decida con quién hacer negocios. Lo que hoy pagamos por la comida está bastante disasociado de lo que cuesta producirla. Mientras un mercado verdaderamente libre ejercería la presión adecuada para reducir los precios hasta que reflejasen el verdadero valor de un producto, las restricciones a la competencia impuestas por el capitalismo de estado permiten que las grandes corporaciones expriman a los consumidores.

En lo que representa una ruptura aún más flagrante con la verdadera disciplina del mercado, el subsidio a los medios de transporte crea incentivos para que la mayoría de nosotros consumamos alimentos producidos a cientos o miles de kilómetros de distancia en lugar de a cientos ó miles de metros de distancia. Por eso es que cuando suben los precios del petróleo, los precios de la comida se disparan. Sin verdaderas alternativas a la basura producida en masa por los conglomerados agro-industriales fortificados por el estado, no existe un incentivo real para proveer al indefenso consumidor con nada que se acerque a ser un buen producto a buen precio.

En lugares como China y el Sudeste asiático, los gobiernos han prácticamente regalado las tierras que eran cultivadas por campesinos locales durante miles de años, tierras que alimentaban a sus familias y comunidades, a las grandes empresas agroindustriales. El estado y sus favoritos no tienen argumentos justificables para relcamar para sí esas tierras bajo ningún estándard mínimamente sólido de derechos de propiedad; pero la ética del estado nunca ha ido más allá de la máxima que dice que “el que tiene el poder para hacer lo que le dá la gana en favor de sus intereses, que lo haga”.

La escasez de los alimentos y el aumento de sus precios que comienzan a dibujar una crisis alimentaria global, son creación del estado, un fenómeno que existe de manera totalmente independiente de nada que pueda llamarse “fuerzas de mercado” con un mínimo de honestidad intelectual. Los anarquistas de mercado removerían las restricciones y la coerción del sistema de producción de alimentos y permitirían que el intercambio volutnario alimentase al mundo.

Lejos de pintar un paraíso utópico, los anarquistas de mercado argumentan que sin la escasez artificial creada por el estado en favor de buscadores de renta privilegiados, la gente de todo el mundo podría proveer de buena alimentación a sus familias trabajando una fracción del número de horas que tienen que trabajar hoy en día. Podemos implorar a los miembros de la élite política para que “arreglen” el problema que crearon, o podemos permitir que la cooperación y el comercio verdaderamente libre, y a escala verdaderamente humana, satisfaga las necesidades de la gente.

Artículo original publicado por David D’Amato el 13 de mayo de 2011.

Traducido del inglés por Alan Furth.

I am, as I’ve said before on my own blog, a big fat cheerful statist. In general, I am less about throwing off the yoke of government and more about adjusting the boot on the neck so that it’s not too uncomfortable. I acknowledge that a certain amount of running roughshod over individual rights is regrettably necessary for the optimal function of society and all…

But now, Big Government has really gone too far.

Bacon-wrapped hotdogs banned on the streets of L.A.

I say this injustice cannot stand. The Man will have to pry that crispy treat from my cold, greasy fingers.

OK, I admit, I lied. I am an East-Coast girl and so have actually never had a bacon-wrapped hotdog before in my life. But really. It’s a hotdog wrapped in bacon and then grilled until crispy and you eat it on the streets! How can it not be the kind of pleasure that makes life itself worth living? Can we really call ourself a free people if we deny the right to indulge in such a glorious food in the name of…

In the name of what, exactly? Why are the street vendors of L.A. getting thrown in jail for selling bacon-dogs anyhow? It’s apparently because they have to be grilled, rather than boiled or steamed, the only two cooking methods allowed for pushcarts in L.A. That raises its own question. What’s wrong with grilling food on the streets? The authorities never seem to give a straight answer even though the article (admittedly one with a very pro-dog slant) is thousands and thousands of words long. The police officer interviewed by the reporter trots out a parade of bull that is truly spectacular. Hotdog grease could splatter onto clothing displays? Um, make them move two meters so that this is not an issue anymore. General unsanitary condition of some of the vendors he has seen? Well, that’s not a cooking method issue!

Even worse. In the comments to this unusually well-written and entertaining article, some guy claimed that in Chicago, street vendors are not allowed at all. Can this really be true?

This entry was posted on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 12:40 pm

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The Rats of El Toro was originally posted to the Art of the Possible blog by Angelica aka Battlepanda.

David Z of No Third Solutions wonders why, if I am such an adamant street-food libertarian, I won’t see the injustice of government oppression in general and let the scales fall from my big-fat statist eyes.

Well, we won’t have to go very far to find the answer. Let’s just stay within the food service industry. As I have stated in the street-food libertarian post, I love street food and I think loosely-regulated street food is just about always the very best kind and I oppose all but the most minimal regulation on hawkery. However, let me just tell you a little shaggy-dog story that illustrates why in general, I am definitely pro government-mandated health and sanitary regulations and inspections.

When I am not busy being a journalist or blogger, I tend bar just a couple of nights a week at a “Spanish” restaurant just a couple of blocks from my apartment here in Taipei. Let’s call it El Toro. Chef Charlie’s paella is inauthentic but delicious. The place is lacking in style. Old posters from the Spanish tourism bureau graces the walls spackled to look Mediterranean. But El Toro considered a genteel mid-range restaurant and people go there for first dates or for Mom’s birthday. That sort of thing.

The restaurant is also home to the feistiest, most brazen rats I have ever seen in my life. As soon as the chef goes home for the night, the kitchen is their playground. I have nicknamed the most humoungus rat of them all “Theodora”. I have seen Theodora galump up the stairs at last call while customers still lingered over their drinks.

The staff at the restaurant puts down glue boards and occasionally those will snare a young rat. But not the bigger ones. Not Theodora. “It’s no use going after her,” said Charlie, “she’s grandmother-grade.”

I’ve talked to the bar manager about professional pest control. He shrugged his shoulders. The owner thinks it cost too much to get the pest guys in, he said. He got an estimate — $4000 New Taiwan Dollars, or roughly $120 USD for every visit. It’s true prices are generally lower across the board here in Taiwan, especially for services, but keep in mind the average tab for two at El Toro could easily be $45 USD or more.

If there are restaurant health and sanitation inspectors in Taiwan, they’ve never made it out to El Toro. Because if she is faced with the prospect of getting shut down, or even an unfavorable rating that had to be prominently displayed, there is no way the owner would have baulked at paying $120 USD or many multiples of $120 USD to get the rats out.

Of course, I still eat at El Toro. I love Charlie’s garlic shrimp, and I’ll fight Theodora herself for the last morsel of his meatball abondigas. As with the street food I regularly eat, I know that I’m taking a risk and the tastiness is worth it. However, I feel bad for our customers who are under the illusion that just because they’re sipping red wine from a sparkling glass, there aren’t rats running through the kitchen. Moreover, it doesn’t have to be this way. With mandatory food safety inspections, El Toro will probably shape up rather than be shut down.

I suppose in theory there could be some third-party inspection firm who can certify the sanitary condition of restaurants. But in practice, this have not happened.

I have a simple rule of thumb for when government intervention is necessary — is it a pressing need that is not met by the market? In this case, the name of the market failure is asymmetrical information. With street food, those who indulge are under no illusion as to the risks they are taking and thus there is less asymmetrical information and less of a case for intervention.

Oh, and David. If you are ever in Taipei, swing by and I’ll see that you get a beer on the house.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 12:31 pm 

Economies of scale require that farmers get large or get out….

The basic business model that drives all of these [agribusiness] enterprises is the notion of doing things en mass. Mass production, mass marketing, mass consumption — all are staples of the modern economy. The margins might be small, but if you turn the crank enough times, you can make a living, and, if you really rev it up, you might become rich.

The farmers’ market movement, which is gaining strength across the nation, is a backlash against the impersonal corporate structure of modern agriculture. But it still represents just a small portion of what we eat. The inherent market inefficiencies of small volume, diverse crop production probably will keep it on the sidelines as a major source of food for American tables.

Don’t take this as a lament because I enjoy being able to go to the store to buy fresh fruit and vegetables in any season. And don’t expect to see me smashing windows and burning cars over global trade issues. We live in a world marketplace, and to sustain long-term peace and stability of the world, rich nations like ourselves must give some of our largess to poorer places.

Klingaman is a retired horticulture teacher, so as much as I enjoy his gardening column, this is the kind of thing I’d expect to see: corporate agribusiness is inherently more efficient than small farming, America is a net exporter whose generosity “feeds the world,” the Green Revolution is the solution to world hunger, etc. I had a conversation several years earlier with a retired agri professor who likewise repeated the party line of the agribusiness establishment. He started out making bald assertions to the effect that “the world would starve” without synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, mechanization, and Green Revolution seeds. But when confronted with labor-intensive techniques like deep digging in raised beds, that make intensive use of the land, he conceded that “oh, well, that’s different; if those techniques were widely adopted it might work….”

Once we get beneath the surface, we find that none of the tenets of the official USDA/Cargill ideology can survive much scrutiny. As Frances Moore Lappé suggested in Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity (N.Y.: Ballantine, 1978), it’s natural for Americans to infer superior efficiency from success:

But haven’t big farmers proved themselves to be more efficient and resourceful than small ones? How else could they have gotten on top?

But that’s a bit like asking how else that turtle could have gotten on top of the fencepost. We may be in a “world marketplace,” but it sure isn’t a free market. Agribusiness is a sector of the economy as state-subsidized and state-cartelized as Big Pharma and the military contractors. In the words of ADM’s Dwayne Andreas, that patron saint of the world marketplace in agriculture:

There isn’t one grain of anything in the world that is sold in a free market. Not one! The only place you see a free market is in the speeches of politicians.

Even in conventional, mechanized row-crop farming, economies of scale tend to max out when a single set of basic equipment is fully utilized–that is, at the level of a one- or two-farmer operation [W.R. Bailey, The One-Man Farm (USDA, 1973)]. The real difference in profitability comes from the channeling of state-subsidized inputs to large-scale agribusiness. As one farmer said, the only thing the agribusiness interests are more efficient at farming is the government. Dan Sullivan’s seminar on “The Myth of Corporate Efficiency” at Saving Communities includes a discussion of family farms and corporate agribusiness, finding that while big corporate farms have somewhat higher output per man-hour, their output per acre is actually less than that of small farms. Ralph Borsodi did a study several decades ago, adding up the cost of all the inputs into home-grown and home-canned vegetables (including canning supplies and the prevailing wage for the gardener’s labor), and found that they were still cheaper than vegetables from the supermarket. Home-grown and -canned tomatoes were 20-30% cheaper than the canned tomatoes at the grocery store [Flight From the City, pp. 10ff].

More recently, a post by Diane Warth at Karmalized raised many of the same issues about the Green Revolution in the Third World. She linked to a story about a wave of mass-suicides in Western Vidarbha province, India, by farmers who had adopted bt cotton.

As many as 212 farmers in Vidarbha had committed suicide during the period of whom 182 were from Western Vidarbha, VJAS president Kishore Tiwari said in a statement here today. Among the 182 suicides in Western Vidarbha, 170 were by Bt cotton growers, the statement alleged.

Over six lakh farmers from Vidarbha had sown Bt cotton on the assurance that the minimum yeild would be 20 quintals per acre, the statement said. However, the average yield per acre was only two to three quintals per acre, the statement alleged.

Also linked at Karmalized, this ZNet article by Vandana Shiva adds:

Monocultures and uniformity increase the risks of crop failure as diverse seeds adapted to diverse ecosystems are replaced by rushed introduction of unadapted and often untested seeds into the market. When Monsanto first introduced Bt Cotton in India in 2002, the farmers lost Rs. 1 billion due to crop failure. Instead of 1,500 Kg/acre as promised by the company, the harvest was as low as 200 kg. Instead of increased incomes of Rs. 10,000/acre, farmers ran into losses of Rs. 6400/acre.

In the state of Bihar, when farm saved corn seed was displaced by Monsanto’s hybrid corn, the entire crop failed creating Rs. 4 billion losses and increased poverty for already desperately poor farmers.

(On why the “Green Revolution” might not have panned out for small farmers, and on the misleading nature of the term “high-yield varieties,” more below.)

Coming across that post was serendipitous, because I was in the middle of reading Frances Moore Lappé‘s Food First. I mentioned it in the comments, prompting Diane to write another post linking to a Lappé article in The Nation. It’s subscriber only, so I’m waiting for the issue to show up at the public library. But Diane includes a quote contrasting the deadly results of the Green Revolution’s top-down approach in India to the success of grassroots networks in Bangladesh:

With a living democracy frame for understanding hunger, it’s possible to grasp at least some of the reasons Bangladesh is making faster progress in saving lives than is India, despite its greater hunger and deeper income poverty: Citizen action networks have spread to almost 80 percent of Bangladesh’s villages, providing basic health training, schools and capital. Through the two biggest, the largely self-financing Grameen Bank and the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, peer-backed micro-loans have gone to about 9 million poor people, mainly women, enabling many to birth their own village-level enterprises. Grameen reports that more than half of the families of its borrowers–the vast majority of the bank’s owners–have “crossed the poverty line.” Assuming BRAC’s comparable impact, these rural Bangladeshis’ self-directed enterprises have freed more than twice as many from poverty as the number employed in export garment factories. There, insecure jobs offer wages of 8 to 18 cents an hour. Yet the dominant frame doesn’t differentiate these two paths; to Sachs, both place Bangladeshis on the economic “ladder.”

In India hunger is being uprooted as well, but the real story isn’t high-tech progress, so far creating only a million jobs in a country of a billion. The most meaningful breakthroughs are less flashy. In Kerala hunger is being conquered by participatory approaches that have achieved fairer access to land and education. And the People’s Campaign of Decentralized Planning has trained hundreds of thousands of Kerala’s citizens in budgeting and planning to create rural improvements. Throughout India women have built a network of cooperative dairies that in only three decades has lifted the incomes of more than 11 million households and benefited more than 100 million.

Similarly, Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement has secured legal title to more than 20 million acres for a quarter of a million formerly landless families, creating self-governing communities whose enterprises and farms serve community-sustaining values. Infant mortality has fallen, and wages for members are many times higher than their former day-labor pay.

Third World agriculture today exists in the context of a colonial history where peasant cultivators were pushed off of the best land and onto marginal land, and the most fertile, level land was used for plantation farming of cash crops. It is a myth that Third World hunger results mainly from primitive farming techniques, or that the solution is a technocratic fix. Hunger results from the fact that land once used to grow staple foods for the people working it is now used to grow cash crops for urban elites or for the export markets, while the former peasant proprietors are without a livelihood.

And given the maldistribution of land through state-abetted land theft (either by colonial regimes or by landed oligarchies in collusion with Western agribusiness interests), the state naturally diverts inputs like subsidized irrigation systems (and most forms of technical support, infrastructure, and other development aid) disproportionately to the large plantations. The state’s direct subsidies and loan programs are set up so that only large holdings, with access to preferential benefits like state-subsidized irrigation, can qualify.

Heavily state-subsidized agricultural R&D, likewise, is channelled in directions geared to increasing the profits of cash crop agriculture on the big plantations, rather than to increasing the productivity of small peasant holdings. (The following material relies heavily on Lappé.) The “high-yielding variety” (HYV) seeds associated with the so-called Green Revolution are normally productive only under the most favorable conditions, like those prevailing on the big agribusiness plantations. They are deliberately designed to be productive, in other words, under precisely the conditions provided by corporate agribusiness. They are not “high-yielding” in any generic sense, but rather high-response: highly responsive to certain inputs like irrigation and expensive chemical fertilizer. And they are also most responsive on the kind of especially fertile, well-watered land that just happened to be stolen by landed elites under the colonial regimes or post-colonial landed oligarchies. For that reason, Lappé prefers to call them “High-Response Varieties” (HRV).

The administration of Lazaro Cardenas in Mexico, during the 1930s, is a good example of the result when state policy is less one-sided. His agrarian reform, starting in a country where two percent of the population owned 97% of the land, resulted in 42% of the agricultural population owning 47% of the land and producing 52% of agricultural output. Under Cardenas, state loans and technical support were aimed primarily at the needs of small-scale agriculture. The result was an explosive increase in the rural standard of living. As for state-funded agricultural R&D,

The purpose… was not to “modernize” agriculture in imitation of United States agriculture but to improve on traditional farming methods. Researchers began to develop improved varieties of wheat and especially corn, the main staple of the rural population, always concentrating on what could be utilized by small farmers who had little money and less than ideal farm conditions.

Social and economic progress was being achieved not through dependence on foreign expertise or costly imported agricultural inputs but rather with the abundant, underutilized resources of local peasants…. Freed from the fear of landlords, bosses, and moneylenders, peasants were motivated to produce, knowing that at last they would benefit from their own labor. [pp. 123-24]

The groups alienated by Cardenas–the great rural landowners, the urban commercial elites, and (as you might expect) the U.S. government–reasserted their political control under Cardenas’ post-1940 successor, Avila Camacho. Rather than small farms and cooperatives, development spending was directed, on the American model, toward

electric power, highways, dams, airports, telecommunications, and urban services that would serve privately owned, commercial agriculture and urban industrialization…. [p. 124]

The Camacho administration, naturally, was heavily involved in the postwar Green Revolution. The direction of the new big research program was diametrically opposite to that under Cardenas.

Policy choices systematically discarded research alternatives oriented toward the nonirrigated, subsistence sector of Mexican agriculture. Instead, all effort went to the development of a capital-intensive technology applicable only to the relatively best-endowed areas or those that could be created by massive irrigation projects. [pp. 125-26]

Under Camacho, huge irrigation projects were developed for favorably situated land owned by big landed elites, and massive state subsidies were provided for the importation of mechanized equipment.

As Lappé writes, the Camacho approach could not coexist with that of Cardenas. The Cardenas agenda of increasing the productivity of peasant proprietors would have increased their standard of living; in so doing, it would have reduced the surplus going to urban and export markets rather than domestic consumption, and also reduced the flow of landless refugees to the cities. In other words, the Cardenas policies threatened the supply of cheap wage labor for industrialization, and the supply of cheap food to feed it.

The point to all this is not that Cardenas’ version of state intervention was desirable, but 1) that the present system touted by neoliberals as the “free market” involves at least as much state intervention; and 2) that there is no such thing as neutral, politically immaculate technology that can be divorced from questions of power relationships. Criteria of technical “efficiency” depend on the nature of the organizational structures which will be adopting a technology. And the forms of state R&D subsidy and other development aid entailed in the Green Revolution artificially promoted capital-intensive plantation agriculture, despite

overwhelming evidence from around the world that small, carefully farmed plots are more productive per acre than large estates and use fewer costly inputs… [p. 127]

What’s more, the high-response varieties developed by the Green Revolution crowded out equally viable alternatives that were more appropriate to traditional smallholder agriculture. HRVs are actually less hardy and durable under the conditions prevailing on subsistence farms–less drought-resistant, for example. Hence, the bad experience of those Indian farmers with genetically-modified cotton and corn varieties.

Locally improved varieties, in contrast, were specifically adapted to be productive under conditions of low rainfall, and more resistant to insects and fungi without costly chemical inputs. And a rural development agenda geared toward the interests of peasant proprietors would have emphasized, not increasing the yield of seeds in response to expensive irrigation and chemical inputs, but improving the soil. Technical improvement of traditional techniques, and integration of intermediate technology into small-scale production (for example, wider use of crop rotation and green manuring with leguminous cover crops, and pest control through companion planting) would have drastically increased the per-acre yield of subsistence farms, at little cost. Treated human and animal waste, efficiently used, would have provided several times the amount of nitrogen in chemical fertilizers, at a tiny fraction of the cost. For an example of the spectacular results possible from labor-intensive techniques based on low-cost soil improvement, just consider the work of John Jeavons on intensive raised-bed farming.

The Green Revolution, coming as it did on the heels of land expropriation, channelled innovation in the directions most favoring the land-grabbers. It was a subsidy to the richest growers, artificially increasing their competitiveness against the subsistence sector.

Historically, the Green Revolution represented a choice to breed seed varieties that produce high yields under optimum conditions. It was a choice not to start by developing seeds better able to withstand drought or pests. It was a choice not to concentrate first on improving traditional methods of increasing yields, such as mixed cropping. It was a choice not to develop technology that was productive, labor-intensive, and independent of foreign input supply. It was a choice not to concentrate on reinforcing the balanced, traditional diets of grains plus legumes.

It’s also significant that whatever increased productivity results from the Green Revolution has, as one of its primary effects, increased rents. The introduction of the Green Revolution into areas controlled by big landlords, with land worked by tenant labor, had an effect that Henry George could easily have predicted.

Third World hunger results, not from a deficiency in generic technique, but in a deficit of control over productive resources and decision-making power over what direction technical innovation is to take.

Elite research institutes will produce new seeds that work… for a privileged class of commercial farmers. Genetic research that involves ordinary farmers themselves will produce seeds that are useful to them. A new seed, then, is like any other technological development; it’s contribution to social progress depends entirely on who develops it and who controls it. [p. 134]

The above considerations, I think, entitle us to call bullshit on Coasean arguments that justice in holdings doesn’t matter, as long as they wind up in the “most efficient” hands. For one thing, it matters a great deal to the person who was robbed; it matters a great deal whether you’re producing enough staple crops on your own land to feed your family, or instead holding a begging bowl in the streets of Calcutta or living in some tin-roofed shantytown on the outskirts of Mexico, while your stolen land is being used to grow export crops for those with the purchasing power to buy them. And as we’ve seen, there’s no such thing as generic “efficiency” in the use of resources. The “most efficient” use of a piece of land depends mightily on who owns it, and what their needs are. An “efficient” technique for the land thief is entirely different from what would have been efficient for the land’s rightful owner. Large-scale, capital-intensive, high-input techniques are only more “efficient” given the artificial objectives of those who stole the land.

And capital-intensive techniques that increase output per man-hour, but reduce output per acre, are suited to the interests of American-style agribusiness. They’re perfect for large landowners who, as a historical legacy, have preferential access to large tracts of land and can hold significant parts of it out of use, but want to reduce their dependence on hired labor. In areas with underutilized land and unemployed population, on the other hand, it makes a lot more sense to increase output per acre by adding labor inputs. And this is exactly the pattern that prevails in small-scale agriculture. Lappé found, in a survey of studies from around the world, that small farms were universally more productive–far more productive–per acre than large plantations. Depending on the region and the crop, small farms were from one-third to fourteen times more productive. The efficiency of small proprietors working their own land, compared to plantation agribusiness using wage or tenant labor, is analogous to that of the small family plots in the old USSR compared to the state farms. Plantation agriculture is able to outcompete the peasant proprietor only through “preferential access to credit and government-subsidized technology….” [p. 189]

Though observers and commentators are quick to importune governments to act, making all the usual allegations of “market failure,” the worldwide food problem is a consequence of state intervention.

As law professor Siva Vaidhyanathan observed (regarding intellectual property laws), “Content industries have an interest in creating artificial scarcity by whatever legal and technological means they have at their disposal.” And the same is true of commodity providers whose interest it is to ensure that the nutrition we need to survive comes through them.

If a few giant, state-subsidized and -protected farms, wholesalers and retailers can unilaterally command supply, they can demand in payment whatever capricious price they determine. This propensity — ever more cartelized industry with ever fewer “competitors” — is endemic to state capitalism, but it is alien to genuine free markets.

Free markets divide and moderate market power by denying special protection and privilege and opening competition to a wide assortment of both entrants and methods. Only where potential threats to corporate monopolization are precluded by force of law — through, among other impediments, “safety” and “consumer protection” standards — can today’s “captains of industry” ascend to market dominance.

It is too often assumed that the behemoth conglomerates populating the landscape of corporate capitalism wince at regulations supposedly aimed at health and safety. These rules, however, routinely function to outlaw the farm stand down the street, the small, local producer who can’t afford to jump through the arbitrary and unjustified hoops put up by the political class.

Powerful elites lobby for and welcome new laws that further constrain consumers’ options, preventing you from “taking your business elsewhere.” Today, the price we pay for food is quite detached from the actual costs of producing it. Where the natural pressures of a legitimately free market would push prices downward to reflect a product’s true value, state capitalism’s restrictions on competition allow big business to squeeze out monopoly profits.

In still another departure from real market discipline, taxpayer subsidized transportation means that most people get their food from hundreds or thousands of miles, rather than hundreds or thousands of yards, away. When the price of oil rises, then, so too does the price of food. With so few alternatives to the mass-produced garbage of state-fortified big agribusiness, there’s no real reason to give the powerless consumer anything like a good product at a good price. So much for “consumer protection.”

In places like China and Southeast Asia, governments have dealt away to rich companies land that was cultivated by farmers for thousands of years, land that fed their families and their community. The state and its favorites have no justifiable claim to these lands under any well-founded standard of property, but the ethic of the state has never amounted to much more than might makes right.

The rising costs and shortages of food, a growing crisis all around the world, are a creation of the state, a phenomenon that exists completely apart from anything that could, with a straight face, be called “market forces.” Market anarchists would remove the constraints and coercion from food production and allow voluntary exchange to feed the world.

Rather than pining after some utopian paradise, market anarchists argue that, without state-created scarcities for rich rent-seekers, people around the world be able to provide good food for their families with a fraction of their labor today. We can look to elite members of the political class to “fix” a problem that they created, or we can allow cooperation and genuine free trade on a human scale to fulfill people’s needs.

We’ve seen the way that political solutions work. Now it’s time for society to get out from under the stranglehold of the state.

Translations for this article:

• Spanish, La Política del Hambre.
• Portuguese, A Política da Fome.

Government regulation of food production encourages centralization. Government focuses on enforcing minimum standards, not encouraging best practices. It requires costly procedures that drive small producers out of the market without necessarily improving the quality of food.

The centralization of food production supports business models in which close quarters and high volume promote the spread of disease. When the food supply is put into the hands of big corporations with big lobbying bankrolls, it means placing trust in the effectiveness of regulators and in the reliability of corporations to be clean when nobody is looking. And when tainted food slips past quality control the reliance on a few large providers means that one bad production run will reach more customers in more places.

Any regulatory regime will be implemented by the Food and Drug Administration, a federal bureaucracy with connections to large producers. A nice illustration of the revolving door between government and business lobbies is provided by Judith McGeary of the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, in comments on grist.org: “FDA is staffed by people who come from within the industrial food system, many of whom are looking to get jobs in that food system when they leave the agency.”

Who has more access to regulators — small producers or food factories with big money and dedicated legal departments?

The FDA, which stands to gain power from the Food Safety Modernization Act, has previously demonstrated a tendency to place bureaucratic adherence to the rules over the public interest. As pharmaceutical researcher Dr. Mary Ruwart has written, for years after it was known folic acid supplementation reduced the risk of birth defects, the FDA continued to prohibit vitamin companies from advertising this fact, effectively censoring important nutritional information.

It is certainly reasonable to call for more oversight of food. What you put into your body on a daily basis will impact the quality of your life, and as things are now food safety recalls are likely to occur only after people have been infected.

But greater oversight does not have to mean greater government involvement. Unlike the FDA, non-government regulatory and oversight companies can go out of business if they do a bad job. Competition means viable alternatives are available if one agency proves to be as bad as the current system. And non-government regulation does not solely entail corporations focused on maximizing profits for stockholders. Cooperative testing and inspection agencies could be created. With today’s rapid spread of information, it could easily become public knowledge if a producer was found to be negligent. And the most intimate form of oversight is when community agriculture brings neighbors together to ensure quality food.

Unfortunately, a government privatization program would most likely hand monopoly privilege to a corporation, making regulation more profitable but not more effective. Any call for extensive overhaul would have to insist on more competition and less centralization.

An instructive nutritional improvement is the rising consumption of organic food. While it is not mandatory to produce, market, or purchase organic food, its sales are rapidly growing. Government certification and oversight of labeled organics has been called into question, and reputation is important to a company’s success. Choosing organic is an issue of personal priorities, which are influenced not only by educational and marketing efforts, but perhaps more importantly by monetary needs. Any grassroots overhaul of America’s food production should treat broadening access to quality food as a top priority.

In the short term, writing new rules into the government-business regime can make products safer. But don’t look for an ultimate solution from the system that created the problem in the first place.