| Let me first tell you about ...And the Echo Follows. I heard of it from a friend, George Naylor, who you might know from reading about him in The Omnivore's Dilemma. He sent an email out recommending his friend Nic's book. The book sounded exactly like something I'd love, so I wrote back requesting a review copy. When it came, it came from a return address only a few miles from where I live. George's friend Nic lives near me? Hmm. So I asked to be put in touch, and then suggested we meet for coffee, which we did.
My first question for Nic was how his book came about. As it turns out, it didn't start out as a book. Nic's been friends with folks from the Missouri Rural Crisis Center for years. (MRCC does great work, and I've met one of Nic's friends from there.) Through them, initially, he began traveling and meeting with farmers - first in the U.S., and then around the world. Each trip led to the next trip. In Hawaii, indigenous Hawaiians suggested he meet with Maori in New Zealand, so he did, and so on.
All I had to do was flip through the book to know I'd love it. On any random page, I'd see a mural I recognized from Chiapas, or a stone carving I recognized from Bolivia. Nic interviewed people I know, people I consider heroes, and people I have never heard of but clearly should have. And through these people, Nic discovered a lot of truths about food and about democracy. Ultimately, he put it together in a book. He calls it an essay but I'd say it's more of a collage, and a damn good one at that.
Often, world leaders meet to discuss how to help the poor, or the indigenous, or the malnourished, or farmers. And there's always one group absent from those meetings: the people they are supposedly helping. But as Nic shows in his book, the poor might be poor but they are not stupid. And they usually ARE at those meetings, just not allowed inside. Instead, they organize separate meetings, parallel to the ones held by the WTO or the UN, seldom covered by the media, in which they discuss their own vision of the world.
When you actually listen to these folks, you begin to hear terms like "agroecology" - a word that the UN has, thank goodness, picked up on. Isn't it amazing that 99.9% of Americans probably have never heard that word, yet peasants around the world - people with dirt floors or missing teeth or little formal education sometimes - have been practicing agroecology for years? And I mean doing so in a conscious and scientific way. In a very sophisticated way. In the book, Nic provides one of the best definitions of agroecology I've come across. It comes from Miguel Angel Crespo from PROBIOMA, a group I hope to meet with on my next trip to Bolivia:
It [agroecology] is based on traditional knowledge, native genetic resources, native seeds, traditional practices for the control and prevention of pests and disease in crops; the use of biological diversity; and respect for cultural identity. It is very much related to the security and sovereignty of food. - p. 45
Let me share another quote that touched me from this book:
It is generally recognized that Nicolaus Copernicus in Poland (in the early 16th century), followed by Johannes Kepler in Austria and Galileo Galilei in Italy (in the 17th century), then Isaac Newton in England (in the 18th century), together brought about a paradigm shift in the European cosmovision of their time. It turns out that our planet Earth is not at the center of the universe, with the planets, the sun, and the stars quietly moving around us (although the moon still does). We are just one planet moving around the sun, together with other planets, while our sun, way out in the nether regions, rotates around the center of our Milky Way galaxy - among billions of other galaxies.
And now, a similar shift, a growing body of scientific study about climate, forests, air, life-forms, rivers, and oceans is aligning more and more with the Andean and other indigenous cosmovisions. Humans are not the vital center of life on Earth but rather part of a biodiverse network. Though we may be taking a leading role in destroying it. - p. 77
Let me say a few more things about this book and then shift to Making Poverty. I love this book, but I will give you fair warning that at times it feels disjointed (think of it as a collage), and sometimes I think he uses terms that people might be unfamiliar with without defining them. That said, I love the book. I love reading it, although I find myself constantly turning to the footnotes to find his sources, so I can read everything he read, and I'm torn between pursuing each source he cites or finishing the book. This book taught me many new things, really valuable things. I guess that's what happens when you travel the world and let people speak for themselves.
But that's where Making Poverty comes in. And the Echo Follows is beautiful in so many ways, but I could imagine someone refuting the many quotes in the book, dismissing them as "ideological," or even "primitive." And of course I would find that offensive. But by reading these two books together, I realize that everything said in And the Echo Follows is backed up in a clear, academic, measured way in Making Poverty.
Lines is very analytical in his book. If you want data, he's got it. He starts by defining who the poor countries are - and as he's using data, he cites some data that uses terms I hate "least developed countries" or "low human development." But that's how the powers that be in this world think of it. He tells you who those countries are and some vital stats about them: Population, hunger, per capita GDP, whether they've been getting richer or poorer over time, etc. Many are dependent on commodity exports.
From there, Lines traces the history of how rich and poor countries became so, telling about colonization, mercantilism, and free trade. He tells how real commodity prices have fallen, forcing poor countries to export even more just to make the same amount of money. And he tells how rich countries often blame the poor's rules for being corrupt, claiming that "good governance" would pull them out of poverty. And no doubt that it doesn't help for a Qaddafi or a Mubarak to funnel loads of cash into his own bank account, but... well, here's what Lines says:
Nevertheless, there is ample evidence that, for development to succeed, a certain political attitude is required of a country's leaders. But it is not the willingness to open all doors to foreign capital and trade that is advocated as 'good governance.' On the contrary, the required political stance tends to give primacy to domestic economic forces and to protect them for an extended period from foreign competition, so that they can accumulate the capital and experience needed for further advance. - p. 52
From there, Lines analyzes the World Bank's call to "get the prices right" via free trade. He provides a detailed analysis of commodity markets, followed by the conclusion that:
Taken together, the evidence of the commodity markets indicates that in general they fail in their tasks. The premise of the Berg Report in 1981, and he World Bank's campaign to 'get the prices right' which followed it, was that government measures such as border tariffs and marketing boards distort market outcome, and therefore the efficiency of trade. But the combination of volatile prices, inadequate responses of supply and demand to price signals, and market concentration at certain points on the supply chain means that the commodity markets themselves severely distort the outcomes of trade and the distribution of its benefits. - p. 83
And then he calls for supply management, providing several examples of successful ones from the past, and lays out a plan for helping countries finally escape poverty. This is a skinny little book and yet it's dense because it's so full of detailed analysis and numbers. But, I think, it is very good analysis, covering very important issues.
So now you see why I've written about these books together. Nic provides beauty and inspiration, and Thomas Lines backs him up with hard facts. The topics of the book aren't identical - for example, Nic covers GMOs quite heavily, while they don't play very much into Lines' analysis. But I think the two books do speak to the same point, which is that those in power in the world often do things in the name of helping the poor but which actually enrich themselves, their own countries, and the multinational corporations that donate to their campaigns. And that truly helping the poor isn't impossible - Lines tells us how to do it - and if you listen, the peasants of this world have something important and intelligent to say. |
