There was a short but brutal drought in the East of England this year. It is over now, but from March to May, there was no rain, at all. But the problem is not so much that there wasn?t any rain, but that the condition of the soil means that it cannot hold onto winter rain and make it available to crops through dry months. This spring was particularly bad because we had had a dry winter, and this after last year?s dry spring. We will have to dig the field drains up, so that less winter rainfall runs into the ditches. Our field is protected only by its own hedges, so there is little shelter from the wind that blows across the much larger fields all around. The wind draws what moisture there is out of the soil, and the water level drops faster than our crops can grow roots to find it. We have planted a belt of trees round the whole field, but not many survived the drought.
This brought home what I suppose we already knew in some intellectual way. It is difficult to do small-scale agriculture in the East of England. One reason why the land is difficult farm on the small-scale is that for many decades no one has kept animals on it. There is no mixed farming in the Eastern counties anymore. All farms are arable: most have a five year rotation of two wheat, two rape and a year of beans. No organic matter from animal manure returned to the soil to help it hold on to that water or prevent it from becoming so compacted that plant roots cannot develop properly.
In the East of England in particular the expectation is that all land has to be farmed on an increasingly large scale by fewer farmers with larger machines. All nutrients are dosed and applied to the specific crop, and the soil is just there to hold that crop up. Farmers take on more borrowing in order to do this, and some are always being forced out when they cannot borrow any more. The process of concentration is beginning to resemble the collectivisation of agriculture. All power to the kolkhozy!
The logic of vertical streaming means that large scale agricultural enterprises, agrochemical companies and food giants and supermarkets want to, if not to integrate, at least to achieve more control over it than is good for the market or for national health. Supermarket chains will increase loyalty incentives for their customers until the supermarkets effectively divide up the customers available between them. Supermarkets will be the farmers and consumers their livestock. The problem is that this makes for a population with such low earning power that it will be unable to purchase what these collectives can produce. Supermarkets will respond by reducing the nutritional value of the food they sell. Never underestimate the technological ability of the food industry to dilute real nutritional value whilst loudly informing us of the many individual supplements that provide the health benefits of their products. They will be dosing the nutrients into the customers, and the population will be kept on an increasingly poor diet. Long live our agricultural corporations! Truly they provide for us like a loving mother.
More agriculture in the next post. So much easier than theology.
