Comparative Disadvantage
By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
Comparative advantage is still routinely invoked as a justification for free trade today, so it remains sadly necessary to explain why it’s a poor foundation for contemporary economies.
Population: What’s the Problem?
By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
My question isn’t a rhetorical one intended to suggest that human population levels aren’t a problem. I don’t doubt they are. But it seems to me much less clear than a lot of people seem to think exactly what kind of problem they are, and what – if anything – could or should be done about it
A Marginal Farm Anniversary
By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
To love the farming in a global economic context that writes its economic bottom line in diesel is not only a hard thing, but a conflicted thing. I can’t claim to have extracted myself from those dismal economics but my good fortune is that, on the ground and on the page, at least I’ve found some opportunities to try.
To Find my Resting Place
By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
Local farming isn’t the only way to have an authentic relationship with the universe, local farmers aren’t necessarily immune from the siren song of nationalism, and not everyone who lives in the city mourns its implicit alienation.
Florence, Texas
By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
I’d like to raise a standard in this post for two doctrines that I think speak to our troubled times. The doctrines I have in mind are civic republicanism (that’s the Florence part of my title) and agrarian populism (the Texas part). Let me explain…
Talkin’ bout a Revolution: a Response to the Breakthrough Institute
By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
The Breakthrough Institute have published a response to my critical commentary on a recent post of theirs. Here I continue the debate, because I think it might clarify some worthwhile issues. I
To Be or Not to Be the Change
By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
So…what path to take? The old familiar mainstream, the marginal, or the radically new? Hell, I’m opting for all of the above. I think we need to revitalise the best of the old traditions of right and left, while bringing in the contributions of more marginal political positions from the past – and articulating them all afresh in the completely novel historical circumstances we face.
A Small Farm Utopia
By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
When I made a case for a small farm future somewhere or other a while back, I got a tweeted reply “Your utopia is my dystopia”. I found this slightly odd since the case I try to make for small-scale farming isn’t that it’s the best of all possible worlds – more like the best of a bad job given the circumstances we face.