Testing the VRDG principles

[Guest guest]

Dear all,

 

Not much feedback, but not to be daunted I suppose it

would be good to test the principles put forth.

 

One matter that was raised was land security and

tenure. How would the principles deal with this?

 

In environmental terms of land fertility, it would be

good to secure a long-term working relationship with

the land users. The reasoning being that it has been

found that short-term land use can lead, especially in

today's social and economic climate, to a rapid

depletion of the land's natural capital for short-term

gains, whether this is due to deforestation, over

cultivation, or even stripping the land of its top

soil to sell. All of the latter contravene the

principle of increasing land fertility. So from the

Land's view point there needs to be some form of

tenure security for the participating land-users.

 

In social terms of meeting basic human needs, it would

also be good to secure a long-term working

relationship with land. The reasoning being that it

has been found that people will invest time, effort

and wealth into land if their future is seen as secure

on the land. On the contrary, if people feel there is

no long-term tenure of the land then they will not

invest the latter, and the results are usually

deleterious. Examples are collectivised farms in the

old USSR and China, many "hippy" communes, many ISKCON

farms, and anywhere where land tenure is weak. So from

the social view point there needs to be some form of

tenure security for the participants.

 

In economic terms of utility, with the relationships

being more reciprical, using local resources, and less

moneyed-transactional, based on export and imports

from outside the farming system, land securtiy is

highly desirable; the forms it takes though can be

varied. In general, time, effort and wealth will not

be invested in a short-term exploitation of the land

unless a quick income can de derived, which will

generally deplete the land's natural capital. For

labour and capital to be invested leading to a steady

stream of valued good and services land security is

desirous.

How land security is obtained is debatable. A feudal

system of 25% share-cropping, generational security

and protection is presented as a varnasrama ideal by

Prabhupada. This would be nice. But, where are the

Knights in shining armour following this system? In a

Less Developed Country, and most of them have a very

tainted armour that would not be suited to anyone with

any notion of fairness and autonomy.

On a more contemporary note, land mortgages offer some

security, but only if payements can be maintained.

This falls under the level descriptor (as practice

sould really be named) of permitted. Here whilst land

fertility may be increasing, social principles are in

the permitted description in terms of protection and

education, as safety is jeapourdised due to the

potential loss of land upon lack of payement and

education is jeapordised as the movement towards an

ideal society is set back due to working, whether on

farm or off, to meet said payements, plus other

issues. The economic principle is also only permitted

as whilst goods and services may be produced and

exchanged internally according to some form of

reciprocity, some form of external exchange of goods

and services needs to pass to earn cash to pay the

mortgage. The latter form could be in exporting goods

and services from the farm, be it a CSA or in the open

market, or in exporting labour to work in outside jobs

thus earning the necessary cash.

 

Renting land also follows the latter argument as do

other forms of share cropping follow the former

argument.

 

To finish, another point could be what is the

situation with land security through full ownership

with no debt? In brief the principles should move up a

notch to refine the level descriptors so as to reduce

external economic activity, provide basic human needs

and increase land fertility.

 

This I believe is in the spirit of Prabhupada, as well

as most of the environmentalists, utopian socialists

and rural communist economists of the past centuries,

as well as philosophers and religious thinkers, etc,.

going back to the ideal from where all this comes from

- Golok.

 

Yours,

 

Mark

 

 

 

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