Eric Schwennesen: Consumption

We all know this picture; we've been watching the rising wave for our entire lifetimes: the surging price of land, fed by the dabbling of the wealthy, who invariably acquire their wealth in fields other than agriculture. The net result is always the same: the land is taken out of production, and is transformed into a consumer commodity.

Having become a commodity, that land has now been thrown into the open marketplace, with wealth from many quarters competing for its ownership. If you are among the 98% of US citizens not involved in agriculture, you are a part of that open marketplace, driving up prices and demand, taking ever more of the remaining land to satisfy pipe dreams. 

It was not always like this. Until WWII, the majority of Americans were a part of the greatest agricultural surge ever known; more than half the population were producers, fully capable of supplying every need for those consumers otherwise employed. 

Since then the proportions have steadily shifted; the direct link between production and consumption has been so distorted that an average human can barely conceive that a producer underlies all the colorful wrapping, mass marketing, distribution and shrill advertising of any product. Few, and disappearing, producers. Innumerable, and increasing, consumers. And all along the chain of distribution, at every level, handlers (more consumers) must be rewarded for their efforts. How much can a product support before its cost exceeds its value?

There was a time when this process was understood. Local producers supplied local consumer needs, often face to face; local consumers rewarded producers with enough value to complete the circle. Land was necessary to production; its value had to be tied to its productivity. The result was elemental social stability. 

This is now scoffed at as provincial, primitive, uninspired. Instead of social stability we now admire successful social misfits who trivialize productivity.

There are still instinctive producers: those rare few who dedicate lives to farming and ranching because they sense the rightness and urgency of production and the complexities of making it happen, while all the rest of the world clamors for things to consume. Land is now becoming a consumer product, too costly to justify by production alone. Where does this lead?

Eric Schwennesen is a commercial beef rancher in the Mogollon Rim country. He grew up in Belgium, cowboyed in Nevada, and helped Navajos and many African peoples with rangeland conflicts for over 35 years. He recently published "The Field Journals: Adventures in Pastoralism" about his experiences.