Monopsony

Thanks to our occasional contributor Jacob van Etten for the following article on markets and agrobiodiversity. 

Monopoly happens when there is only one seller for a certain product. Monopsony, this week’s new word, happens when there is only one buyer. And when this happens, it is also likely that this single buyer will impose some rigid standards. And then the industrial buyer makes fake diversity by making slightly different mixes of standard components:

One technique retail oligopolies use is flood the shelves with a pseudo variety of similar products made in almost exactly the same way, so that minor vendors that offer real variety can be elbowed out. The beer industry is a great example of this trend.

In other words, agricultural biodiversity is being replaced with industrial diversity. Monopsony is growing in the US wine market. If climate change will push wine production to the north, will Canadian and Swedish vineyards become planted only to the few grape varieties demanded by the monopsonists ((There was a nice map in the November 2007 French National Geographic that shows how viticulture will move northwards, based on data by Gregory Jones, whose home page has a number of interesting articles on this, but none as the NG map.))?

The role that markets play in biodiversity conservation as well as local food provision is also the subject of a recent article, published in the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability. The article is behind a pay-wall, but the PhD dissertation (in Spanish) on which it based and a colorful brochure are available for free.

Neus Martí and Michel Pimbert explain that in the Peruvian Andes, local communities organized barter markets to exchange local food products, while the economy of the region was pushed towards commercial agriculture. The barter markets permit a commercial exchange of agricultural products that is economically horizontal (between equals) and ecologically vertical (between ecological floors in the mountain landscape), whereas neo-liberal policy promote something that is the other way around.

The barter markets also happen to be good for biodiversity. All crops that are sold for money may also be bartered, but the reverse is not true. Many crop landraces and wild foods exchanged in barter markets are never sold in money-based markets.

So, don’t blame the market. Blame the monopsonists.

Credit where credit is due

The latest Oekologie carnival is up over at 10,000 birds, and I’m here to state that although I submitted the article featured, I did not, as Mike suggests, write it. That was Jacob van Etten, and I hope he’ll submit another guest post soon.

The Oekologie carnival has its usual fascinating bunch of links to stories of potential interest. One in particular that took my fancy was an account of water wars in the south. The south of the United States, that is, where you would think that they would be better prepared. They’re not. As Jennifer at The Infinite Sphere writes:

As a result of the merging of a bad drought, a population explosion in the Atlanta metro area, a lack of planning to accompany said population explosion, lack of any kind of plan to deal with a severe drought, and pretty much no water conservation incentives at a state or local level. As a result, Alabama, Tennessee, and Florida are now duking it out over a watershed (Chattahoochee/ Flint/ Apalachicola Rivers) spread over the three states. It’s gotten so bad that the Georgia aquarium, home to the largest aquarium tank in the country, has drained several aquariums to save water (I would assume the water is now being used for some beneficial purpose).

Phew! There’s not a whole heap in there directly about farming, but it does indicate just how complex water management can be.

Cutting down on cow emissions

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas and ruminant farm animals belch out a huge amount of the stuff. No wonder people are scouring agrobiodiversity for animal feeds that minimise emissions. A paper in Animal Feed Science and Technology ((C.R. Soliva, A.B. Zeleke, C. Clement, H.D. Hess, V. Fievez and M. Kreuzer. In vitro screening of various tropical foliages, seeds, fruits and medicinal plants for low methane and high ammonia generating potentials in the rumen. Animal Feed Science and Technology. Corrected Proof, Available online 18 October 2007. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anifeedsci.2007.09.009)) has come up trumps. The researchers found differences in methane production not just among tropical feed species, but also among accessions of Acacia angustissima and Sesbania sesban. Something to add to the list of evaluation descriptors.