Doug’s Dynamic Drivel

Peter Baker does an excellent job of applying the Second Law of Thermodynamics (entropy always increases) to the agricultural import/export industry. That is, how does it make sense to import (or export) an agricultural product whose caloric value is less than the calories required to produce and transport it?

Tomato production in the US consumes four times as many as the calorific value of the tomatoes created. Global development, global debt, global warming, food miles, food security, food riots, peak oil, peak water…

What’s this got to do with small farmers and ?

The answer is that all the issues mentioned above intersect over small farmers.

If we can’t quite get a grip on what is happening to the world, we won’t be able to do a good job for them, and we’ll waste a lot of resources in the process.

It’s perfectly reasonable to want to assist farmers to build a better life by adding value.

It’s also perfectly reasonable to expect their produce to be fresh and non-toxic. And it’s only natural to want to facilitate this process through aid, technical assistance, capacity building and the like.

But the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Maintaining order

I had originally planned to call this article Supermarkets, Smallholders and the .

The Second Law is about order; the Universe is inexorably heading to increased randomness and disorder.

For practical purposes, this does not have to be a problem because we can increase order locally by hard work, by expending energy. But in the process we create greater disorder (heat and waste) elsewhere.

If there is plenty of energy and plenty of “elsewhere”, then we don’t have to worry.

Indeed, for our whole existence, we largely haven’t worried; in fact the whole world order, built on trade and economics, hasn’t worried.

Biological systems know all about . All living things are highly ordered assemblies of molecules continuously battling against disorder.

Commodity chains must also obey the Second Law; in a sense, they are living things, creating highly ordered products and emitting significant waste and heat in the process.

For example, a recent study looking at Nicaraguan coffee production and processing showed that the total energy embodied in coffee exported to several countries - though not all - was not compensated by the dollar price paid for that energy.

Essentially, the conclusion was that the country is exporting .

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