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Strategies & Market Trends : Currencies and the Global Capital Markets
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To: ShoppinTheNet who wrote (83)5/12/1998 12:16:00 PM
From: Chip McVickar  Read Replies (1) of 3536
 
Hello S.K.Werom 2

You asked me to about my statment on agri-business, small farmers as an
example of imbalances of electronic technology. You also asked what was
wrong with WalMart type monopolies and farmers subsidies.

Living and being close to the lives of the nations small farmers, ranchers
and the communities that surround them is the one clear way to understand
what is being lost and why smallness has some validity. If you live in
a city or suburbs you would not understand the qualities of community that
are at the heart of the contentious struggle that is taking place betwen
the agri-concerns and the producer. (I spent a number of years in Montana.)

So why is this loss important and why is it relivant to a discussion on
international monetary systems..? It is fundamentally more efficient
to farm or ranch large numbers of acres and to market those products
through even larger co-operatives. So the large concerns always dominate
the structure of *deals* made between the grower and the table. In this
search for efficiency of product...mistakes are often made in providing
those consumers needs. The Walmarts and HomeDepots have the power to
dominate and set the structure of the *deal*. If one understands being
connected to the source as the small farmer does...then ones understanding
of the conflict between the 2 is clearer.

What about the mistakes. One example is the canned goods supplied to
the union army during the civil war. The cans were made of lead and the
soldiers suffered terribly from the ingestion of lead. This eventually
produced a series of laws and regulators (the early beginnings FDA.)
Today large agri-business has been using fertilizer made from the sludge
products of municipal sewage treatment plants of your city. Your spinich
contains very thigh levels of heavey metals....something most small
producers know is *wrong*...no matter how much you cook the stuff. There are
other examples that demonstrate pressures of effiency applied to producers
to meet the price demands of Walmart's...Animal feed made from ground up
skeletons and hormones treatments are good examples.

What about currencies:
Diversity is a key element in this discussion. One of the dominant
agruments against the euro is the loss of diversity....culturally, politically
monitarily and of national identity. The powerful players who want the
euro are driven by effiency product models and the desire to homogenze
europe for greater potential of profits.....both commercially and poltically.
The struggle between those who know that diversity and smallness works
and those who want a more efficient pricing structure has only just begun.
The French farmer will not easily give up their subsidies and social welfare
programs and the German counter part will follow suite. There will be a lot
of "mistakes" in maintaining a Walmart currency and the potential dislocation
into defensive maneuvers. There is a good chance the ECU will come out
stronge and eventually disolve in bickering and laughter.

I think the E.F.Schumachers (Small is Beautiful) and Archer Daniels Midlands
of the world will continue to create a revoution in the way we conduct our
lives, the way we think and the way we wish our lives to be transformed.
The world is undergoing an extraordinary revoution of empowerment that has
only just begun. Computers and communications are linking whole new areas
of solutions and allowing for new interpretations of problems that will
eventually produce....one hopes a better quality of life for all nations.

This conversation started with Jerard Pearsons post #47....I hope it addresses
both questions and conversations.
Chip
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