Let's plant some shit

1. What is my objective?

Friends, comrades, and companions, are you listening to me?

ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?

I need you, to be part of a project. But before I reveal what project it is, please come with me on a trip to the supermarket

We go down the aisle to the fruits and vegetables. The produce appeals to your senses: shiny, tasty and nicely presented. But behind this bright appearance there are some hidden facts: oil dependent, full of chemicals and unhealthy.

First, today’s agriculture is highly dependent on oil. Tilling, fertilization and transportation is all done with oil derivatives. Each calorie of food energy produced and brought to the table represents an average investment of about 7.3 calories of energy inputs.

Second, pesticides used in intensive farming, prolonged refrigeration and preservation agents contained in produce may affect your health in ways science has not yet investigated fully. We are everyday more worried by the quality of the products we consume.

If, after eating an egg plant your face is purple, something is wrong with your food.

And third, we are losing the traditional knowledge of cultivation. This knowledge is instructive for children as well adults. It’s a hobby useful and didactic to learn the sow, cultivation, harvest, rotation, ripening process and pests. When oil is gone, we’ll probably find this knowledge essential for our lives. And Oil will certainly be gone by the end of this century.

(1) OIL DEPENDENT, (2) UNHEALTHY AND (3) RISKY, THIS IS THE MODERN AGRICULTURE.

Growing one's own food would mean (1) decreased carbon footprint, (2) increased health and (3) enhanced enjoyment.

MY OBJECTIVE IS (1) to reduce the environmental impact of growing vegetables; (2) to reduce the distance food travels before reaching consumers; and (3) to provide fresher, better, more nutritious products to urban consumers.

A real opportunity exists to produce significant quantities of food in the heart of the city, (1) efficiently, (2) cost effectively, and (3) in an environmentally sustainable fashion. The climate of Valencia is exceptional.

(1) Front yards, (2) backyards and (3) empty plots, all can be cultivated.

GROWING YOUR OWN FOOD IS LIKE PRINTING YOUR OWN MONEY.

2. Who is my audience?

Fellow Toastmasters

Is not difficult, you can do it.

3. What does my audience want or need?

My audience needs to eat healthier, to consume fresher, better, more nutritious produce.

4. What do I want the audience to do?

I want them to cooperate with me to establish the land work swap and the agricultural school.

5. What is the plan

To establish a (1) network of shared gardens and (2) a school of gardening.

In a land swap there are two parties: one has a plot of land to be cultivated and the other wants to cultivate something. Both are needed. Also, gardeners-to-be may learn agricultural techniques in big farms via a gardening school.

1. I have a plot of land

Do you own a piece of land that you do not use and you want to make it available to someone to cultivate?

Are you interested in obtaining, in return, a portion of the products that are grown in it?

2. I search for a garden

Do you want to cultivate your own vegetables and you don’t have where to do it?

Shared gardens is a tool to help those persons who wish to cultivate their own food, connecting people with suitable plots of land with those who need these lands to cultivate.

Conditions are

1. That the vegetable garden be ecological
2. That the exchange be in kind, mainly sharing the crop
3. That sale of the crop will not be allowed

3. Shared and tutored gardens

To establish a network of gardening schools through which the gardeners-to-be will have access to big farms.

The will have access o a weekly tutorial and support to gardening activities

Initial payment 29€

Monthly payment 29€ (includes right to use a plot)

Your fee will allow you to

• have a plot to practice agricultural techniques in group
• 4 hours weekly of tutorials, following a training and cultivation plan
• irrigation water
• tools
• to cover your self-consumption needs with the garden production
• insurance
• ID card

The training plan will be subject to a training plan closely linked to a cultivation plan. It will be a hands-on, totally practical type of training.

Instructor will be: an agricultural engineer. He will be in charge of assigning the plots designed for a cooperative kind of work

Trainees will be able to participate in a future cooperative of ecological production.

6. What would the results be

The results will be that we will be able to grow our own food. Growing your own food is like ... Wit my plan, if we are the owners, we will get 50% of the crop in exchange for giving in the land. If we are the laborers, we also will reap the fruits of our work (all without a great investment).

What we can say now without any shadow of doubt is that petroleum will be extinct by the end of the century. This rises a difficult question: will homo sapiens be as wise as his name implies? Will he be able to find the way to live without oil, the blood stream of the economy?

The sooner we begin the transition to this low energy future, the easier the task will be.

Growing your own food wii be good for our health, reduce our carbon footprint, be educational for children and save us a lot of money.

We are soil!

So, join me. Let’s plant some shit!

Let's abolish capitalism

Does the common good arise from selfishness?

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest” (Adam Smith, first scientific economist, 250 years ago).

Adam Smith expected that an “invisible hand” would lead the individual selfishness to the welfare of the greatest number of people possible.

This is the basis of the capitalistic system. Also called free market economy, it is a system that tries to maximize the profits and competition.

It encourages egoism, greed and envy.

Those traits are opposed to the values normally acceptable in our daily personal relations, like trust, sincerity and mutual appreciation.

This contradiction divides us deeply as individuals and as a society. Should we be cooperative and help the others? Or should we only care for ourselves and don’t give a damn about the others?

If we pursue our own welfare as a supreme good, then it will be common practice for some to use the others as means for our own ends.

Does a “free” market exist?

It will be free if any economic agent could withdraw unharmed from any economic transaction. But many cannot do so, because they are to a great extent dependent on others. An employer can withdraw from a labour contract more easily than an employee, a lender in a loan contract, more easily than the borrower, etc.

Three common myths about capitalism

1. There is no alternative to the market economy
2. Any other system will lead us to poverty or, even worse, communism.
3. Market economy is the most productive system as history shows; competition is inherent to the nature of the human being.

No economist has demonstrated there is no alternative, ever. Actually cooperation is a better solution than competition. True motivation is intrinsic rather than extrinsic, like it is competition. Best results are achieved when people are enthusiastic about an idea, and they are full of energy.

In competition, because goods are scarce, there are lots of losers. If you set your own personal value in being better than the others, you depend on the others being in a worse position, this is sickening!

The ten crisis of capitalism

1. Concentration and abuse of power
2. Disruption of competition and creation of cartels
3. Manoeuvres to attract capital
4. Prices often reflect power relations
5. Inequality and fear
6. Famines
7. Destruction of the environment
8. Consumerism
9. Deterioration of values
10. Suppression of democracy

Proposal: Economy for the Common Good

1. Polarity reversal in the incentive framework

The new objective of companies is to produce the maximum contribution to the common good, not to make the maximum profit.

2. Redefine economic success

Today economic success is measured as GDP in the case of a country and financial profit in the case of companies. Both are monetary indicators.

Does GDP indicate if, in a country:

• are they at war or in peace?
• is there a dictatorship or a democracy?
• is income is fairly distributed?

Does financial profit indicate if a company:

• creates of destroys employment?

• job quality increases or diminishes?
• profits are fairly allocated?
• takes care of the environment?

Financial profit offers information of how a company serves itself, not how it serves the society.

There may be a nexus between profit and common good but it is not necessarily so. A financial profit may exist together with job destruction, sexual discrimination and destruction of the environment.

The ECG will measure success by the social dividend, a non monetary indicator.

3. The balance sheet of the common good

Will measure what is laid out in the majority of constitutions:

• human dignity
• solidarity
• justice
• environmental sustainability, and
• democracy

The balance of the common good measures how the stakeholders (suppliers, customers, lenders, borrowers, employees, society) live these basic values.

In the intersections you find the indicators of common good

• the usefulness of goods and services
• labour conditions
• if production is ecological
• how clients are treated
• solidarity with other businesses
• sharing of profits
• remuneration of women
• if decisions are taken democratically

The result will be the assignment of “points”

4. Reward the search of the common good

The more points on the common good a company gets the more legal advantages it should enjoy. Like:

• VAT reduction up to 100%
• Lower tariffs
• Bank credits in favourable conditions
• Priority in public biddings
• Cooperation with public universities
• Outright aid

5. Permitted uses of the surpluses

• Investments
• Provision for losses
• Capital increase
• Distribution to stakeholders
• Loans to stakeholders

Capital yields should only benefit those who made them possible with their work. Only persons working in the company should participate in profits in an equitable manner.

6. Optimum size

Growth in nature is only a means to reach the optimum size. So should it be in the world of enterprises.

7. Structural cooperation

The ECG is a market economy and is based on private companies and money. So competition is possible, but the more companies cooperate among themselves, the better their balance sheet of the common good will be and their survival possibilities. From the present win-loose system, we’ll go to a win-win system.

8. Cooperative management of markets

Economy of the common good is a market economy and markets fluctuate. If demand in a sector drops or if there is a sudden surge of the supply, how will it manage this?

In the actual win-lose system, prices will drop and companies will go bankrupt. In the ECG, the affected companies will convoke a “crisis committee” to seek solutions, like:

• reduce working hours;
• reduce jobs and retrain workers
• reduce business and specialize in other fields
• close business and find jobs for redundant workers
• merge businesses
• strive to find other solutions

9. Sabbaticals

All workers will enjoy a sabbatical every 10 years during which they will perceive the minimum salary.

10. Solidarity income

2/3 of the minimum salary in case of emergency