Chapter 4 in Princen, T.. Maniates, M. and K. Conca, Confronting Consumption, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002

Beyond Commoditization: Consumption Efficiency and an Economy of Care and Connection

Jack P. Manno [1]

As noted in the introduction to this book, interesting insights are gained from opening the black box of consumption. It becomes possible to ask questions about the fundamental purposes of economic activity and to imagine a society that prospers with much less stuff. These questions force one to consider why people organize economic systems in the first place. Is it merely to produce more things, or rather is it to create the material prerequisites for a good life, one that includes many of the things that money can�t buy. Since major environmental stresses are directly related to the side effects and by-products of economic activity, the question is particularly pressing. The big challenge is how to live well without undermining the natural systems on which we fundamentally depend. The solution lies in getting more with less, not more stuff but more satisfaction, not quantity but quality. This is what is meant by the concept of consumption efficiency: the level of social welfare and personal satisfaction obtained per unit of energy and materials consumed. Policies that are directed toward improving consumption efficiency could begin to disassociate individual and social welfare from increasing levels of material and energy consumption and accompanying waste products. Improved consumption efficiency means increasing satisfaction of rational human needs and wants with decreasing amount of consumption. This chapter will not attempt to directly quantify consumption efficiency[2] but rather describe the difficulties in achieving such efficiencies under current economic conditions and will suggest political and economic reforms that can lead in the direction of improved consumption efficiency.

Typically the focus of efficiency analyses is on the key factors of production, labor and capital, measured in terms of input per unit of output. In practice, inputs are generally measured in terms of monetary costs. Investments in innovation are directed toward decreasing the costs of inputs and/or increasing the value of outputs thereby maximizing productivity. The result is that investments keep spurring production in the absence of considerations as to the overall efficiency of how that production is ultimately consumed. In fact, for the producer, the less consumption efficiency the better, the result being ever increasing consumption, and ever increasing dependency on the producer.

It is important to understand that technical progress that leads to improved production efficiency of capital and labor is a necessary but not sufficient condition for improvements in consumption efficiency. In general improved efficiency of production simply lowers the costs of producing stuff and transfers the resulting savings toward additional consumption. Gains made in improving the fuel efficiency of the U.S. motor fleet, for example, has been more than offset by trends toward larger vehicles, more cars per household, and more miles per car.[3] A study by Freund and Martin demonstrated that even though the automobile fuel efficiency in the United States improved considerably (34%) between 1970 and 1990, total fuel consumption during the same period increased by 7%. The number of multi-car families had increased and the family drove more miles.[4] Energy efficiency gains will only be successful in uncoupling improved quality of life from increased energy use if it is accompanied by comprehensive political and economic strategies to reduce consumption. Without such a strategy, discussed in detail later in this chapter, improved efficiency leads to lower costs and increased consumption. This paradox is sometimes referred to as �Jevons� paradox� after economist Stanley Jevons who pointed out in 1864 that efforts to conserve English coal by increasing the coal-use efficiency of British steam engines ended up making steam power cheaper compared to human and animal power and in the end stimulated increased coal consumption.[5] Likewise, production efficiencies unaccompanied by brakes on consumption tend to bring the consumption of energy and materials to levels greater than what existed before the production efficiencies were introduced.

Modern industrial economies provide a way of satisfying almost all human needs and wants through the individual consumer purchase of some form of commodity. There are, however, two possible additional approaches to address any particular set of needs, such as the need for transportation, for entertainment, for food and clothing and so on. These are:

� Need reduction and prevention approach - You can reduce the need for health care through public health, hygiene and health promotion. You can reduce the need for transportation through urban planning that clusters housing near to workplaces and services. The need for waste management services can be reduced through pollution prevention. Farmers can reduce the need for commercial fertilizers through recycling soil nutrients. Homeowners can reduce the need for lawn watering by planting drought tolerant species. The number of approaches to need reduction is limited only by creativity. Technological and social development if directed to need reduction, could greatly reduce many excessive forms of consumption. Although basic needs such as the need for food, clothing, shelter and love are difficult to reduce, perceived needs in these areas may often be in excess of actual rational needs and can be effectively reduced. Obviously, one key to gains in consumption efficiency lies in such need reduction strategies.

� Cooperative and collective approaches � There are many ways to meet needs collectively rather than individually. These approaches also hold great promise for improving consumption efficiency. Public transportation can move far more people-miles per unit of energy than the same number of people in individual cars. Well organized neighborhoods and communities create the possibilities for sharing resources through tool and appliance libraries, central worksheds, entertainment centers, cooperative arrangements for shared child and elder care and all sorts of mutual aid arrangements.

A healthy, balanced economy would be able to steadily improve and develop all three approaches: personal consumption, need reduction, and cooperation, directing its research and creativity toward all three areas relatively equally. As we will see, however, in modern industrial societies economic forces come into play which distort economic and social development increasingly in the direction of increased consumption. Technical progress is overwhelmingly directed toward increasing the amount, variety and availability of goods and services for purchase. One key economic force that I call commoditization[6] must be understood and countered if progress is to be made toward improving consumption efficiency and increasing our chances of building communities that prosper while living more lightly on the earth � the key component of environmentally sustainable development.

This chapter analyzes commoditization and suggests that social distortions wrought by it are the major systemic obstacle to improving consumption efficiency. Commoditization is the tendency to preferentially develop those things most suited to function as commodities --- things with qualities that facilitate buying and selling �-- as the answer to each and every type of human want and need. In many ways, commoditization, is the same process as industrialization, but looked at through the lens of consumption. Industrialization is the ongoing application of technology toward improving the efficiency of production. Industrialization, as we will see, serves the commoditization process. Commoditization operates as a selection pressure in the evolution of an economy. As a result of commoditization, any competition between alternative means to satisfy any particular human need will result in the options that have greater potential as a commodity out-competing the options that have lower commodity potential. The selection happens mainly as a result of investment decisions. The alternatives with the most commodity potential receive the greatest investment of the key resources: money, time and technical innovation. Of the three paths to responding to human needs and wants, technical progress is overwhelmingly directed toward increasing consumption rather than reducing needs or increasing cooperation. The latter two however form the foundation of an economy of care and connection but are much more difficult if not impossible to market and sell.

We can refer to any given economic activity or sector, say, food production or health care provision as being comparatively more or less commoditzed by which is meant that the continuous improvement and development of those activities is more or less focused on the most marketable end products rather than the social systems necessary for the delivery of nutritious food or the maintenance of human health. We can also refer to a given economy as more or less commoditized, to the extent that the commoditization process dominates in the allocation of resources in that economy.

Under the current industrial capitalist system of incentives and disincentives what we consider �progress� is invariably directed toward increasing levels of consumption. There are, however, other possible paths of progress and development. As Cogoy[7] and others have pointed out, technical progress that improves the efficiency of labor could be directed toward either increasing production or reducing labor time. If directed toward freeing up more and more time, this time could be directed toward improvements in community and cultural life. This time would become the raw material for an economy of care and connection and the main source of improvements in consumption efficiency. Under present economic conditions investment is almost always directed preferentially toward the production of commodities to be consumed rather than toward the freeing of more time.

Commoditization makes the attainment of consumption efficiency difficult at best. The fundamental thrust of consumption efficiency is increased human satisfaction with decreased consumption. The general thrust of commoditization is ever increasing consumption. Therefore, in order to explore the possibilities for improving consumption efficiency, we first need to understand commoditization.

There is another concept that must be understood before we can fully define commoditization, that is commodity potential. If a commodity is something endowed with the qualities that facilitate exchange, then commodity potential is the potential of a thing to carry those qualities. Commodity potential is a measure of the degree to which a good or service carries the qualities that are associated with and define something as a commodity. Goods and services can be described as having high commodity potential (HCP), or low commodity potential (LCP) or to be HCP or LCP goods and services.

Everything has some commodity potential, even if, as in the example of interpersonal relationships, it is very small. Commoditization operates to increase commodity potential to its maximum, no matter how small or large that maximum may be. If we want to understand how this works we must first identify the qualities that are associated with and define commodities. Let�s first compare the difference between goods and services with low and high commodity potential. This way we can begin to understand the qualities commoditization develops and why.

The primary qualities that define a commodity are:

� Alienability, the ease with which ownership can be asserted, assigned and transferred.

� Standardizable, independence from the particularity of geography or culture.

� Autonomy, the ability to be used independently, outside the constraints of social relationships.

� Convenience, the ease with which it can be used.

� Mobility, the ease with which something can be packaged and transported.

These characteristics, along with several related qualities and their implications for consumption efficiency, are considered in more detail later in Tables 2a & b.

The distinction between HCP and LCP goods is not absolute but rather one of degree. Goods and services more or less have the characteristics of a commodity. They are more or less, alienable, standardizable, autonomous, convenient, mobile. Non-commodities are less alienable (more communal), less standardizable (attached to local ecosystems or local culture), less autonomous (goods and services that rely on a web of relationships), less convenient (involving a complex set of relationships), and less mobile. Most things are some of each. Even non-commodities like �friendship� have their commoditized service version in �psychic friends networks,� personal ads, etc. In highly industrialized societies where commoditization operates most strongly, there are few aspects of human life that have not been commoditized to some extent. The selection pressures that favor commodities over non-commodities involve a gradual �survival of the fittest� where what is fit is by definition what is marketable.

Consider for example children�s need for play. At one end of the scale of commodity potential are such mass marketed toys as Barbie dolls, super-hero action figures and the packaged entertainment that accompany them. These products are inexpensive, marketed worldwide, involve immense sums invested in product research and development, packaging and marketing. Their production is energy intensive, fossil fuel dependent and involves the highly publicized exploitation of cheap labor and mountains of industrial and post-consumer waste. In the middle of the commodity scale lie locally produced, hand crafted dolls, toys and games usually made from renewable materials and with local or culturally idiosyncratic designs. These are the goods of the crafts market and bazaar. Also in the mid-scale are all the services for sale: childcare, playgroups, clowns for hire etc. At the far end of the commodity potential range are things that are not for sale such as making angels in the snow, play with found objects, group play, sing-a-longs and all the goods of interpersonal contact.

The point here is not that goods with lower commodity potential are morally preferable or even always more benign. It is that LCP goods and services have the potential to satisfy human needs with less material and energy, they form the basis of need reduction and cooperation strategies and an economy of care and connection that facilitates consumption efficiency. It is most likely that a sustainable society would support the development of both HCP and LCP goods and services. Given the selection pressures of commoditization, however, unless public policy deliberately intervenes, HCP goods and services inevitably out-compete LCP goods and services for investment and resulting allocations of time, attention and the means of material survival. Commoditization pressures act over time to gradually and inexorably expand the number of commodities available, the geographic spread of their availability, and the range of needs for which commoditized satisfactions exist.

Let us consider several economic sectors to see the range between goods with high, medium and low commodity potential (Table 1). Then consider the qualities that are associated with different degrees of commodity potential (Tables 2a & b)

Table 1 Commoditization is the process that favors those goods that have the quality of a commodity (see Tables 2a & b). Goods and services with low commodity potential (LCP) tend to be processes that involve direct and cooperative relationships between people or between people and the natural world. Goods and services with medium commodity potential (MCP) involve a direct exchange relationship between the purveyor of the goods and the end-user. High commodity potential (HCP) goods and services involve highly abstract and usually distant relationships between producers and consumers.

Sector	High Commodity Potential (Marketable Products)	Medium Commodity Potential (Products with localized markets)	Low Commodity Potential (Processes involving social and ecological relationships)
Children�s Play	Barbie dolls, Action figures, packaged entertainment	Handicrafts, childcare, live entertainment	Direct child-led interaction with natural surroundings, group play, interpersonal goods
Food production	Commercial fertilizers, pesticides, engineered seeds, mechanization tools, genetic material	Commercial manure, stored seeds, farm animals, tools for small farm, agricultural extension and research services.	Knowledge of soil, locally co-evolved skills and techniques
Health care	Mass-marketed drugs, diagnostic equipment, hospital supplies, insurance	Doctor-provided services, hands-on therapies and treatments	Knowledge of healing, personal health maintenance and illness prevention, life-style adaptations, sense of well-being
Energy	Grid-dispersed electricity, power plant equipment, fossil and nuclear fuels	Renewable energy sources, energy conservation services, wage labor	Personal energy conservation strategies, passive solar design, cooperative sharing activities
Transportation	Personal transport vehicles and the infrastructure of roads, etc. that supports it	Public transportation	Transportation reduction strategies (such as cluster housing near workplaces, etc. ), walking
Environmental Protection	Pollution control equipment, waste-to-energy incinerators and equipment	Recycling, pollution reduction/prevention services	Pollution prevention redesign, materials and energy use reduction strategies
Mental Health	Mood altering drugs	Therapists, Fitness clubs	Peer counseling and mutual help, friendship, exercise
Finance/credit	Options, junk bonds, credit cards	Neighborhood banking, credit unions	Personal loans, gifts

Table 2a Comparing the key attributes associated with the high and low commodity potential and their effects on the process of development.

Attributes of Goods and Services with High Commodity Potential	Attributes of Goods and Services with Low Commodity Potential	Negative Effects of Commoditization on Development	Positive Effects of Commoditization on Development
Alienable, Excludable, Enclosable, Assignable, Patentable: simpler to establish right of ownership, easier to establish price.	Openly accessible, inalienable: difficult to establish rights, widely available, difficult to accurately price	Privatization accelerates decline of sense of community and the common good and increases commoditization of all aspects of life. Skills and capacity for managing common property and promoting common good is underdeveloped.	Releases individual and corporate entrepreneurial energy. Ability to manage individual property and promote personal gain is highly developed.
Standardized, Universal, Centralized and Uniform: adaptable to many contexts.	Particular, Customized, Decentralized and Diverse: each culture potentially derives the best practices for its particular environmental context leading to diverse customized goods and practices.	Reduces cultural and geographic diversity, standardized methods may not be suited to particular ecosystems, as a result efficiency potential is reduced. Locally appropriate development options remain underdevelopment.	Allows rationalization of production economics of scale and transfer of skills. Greatly increases production efficiency.
Autonomous, depersonalized, use or practice occurs largely independent of social relationships. Primary relationship is between consumer and product.	Embedded, use or practice occurs in a web of social and ecological relationships.	Promotion of individual consumption reduces the efficiency gains made possible by sharing, increases flow of energy and materials Excessive autonomy undermines social relationships, redundancy and resilience.	Minimizes the complications of relationships. Advances freedom of the individual.
Embedded knowledge or skills, convenient, use simplified and inherent in design and material.	Disperse knowledge and skills, convenience is not goal, use requires relevant knowledge and skills	Impoverishes knowledge base particularly at the personal, local and regional levels.	Convenience frees human attention for other activities.
Mobile, transferable, easy to package and transport	Rooted in local ecosystem and community	Propensity for mobility increases flows and export of energy and materials. Local knowledge and connectivity underdeveloped.	Makes trade possible with accompanying spread of benefits. Trade and markets become highly developed.

Table 2b Secondary attributes related to key attributes in 2a.

Attributes of Goods and Services with High Commodity Potential	Attributes of Goods and Services with Low Commodity Potential	Negative Effects of Commoditization on Development	Positive Effects of Commoditization on Development

Contributes to production efficiency; more is produced per unit of currency expended.	Contributes to consumption efficiency; more satisfaction per unit of material and energy expended.	Neglects the potential for achieving sustainability through increased satisfaction with less material and energy.	Increased production efficiency creates more wealth and greater availability of material goods and services.
Product-oriented: ends are accomplished through products.	Process-oriented: ends are accomplished through processes and interactions involving people in relationship with their environment.	Discourages systems thinking, keeps attention on parts rather than wholes. Undermines capacity for ecosystem approaches to decision-making. Over develops competitive skills and underdevelops collaborative skills.	Produces cornucopia of products.
Responsive: services that respond to needs and fix problems	Anticipatory: services designed to avoid needs and prevent problems.	Focus on need satisfaction rather prevention encourages the expansion of neediness and associated chronic dissatisfaction. Anticipatory and preventative capacities underdeveloped in society.,	The capacities associated with responsiveness are highly developed, wide range of needs are addressed. Problem solving capacities and tools are developed.
Embedded energy: production is energy intensive. Packaging, transportation and promotion add to energy embedded in the product.	Dispersed energy: energy is used and dissipated at the site of the activity or point of exchange or consumption.	Concentration of energy causes ecological disruption at the point of its release. Commoditization of fuel facilitates dramatic increase in energy availability and use. Decentralized energy strategies underdeveloped.	Energy sector highly developed. Commercial energy increasingly replaces human labor and leads to expansion of leisure.
High capital intensity Low energy productivity Low labor intensity High labor productivity	Low capital intensity High energy productivity High labor intensity Low labor productivity	Eliminates jobs, encourages replacement of workers with fossil fuel energy.	Increased productivity frees capital to invest in new productive activities creating new jobs.
More stable, Predictable, Reliable	More variable, Unpredictable, Unreliable	Predictability tends toward simplification, including loss of diversity and redundancy in ecosystems	Increased predictability and reliability benefits all human activities
Design resists and/or alters natural flows and cycles	Design follows and mimics natural flows and cycles	Failure to promote and use ecological designs leads to increased energy use and more waste	Overcoming ecological constraints opens more possibility for economic growth.
Abstract, distanced, less direct ties to physical base of reality.	Concrete, tied to physical and biological constraints.	Reduces knowledge and awareness of physical basis of human life and culture	Overcoming physical constraints opens more possibility for economic growth
Path-breaking, break from bonds of place and tradition. Relationships structured by contract.	Co-evolutionary and traditional, evolves in the context of specific ecosystem and culture, relationships often structured by custom	Loss of traditions and traditional knowledge.	Overcoming cultural constraints opens more possibility for economic growth.
Short term, Large return on investment	Long term, Stable returns	Increases speculation, reduces investments in sustainable opportunities	Increases wealth and its accompanying benefits
Efficient, the most exchange value for a given investment	Sufficient, optimal service for minimal expenditure of material and energy	Reduces capacity to develop low impact living, accelerates commoditization	Efficiency frees reserves for other wealth producing activities.
Contributes to GNP, GNP growth measures commoditization.	Contributes little to GNP, the less commoditized a good or service, the less it contributes to GNP.	Public policy goals become tied to growth in size of economy rather than improvements in quality of life.	GNP represents accurate measure of economic activity and is closely related to improved quality of life.

If the qualities associated with commodities are privileged in an economy, and if economic rather than social or democratic forces dominate a society then over time more and more of that society�s attention, resources, creativity, enthusiasm, etc. will be directed toward the production and reproduction of those qualities. At the same time, those qualities associated with lower commodity potential will become increasingly underdeveloped in comparison.

Improved consumption efficiency, a rise in social and individual welfare with lower energy and material consumption, is increasingly difficult to achieve to the extent that commoditization drives the evolution of an economy. Like all systems, economies evolve over time. This evolution occurs through a process of natural and unnatural selection in which certain things survive and others do not. Those that survive become the goods and services which citizens use or consume to meet their needs. In a modern industrial economy, the key ingredients for survival are investment capital, time, attention, skill, technology and creativity. They are the nutrients and raw materials of economic life. The allocation of these �nutrients� is affected by subtle economic pressures that �select� those options for satisfying wants and needs which are most commoditizable.

There are several factors that determine which goods and services are available and practically obtainable for the satisfaction of human needs and wants. These factors can be illustrated in the design of a car. Physical laws determine the range of design options and as a result most cars are fundamentally alike: height, width, wheel span, steering mechanisms, etc. Designs that veer too far from the physically optimal pay the price in higher fuel demands, safety risks and associated liability concerns, and are selected out. Consumer preference determines most of the variability within the range of what physical laws determine is practical. These choices are the result of the interplay of options and motivations, including disposable income, status seeking, comfort, and practical considerations such as size of family, the purposes to which the vehicle would be put to use, etc. The result is a range of available vehicles and features that represent the optimal balance of possible customer satisfactions. Neither these physical limits nor consumer choices, however, account for the selection of automobile transport over other LCP options for moving people and goods such as well-designed public transport, urban designs that minimize transport needs, and other approaches to minimizing the need for the personal automobile. A transport system based on the personal automobile represents the transportation option with the greatest commodity potential. Cars are individually owned, their operation is nearly globally standardized, they allow tremendous individual autonomy, they are always available and simple to use and greatly expand individual mobility.

This phenomenon, the selection of high over low commodity potential solutions to personal and social needs can be observed in sector after sector. It is a self-reinforcing, positive-feedback mechanism. People grow increasingly dependent on HCP goods to meet their needs, much as people have become dependent on cars as suburbs grow and public transportation becomes comparatively underdeveloped. Society increasingly invests in the infrastructure to support a highly commoditized lifestyle. Since HCP goods receive by far the greater amount of R & D they invariably appear to be more advanced and competitive. As a result, it simply makes good sense to purchase and use the more advanced products. It is then logically compelling to assume that the proliferation of HCP goods is the very meaning of development and to suggest alternative, currently less developed, pathways to social development is to be unrealistic, even reactionary. Ways of meeting human needs that rely on LCP goods and services appear on the surface to be less developed, more backward and less capable of meeting broad human needs despite the fact that they are the key to improving consumption efficiency. Their proponents and serious proponents of environmentally sustainable economic development face this problem of unfair comparisons. Those approaches or products with high commodity potential receive far greater R & D investment. Over time they become more "developed" and appear more practical. R & D investment is not the sole determinant of success nor the sole determinant of outcome in this evolutionary selection process, but it is a good indicator of what the economy will identify as potentially successful in the context of commoditization. The remainder of this chapter will describe the implications of this with examples from several different economic sectors.

AGRICULTURE

No economic sector has been as highly affected by the pressures of commoditization as agriculture. Commoditization operates both on the inputs and outputs of the production process, preferentially investing in commercial chemical fertilizers, pesticides, machinery, and standardized crops suited for long shelf life, transport and branding while underinvesting in the development of local site-specific knowledge and skills of soil management, site specific agronomy , and diverse crops with a high mix of nutritional qualities. As a result of this pattern of preferential investment, more progress occurs in highly commoditized industrial agriculture than in alternative agricultural methods that depend less on commercial inputs and more on highly evolved, site specific skills and methods. Hence, when comparing the future prospects for feeding the world�s people with different agricultural methods, small scale, low-input, LCP methods appear less capable. But this comparative disadvantage is the result of past distortions. If as much development attention and investment had been going into improving low-input alternatives, it is possible that these alternatives would be as highly developed and productive as more industrial agriculture. Its comparative underdevelopment then becomes the argument to justify the disproportionate share of investment into research and development that industrial agriculture receives. It becomes a vicious circle in which underdevelopment becomes the excuse for further underdevelopment. This is exactly the way commoditization affects and distorts development practice.

Agriculture is also one of the most environmentally damaging sectors and the increasing use of energy and other inputs is highly implicated in this damage. In the United States agriculture is responsible for 57% of the pollution in freshwater lakes. Significant improvements in consumption efficiency will be required to reduce this damage while providing adequate nutrition for people. Improvements in consumption efficiency means better nutrition for more people with lower consumption of energy and materials in producing, processing, packaging and delivering food. It can also mean, at the individual level, more nutrition per calories consumed. Consider the distinction between HCP products and LCP processes in the agriculture industry:

Agricultural system products (High Commodity Potential)

Proprietary hybrid and patented seeds

Insecticides, herbicides and fungicides

Commercial fertilizers

Farm machinery

Fuel

Farm management books and magazines, Etc

Agricultural system processes and skills (Low Commodity Potential)

Soil protection and management

Water conservation and management

Knowledge of soil, climate, local pests

Energy conservation and management

Nutrient cycling and enhancement

Crop rotation and placement

Rural networks of mutual aid

Pest control and management

The selection pressures of commoditization help determine which farming methods are widely adopted, preferring those approaches that rely on HCP inputs and produce HCP crops best suited for broad marketing, and rejecting those LCP crop varieties that rely on LCP agricultural methods. Given the tendency toward standardization that characterizes commoditization, one result is to gradually select out those crop varieties that are uniquely adapted to particular growing conditions. The result is greatly reduced agricultural and genetic diversity.[8] Pre-industrial traditional agronomy bred many different crop varieties, each uniquely suited for a specific set of growing conditions. Each farming community and culture bred its own wide range crop varieties. Under the pressures of commoditization, the tendency is to engineer the soil through HCP inputs to recreate the conditions favorable to standard high-yielding varieties rather than creating unique LCP crops for unique soil and climate conditions. This soil engineering is accomplished through the applications of a variety of agricultural chemicals and fertilizers and the use of massive farm machinery. In this way the same crop varieties can be grown in many different locations.

It is interesting to consider the possibilities inherent in the development of genetic engineering technology. In the absence of commoditization pressures it is possible to conceive of this new technology being used to make it once again economically viable to create many crop varieties each suited for particular and uniquely harsh growing environments. This could be a great boon for local food production and rural self-sufficiency, as land previously unsuited to agriculture, is brought into production. The majority of genetic engineering research and development, however, is directed toward promoting qualities that either maximize those attributes associated with high commodity potential, such as long shelf life, portability, standardization, or those qualities, such as product-specific herbicide resistance, that enhance and promote the adoption of a particular agricultural product.

Society�s resources, represented by the amount of time, attention and money directed toward research and development, is �naturally� directed toward that which will yield the greatest return on investment. Low-input, indigenous and environmentally sustainable agricultural methods may rely less on purchased fertilizers, pesticides and other inputs but they produce higher crop yields. Or so it is widely assumed. According to this reckoning, the cost of a large-scale transition to sustainable methods would be simply too costly and risky to be worthwhile. For example, former Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Earl Butz was reported to have responded to those arguing for greater support for organic agriculture, �Show me the first 10,000 Americans who are prepared to starve to death and then I�ll do something.[9]� But the assumption that sustainable agriculture is necessarily less productive is misleading.

Conventional industrial agriculture is indeed more productive in producing HCP products but not necessarily in growing nutritious food. There are indeed economies of scale that can be achieved by industrialized farms but improved labor and capital productivity, not necessarily land productivity realize these savings. In terms of land productivity, small farms, which rely heavily on skilled labor, can yield more per acre than large farms. The most productive farming turns out to be small labor-intense garden-like cultivation systems with mixed crops, shifting cultivation and a high degree of nutrient recycling. Such systems are capable of producing three times as much per unit area as highly mechanized, capital and energy-intense agricultural production systems utilizing minimal human labor.[10] This productivity consists of the total of multiple yields in a mixed crop farm. Industrial farms are far more productive in producing a single crop for market in terms of yield per worker-hour, whereas low input agriculture is more productive in terms of yield per area, and far more productive in terms of yield per unit of any of the major inputs such as chemical fertilizer, pesticides, fuel, and irrigation water. In addition, studies have shown that the nutritional content of organically grown produce can be significantly higher than in conventionally grown equivalents.[11]

For farms larger than intensively cultivated gardens, small farmers produce about twice as much per hectare as do large, industrial scale farmers, while using only one fourth or one fifth as many purchased inputs.[12] Studies in modern Mexico have shown the advantages of traditional companion planting methods. These methods rely on the mutually beneficial characteristics of corn, beans and squash. The corn stalk provides structure on which the bean plant can climb, while the broad squash leaves shade out weed growth. Insect-attracting plants are deliberately planted at the edge of the fields to draw pests away from the crop while other plants are cultivated in the field to deliberately attract those insects that feed on the most damaging of crop insect pests. Fields planted in this diversified pattern have been able to increase yields by as much as 50% over methods of planting a single highly marketable commercial variety.[13]

Most traditional farming methods rely heavily on skilled labor. But labor in a commoditized economy is increasingly expensive relative to those inputs with higher commodity potential: machinery and raw materials. Since some of the highest costs of any operation are associated with labor, particularly skilled labor, investments naturally focus on reducing costs through mechanization and standardization. Eliminating skilled labor removes the very resource most essential to sustainable agriculture � people with intimate, detailed knowledge of particular lands and soils. A single technician giving instructions to untrained field hands on an industrial farm can manage several thousand acres using standard recipes for determining the amounts and timing for the application of pesticides and fertilizers. Organic and other forms of sustainable agriculture on the other hand require highly trained and experienced labor and diverse management skills. Because resources for agricultural training are distorted by commoditization, there are almost no formal training options available for individuals interested in obtaining the skills for sustainable farming. Internships are few, college training programs even fewer.

One example of how this lack of skills and training affects agricultural practice has been the disappointing progress in implementing integrated pest management programs as an alternative method of pest control. In the fifty years since farmers started using DDT for protecting crops, use of pesticides has grown 33 fold. Worldwide, 50 million kg of pesticides were applied to crops in 1945; by the mid-1990s annual worldwide pesticide use had jumped to 2.5 billion kg.[14] Pests continue to develop resistance and become even more harmful as a result, leading to increasing pesticide usage and the continuing need for new and more targeted pest management products. All the while, pesticides continue to spread into the water and air, endangering other plants and animals as well as humans. The problems associated with increased reliance on chemical pesticides have been known for decades. Excellent alternatives have been developed mostly under the heading of IPM. These systems are designed to support and promote natural pest resistance through companion planting, hardier breeds, introduction of beneficial insects and pathogens, and the controlled use of narrowly targeted and non-persistent pesticides. Despite some considerable success with these methods they have not been widely adopted, except on a few crops, and have not significantly affected the amount of pesticides used worldwide. The failure to adopt IPM stems from two facts: the full cost of pesticides in terms of environmental health affects are not reflected in their price, and the implementation of IPM requires careful management, experimentation and observation, all LCP services.[15] IPM, like other efforts designed to decrease the environmental impacts of farming, require just the kind of site-specific knowledge and understanding that have been selected against by the force of commoditization and is in decline worldwide.[16]

Commoditization and associated industrialization consistently distort development toward capital intense and less productive large industrialized farms that are devoted to the production of a single or just a few crops. This, as David Barkin and others have noted, encapsulates the experience of rural development worldwide. Emphasis is invariably placed on producing a single commodity without understanding the role of agriculture in peasant society, culture and economy.[17] Cropland devoted to single crops (usually wheat, corn, or rice) has expanded worldwide heavy inputs of pesticides and fertilizers. At most, some land is simply rotated between corn and soybeans. Farm animals are increasingly raised apart from croplands, further reducing the opportunities to recycle animal waste as soil nutrients and greatly adding to the pollution load on streams and rivers near chicken houses and feedlots.[18] The number of hog and dairy operations declined by 70 percent from 1969 to 1992 while production, now highly concentrated, remained stable.[19] At present, 90 percent of the world�s food supply comes from only 15 species of crop plants and eight species of livestock among the estimated 10 million species of plants and animals in the world.[20]

The process of commoditization in agriculture is reflected in the ongoing replacement of human labor, animal power and renewable energy with fossil fuel. Each calorie of food we eat from high-input agriculture embodies several calories of fossil fuel energy. From petroleum comes the synthetic chemicals in pesticides. Oil powers the production of chemical fertilizers, moves agricultural commodities around the world, drives the farm machinery, raises the irrigation water and on and on. High input agriculture requires about 3 kcal of energy derived from fossil fuels for every 1 kcal of human food produced. Food production accounts for about a third of all energy used. The United States uses three times as much energy per capita for food production than developing countries use for all energy consuming activities combined, including food production.[21]

This measure, the amount of food energy produced per unit of energy expended in food production, is a measure of energy efficiency. The energy efficiency of modern conventional agriculture declined in the United States throughout the period 1920-1973.[22] Industrial agriculture is tremendously inefficient in terms of energy. This inefficiency is directly related to the economic force of commoditization. Fossil fuel has much greater commodity potential (see Tables 1 & 2) than other forms of energy. The fertilizers and pesticides produced from fossil fuels have much more commodity potential than do alternative methods of soil enhancement and pest control. The preferential development of commodities through the process we describe as commoditization greatly distorts agricultural development toward massive energy inefficiencies. These inefficiencies will likely continue until public policy intervenes to direct development toward low input and less environmentally disruptive agriculture.

Consider rice production. Modern rice farmers get a negative 1 to 10 energy return. In other words, they use up to ten times as much energy to produce the food than the resulting food yields in calories.[23] Compare this for example to the traditional rice farmers of Bali which are reported to produce 15 calories of food energy for every one calorie of energy used, and even higher yields are sometimes obtained. Many of the negative environmental consequences of conventional agriculture result from this massive dependence on non-renewable fossil fuel energy.

Because of commoditization, organic agriculture in general cannot compete for private investment capital. Up front public funding of research, development and agricultural extension is essential for organic farming to succeed. To achieve the full potential of organic farming requires time and the knowledge and skills of the farmers to build up the humus content of the soil. Without public financial support it is extremely difficult for a farmer to stick out the lag time between start-up or changeover from standard farming practices to organic practices. In addition, organic farming is very labor intensive and the costs of sufficient labor can be prohibitive.[24]

When farmers switch to organic methods, they experience a short term decline in productivity for some crops in terms of yield per unit area and a dramatic rise in productivity in terms of yield per unit of energy input. A 1980 USDA study, however, not only found increased energy efficiency on organic farms but roughly equivalent yields per acre of organic versus standard methods. For wheat there was not a significant difference, for soybeans, organic methods produced 14% higher yields. Most studies show a 20-30% decline in productivity in the short term with productivity increasing slowly but steadily in organic farms over time.[25]

Agricultural research dollars go overwhelmingly to benefit the dominant agricultural paradigm. The Organic Farming Research Foundation analyzed the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Current Research Information System (CRIS) to assess the pertinence to organic farming of the currently funded research.[26] Of the 4,500 projects the authors reviewed, only 301 led to results that were pertinent to organic practice. Funding for these projects amounted to about one-tenth of one percent of the USDA annual research and education budget. In another study, the CRIS data base was searched for projects that included the words "sustainable" or "low-input" in their title or abstract. These 122 projects were then analyzed for content. According the Molly Anderson who cites the studies, "Few of the 122 projects showed the broad scope that writing about alternative agricultural research emphasizes. Only 22% dealt with entire farms, 25% looked at both crops and livestock and 19% studied general processes from which basic agroecological principles could be learned.[27] " Both these studies analyzed the CRIS database that includes only publicly funded research and probably greatly overestimates the actual share of total agricultural research directed to sustainable or low-input agriculture. Privately funded research tends to be even less relevant to organic farmers and other forms of alternative agriculture.

Instead of comparing averages, the performance of the best most productive low-input farmers should be compared with the best, most productive high-input farmers. In general the best, most experienced organic farmers can achieve yields equal to or better than conventional farmers while decreasing energy use, building up humus in the soil, dramatically reducing soil erosion, reducing nitrate concentrations in ground water, and enhancing plant resistance to disease.[28] Studies undertaken by the Rodale Institute concluded that experimental plots using standard organic farming techniques had similar yields to plots using conventional methods over a 15 year period. While the experimental crops produced as well as the conventional plots, they also enriched the soil. Carbon levels rose dramatically and nitrogen losses were half of what they were in the conventional high-input plots.[29] Well maintained soil acts as a carbon sink, preventing large amounts of carbon from entering the atmosphere, not inconsequential when industrialized societies are straining to figure out ways to reduce the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide to stem global warming.

The stakes continue to grow. It is going to be increasingly difficult to continue to raise yields enough to meet the needs of growing populations when the amount of cropland is declining on a per capita basis. Farmland is disappearing under human settlement and environmental degradation. Although new areas continue to be opened, the most fertile lands were long ago put under the plow and much was later then buried under cities and suburbs. Since the 1950s, total land area in grain cultivation has increased by around 19% while global population has increased 132 percent resulting in a decline of 50 percent in the amount of grain area per person.[30] Heavy uses of fertilizers and pesticides have more than doubled average yields so that per capita production has continued to increase. We have begun to see potential saturation points beyond which increasing fertilizer use will not likely increase yields to the same degree as initial applications once did.[31]

Agriculture is in a bind. Industrialized methods have led to reduce natural fertility in a farmlands worldwide. This reduced fertility makes it more difficult to begin the transition to lower-input methods. At the same time, the amount of available good cropland declines as cities and suburbs spread out into surrounding farmlands as the land becomes more economically valuable to grow houses and strip malls than food. Calls for the continued intensification of agriculture are likely to increase along with charges that proponents of alternative, low-input agriculture are essentially irresponsible. The results of the �unfair comparison� are only likely to worsen. We approach what looks like a choice between feeding growing populations of hungry people and protecting the environment. This is a false choice.

All agriculture disrupts natural ecosystems. That is what agriculture is meant to do, replace natural ecosystem with ones that are deliberately manipulated to produce more of those plants and other organisms people find useful and desirable. However, disruptions can be limited, first of all by limiting the number and amount of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides. While it may not be possible to maximize both environmental protection and crop yield, each can be optimized in relation to the other. The goal of agricultural policy and practice should be to optimize harvest and ecological integrity, which will maximize neither. This will only work within an economic context that balances commercial and non-commercial values. This brings us to the most important problem created by commoditization which constantly distorts human development by giving overwhelming preference to commercial values. This makes it extremely difficult to find the optimal balance between environmental protection and production, the goal of sustainable development in agriculture and in every other sector of the economy.

The world is in a bind. World per capita food production has increased by 15% from the 1960s to the 1990s. But per capita figures are misleading. Modern commoditized agriculture has been enormously successful in producing a wide variety of food for the tables of those who can afford it. For those who are left out of that market for one reason or another, the result has been a devastating loss of capacity to achieve self-sufficiency in food and an enormous increase in the number of people on the planet currently considered malnourished, more than half of the present world population of around 6 billion people.[32] Current agricultural practices contribute significantly to all the major environmental problems facing the world: global climate change, loss of biological diversity, polluted and overdrawn water resources, spread of toxic chemicals, and air pollution. The combination of trends necessitates a shift in agriculture toward more benign and sustainable practices. In addition, agriculture in general suffers from problems of diminishing returns. The first crop planted in a cleared field yields more than subsequent crops. The initial application of fertilizers can boost production substantially but later applications are less effective. The same is true for irrigation water. The first applications of pesticides are more effective than later ones after pests begin to adapt and evolve pesticide specific resistance.

The good news is that because of the underdevelopment of organic methods, we are a long way from reaching the limits of the potential gains to be had there. We have considerable knowledge of how to farm sustainably and an ancient history with many successes. The bad news is that commoditization pressures continue to skew investment toward research and development in the opposite direction of sustainability. In addition, ecological disruption changes the ecosystems within which traditional farming methods have evolved. Once these changes occur, traditional practices based on knowledge of local ecosystems are no longer viable. We are losing our inheritance. Global climate change makes this phenomena worse still. All agriculture depends on relatively stable climate. A shift into a new climate regime would severely complicate our task. Commoditization is preventing us from achieving sustainable development, and in the process grossly limiting development of our full human potential. The more extensive the commoditization, the more ecologically disruptive it is. The longer it lasts, the more underdeveloped alternatives become and the more difficult the road to sustainability becomes.

ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION CONTROL AND THE 4RS

The field of environmental protection is subject to the same commoditization forces. Let�s distinguish between products with high commodity potential and processes with low.

Environmental products (High Commodity Potential)

Clean-up equipment and tools

Energy efficient appliances

Waste management equipment and services

Environmentally friendly products

Photovoltaic cells

Biomass fuels

Parks and zoos

Environmental system processes (Low Commodity Potential)

Energy and materials conservation programs

Ecological design

Watershed management

Voluntary simplicity

Community building and resource sharing

Environmental education

Waste reduction programs

Extended producer responsibility

Habitat protection and conservation

Many analysts look to nature for models of effective resource conservation. In natural systems there is no such thing as waste, there are only byproducts which become resources for another organism or process. By mimicking nature in the design of our production and waste management systems, energy and material efficiency can be enormously improved and wastes thereby dramatically reduced. Every step, from obtaining and processing raw materials to delivering final goods to repair and maintenance to final disposal, could be organized with the intention of minimizing the waste of energy and materials.[33]

There is a widely accepted formula for waste minimization, the 4Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Recover. There is a widely accepted formula for waste minimization, the 4Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Recover. These four approaches are typically depicted in order of effectiveness and priority.

� REDUCE the amount of waste produced: Reduce unnecessary packaging, improve energy and materials efficiency in both production and consumption, reduce the amount of material and energy required to provide any given service.

� REUSE materials: The waste material and energy that can�t be eliminated should be captured and reused in another part of the production process. Waste can also be greatly reduced by repair and remanufacture of existing consumer products rather the manufacture and sale of new ones. For example, reconditioning a car to make it last for another 10 years requires 42% less energy and significantly less material than manufacturing a new car.[34]

� RECYCLE used materials: Materials that can�t be recovered for reuse, repair or remanufacture should be recycled for use as raw materials somewhere else in the economy.

� RECOVER materials: Lastly, some component of the waste stream that is not suited for reuse as raw materials in other processes can sometimes be recovered as fuel for energy production or steam generation.

Each of these R�s is preferred over simple disposal. A formal policy on waste reduction was established in the United States by the 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act which focused originally on requiring industry to modify its production processes to encourage and facilitate recycling of raw materials. This approach, however, was considered too expensive by manufacturers who successfully convinced the administration and congress that RCRA should instead support landfill improvements and the construction of a new generation of solid waste incinerators.[35] Waste handling services and incineration have far greater commodity potential than does waste reduction, which in effect has negative commodity potential.

The priority ranking for the 4Rs[36] is the exact opposite of the order of commodity potential. Energy recovery yields electricity, usable energy at its most portable and marketable. Recycling produces some products and the things that have been most recycled in the U.S., paper and aluminum are the most marketable. Reuse tends to reduce the consumption of new goods. And as already noted, use reduction has virtually negative commodity potential. Although the 4Rs approach and prioritization are regularly advocated by environmental agencies in the United States and elsewhere, actual practice reflects another set of priorities.

A closer look at recycling as it is presently organized in the United States provides a good example of how commoditization distorts what is ostensibly an environmentally beneficial activity. The biggest problem with recycling is that it has never been fully integrated into a system of waste reduction that includes the entire life cycle of a product from raw materials extraction to production and consumption. In such a system recyclability would be designed and manufactured into products up-front and manufacturers would be responsible for seeing that their products are recycles at the end of their lives. Consumer products would contain materials that are meant to last beyond their first use, materials that are designed to be recycled. A variation of this is becoming increasingly the case for automobiles where a used parts market has always thrived and somewhat less so for major appliances. But for the majority of small appliances and the vast majority of consumer goods this is far from the case.

Recycling as a stand-alone service rather than part of an overall waste reduction strategy is invariably organized to produce raw materials for sale. This is consistent with the pattern we have been describing of privileging products over processes. In today�s U.S. economy, it is considerably less expensive to throw away a damaged radio, for example, than it is to pay to have it repaired. This is a direct result of commoditization policies which lower prices for energy and raw materials while raising the cost of labor by taxing wages and not energy. As commoditizaton drives innovation, goods that were once repairable no longer are. For example, in recent years the sports-shoe industry has replaced rubber and leather with synthetic materials. As a result, the athletic shoes are now unrepairable.

Products are not designed for reuse, and therefore recycling programs must first transform the material they collect into usable materials again, a process which uses additional raw materials and energy and produces considerable pollution.[37] Even though science can produce materials that are easily recyclable, investments in this research and development are stymied because of the ambiguity of property rights over recycled materials in subsequent uses and liability for the environmental effects of post-consumer waste. As I have argued, the ease with which property rights can be established is the most significant characteristic of goods and services with high commodity potential.

One proposal for improving recycling and materials recovery is to require manufacturers to take back products, especially large consumer goods and appliances, once they have completed their service life. This would create significant incentives for manufacturers to design longevity and recyclability into their products. Companies facing such requirements or liability for the environmental effects of their waste may shift to leases rather than sales. This is already happening in some instances, for example, with some large carpet manufacturers who lease carpets to major institutional customers with the intention of recovering the worn carpets and using the materials in the production of new carpeting. Leasing is possible for a wide range of consumer goods.

Since the 1970s the generation of waste products by industry in the United States has declined significantly. This is often pointed to as evidence that environmental problems can be solved by continued economic growth and that any efforts to slow growth to achieve environmental ends are counterproductive. However, only industrial waste has declined, consumer waste has risen precipitously. This is possible because a large percentage of the material thrown away by Americans was produced in other lands. For example annual production of metals in the United States is more than 1.5 tons per capita (down from a maximum of close to 2 tons in the early 1970s). However this decline merely reflects the fact that the United States is increasingly dependent on imported ores and metals. US metal consumption is now more than 2.5 tons per capita.[38] In effect, U.S. environmental gains have been purchased by exporting industrial production and associated pollution elsewhere. Declines in industrial waste have not been matched by a decline in domestic refuse. Per capita municipal solid waste has increased from 2.7 pounds per day in 1960 to 4.5 pounds per person per day in 1990, meaning that not only are we producing more garbage because our population has grown, but because each of us actually consumes more products and discards more waste.[39]

It is interesting to note that the presence of plastics, the most highly commoditizable material in the waste stream, has grown by a factor of 40 while metal and glass, materials with lower commodity potential, have increased only slightly. As a percentage of total waste, plastics have increased from less than a half of a percent to nearly ten percent, a twenty fold increase.

In many ways, plastics are the ultimate commodity materials. Almost infinitely malleable, they have greatly increased our capacity for standardization and packaging. Mostly synthesized from petroleum, plastics greatly expand the amount of fuel energy embodied in the products of everyday life. Their malleability makes them particularly well-suited for molding operations which greatly increase the labor savings. Plastics are difficult to recycle and plastic products almost impossible to repair. They have become a huge portion of the waste stream and degrade extremely slowly in the environment, if at all. The by-products of their oxidation, particularly when burnt, produce a considerable portion of the dioxins and other toxic pollutants in the air, water, and soil.[40]

COMMODITIZATION, OPPRESSION AND LIBERATION

This section discusses one of the most emotionally charged features of economic life: the deliberate underprivileging of groups of people based on race, gender, class and physical abilities. The constraints of space in a single chapter in an edited volume preclude the depth of discussion the subject requires. Yet the concepts of commoditization and commodity potential provide an interesting and revealing lens through which the mechanisms of oppression can be understood. Until now this chapter has mostly addressed the privileging of certain goods and services over others in the allocation of development resources. We turn now to how commoditization effects the social status of those who participate most fully in the commoditization process compared to those who for one reason or another do not. These effects, as it turns out, neatly parallel the effects of various �isms.�

Commoditization creates a hierarchy of value where what is most readily marketable receives the largest share of society�s resources. Those groups of people who have borne the greatest costs and gained the least from the benefits of commoditization�Indigenous people and other People of Color, Women, People with disabilities and everyone who has only their labor to sell (working class people) are the targets racism, sexism, classism and disability oppression. Although these �isms� are usually thought of in terms of personal prejudices, their roots and reinforcement lie in part in the economic biases of commoditization. Unless the economic forces of commoditization are addressed, the effects of this oppression will not be redressed.

This assumption challenges most of the current efforts to eliminate oppression which focus on inclusion without necessarily changing the economic patterns of privilege. Such approaches invariably tie the oppressed closer to and make them ever more dependent on the success of the commoditization economy. The personal costs of such a struggle and compromise can be devastating.

Oppression can be seen as the systematic mistreatment of any group of people. Economic oppression is the privileging of some and disregard of others that results from the system of allocation and distribution of resources. Commoditization, by distorting the direction of development and the allocation of costs and benefits, plays a significant role in the operation and continuation of all types of oppression. Developing an understanding of commoditization and policies to counteract its distorting effects is therefore key to eliminating oppression.

The situation for Indigenous people is particularly painful. miserable. (any group whose ways of life have co-evolved over extensive periods of time in a particular ecosystem) is directly related to the effects of commoditization which selects out an important component of their very being, their connection with the ecosystem within which they have coevolved. In addition, in as much as the resources of their lands have been degraded by participation in the commodity economy, their previous way of life is often impossible to sustain as it once was. Since the commoditized economy has expanded to the point where its allocation structures totally dominate the distribution of materials, energy and human attention, there is almost no chance to opt out in favor of traditional ways. The forms of knowledge valued by indigenous people�knowledge of relationships between and among the varied components of the home ecosystem�is largely unvalued by the commoditized economy for the reasons we have discussed above. The end result is a form of cultural genocide in which groups of people are systematically impoverished.

There is no doubt that tremendous potential exists for sustainable economic and cultural development in indigenous communities, but the realization of this potential will require substantial investments in research and development directed by indigenous peoples themselves. But these investments are systematically out-competed by commodity-driven investments. Native American communities have been left not only with degraded ecosystems and the effects of cultural imperialism, but have been given few opportunities in the dominant, commoditized economy. As a result, many tribes have now chosen to exploit their limited sovereignty to introduce gambling onto reservations and to specialize in the sale of cigarettes and gasoline, which are untaxed on tribal lands. Focussing on these quintesential commodities (gambling, a commoditized response to hope; gasoline, a commoditized form of energy, and nicotine, like other drugs, a commoditized form of satisfying of synthetic need) has come at a high cost to the tribes themselves: in exchange for money that they now need to survive, they have become even more dependent on the commoditized economy and have admitted morally dubious and corrupting enterprises onto their territories and into their midst. The long-term effects of this phenomenon have yet to be seen, but it may make the tribes even more vulnerable to the homogenizing pressures of the dominant society.

The lands and resources of indigenous people were colonized during the period of expropriation and wealth accumulation known as colonialism and imperialism. The concept of commoditization gives us a new understanding of this period. The explorers, conquerors and settlers in effect robbed the colonies of their natural resources in a prototypical process of commoditization. Whatever goods could be transported to world markets most easily were plundered. In the process, the relationships which had evolved over centuries between the native peoples and their environment were left in tatters. Those aspects of the native way of life which hindered commoditization in any way were regarded as backward and uncivilized and suppressed or destroyed.

The economic system which has evolved as commoditization pressures select out an important component of their very being, their connection with the ecosystem within which they have coevolved. In addition, in as much as the resources of their lands have been degraded by participation in the commodity economy, their previous way of life is often impossible to sustain as it once was. Since the commodity economy has expanded to the point where its allocation principles totally dominate the distribution of materials, energy and human attention there is almost no option to opt out in favor of traditional ways. The end result is a form of cultural genocide. Native American communities have been left not only with degraded ecosystems and the effects of cultural imperialism, but have been given few opportunities in the dominant, commoditized economy. As a result, many tribes have now chosen to exploit their limited sovereignty to introduce gambling onto reservations and to specialize in the sale of cigarettes and gasoline, which are untaxed on tribal lands. Focussing on these quintesential commodities (gambling, a commoditized response to hope; gasoline, a commoditized form of energy, and nicotine, like other drugs, a commoditized form of longing) has come at a high cost to the tribes themselves: in exchange for money that they now need to survive, they have become even more dependent on the commoditized economy and have admitted morally dubious and corrupting enterprises onto their territories and into their midst. The long-term effects of this phenomenon have yet to be seen, but it may make the tribes even more vulnerable to the homogenizing pressures of the dominant society.

The main driving features behind the story of the oppression of women is not very different. The productive spheres in which women and women�s innovations have predominated are also those which have been historically most resistant to commoditization. Expectations in many if not most cultures are that women attend to the least commoditized spheres of life: child-rearing, care-taking, domestic maintenance, and interpersonal relationships. Again, as the economy becomes more commoditized, the distribution of material, energy and human attention becomes more dominated by commoditization pressures and the spheres of life with the least commodity potential grow increasingly neglected. In addition, saddled with the responsibilities for essential common goods, women tend to be less mobile and have less free time to invest in commodity production. At a time when the US economy was less commoditized, income was expected to be distributed so that a wage earner could support both himself as participant in commodity production and also the non-commodity spheres of his household and community, the so-called �family wage.[41]� As the non-commodity spheres have grown increasingly marginal, this is no longer viable. Hence, the sphere of �women�s work� has grown increasingly impoverished to the point that women and men can no longer afford to spend much of their time there. Only the application of some countervailing forces against commoditization pressures can effectively invigorate the non-commodity domestic and community spheres with material, energy and the attention of women or men.

A neighborhood becomes a community over time. It is built and maintained with products and services like bricks and mortar for the homes, schools and businesses; the goods that fill the shops; the tools, equipment and skills that keep the neighborhood clean, repaired and maintained. All these things matter a great deal to the quality of life in a neighborhood. But other things that can�t be easily bought and sold matter as well, perhaps even more. The time spent with neighbors, the sharing of childcare, the watching out for each other�s homes and children, the communal enforcement of neighborhood standards, the walks, the parties, the births, weddings, and funerals.

By oppression I mean the systematic denial of certain groups of people�s development opportunities, while systematically directing material, energy, and attention preferentially toward privileged goods and people. The choice made by a society to develop a massive state-supported infrastructure to support the use of the personal automobile while simultaneously underdeveloping public transportation is one example. The systematic privileging of commodities and underprivileging of common goods results in those qualities and that �know-how� which are not readily commoditizable being systematically starved for material, energy and attention. But these very qualities and skills�local connection, conviviality, ecological attentiveness, cultural and individual distinctiveness and long-term care and maintenance�are inherent human qualities and their gradual impoverishment by the free reign of commoditization diminishes all human beings. In this way, everyone is oppressed by the effects of commoditization.

Oppressed groups are affected in two distinct ways: First, by receiving a disproportionately small share of the benefits of commoditized economic development and second, by suffering the greatest losses resulting from the deliberate underdevelopment and destruction of common goods, traditions, and values. By analyzing the socially and economically distorting effects of commoditization, we can more clearly define and understand the reasons why certain groups� indigenous people, people of African descent, other people of color, women, young people and working class people � are each oppressed and disadvantaged is some way associated with the effects of commoditization. Commoditization can also explain why and how the experience of this oppression continues, and is, ironically, intensified even while important advances are made in the spread of freedom, democracy, humans rights, literacy and appreciation of cultural diversity in much of the world. Lastly, empowered with an understanding of commoditization, the road to liberation becomes clearer if not necessarily easier to travel.

In the present circumstances we almost all contribute to our own oppression and the impoverishment of our communities. We have little choice. A rational economic actor will put her time and attention toward activities and things which are likely to be most rewarding to her. When rewards are allocated according to commoditized criteria, people rationally make choices to give their time and attention to the most commoditized option before them. People who for whatever reason put their creative intelligence and time and attention toward the non-commoditizable activities of community building, or soil building, or developing a deep personal knowledge and understanding of local ecosystems, or working at the bedsides of people who are ill, or playing with children, or making things from local materials, or working with community supported agriculture and countless other things that people do to make lives better, will suffer both financially and in terms of personal self-esteem when the resources of society are systematically denied their good work.

The specific group most systematically excluded from the benefits of western economic development have been people of African descent whose forbears were subject to the worst form of commoditization, human slavery, as well as the many colonized people of the world whose material and energy resources were exploited to fuel western development from the 15th to the mid-20th centuries.

Peoples whose energies focus on the particular, the local, or the community are expending energies at services that are not rewarded because these services being local and particular, have a low degree of commodity potential. Not surprisingly the community-building tasks, which are inherently local and particular, grow increasingly neglected as the people who devote themselves to those tasks find it increasingly difficult to sustain themselves. The geniuses of community organizing and caretaking easily fall victim to self-deprecation, as the primary vehicle for social valuation in a commoditized society, purchasing power, is systematically denied them. In this way oppression is systematically internalized as belief in the lesser value of the oppressed group, or it simmers as a deeply felt resentment against faceless and nameless oppressors. This difficulty with naming oppression is realistic: the dynamics of commoditization are embedded in the broader economic system and are not necessarily the result of individual decisions or actions that oppress other human beings.

RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

Western-style economic development has flourished largely because societies invented legal and institutional mechanisms that favored commoditization and expansion. If non-commercial values such as human rights and ecological integrity are to be serious goals of public policy then legal and political instruments designed to favor the non-commodity satisfaction of human wants must be adopted to counterbalance the force of commoditization. Commercial law is now evolving into a global legal framework designed to unleash commercial energies worldwide by minimizing the capacity of states to restrict access to markets. As a result, commoditization pressures are expanding worldwide. Since the legal and political actors unleashing these forces operate at the global level, countervailing pressures must also operate globally. But since non-commodity solutions to human needs and wants are inherently local, the effects of these countervailing forces must be felt at the local level. New legal and political capacity to stimulate investment in community-based, less commoditized satisfactions for human needs and wants must devolve to the level nearest to the people with those needs and wants. There have been several efforts to describe the emergence of global civil society as a precursor to a governance capacity that can act with some affect and authority at both the global and local levels. (Walzer, 1983; Princen et al., 1994; Lipschutz, 1996; Wapner, 1996). At the same time, nation states must invent new legal frameworks that allow localities to innovate economically and that protect them from the colonizing impulses of global forces and actors.

The forces that drive the increasing commoditization of all aspects of life derive naturally from the structure of the economy. Resources (wealth, income and associated power) are allocated to those who are successful at selling. As we intuitively understand, not everything that makes up a good life can be packaged and sold. Yet the full development of those non-commodities also requires time, attention and resources. Public policy can go a long way toward correcting the distortions of development wrought by commoditization by making certain that non-commercial values and consideration of the common good play a role in the allocation of resources. Policy tools that counterbalance commoditization pressures fall into the following main categories:

� Increased public investment in research and development and additional subsidization of beneficial goods and services with low commodity potential.

� Taxes and fees that help make the prices of environmentally and socially damaging commodities reflect their true costs. Examples include the 1990 U.S. tax on ozone-depleting chemicals, taxes and fees linked to discharges, and carbon dioxide in Sweden and Norway.

� Investing in �natural capital�. Various methods to encourage or require investments in protecting and restoring the natural environment to an equivalent degree to which profit-making activities deplete the natural environment.

� Protecting ecological integrity. Mandating limits to human disruption of key ecological regions and global ecosystemic processes thereby forcing the development of alternative forms of human settlement and prosperity.

� Investing in human development. Directing public investment toward those beneficial qualities associated with low commodity potential.

� Tax reforms that decrease taxes on income from labor (the least commoditizable of production inputs) thereby decreasing the cost of labor in relation to energy and materials.

� Protecting the rights of workers. Human labor has far lower commodity potential than machinery and energy. Policies that subsidize job creation, particularly in community building, environmental restoration and other caretaking tasks directly counteract the effects of commoditization.

� Empowering local and indigenous communities, particularly those who whose livelihoods depend on the long-term viability of local resources.

The sum of these efforts would begin to create a parallel economy of care and connection that can counter the negative effects of the domination by the economy of commerce. An economy of care and connection, because it is directed toward development of goods and services with lower commodity potential, will require considerable involvement of a democratically accountable public sector at the local, national and global levels. At the global level, what is clearly needed are democratically accountable institutions with the authority and capacity to act at the same international scale as the multinational corporations. To promote effetcive policies at the global level we will need an international labor movement, an international consumers movement, an international democracy movement and so on. At the same time, non-commodity alternatives to human need satisfaction are inherently local and any governance reform for sustainable development must include increased civic capacity at the local and neighborhood levels.

Although we are a long way from having a flourishing economy of care and connection that can balance commoditization, there are hopeful signs that we are headed in the right direction. The movement for sustainable development is forming links with the global movement for workers rights and empowerment and the elimination of all forms of oppression. These alliances are formed as a result of a new strategic recognition that the causes of environmental and social degradation are often the same. An understanding of the process of commoditization can help advance the analysis of how and why the global expansion of the western model of development enriches some and oppresses many, spurs overconsumption and degrades the environment. It is critical that we invent an economy that rewards people for placing their time and attention on the non-commercial things that really matter in life.

[1] Executive Director, Great Lakes Research Consortium; SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse, NY 13210 Email: jpmanno@mailbox.syr.edu

[2] Quantifying consumption efficiency will need to wait for future research. A rough cut at a measure of consumption efficiency at the country level may be made by taking some measure such as the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare, the Human Development Index or the ?????�.and dividing by per capita energy consumption. Comparing countries with

[3] C. Morey, R. Hwang, J. Kliesch, J. DeCicco, Pollution Lineup: An Environmental Ranking of Automakers (Cambridge, Ma: Union of Concerned Scientists, 2000).

[4] J-Y Ko, C. A. S. Hall, and L. G. Lopez Lemus, "Resource use rates and efficiency as indicators of regional sustainability: an examination of five countries," Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, vol. 51, (1998) : 571.

[6] I adopt the term commoditization rather than the more familiar commodification in order to stress the active quality of the process. Something is commodified, whereas economic forces act to commoditize things. For a more in depth discussion of commoditization see my book Manno, J. Privileged Goods: Commoditization and Its Impacts on Environment and Society, Lewis Publishers, Boca Raton: Fl., 2000.

[7] M. Cogoy, "The Consumer as Social and Environmental Actor," Ecological Economics, vol. 28, (1999): 385-398.

[8] T. A. Lyson, and R. Welsh, "The production function, crop diversity and the debate between conventional and sustainable agriculture," Rural Sociology, vol.58, no. 3 (1993) : 424-439.

[9] K. De Selincourt, "Intensifying agriculture � the organic way," The Ecologist, vol. 26, no. 2, (1996) : .271.

[10] H. Wohlmeyer, "Agro-eco-restructuring: Potential for sustainability," In: R. U. Ayres, Eco-restructuring: Implications for Sustainable Development, (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 1998) : 291.

[12] W. Murdoch,, "World hunger and population," In: C. R. Carroll, J. H. Vandermeer, & P. M. Rossett, (Eds), Agroecology, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990) : 3-20.

[13] J. M. Weatherford,, Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World, 1^st ed., (New York: Crown Publishers, 1988) : 83.

[14] D. Pimentel, C. Harvey, P. Resosudarmo, K. Sinclair, D. Kurtz, M. McNair, S. Crist, L. Spritz, L. Fitton, R. Saffouri and R. Blair, "Environmental and economic costs of soil erosion and conservation benefits," Science vol. 267 , (1995) : 111.

[15] P. A. Matson, W. J. Parton, A. G. Power, and M. J. Swift, "Agricultural Intensification and Ecosystem Properties," Science , vol. 277, (7/25/97) : 504-509.

[16] G. C. Gallopin, "Eco-restructuring tropical land use," In: R. U. Ayres, Eco-restructuring: Implications for Sustainable Development, (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 1998) : 317.

[17] D. Barkin, Wealth, Poverty and Sustainable Development, (Mexico: Centro de Ecologia y Desarollo, A., C., 1998)

[18] M. A. Mallin, "Impacts of Industrial Animal Production on Rivers and Estuaries," American Scientist, vol. 88, (Jan. - Feb., 2000) : 26-37.

[19] U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service, "Change in Livestock Production, 1969-1992," AER-754, (August 1997) at http://www.econ.ag.gov/epubs/htmlsum/are754.htm, 5/11/99.

[20] D. Pimentel and M. Pimentel, Eds., Food, Energy and Society, (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1996) : 168.

[22] C. A. S. Hall, and M. Hall, "The efficiency of land and energy use in tropical economies and agriculture," Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, vol. 46, (1993) : 1-30.

[23] W. Ophuls, Requiem for Modern Politics, (Boulder: Westview, 1997) : 100.

[25] H. Wohlmeyer (1998), and M. Anderson, "The life cycle of alternative agricultural research," American Journal of Alternative Agriculture, vol. 10, no. 1, (1995).

[26] M. Lipson, Searching for the O-Word Santa Cruz, CA: Organic Farming Research Foundation, (1997).

[29] J. Warick, "Cultivating Farms to Soak up a Greenhouse Gas," Washington Post ,(11/23/98): A03.

[30] L. R. Brown, G. Gardner, and B. Halwell, Beyond Malthus: Sixteen Dimensions of the Population Problem.,Worldwatch Paper 143, (Washington, D. C.: Worldwatch Institute, 1998) : 31.

[31] P. R. Ehrlich, A. H. Ehrlich, and G. C. Daily, The Stork and the Plow, (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1995) : 171.

[32] World Health Organization, "Micronutrient malnutrition -- Half the world's population affected," World Health Organization, vol. 78, no. 1, (November 13, 1996).

[33] US EPA, "Extended Product Responsibility: A New Principle for Product-Oriented Pollution Prevention, " Website report at http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/reduce/epr/epr.htm

[34] W. Stahel, and T. Jackson, "Optimal utilization and durability," In: T. Jackson, (Ed), Clean Production Strategies, (London: Lewis Publishers [for the Stockholm Environment Institute], 1993).

[35] K. A. Gould, A. Schnaiberg, and A. S. Weinberg, Local Environmental Struggles: Citizen Activism in the Treadmill of Production, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996) : 146.

[36] International Institute for Sustainable Development, "Reduction, Reuse, Recycling & Recovery," (August 24, 2000), http://iisd1.iisd.ca/business/4rs.htm.,

[37] W. McDonough and M. Braungart, "The NEXT Industrial Revolution," Atlantic Monthly, (October 1998).

[38] P. K. Rohatgi and R. Ayres, "Materials futures: Pollution prevention, recycling and improved functionality," In: R. U. Ayres, Eco-restructuring: Implications for Sustainable Development, (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 1998): 111.

[39] Franklin Associates, "Characterization of Municipal Solid Waste in the United States: 1998 Update," (Washington, D. C.: USEPA, August 24, 2000)Accessed from Waste News on the Web http://www.wastenews.com/library/execsumm.txt.

[40] J. DePinto, J. Manno, M. Milligan, R. Guzman, J. Honan, and L. Lopez Lemus, Proposed Chlorine Sunsetting in the Great Lakes, Donald W. Rennie Memorial Monograph Series, No. 11, (Buffalo, NY: State University of New York at Buffalo, 1998).

[41] See for example, A. Carlson, �Gender, children and social labor: transcending the �family wage� dilemma,� Journal of Social Issues, vol. 52, 137-161.