RED DEER, Alta. – Farmers are about to go through a change as dramatic as the industrial revolution, says a Saskatoon theology professor.
“It will be a revolution like we haven’t seen for 200 years,” said Chris Lind.
The people with wealth won’t be farmers. The rich will be those who own intellectual property, like patents and copyrights and the licences for genetically engineered crops, predicted Lind during the Managing Agriculture for Profit conference.
In the 1800s the people in Britain who were wealthy owned land and the key technology was the plow. After the industrial revolution the wealth moved to people who owned factories.
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“Along came the steam engine and the power was transferred from an agriculture to an industrial economy,” said the United Church theology instructor.
“We’re now living in a revolution like that. We’re moving from an industrial technology to a knowledge technology. The people with wealth own intellectual property.”
The richest man in the world, Microsoft owner Bill Gates, is in the business of intellectual property.
The shoe company Nike doesn’t own any factories, just the patent it sells to factories to produce the product.
Chemical companies
In agriculture, it won’t be farmers who become wealthy, it will be the chemical companies that own the herbicides and the genetically manipulated plants that can be used with those herbicides.
“They can sell you the herbicide and the plant which is tolerant of the herbicide,” he said.
Each variety of grass seed, wheat and barley will be controlled by large companies. In 1995 there were almost 800 field trials of genetically altered crops. Most of them were with canola.
While farmers can no longer stop the change in direction they can still make a difference, Lind said.
He suggests farmers work to stop or slow down government restructuring of institutions that takes power away from farmers. They should “resist competition” as the sole value that guides their lives. While competition is good, he thinks it should also be tempered with co-operation.
