Lord Potato

“Vazi ni-bwana wangu, eytow”, chants the man as he strikes the ground. All life long he toils for lord potato. Rhythmically working he digs a mound, and lays him in the soil. “Vasi bwana eytow. Hide in here until the fall comes round. Vazi ni-bwana wangu, eytow. Then master, will you be found? To keep me as your slave next year? Or leave me hungry without a sound, and send me to my grave, I fear”.

Can such a lowly, misshapen vegetable really be one’s master? For millennia most people on earth subsided in drudgery on a single staple. Of course, there were some who never joined in the agricultural revolution and continue in their hunter-gatherer lifestyle even to this day. Indeed, skeletal evidence shows that the hunters were initially much healthier than the farmers, due to their diverse diet and adaptability.

Still to this day, in some forgotten corners of the world, people continue to scratch a living onto the dry surface of the earth. Just one failed harvest away from death, working all day to extract their nourishment from dawn to dusk, cradle to grave. It was this way in Africa, in Asia, in the Americas and even in Europe. Only in the fertile river deltas, those naturally plentiful areas that need no human irrigation were harvests plentiful and reliable enough to sustain those early cities.

Through the meager surpluses and warmer years, technology did improve; wind and water mills, metal ploughs, crop rotation, ash fertilisation and irrigation techniques freed up labour and improved yields above subsistence to create the ancient and modern civilisations. And even though millions could now live beyond agricultural subsistence, still, even as late as the 18th century, and in the most developed parts of the world, the vast majority of people were busied with agriculture. 200 years ago, 90% of Americans were farmers. Today, it is only 2%.

The benefits of this second agricultural revolution cannot be understated. Not only do even the poorest and most destitute now no longer know hunger, they eat better than most people have ever been able to before. This bountiful plenty freed people up to pursue other needs and interests. A flourishing of art and science, ordinary people retiring and taking vacations. The miracle from the field and pasture that turned a newly-independent rural backwater into the world’s foremost industrial superpower.

They had plenty of fields in the old world, paddies in China, pastures on the Russian steppes and vast plantations in Brazil, but none of those could launch the second agricultural revolution. Only the small, independent farmsteads of the USA had the crucial ingredient to unleash this tidal wave of progress and prosperity. That ingredient was freedom. Freedom to innovate, free from burdensome meddling regulation. Freedom to keep the fruits and profits of their labour, a most crucial incentive. Freedom to buy the best tools and equipment at the cheapest price and to sell their produce to the highest bidder with virtually no tariffs or quotas.

The tyrants and despots in the rest of the world could only scratch their heads in wonder as cheap, high quality American manufactured goods flooded the markets. Assembled by the freed up labour in the factories paid for by the profits on exported agricultural produce. What then should be done for those poor earth scratchers, still hunched over and singing to their potatoes? Give them peace and give them freedom, and let them be. They will do the rest.

Damn those capitalist fat cats!