This is Part 3 of a short series relating to the economic concept ‘scarcity’. In Parts 3 and 4 I will investigate common sources, or should I say claimed sources of scarcity. I will be looking at scarcity in regards to the four economic factors of production:
- Land
- Labour
- Capital
- Entrepreneurship
I will be paying particular attention to how ownership of these factors of production has resulted in scarcity. I will be looking at the meat and dairy industries and the amount of land wasted for keeping animal livestock and food required to feed the livestock. I will also take a look at the exploitation of labour and the cut of revenue that workers are getting relative to the price of the product. In regards to capital, I will take a look at improvements in technology and efficiency and the extent the benefits are being passed down to the workforce. Before we get started let’s have a quick recap of Parts 1 and 2.
Quick Recap: What is scarcity?
In short, scarcity can be defined as too many people chasing too few goods and services. Scarcity means that there are insufficient resources to cater for all the needs and wants of everyone.
Part 1 explained the concept of scarcity using a very simple example of several people competing to obtain a banana from a single seller. This example demonstrated that those with the least to offer lost and were forced to go without. The seller and the buyer with the most to offer were able to make a deal and therefore did not lose out or suffer because of scarcity.
For more information regarding Part 1 use the following link: https://steemit.com/economics/@spectrumecons/scarcity-part-1
Part 2 explained two types of scarcity. They are natural scarcity and contrived scarcity.
Natural scarcity occurs when there is naturally an insufficient supply of a good or service. This concept was demonstrated using a very basic example of a world that consisted of just 10 people that required a total of 500kg of food to live comfortably. If, for example, the world could only produce 300kg, there would be a shortage of food. Hence, food would now be scarce and people would need to compete for it.
Contrived scarcity exists when there are sufficient resources to go around but because certain people obtain control over important factors of production, scarcity becomes a problem to those who do not control those factors of production. This concept was demonstrated when the owners of the factors of production employed people to gather resources but only gave them a cut of the what they collected, hence creating scarcity amongst them.
For more information regarding Part 2 use the following link: https://steemit.com/economics/@spectrumecons/scarcity-part-2-natural-or-contrived
Land
The first economic factor of production we will looking at will be land. When I say land, I mean more than just the earth we stand on but also what’s in the land, on the land, above the land, and even in the sea. In other words, the planet’s natural resources.
Some of these resources are renewable such as plants, animals, water, and sunlight. These are resources that can naturally replace themselves. Scarcity occurs when these resources deplete faster than they can replace themselves.
Other resources are non-renewable. These include fossil fuels such as gas, oil, and coal. Mineral, metals and ores are also non-renewable. Physical land mass can be considered as finite in quantity and can be therefore, be considered as non-renewable. Non-renewability can cause a problem of scarcity as these resources can become exhausted one day.
So is land a scarce resource?
In general, government agencies, scientists, economists, and many environmentalists will tell you that land is a scarce resource. So to make things simple and without going into any debate, let’s assume that land (natural resources) is scarce. Is this scarcity natural or contrived? I am going to take a look at the meat and dairy industries. I will be predominantly using sources of information used by Cowspiracy and Meatonomics.
Here are some of the facts regarding land mass use that I obtained from the documentary Cowspiracy.
Livestock of livestock feed occupies 1/3 of the earth’s ice free land (Cowspiracy 2014).
Animal agriculture is the leading cause of species extinction, ocean dead zones, water pollution, and habitat destruction (Cowspiracy 2014).
Livestock operations on land have created more than 500 nitrogen flooded deadzones around the world in our oceans (Cowspiracy 2014).
1/3 of the planet is desertified, with livestock as the leading driver (Cowspiracy 2014).
For more information and the full list of sources go to: http://www.cowspiracy.com/facts/
As seen from the facts above, the meat and dairy industry uses a lot of land both directly and indirectly. Is this land use completely necessary? Do we actually need to consume meat and dairy to survive? The reality is, there are many very healthy vegans in the world. A vegan lifestyle can be healthy if you want it to be. The makers of Cowspiracy have come up with a new documentary explaining the healthy benefits of a vegan lifestyle. This documentary is titled ‘What the Health’. The webite: http://www.whatthehealthfilm.com/, explains more about the information in the documentary as well as where you can watch it. I watched it on Netflix.
So does a vegan lifestyle require less land use? The omnivore diet requires 18 times more land than a vegan diet (Conspiracy 2014). Yes, another Cowspiracy fact. I got this straight from the documentary itself rather than the website.
The excessive use of land is just one part of the story. Here are just a few more facts regarding the damage done to our environment because of the Meat and Dairy industries.
So let’s take a quick snapshot of the natural resource usage of an omnivore diet compared with a vegan diet.
The answer seems remarkably simple, just adopt a vegan lifestyle. The good news is veganism is growing rapidly, countries like the USA and England have seen veganism more than triple in the last decade. The bad news is, the percentage of vegans is still very small.
Considering the amount of information indicating the benefits of a vegan lifestyle on both ourselves and the planet, why do so few vegans exist?
Meatonomics provided some interesting answers to this question. This takes us back to contrived scarcity. Both Government and the Meat and Dairy industries heavily advertise meat and dairy products as healthy. They promote eating meat and dairy as being natural. In many cases they even ridicule those that choose the vegan lifestyle. Why would they do this? Meat and dairy industries are very powerful.
Let’s take a look at the percentage of the market share that the top 4 meat packers have in the USA.
Tyson Foods has 25% of the market share.
Cargill Meat Solutions Corp has 21% of the market share.
JBS USA has 18.5% of the market share.
National Beef Packing Co. has 10.5% of the market share.
Those four companies have 75% of the market share and 80% of all cattle slaughtered go through these companies (High Country News 2011). This power relies on us eating meat. We see a similar trend in the dairy industry. Take Australia for example. The number of dairy cows has remained close to constant but the number of Dairy farms has dropped dramatically since the 1980s, see graph below provided by sustainability.org.au.
Again we see the power lying with the few. To maintain this power, facts need to be repressed to prevent loss of business and revenue. Government plays a key role by subsidizing these industries as well as using tax payer money to cover external costs to the environment as well additional costs of health care. According to Meatonomics, the price (to people) should be lose to triple if all external costs are considered.
Contrived scarcity does not simply apply to the meat and dairy industries but to other industries as well. Take for example Hemp. Hemp is extremely versatile and is a very good alternative to cotton. Hemp also uses half the land and a small fraction of the water required for cotton production. The comparison between cotton and Hemp is made in the figure below
Source: Davidwolfe.com
Some of the other areas I have not covered today, which relate to land (natural resources) include:
- mining (both on land and in the ocean)
- logging industry
- fishing industry (could be included in our earlier discussions)
- urban land use
These areas and industries are often debated in regards to scarcity and similar to what I have discussed regarding the meat and dairy industries, this scarcity is often avoidable. I will most likely revisit the above topics at a later date.
This brings me to the end of Part 3 of my series on scarcity. I was only able to cover off on land. Many of the issues regarding land I am very passionate about. This is particularly true in relation to the meat and dairy industries. I feel it is important to get the message out that the world is not overpopulated but instead we live in a world where scarcity is created by those with power. If we all became vegan, the planet could easily hold three times the world’s current population with minimal scarcity of land.
In Part 4 I will finish off discussing the remaining economic factors of production of labour, capital and entrepreneurship. These factors are also manipulated to create scarcity, when scarcity should not exist. I hope you enjoyed Part 3 of this series on scarcity, there are still another two more parts to come. If you do not want to miss out I suggest you follow me on Steemit. Thank you for your time.
