Month: April 2014

High Cotton author Gerard Helferich visited farms in Mississippi to examine “the forces that have exiled cotton from its historic homeland and to ponder what its loss means for farmers, for others in the industry, and for the rest of us”:

In the end, what is gained and what is lost by the Delta’s shift away from cotton? It’s clear that if Mississippi farmers never harvested another boll, the world would still have plenty of the fiber to meet its needs. The region’s residents may miss the sight of cotton nodding in the fields and the evocative scent of fresh-​picked lint. Those whose livelihood depends on the crop, such as brokers and gin workers, have already suffered from cotton’s retreat. The local economy has been pinched, as cotton’s greater capital investment and higher employment needs have drained away. … Excluding [Quito Gin owner David] Grossman, every farmer I spoke with believes that he is better off for diversifying his crops. In fact, as I’ve talked to growers large and small over the past few months, I’ve heard very little nostalgia for cotton.

Yet “even as the creation of the finished product disappeared from the US economy,” observes Matthew MacFarland, “demand for American cotton in the global textile sector has only grown: Exports’ share of domestic cotton production has expanded from 32 percent in 1948 to 74 percent in 2012.” He examines the bottom line as the product moves to cheaper labor markets:

Enter Bangladesh, a country whose garment exports have skyrocketed from a mere $6.4 million in 1983 to $21.5 billion in 2012. Bangladesh’s ready-​made garment (RMG) industry has been the sole force behind the country’s rapid industrialization, shifting its economy away from agriculture and toward manufacturing and drawing a rural population into the churning city of Dhaka. … The Bangladesh RMG industry gets most of its cotton from India and Uzbekistan, countries that trail the US in terms of sheer cotton exports but whose proximity makes for cheaper and easier trade. But while the likelihood of an American farmer’s cotton ending up in Bangladesh is low, a piece of clothing made in a Bangladeshi factory has a one in four chance of ending up in the US and a 50 percent chance of ending up in the European Union. In other words, on the supply side, American cotton and Dhaka factories are cousins several steps removed. In terms of demand, the relationship between Western retailers—​and consumers—​and the RMG industry is more directly causal. Including the Pacific Ocean, 8,500 miles lie between Yazoo City and Dhaka—​but that distance vanishes between here and any local mall.

Previous Dish on the costs of clothing here, here, and here.

(Photo of “September in the Delta” in Leflore County, Mississippi, 2006, by Natalie Maynor)

David Crane reviews Ian Morris’s new book War: What is it Good For? The Role of Conflict in Civilisation, from Primates to Robots, which posits that “in the long run, the very, very long run, ‘productive war’ has always made the world a safer and richer place for the losers as well as the winners”:

It is conceivable, in theory, that there are other ways of taming man’s capacity for violence, but if the European Union (hiding behind the American Leviathan) has at least temporarily succeeded in boring and regulating a continent into relative docility, pretty well the only force through history capable of creating the Leviathans big and strong enough to cage William Golding’s ‘beast within’ and bully, bribe and coerce the levels of violence down is, paradoxically, war. ‘Lord knows there’s got to be a better way,’ Morris quotes the song,

but apparently there isn’t. If the Roman empire could have been created without killing millions of Gauls, if the United States could have been built without killing millions of Native Americans … if conflicts could have been resolved by discussion instead of force, humanity would have had the benefit  of larger societies. But that did not happen … People hardly ever give up their freedom, including their rights to kill and impoverish each other, unless forced to do so, and virtually the only force strong enough to bring this about has been defeat in war, or fear that such a defeat is imminent.

This winter, The American Scholar asked Morris to pose questions about the future of conflict. One of his open queries:

Late in the 20th century, anthropologists learned that feuding and war were extremely common among the world’s last surviving Stone Age societies. On average, something like 10 to 20 percent of people in these societies died violently, and archaeologists suggest that similar rates applied in prehistoric Stone Age societies. In 20th-century industrialized societies, by contrast—despite two world wars, the use of atom bombs, and multiple genocides—just one to two percent of people died violently. And as Steven Pinker pointed out in his recent book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, in the 21st century the rate is, so far, well below one percent. Why, even though our weapons keep getting more destructive, has the risk that anyone among us might die violently fallen so much? Can that trend continue?

Lizzie Wade questions the practice of raising endangered birds with puppets before releasing them into the wild:

These animals don’t cause as much trouble as marauding gangs of adolescent condors, but they can wind up with their own mysterious behavioural issues. Puppet-reared whooping cranes, for example, have trouble incubating their eggs in the wild; they will often abandon their nests mere days before the eggs are due to hatch.

John French, Patuxent’s research manager and head of the crane programme, has a couple of different theories about the crane’s parenting problems.

In the wild, nesting cranes are often swarmed by black flies; perhaps the puppet-reared cranes, raised in relative comfort, can’t tolerate the parasites and are driven off their nests. Or perhaps their own puppet parents failed to pass along a crucial piece of information about the breeding process. What the missing piece might be, French told me, ‘I have no idea.’ Meanwhile, the cranes’ failure to raise the next generation on their own guarantees, somewhat ironically, the need for more puppet-rearing.

It’s tempting to see puppet-reared California condors and whooping cranes as victims of a horrific real-life version of Plato’s cave: after living in a shadow world since birth, they are suddenly dragged out into the blinding sunlight and forced to cope with an incomprehensibly rich and complex reality. Ill-equipped to live in anything but a carefully managed simulacrum of nature, they crack under the pressure. When viewed from this angle, it is hard to imagine why keepers thought puppet-rearing would produce psychologically healthy animals.

[L]ike all intensive, hands-on conservation programmes, puppet-rearing was never really about the animals. While the stated goal of any captive breeding programme is to create self-sustaining populations of wild animals that can survive and thrive without human intervention, the true reason for their existence is guilt of a very human variety.

Steven Cook worries that Egypt is dangerously close to defaulting on its debt:

This might sound surprising to the casual observer of Egypt.  The economy was a subject of intense coverage in the months preceding the July 3, 2013 coup, but has receded from view as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait stepped in with an initial $12 billion infusion of aid that was followed recently with another $8 billion.  The money from the Gulfies was supposed to stabilize the Egyptian economy, but the numbers do not lie.  The country’s foreign currency reserves—between $16-$17 billion—are close to where they were in late 2012 and the first half of 2013, which means Egypt is hovering just above the critical minimum threshold defined as three months of reserves to purchase critical goods.  A portion of those reserves are not liquid and with a burn rate estimated to be $1.5 billion per month, it is easy to understand why Egypt is one exogenous shock—think Ukraine, which is a major producer of wheat and Egypt is the world’s largest importer of it—or political crisis away from default.

What this would mean:

An economic problem the magnitude of a solvency crisis will only intensify the pathologies that Egypt is already experiencing—violence, political tumult, and general uncertainty.  Economic decline would create a debilitating feedback loop of more political instability, violence, and further economic deterioration. It’s a scary scenario that deserves attention and preparedness, but there does not seem to be much urgency to try to address it anywhere.  Gulf money appears to have lulled people into the sense that the Saudis, Emiratis, and Kuwaitis will stave off disaster.  It’s a false sense of security.