Family farmers: our green-thumbed heroes!

True sustainable development will not be achieved by corporate-wealth-accumulation agendas, but by visionary family farmers, says Prof James Blignaut, an ecological and environmental resource economist.

- Prof James Blignaut

The prolonged financial support of conventional agricultural practices, knowing all too well the detrimental effects these have, can be compared to reckless lending, if not de jure, then definitely de facto.

It’s therefore important to celebrate the visionary leadership of bankers who acknowledge the need and urgency to support conservation and regenerative agriculture.

It was not so long ago, in 1993 actually, that I was bluntly told by a senior manager of the financial institution where I was employed that the only form of sustainable development was sustainable financial and economic development. Today, we can both laugh and lament at such a one-sided statement, because the truth is that no environmental sustainability exists without financial sustainability, and no financial sustainability without environmental sustainability.

Unfortunately, however, dangerous and even toxic reminders of such a narrow view are still prevalent today, some more subtle than others. There are those who relentlessly believe that the economic theorem of ceteris paribus, meaning to keep all else constant, still holds. In the context of economic growth, this means that growth can be pursued by focusing on the growth of capital and labour as production factors while holding all other factors constant.

This does not imply that natural capital is ignored; on the contrary, natural capital is used in the production process. It is just assumed that the consumption thereof does not bring about any qualitative and/or quantitative change in the natural capital base, resulting in no impact on the economy and its development trajectory.

This is folly, flawed in every imaginable sense, and it is phenomenally destructive. Yet the