Irrational Exuberance

Andrew Layman:  PCB CEO

I consider myself to be very lucky to have been present at the Kwanalu Congress last week at the time that Professor Mohammed Koraan, the Dean of Agricultural Sciences at Stellenbosch, was delivering an address on his perspectives of the agricultural sector of our economy.    It was a captivating presentation which was given an extra touch of gravitas because the Professor is a member of the National Planning Commission.   He listed nine legacies that our current generation would leave for our children.    While these have particular relevance to agriculture, they resonate beyond that sector as well.   The last of the nine was summarised by an aphorism attributed to Alan Greenspan: “irrational exuberance”.   I mention it first because it seemed to me to encapsulate the others that went before.    The Soccer World Cup was a classic case of irrational exuberance.    It pushed all manner of realities into the background and provided us with an escape route from the mundane, which however dull, is both real and the context in which Life’s challenges are confronted.   Work, productivity and study were suspended as of trivial importance midst this event, while government and the people went on a spending spree with little thought for tomorrow.    It was irrational exuberance that led to the credit crisis and the world recession and – this was the Professor’s point – it is the driver of much contemporary behaviour, especially among younger people whose excitement is derived increasingly from materialism.   Branded clothing, the newest cell phone, good times – anything that distracts from the realities of life and living – are favoured, even in communities where incomes fall far short of expenses.   The opportunities to buy and parade are too compelling for many.    This is one of our legacies.

He referred also to a “plundered planet”, a “waterless world” and “food catastrophe”.   While the ability of the world to produce more food is increasing in consequence of research and technological advancement, huge swathes of the population remain mal or under-nourished.  Small and subsistence farming is being overtaken by large-scale commercial operations which have forsaken, to some significant extent, the imperative to respect the fruits of the earth.   During the past ten years, the number of farmers in South Africa, for example, has declined by an average of one thousand each year.  Our world has become characterised by “feast and famine”; a simultaneous increase in obesity and malnutrition.    Agricultural challenges relate to both quantity and quality and include the prickly issues of price and subsidy.   Beyond agriculture and food, “feast and famine” is also an apt metaphor for the general condition of society.    More than ever in recent years, it has been proven that markets have defied the traditional beliefs of capitalist economics.    The anticipated quest for equilibrium has been sabotaged by human greed and self-interested manipulation, both facilitated by “irrational exuberance” which also encourages us to “try and project micro movements in the global economy as positive”.   What is free, one may ask, about the free market?

Professor Koraan opined that since 1994 we had created South Africa, but not South Africans.   He pointed to the constitution as a watershed between the pre-eminence of the rights of groups and the ascendance of individuals as rights-holders.    “We are,” he said, “a country of minorities – forty five million of them”, yet we still think in groups, some in the majority, some not so – “a nation in numbers.”   Equity is reduced to numbers and so is economic emancipation, yet neither make an impact on the unemployed poor.    The remaining legacies were described in terms of John Steinbeck.   “Of mice and men” was a tale of hardship endured by farm labourers.   In this country, workers on farms are among the lowest paid and enjoy commensurate status.   Yet, while they are the “mice”, they provide the food.  It is important to note, too, that the agricultural sector is the one most able to provide jobs for unskilled labour.    Indifference to the plight of farm workers, and to those afflicted by poverty generally, promotes the “grapes of wrath” and the potential for a “deferred revolution” in the future.  

The speaker lamented the failure of meritocracy, the waning of spirituality and the increasing “disconnect” between Man to Nature.   “The most important thing about agriculture,” he said, “is that it has always been the incubator for values.”   Children of the soil, who have “grown up with mud between their toes”, are less distracted by the diversions of the contemporary world.    He pleaded for a regimen in which the full value of farming, as such incubator and as the provider of food and nutrition, should be restored in a unity of purpose and with every encouragement of the small-grower sector.  

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