The hashtag #Juststoptoil has a lot going for it. Started - at least we think so - by Jusper Machogu the aim is simply that basic aim behind having an economy, a civilisation, at all. To gain more output from less human labour. Therefore we’re all richer, as for each hour of human labour it is possible to enjoy more consumption. Jusper illustrates this with scenes on the ground from farming in Africa. The weep inducing toil and labour that has to go into making a living as a peasant that is.

Thus:

Which is why - and we’re sorry about this and all that - we so despise agroecology.

From degraded fields being brought back to fertile life to community gardens flourishing as food co-operatives, a growing revolution is happening in countries across the African continent.

The climate crisis, conflict and the dominance of multinationals with industrial-scale production for export have popularised the concept of agroecology – promoting small-scale farming and farmers, protecting biodiversity and adapting traditional methods that do away with the need for chemicals and expensive fertilisers.

Now, better ways to farm, of course, delightful. Varying crops, cassava as well as corn - or cabbages, courgettes and cauliflower as well - and why not? Diversifying, increasing, incomes is just great.

However, that insistence upon traditional methods - that means peasant farming. That insistence upon small-scale - that means peasant farming. And the peasant farmers’ lot is an unhappy one - one packed with toil.

For we hit a basic truth here. The income - standard of living, lifestyle - that can be enjoyed by doing something has a hard upper boundary. Which is the value created by the doing of that thing. And peasant farming doesn’t produce much value.

For example, the corn (maize to us Brits) price seems to be $170 a metric tonne. -ish. Maize yields in Africa - without that fertiliser, those expensive chemicals - seem to be around 2.1 tonnes per hectare. So, the quite literally backbreaking work of raising 2.4 acres of corn is worth $350 or so. That’s the upper limit of the lifestyle possible from the peasant farming of a hectare of corn without chemicals and fertilisers in Africa. And, you know, that’s not a lot. You’d need 5 acres - a large peasant farm - to even reach that minimum standard of absolute poverty of $2 -ish a day. For one person.

Yes, yes, it’s possible to diversify. Modicums of other crops and so on. But the base insistence is still true. Peasant farming - which is what “small-scale farming without fertilisers and expensive chemical inputs” is, by definition - leaves the farmers living as peasants. Vast toil to live in what we all define as abject poverty.

We’re all fine with the idea that African farming could, should, improve. That the incomes of African farmers should increase, that the income to toil ratio should improve in the farmers’ direction. But that just does mean that more fertiliser, more chemicals, more machines and larger farms are required. Those larger farms - and thus fewer farmers - will be the inevitable outcome of that replacement of toil by its substitutes as well. And won’t that be fabulous? Hundreds of millions will be able to move - as we all have - to indoor work, no heavy lifting, and the remaining farmers will be ploughing, by tractor not hand, the acres to feed them. Glory, they can become as rich as we are.

And that’s why we despise “agroecology”. Because that insistence upon small-scale, no chemicals, no fertilisers, farming is exactly what will condemn those hundreds of millions to an eternity of peasant farming - and, ineluctably, an eternity of peasant poverty.

#Juststoptoil - it’s the entire point of our having an economy, a civilisation, at all.