I'd like to recommend to the list a book I recently finished reading: "Democracy at Work" by Richard Wolff. Challenges from farm labor rights to externalized environmental costs could be addressed eloquently by Wolff's "Workers' Self-Directed Enterprises;" and at the heart of his proposal is a way of thinking called “surplus analysis” a concept any framework for sustainable agriculture cannot do without.
Whether state or private, capitalism tends to externalize long term costs for short term efficiencies and concentrate wealth into the hands of a few. This is exactly what WSDEs are designed to prevent. The inequitable distribution of power lies at the heart of many challenges in sustainability, we are often prevented from addressing other problems until this issue is resolved. Though Wolff generalizes his WSDEs to apply to any enterprise, I think their greatest potential lies in changing the face of agricultural industries. _______________________________________________ Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel