THREE CHEERS FOR DIVERSITY

CHEER 1

http://www.pictorialmeadowsonline.co.uk/

 
"A study shows that strawberries are bigger and better looking if they're pollinated by bees which have visited wild flowers on field margins, rather than those that have just visited crops."  
(BBC Radio 4 - Farming Today 29 09 15)

The study was undertaken by Professor Jane Memmot of Bristol University. 

The crops of large scale mono-cultures, depleting natural diversity as they do, incur costs of which we are only now beginning to learn. 
 

CHEER 2

Both David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn are speaking of supporting small businesses. Hooray. I remember the days when many, if not most, who were self-employed or in small businesses were looked upon as crooks. Getting a post in big business or the public sector was the way to progress your career but ...

CHEER 3

Volkswagen, of all companies, has shown yet again how big monolithic businesses become corrupt despite there being thousands of good people working in them. Remember Enron and Arthur Andersen?

If businesses are small they are not 'to big to fail'. There are many of them, so, by the natural process of evolution, they will produce variety, diversity, in which lies great strength. If they go bad, for whatever reason, the social cost of their failure is also small. If enterprises are small, they are not too big to be challenged for their misdemeanors by regulators, local authorities, the media or the public. Best of all, small businesses are quicker to adapt to changing circumstances, unlike these mega-tanker corporations whose massive momentum takes them crashing on to the rocks.   

SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL. 

With modern communications, at once global and personal, the day of the large corporations is coming to an end, I like to think. But are we simply replacing Exxon, Shell, VW with Google, Facebook, Microsoft? Al least the latter can always be copied. Just think of Linux. We do need to encourage the development of a myriad of small enterprises.  

So here's to E F Schumacher, author inter alia of Small Is Beautiful of whom I will be saying a lot in due course on this blog.

Meanwhile, for those already interested try http://www.schumacher.org.uk/.