From Liberalism to Circular Economy
From Liberalism to Circular Economy
Globalization, with its accelerations of the last decades, has made us understand, if ever it were needed, how the Planet system is regulated by laws and principles that require a revision of the liberal system and the free market without rules.
In the ecological and, therefore, also agricultural field, the push given by the so-called “Green Revolution” has transformed the way of producing of numerous agricultural companies. In the production cycle, this transformation required an ever greater contribution from external factors to compensate for the ecological error of the “modern” production system. Ecological error due to excessive specializations, to the choice of cultivars and non-native varieties, to selected seeds and plant or animal species with low genetic variability; all factors that have made the production model low-yield, even if disguised as temporary increases in production yields. In thermodynamics, which is the discipline that deals with energy processes and the evaluation of their performance, the production system of this model is defined as an Open Cycle, that is, a process that must exchange a lot of mass and energy with the outside (fertilizers, fuels, production factors, etc.) significantly reducing the efficiency of the same.
To remedy this production model today, more and more, the advent of closed cycle production models (not only in agriculture) is required, which are able to meet the needs with the contribution of indigenous factors (protection of biodiversity, safeguard of fertility with the help of conservative techniques, production of energy factors directly on site, etc.). In agriculture these models take the generic name of Agroecology.
Recall that the efficiency of a process is not the sum of the individual yields but the multiplication of the same, which makes us understand how Closed Cycle Systems have energy efficiencies often tens of times higher than those of Open Cycles.
The Closed Cycle model now also finds application in the parallel economic system, which with the term Circular Economy represents the synchronism with which factors of production, distribution, reuse, etc. move on the same plane, at the most local scale possible (remember that each mass requires as much energy to be transferred as the longer the journey is, and this too is a performance function that therefore moves with an exponential factor and not as a sum) .
This transition from a now outdated system, which is the liberal one and the free market without rules, with very low efficiency (because with an Open Cycle) to a Circular Economy system and based in agriculture on Agroecology (therefore Closed Cycle) requires not only an increasing awareness among citizens but also transition governance policies through two activities that suit them:
That of social and information policies;
That of the legislative and addressing systems.
As a corollary of the foregoing, it should be noted that neither Agroecology nor, even less, Circular Economy can have a concrete application if new proximity and partnership relationships are not established between the productive and economic systems and citizens. It is an approach to the birth and growth of a Social System, already in place, which brilliantly Pope Francis, in his Encyclical “Laudato Sì” defines Social Ecology.
Finally: the relationship between climate change, global warming and the economic and social model; From what has been said, it is clear that an Open Type System, such as the one put in place in recent decades, requires energy needs (often non-renewable) far superior to those of Closed Type Systems, which leads (and docet thermodynamics) to a Planet suffering from an excess of Joule effect and an increase in Entropy; triggers of human impoverishment and ecological resources (including biodiversity), desertification processes and global warming.
Guido Bissanti