Written by Clara Daikh and Margo Galliard
Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, Moriah Bostian
Introduction
Over the last century, and even the last few decades, individuals have become increasingly aware of the tradeoff between economic growth and what we call “the environment.” Our interactions with, and use of, Earth’s resources have brought us to a precarious and worrisome global situation. In many liberal communities, we like to blame environmental destruction on capitalism, but the conversation usually ends there. In this paper, we hope to explore what else could exist, and does exist, beyond the most visible capitalist market-based economies. We ask: what diverse markets exist in the Pacific Northwest? And, what do they say about how we might reconsider our ideas of economy and environment? We dive into three examples: wild mushroom foraging economies, urban foraging practices, and freeganism (the practice of urban scavenging for capitalist waste) to explore what we can learn from “diverse economies” in the Pacific Northwest. We use the term “diverse economies” to illustrate the ways these various economies overlap with each other and exist alongside mainstream capitalist markets, while also offering challenges and insights to the dominant capitalist market.
The Pacific Northwest is a great place for us to explore these questions. The region is well known for its beautiful landscapes for outdoor recreation and tourism, urban coffee shops, micro breweries and wine, its Chinook salmon, and the budding food scene. Historically, the Pacific Northwest has supplied timber and hydropower for the rest of the country. Each of these sectors contribute to the region’s commodity markets and private enterprises but there is and has always been much more going on beneath the surface of the official market economy. Wild mushroom foraging, some neighborhood farmers and craft markets, local second hand gifting and trade, even theft and finding stuff on the streets and in dumpsters, are all commonplace activities in PNW communities. Most of these are considered by economists to be “informal economies” and some aren’t recognized as economic at all. Informal economies are viewed as not contributing to GDP, nor do they clearly contribute to capitalism’s Growth project. This is part of why they are forgotten; however, the global informal cash economy is estimated to be worth $10 trillion a year, not including non-cash interactions (Neuwirth 2012). This would place the informal economy as the world’s second-largest after the USA. Thus, it is critical that we begin to include the value of informal economies into our larger economic models.
Diverse Economies
Both classical and neoclassical theories of economics see the capitalist market as the guiding force of all economic systems. In this framework, everything has or can be given cash value. Market economists believe that the free-market forces of supply and demand will allocate resources efficiently via the “invisible hand.” Even the externalities framework can miss some important social costs and values which come from overlap across formal and informal economies.
Figure 1: Iceberg analogy illustrating a variety of activities included in the concept of “diverse economies
We use Gibson-Graham’s “diverse economies” in hopes of moving beyond binaries created in the language of “informal.” This framework allows for “the possibility of many economic others [whereas] alternative restricts economic imaginings to a limited binary framework” (Fickey 2011, 239; Gibson-Graham 1996). This helps us push traditional economic tools of analysis to recognize overlapping lifeways sometimes missed by the field. An iceberg analogy (Figure 1) illustrates the way diverse economies exist beneath the surface of what is easily recognized as “The Economy.”
Diverse Economies of the Pacific Northwest
In the Pacific Northwest, we’ve identified three informal economies which fall under the diverse economies framework: wild mushroom foraging, urban product gathering, and freeganism. Each story contains insights into how standard economic valuation methods ignore some externalities which can be revealed by diverse economies. We first explore a luxury market for a wild foraged mushroom which reveals various non-use values in human-forest interactions currently endangered by policy which is blind to their value. Likewise, foraging in urban green spaces is subject to policies and social-economic judgements that reduce its value to local communities. Additionally, freeganism represents an informal economy which makes better and more efficient use of food waste than the market-based system yet this socially beneficial activity is ignored in traditional market models. In each context, people participate in a diverse economy which makes them resilient, ultimately benefiting society in terms of waste reduction, community-engagement, and increase in economic security. While usually rendered invisible within the market system, we will use models of positive and negative externalities to make visible the social benefits and complex interactions that build a diverse economy.
Wild Foraging and Mushrooms
Foraging for berries, herbs, and fish has been a beloved activity in the Pacific Northwest for thousands of years. A diversity of mushroom-foraging activity alone includes mass and luxury commercial markets, subsistence activity, and recreational harvesting. Oregon’s forests supply Matsutakes that can sell for $90 to $2,000 per kilogram in Japan (Tsing 2015). This wild mushroom can’t be cultivated, is hard to find, and can have seasons lasting as little as a week — it’s a luxury good with an incredibly unstable supply — but foragers in the region choose this lifeway over other options. Most of these foragers are immigrants from Southeast Asia who love the freedom to work for themselves and be in the forests, and are happy despite the precarity of this seasonal work. Mushroom foraging to them is not simply about making the most profit, or even just getting by — for many of them, it provides an alternative lifeway from what modern capitalist work can provide (Tsing 2015). Treating forests and mushrooms as natural resources reduces them to products and misses the non-use value of the lifeways they provide. Foraging practices are based in communities and cultures which respect that the forests and ecosystems themselves hold inherent value. Figure 2 illustrates a variety of these use and non-use values often overlooked by economic models and capitalism vs. the planet modes of thinking.
Figure 2 (left): The diverse economies framework reveals a variety of use and non-use values overlooked by mainstream capitalist valuation methods. These include freedom, human-ecosystem connection, community-value, wellness to foragers, and scientific value of organisms.
This is more than just a model or philosophical argument — regulation applied to this mushroom foraging activity erases the value it holds when it treats foraging as simply natural resource extraction (Robinson 2016). Certainly any ‘natural resource extraction’ can be taken to wholly unsustainable scales, but foraging is not inherently harmful to ecosystems, especially when done with care. Foraging alone sustained indigenous populations for thousands of years in this region and even modern science is finding that most of this mushroom foraging has minimal impact on forest ecosystems (Kimmerer 2013; McLain et. al. 2008). Indigenous foraging in the region allowed for place-based knowledge of how to participate in and care for ecosystems and was not simply a form of natural resource exploitation (Kimmerer 2013). In one analysis that situates mushroom foraging in China, Robinson (2016) argues that “policies that limit the extent of forest travel, such as protected areas, may protect fragile ecosystems but can have a disproportionately negative effect on those most vulnerable” and management of harvest activity often doesn’t resolve trade-offs between ecologies and human communities. There is an abundance of inherent non-economic value in this lifeway and it is these values that form the condition for sustainability. Land conservation is important but ought not be pursued at the expense of other social benefits. One can see the often ignored social benefit of foraging in Figure 3.
Modern economics and policymakers have placed mushroom foraging in the category of forest product extraction and viewing it thus as anti-environment. In Sisters, Oregon, mushroom foragers have been concentrated and surveilled by state policy hoping to regulate foraging activity and protect forests (McLain et. al. 2008). Land is protected for conservation, economic, and recreational purposes, but foraging is marked as external to these values and so its benefits are unseen (see Figure 3). Private benefits of land conservation prioritize recreational use as RVs and campers are given priority and freedom in the area compared to foragers whose presence has been found to be less harmful to local streams than the recreational users (McLain et. al. 2008). Similarly, in Northern California, many immigrant foraging communities have been subject to extreme land conservation efforts that banned them from entering the forest at all. Foragers who live in caring relationships with the forests still search for Porcini because of the value this lifeway provides to their communities (Arora 2008). However, the loss of social value (due to policy and other barriers to access) is also unseen by a traditional economic model that has a limited idea of what land conservation can look like and ignores the lifeways provided by foraging (see Figure 3). Beyond social value to foraging communities is the value that this activity provides in general to society and a potential for care between humans and more-than-human ecosystems. These informal and place-based lifeways — not just economies — are based in community, respect, and reciprocity, not just between humans but between humans and non-human ecosystems (Kimmerer 2013). Both the Oregon and Northern California examples reveal harm to social benefit when foraging is misunderstood by the state, even when intentions of land conservation are good. In our model of externalities, there is deadweight loss to private-market based economics even when applied to supposedly public-owned resources such as forests. There is also deadweight loss from simply ignoring the value that diverse economic activity brings not just to individuals but to communities and potentially to ecosystems. When scaled up such that we consider the value of global informal economies, the unseen social benefits (illustrated as the DWL of not including this benefit) are huge. Foragers and other participants in the local diverse economy should be included in land conservation approaches because they transcend the boundaries of human vs. nature. Incorporating these diverse economies into economic models can help us to see a more inclusive value of land (Figure 3).
Foraging in Urban Spaces
Foraging is not just an activity for the wilderness. Within even larger cities like Portland and Seattle, people forage for wild berries or fruit from trees in a park or neighborhood — some do it for fun and others depend on this freely available resourcefulness. But, like wild foraging, urban foraging can be fraught with political, social, and physical barriers which bar individuals from accessing freely available “products.” In one example, a urbn park guide was concerned that “Asian immigrants” harvesting in the park were unaware of sustainability practices (Poe et. al. 2014). In urban spaces, barriers are stricter and foraging stands out in contrast to traditional capitalist life. People collecting things from the streets, foraging for herbs or berries in parks or neighborhoods, and even homeless people gathering various materials may stand out more in a city and can be seen as suspicious. Parks that ask visitors to “leave only footprints” discourage making use of available resources and police that upturn homeless camps or ask foragers of color to leave may not be directly enforcing capitalist notions of ownership and right to materials, but this certainly makes exercising one’s natural resourcefulness difficult — and there are social costs to this restriction (see Figure 4).
Urban foraging has many community building benefits and highlights ways diverse economies contain hidden social benefits, such as addressing food insecurity. A family may be better able to pay for more-needed services when they can offset some of their food costs by foraging, someone with a little extra cash can help their neighbors afford rent that month by gifting them some foraged food, and artisans and craftspeople can create goods which can then be sold for profit at community markets (Poe et. al. 2013). Additionally, urban foraging can help offset a community’s costs of conservation when individuals systematically harvest from invasive species. In Seattle, there is now an annual “edible invasive ice cream” event where ice cream is made from invasive species such as blackberry while it is being removed for conservation purposes (Poe et. al. 2014, 7). All of these opportunities for increased economic activity come at a small cost, as many of the providing flora and fauna already exist in urban areas. However, they are often inaccessible, and thus this array of diverse economies is stopped before it can even begin. Additionally, the passive-use values of foraging with someone, sharing knowledge, and sharing meals are not taken into account by larger models of greenspace use and non-use valuation.
Figure 4: Some potential marginal external benefits of including foraging in the marginal benefits of urban greenspace are lost due to barriers to access.
The model in Figure 4 illustrates how including external marginal benefits in one’s economic analysis allows one to see more fully the overall value of the land. We also see the limitation to this potential when there are barriers to access. While the private marginal benefit of urban greenspace might not include some of these less-known social benefits, we may internalize this benefit through policy in order to bring the private marginal benefit to the true social benefit. Policy can help stimulate economies within urban areas struggling with food insecurity via addressing these barriers to accessibility. There are a variety of options available for policy makers – increasing the amount of foragable food integrated into greenspace development, removing bans on harvest, decriminalizing use of park space, creating conservation incentives for harvesting invasive species, or subsidizing art made with all local materials. Each of these options would help reduce barriers to foraging, thus stimulating the market economy and allowing communities and diverse economies to flourish. There also seems to be productive value in recognizing ways our communities are already finding ways to forage despite barriers, as this value does exist. Whatever the path, accepting and welcoming urban foraging can help us better see the marginal benefit of urban green spaces and of making materials freely accessible.
Freeganism
Finally, we look to freeganism, the community and practice of scavenging capitalism’s waste products, specifically food, for personal use. Freeganism has become increasingly popular in urban places like Portland where food insecurity and poverty are abundant and waste is plentiful, though it thrives throughout rural Oregon as well (Gross 2009). Like foraging, “[T]here is a code to dumpstering, though not everyone complies. You only take what you can use, leave some for others and leave the area clean” (Gross 2009, 69). Freeganism has a particularly interesting set of relationships to the capitalist market, as freegans tend to be morally opposed to the market system and the waste it produces. Gibson-Graham’s term alternative-oppositional describes the way “below-the-surface” economies like this overlap with “above-water” economies sometimes in ways that are intentionally in opposition to one another. However, they also rely on waste, and thus capitalism’s excess productivity, as a means of survival — it is still not outside of capitalism. Freegans engage in a diversity of economies including foraging, food banks, and government aid when possible in order to acquire goods which are rarely found in dumpsters (Gross 2009, 72-73). Freegans face similar barriers as foragers, particularly through policing and locking-up of some dumpsters by firms. Often, it is illegal to dumpster dive, and thus individuals cannot always access fresh food because they must wait for safe times to scavenge. Additionally, some businesses will poison food waste in order to dissuade scavenging which is both a barrier and health hazard for freegans. Ironically, these barriers disproportionately target people who are experiencing food insecurity and are often strongly felt by the homeless who also value the ability to scavenge for food. As a result, a resource which is often categorized as waste but could help get people back on their feet is inaccessible. Why would these companies stop these people in need from making better use of their waste? It seems it needs to be easier, cheaper, and less risky for companies to make better use of their waste.
As illustrated in Figure 5, freegans add social marginal benefit (MBSociety) by making use of what otherwise would be total deadweight loss (good food in the trash). Food waste is modeled through a negative external marginal cost (MCSociety) which includes waste from production, transportation, and sale. Point A represents the private quantity and price when externalities are not taken into account at all. Point B shows the socially optimal point when only the marginal costs of waste are included. Point C represents the socially optimal equilibrium point when both the marginal cost and marginal benefit are taken into account. Point D is where we would realistically see the market equilibrium when taking into account both marginal costs and benefits without regulation. We see from both deadweight loss triangles that there is too much food waste and that this food waste can be reduced by properly valuing freeganism’s social benefits.
Figure 5 (left): Both negative and positive externalities are present in freeganism’s interaction with food waste.
Thus, the deadweight loss of the waste itself is somewhat accounted for via freeganism’s use of the waste.
In order to reduce food waste and bring private allocation to the socially efficient Point C, policy makers have a variety of options. First, they could place a tax on waste production coming from any area of the production and sales system (Figure 6). The ideal amount of tax would be equal to the marginal external cost (illustrated on the y-axis) so that the private marginal cost equals the social marginal cost, thus internalizing that cost into the market. On the other hand, one could create a subsidy to encourage transportation of unsellable, yet unspoiled , food waste to a food bank (Figure 7). The cost of transporting food waste often acts as a barrier to its use, therefore this would directly address a problem already faced within the market. A subsidy system would also internalize the marginal social benefit so that the private market reflects the true value of waste. This already is a common occurrence at grocery markets and other food facilities, but it could be improved upon (see Figure 7). Policy that allows more access to waste materials would increase the marginal benefit of waste as individuals could harvest food or other food from dumpsters which, for whatever reason, did not make it to the food bank to be redistributed.
Figure 6. Using a Waste Tax to Reduce Food Waste by Internalizing its Negative Externality. Ideally, we would set a tax equal to marginal benefit in order to function at q* (Point C) in the private market.
Figure 7. Using a Subsidy to Increase Food Donation would Reduce Food Waste.
By increasing the availability of edible waste, via food banks and other policies, urban areas have a doubly-positive opportunity to decrease food waste while reducing food insecurity. It is simply a matter of accepting that much of our waste need not be total waste. Perhaps this helps us to realize other potential values within the deadweight loss area that can be re-conceptualized and made use of.
Analyses and Conclusions
Across all of the economies we have outlined, there is considerable overlap. Each diverse economy values something (or many things) which the capitalist economy, and traditional economics, do not take into account. Thus, models of externalities can help advocate for internalization of these values, but we must also think about what hidden values exist within deadweight loss, for instance, and broaden our scope of what counts as value and economy. Policy makers often rely on traditional economic arguments to “sell” their policies, so modeling which starts to include the diverse economies frameworks into traditional economic thought will be incredibly valuable to everyone involved. Diverse economies are only beginning to be recognized and taken seriously by the field: “[m]ainstream researchers still fail to take seriously economic research not framed within analyses of ‘globalization’, ‘neoliberalism’ or ‘capitalism’” (Fickey 2011). But this misses, at least, a $10 trillion worth of wonderfully diverse economies. We hope to have made a case for ways common economic modeling can help bridge the gaps among capitalist markets and diverse economies, all of which rely on and interact with others. All three economies we explored face barriers through law enforcement, profiling, and some sort of general disapproval of the activity. In each scenario, these barriers keep them from fulfilling their highest potentials, not just of what value can be appreciated through foraging or scavenging, but of the free and resilient lifeways they provide to those that participate. Barriers like these also endanger the safety of individuals and communities. Despite a growing abundance of traditional wisdom and new research on each of these topics, there is little explicit economic research on the values and economic activities of each group (notice few truly economic sources on these topics). Further research in this area, and which bridges disciplinary boundaries as we’ve shown so far, may allow policymakers to use data and existing trustworthy theory to acknowledge, accept, and advocate for the abundant and thriving diverse economies that give our world and lives so much richness.
Our models have shown how the mainstream capitalist economy already relies on a variety of diverse economies to support individuals who have been overlooked by and outcast from the mainstream market system. And, let it not be forgotten, all of us that participate in diverse economies also benefit from and rely on capitalism and formal markets for wages, waste, government help, and plenty else. With this information, perhaps policymakers and advocates — even citizens like us — could prioritize social benefit by recognizing the resources and economies that already exist and focus instead on re-allocating these re-sources to those most in need. We hope our examples illustrate the potential beauty in opening our eyes up to resourcefulness and how we are resourced, if by nothing but by what we’ve neglected in our trash bins and in our forests.
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