The Research of E.F. Schumacher
E.F. Schumacher was a highly respected economist and philosopher who is considered by many if not the father of the Local Food Movement, certainly one of its first heroes.
E.F. Schumacher
Ernst Friedrich Schumacher was born in Bonn, Germany in 1911. He was educated in Germany, England, and the United States. He left Germany shortly before World War II to avoid living under the Nazi regime and moved to England. At the outbreak of the War, he was interred in a camp for German Nationals. Some of his writings done at this time caught the attention of famed British Economist, John Maynard Keyes. Keyes realized that not only did Schumacher present no danger, but in fact, he could actually contribute to the war effort with his economic understand and background.
Schumacher did help Great Britain organize and mobilize its economy during the war years, and after the war was rewarded with a position on the British National Coal Board. He held this position for 23 years from 1950 to 1973. During this period that Schumacher advocated coal as a more logical source of the World’s energy needs than petroleum. It was not this work, important though it was that has made Schumacher the hero of environmentalist and local food supporters. It was his research and several books that he wrote that accomplished this.
Schumacher stands out for his opposition to the head long rush toward a global and massive industrial world. His 1973 book, Small is Beautiful, laid out much of his thinking on the dangers of the idea that bigger is better and more is the ultimate good. His major problem with the industrial society was its lack of regard for individuals. To Schumacher, it was as if the World was keeping score on some cosmic tote board and had sets its goal to produce more and more regardless of the consequences. He saw the consequences on several levels. Technology was no respecter of the environment, he asserted, and we were using up the resources of the World with no thought to the environmental impact or the future.
He also believed that most industrial concerns were dehumanizing in their headlong pursuit of bigger and more productive ways of making things. He felt that the ultimate goal of society was not to get a higher score on that cosmic tote board, but to enrich the lives of individual human beings. He called his theories Buddhist Economics because they shared the idea that human development was precious and harmony with nature was important with the philosophies of the East.
Although he did not write specifically about local food issues, the ideas of decentralization and a turning away from global thinking toward regional priorities have strongly influenced the Local Food Movement. Schumacher died in 1977, but his works have been growing in popularity as many of his ideas, radical and out of the mainstream during his lifetime, have come to be associated with many popular economic and environmental issues. His research is often quoted by those involved with the Local Food Movement and he remains one of the movement’s greatest heroes.