Page 6 RAIN July 1979 • ••• •••••• •• • • • • ••• • • • ••••• ••• • •• •• •• ••• ••• •• • •• DATACONTROLDATACONTROLDATACONTROL '' THE BIGGEST THING IN SMALLNESS?'' BY TOM BENDER "Better solutions to many of the basic proqlems plaguing the nation's food chain can be obtained by means of the small family farm than can be achieved through the large capital-intensive, fossil-fuel based operation. " These are not the words of a decentralist, "small is beautiful" advocat~ but the head of~ multi-national corporatim:-1, operating in 33 countries, employing more than 45,000 people and receiving revenues last year of over $2 bill'ion-a corporation that has donned the rhetoric of smallness and is rapidly extending its activities into m~ny areas of "appropriate technology." • Control Data head Bill Norris is a board member of Appropriate Technology International-the AID-supported international development group'whose initial aim to support indigenous development in poor countries has been turned ·into a $20 million slush fund.for U.S. industries to market their products and services abroad. Coritrol Data ha~ offered financial support to several midwestern a.t. groups working in urban agriculture in return for data developed from their research. They have developed a pilot program for franchising Rural Development Centers that would provide management, technical, advisory and perhaps credit services to small farmers, and have c·ommitted several million dollars to their entry into the area of small-scale agriculture~CDC's Technotec, an international compu,ter-based technology exchange service, has been courting' a.t. groups around the world for sev~ral years to set up for them both an a.t. and a small farming data base, and CDC's staff has been quietly omnipresent at all major a.t. and small farm gatherings in the last couple of years. . Attempted corporate entry into these areas is inevitabl~ as their viability becomes more widely recognized, but is obviously bringing a strong reaction from people who recognize that there is not room for livelihood as well as for corporate profits in these areas. Governmental entry into these areas as represented by NCAT, ATI, NSF and DOE programs/nonprograms has shown that its true interests and impacts are , rarely compatible or of real value to the development of decentralized patterns. Big Business's challenge is more powerful' and even less supportable, but it means that citizen and . technology groups must act clearly and competently to both demonstrate convinci1ngly the capabilities of ,our dreams while exposing the- true intentions and implications of corporate initiatives. The central focus of CDC's small farming initiative appears to be their proposed Rural Development Cente:rs. Through these centers CDC would provide a number of services: acquisition of large ( 1000 acre) acreages and resale in 80-100 acre blocks, assistance in organization of centralized purchasing of essential products and services, obtaining credit, establishment of local marketing structures, smaller processing units and qualifying for government programs. The farmers may be offered computer-based instruction packages as well as CDC's main interest, a "computer optimized package of technology (crop, livestock, fertilizer, energy, equipment, etc.) that ~s "being developed." (:oncern over CDC's activities resulted in Gil Friend at CalOAT pulling together information on them and questions as to their implicatipns. In February he sent that information out to more than 100 people and groups to initiate clearer discussion of appropriate actions. Many people's initial reaction to CDC's activities had been distrust and resignation, .similar to the response that coincided with beginning corporate dominance of solar energy-"They're not going to go away," "They will go ahead with or without us, so let's at least try to assist them to go in good directions." But the composite picture which q1.me together when Gil·pooled the individual fragments of insights and information he got as feedback was quite different. It exposed more clearly CDC's weaknesses, the implications of their activities, the capabilities of a.t., farm, and community groups to achieve much more without CDC than with them, and confidence in those capabilities: A sample: "There is a striking similarity in CDC's actions vis a vis small farm agriculture and the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s relq,tionships between large ·development corporations in the so-called, "urban renewal" schemes and the citizens of the areas being "renewed." The corporations were often apparently receptive to community needs and ideas yet they left "vague" or "undecided" or "incomplete" gaps in the planning. The pl~nning process wa,s otherwise extremely well thought out and usually very well articulated, so it seemed strange, in retrospect usually, that these gaps existed. What virtually always transpired was that these gaps and the apparent receptivity to other ideas were enticement~ to attract or get people and groups to go along with the corporation. Only when it was too late did the community groups realize t~ey had been co-opted for end,s in conflict with their own. I w-ould suggest that CDC is using the same tactics. "The kinds ofgaps 'that CDC has left- e.g. who controls the coordinated marketing effort, and what have they done concerning organizational .structures that maximize the farmer's own responsibility and control- these gaps don't reflect a lack of understanding of the overall situation; rather they reflect deviousness. These are subtle yet crucial elements to both a realistic a. t. approach, and by their exclusion, an obvious ploy for CDC to gain an economic hold over the farmers.
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