|
Rural System? Just Dreaming …
A For-Profit Conglomerate for
Meaningful Jobs
Healthful Communities
and Improved Natural Resource Management
by Robert H. Giles, Jr., Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia
2007
Chapter 15. Processes Within the System
Dreaming:Calliope sounds and steam, checkerboard squares popping up, then flattening, an unknown tune, change across the mosaic; up, down…up, down; black and red… black and red; green and yellow … green and yellow; change, always change; up and down and sideways … up and down and sideways; below and up and down and sideways … below and up and down and sideways; and the green slithered off the edge…Just Dreaming …
| Rural System is just a dream about a practical system. Not stressing organics, how to kill bugs better, or how to profit at the farmers' market, it stresses "the general system." Such systems, besides having well-emphasized inputs and outputs, gain power from their processes. I discuss them and strategies with their use. General systems theory includes the major concept of processes. It is the single word for what happens to "inputs" to any system and what then results as "output." The processes in the Rural System conglomerate are many. |
Specifying the Context
One process of people working with systems is that of specifying the context. The problems within rural areas are many, large, and long lasting, and it is clear that other people have worked on these problems with different intents, assumptions, and strategies …and limited successes. The context for Rural System may be large, perhaps too large, but at least one believed to be conceivable and manageable using the approaches described in this book. It was once eastern-US oriented, had potentials in the Western US (but with different problems and questions of quite different scale) and had greater potentials for rural areas where I visited in Nigeria, India, China, and Senegal. I had failed to communicate the potentials of modern computer-aided natural resource management and Rural System to students or people in those areas. It really only made sense when the world was seen as the context. One person suggested the concept was victim of the NIH syndrome, that of "not-invented-here." I needed a more specific, narrower distinction for the context. The major limit that I had intended was to exclude extensive involvement with urban issues, the built environment with large numbers of people and their vast array of issues, some similar, but, as a whole, very different from those in the rural areas. (I easily allowed in waterways, urban parks and forests, and most vertebrate pest issues. I included the Border Group.) The residential areas were typically cropland in another use and conceived as a Rural System opportunity as well as a challenge … at the border. At every turn, what could be seen as a part of or subsystem of the rural areas and problems could be easily translated or seen as urban, or some other system. These entities and parts are very similar in appearance and structure and are called isomorphic. Awareness of and using similarities in systems and their parts is very much a part of "taking a systems approach."
The context was temporarily specified, giving some limitations, and the possibility of a tentative completion, at least one for evaluation, comparisons, and corrections, for feedback. Specifying the context is a process for members of Rural System. It is not one within the system like erosion or tree decomposition. It is difficult, complex. The context is the result of a decision, a special process that also includes communicating the result to others so they can share in the temporary limitation. Systems fit within a context. My system diagram (Chapter 1) includes around the edge a box labeled "context." This is part of the system, not just an editorial or artful addition. Perhaps it is just a reminder that for all systems, there are boundaries. We cannot think of or talk about everything, or we deal with nothing. There is needed at least a little specification such as (pointing and saying) "…that system." Analysts and designers have to have temporary limits, then they can move on to the larger or smaller systems. I start with bounded systems, dodging the complexities of the "ecosystem" definition. I specify the context as practical. For example, I speak of a pond and define it as all of the water and all that it may contain within the estimated volume, the top of which is the modal 5-year high water elevation. Others may include the wet soil zone, precipitation, even the watershed. As another example, I rarely use the word "ecology" for it is the study of relations of plants and animals and their environment. Rural System is temporarily, single-mindedly and self-consciously risking concentrating on using the results of past studies and current best knowledge of how natural and managed systems work. Using is not the same as studying, and they are best done together in a dialog.
While very much involved with and personally concerned about plants, animals, lands and waters, being long-involved in "ecology," and tending to be in favor of "conservation," "biodiversity," and "the environment," I know that these words are very soft, almost meaningless. They are mere grounds for pleasant, long conversations or television clips. It seems essential to me and for all of us to be reasonably precise, don the hair-shirt of accountability, and begin some difficult, very human systems work with its kindly feedback. There have to be limits, bounds, or we end up discussing everything, thus nothing, the plight of current rural economic development conferences. Specifying the context is a first step toward work within, maybe organizing the chaos.
Perhaps the topic of context is no more important than discussions about the appropriate scale of work. This scale is of great importance to ecologists as they specify each relation that they study based on their definition of ecology. The scale may range from electromagnetic influences to effects of temperature on glaciers and lunar forces and sunspots on populations. It may range spatially from the laboratory dish to the wilderness forest. The insect gut and "the world" seem excessive. It is commonly felt that the small private forestland owner cannot " make money" because his or her land holding or operation is too small. The owner often cannot afford a consultant's advice, new software, or a computer. Owners cannot rotate harvests, stabilize income, or engage in any cost-effective work. Rural System requires working to achieve an appropriate scale at which financial analyses can be useful. The larger the scale of management, the greater may be the diverse opportunities for crops, livestock, hunting, fishing, and other land and resource production. Each land unit can be managed in accord with its characteristics as a subsystem of the large, constrained, for-profit system. One area may be managed for trophy deer as, in a similar example, catch-and-release regulations can be placed on a stream fishery. Habitat of many types can be far more cost-effectively managed at a large than at a small scale. Rather than the optimum farm or forest being the unit of interest, the optimum enterprise is the management unit. The potential enterprises being described and studied for inclusion within Rural System are listed with comments in Chapter 10.
These are enterprises, each potentially working on many farms or Tracts in an open, willing-seller, for-profit, shared-gains mode. Rural System is united by an allegiance, not by ownership but by land products and services under contract to a sophisticated, profit-oriented management group.
In Rural System work, the specified context is tentative. It establishes a closed system for a brief moment. It is tentative work on description and analysis, anticipating that very soon, perhaps in the next moment, that a larger (or smaller) context will have to be engaged. One person may find that a pest can be controlled by a substance and then must investigate the biochemical control purported for those effects. Rather than working through a smaller system, a broader context may be essential, one that requires defining the physical nature of the reported loss and then the loss in market value of the specific affected product. Failure to decide and communicate the context has resulted in chaotic studies and great waste. The decision is difficult, but made increasingly clear after studies of "scale" and made practical when it is realized that it is a tentative decision and can be and is likely to change. Many natural resource studies start, for example, with a single wild animal, but the context expands to the population, then to an aggregate of animals, then to sociopolitical forces affecting the lands of the aggregate.
Starting on planned work is a good idea. I have a bias toward getting started on improving conditions in the rural environments. I remember well a not-very-funny joke of the man watching his house burn while the firemen, realizing the house was already engulfed in flame, were spraying the adjacent house to prevent it burning also. He yelled at them, Give me the hose, man. I see the place!"
The other type of processes, other than context and those external and those of people working with systems, are within the system itself. I list major ones as follows, comment on each one, and then join groups of them in units that I call strategies.
Starting
I discovered very late in studying, teaching about, and using general systems theory that "start" was not included in the theory or hidden somewhere. Maybe it is a process but few systems theorists begin discussing systems with "processes." They start with "context" or "inputs." Start is given or assumed. How to start a business is described in many publications but it rarely states that at some instant of decision on some day you must be willing to take a very big risk and spend a lot of money. Until then, starting is about planning, designing, selling, evaluating … reducing risk to some personally acceptable level. Foundations ask for great detail to avoid risks of poor or functionless grants. A good idea may become real only in the instant of investment. In ecological systems work, initial populations or communities are assumed, or a manager walks onto a tract, which is the "given," and starts to work. Creation is "the start." It may not be expensive and may be as enigmatic as the spark that releases the stored energy of gasoline, the idea or insight that changes a world.
I know how consistently plants and animals reproduce, how sure that eventually a population will appear. I do not know about the start of each species and rarely ask, probably for the same reasons that "start" has been missing from general systems theory documents. I leave the fundamentals of starting to theologians and astrophysicists but the real start of a business is a fully-developed idea and then finding capital to implement it. The real start of a work or development project is the instant of decision.
I wanted someone to adopt and implement Rural System, a large solution to a larger problem than usually imagined. I want to avoid the sad day when some subsystem-like thing, a, was adopted and the next day it became realized that a system, A, could have and should have been adopted and implemented. I wanted more than agreement but resulting evident action.
Aggregating
I suspect that there are no identical ecological or notable Rural Systems. They are unique aggregates. They often look alike so we give them a name as a short form of saying "this group of organisms, plants and animals and all of their relations that has developed over a period (that we generally assume) and that we have described and recognize as significantly different from its neighbor or another one that we have described." That is far too many words. We need help, a "short form," and we say "ecosystem," then some of us busy ourselves with describing the similarities and differences as they change. They are aggregates, not systems. They are unique combinations of plants and animals, all with different starters, different starts, with different factors all performing in different sequences. They have nameable outputs but they differ from nearly identical systems, and have different values to the people observing them. They are not planned system, just aggregates following biochemical and physical laws. We can call a fish pond "a system" and analyze and describe it as such but it has no intrinsic or innate objective. It is useful for people to describe its energy-capturing and storing properties but that is because of their perspective on the world as life forms themselves. And we now have the computational tools to deal with the individuals in the mix and most of the dominant forces and factors that affect them at each individual alpha unit of land. Things that look alike seem more alike the more ignorant we are.
Adjoining
Things called ecosystems are aggregates that are on a chunk of Earth, i.e., rock, sand, soil, or water within an alpha unit (Chapter 12). They are more a function of things adjacent than on the site. They are very much a function of the area of the site and adjacent sites, more than the on-site so-called "ecological factors." They receive annually a variable rain of propagules, water, minerals, and dust - "micro sticks and stones." Whether affected by water flowing across the surface from the contiguous up-hill alpha unit, or shaded by the tall trees of the nearby north-slope's semi-desert, or being urinated on by the deer walking from the nearest-neighbor pond, the alpha unit is at least and probably more a function of processes and structures of adjacencies than on-site factors. Scientists and field workers aserting that they are being precise about and controlling details in the field (unlike maintaining lab precision) is a little silly.
Statistical processes (e.g., semivariogram and logistic regression) exist for grouping cells and areas into mapable areas with similar characteristics. These can be helpful in analyzing where things like animal species occur or are absent and may suggest causative forces.
The alpha unit is a small designated piece of land on a map, about a 10m x 10m map-cell unit easily imagined in the context of the American football 10-yard lines. We can study the alpha unit and its nearby cells, but know (from the working of some personal conscience-demon on the shoulder), that there are other processes at work. Global processes listed here affect the site, the farm, and ranch…the entire community:
Exhibiting Equifinality
Systems exhibit equifinality, the easily understood word meaning that there are many different ways to the same end point or condition. Equifinaility (Von Bertalanffy 1958) is an observation that different processes can result in the same end state. (For example, a gardener may within limits get the same crop from much water and a little fertilizer as from a little water and much fertilizer.) Elementary statistical treatments perpetuate the statements that there is great mystical variation in outdoor areas. Of course there is. A flower gardener throwing one handful of seed-mix at each of three side-by-side garden plots will get three very different gardens and will name them differently based on the dominant plants and total phyto-mass. Left alone for 3 years, the three plots will probably look almost the same. We have to concentrate on the factors, the non-biological ones called "abiotic," in each alpha unit. The processes are dust import (to rock), wind blow (to sand), precipitation (to all), and freezing (to all). I need to use " ecosystem" but do so reluctantly. Its use is now so widespread that inserting or changing the word to reflect the above differences only become tedious for the reader. (Here in the next sentence is the discord, for there are mapped similar areas that in no way are systems even though they look alike.) They cannot by any stretch of logic be thought of as purposive. They have no innate objective, and have variable functions. Many show great variability over time, and widely different responses to challenges and even species invasions and removals (similar to human and animal systems response to organ removal - the means by which so much has been learned by human anatomists and so little by ecologists).
In Rural System we tend to resist a theistic motive for all rural places. Things that other people rush to call an ecosystem or community are not equivalent to plants or animals (even though they have a few similarities). All aggregates of life do not have the same processes. An aggregation of plants and animals in a place is not an organism; there is no innate intent; no self-contained purpose; no identical progeny. It does not follow the fundamental law, the set found for all life forms which is:
Aggregates are only rarely seem to reproduce themselves (over long durations) a phenomenon called "succession."
These are first-principles for the human aggregate life space, but they are overly simplistic because each life modulates these elements, adjusting and tempering them to match genetics, the environment, and temporary changes. Human, unlike other life forms, seem to be able to predict and plan.
Transition, Succession, or Succeeding
Things that we can identify and classify and that stay about the same, or change in an orderly way (the individuals within it growing or being suppressed or dying), we call "living systems." We call this change "succession" or, I prefer, "transition" We study them and biological systems, hope for universal and simplifying principles and assumptions (for parsimony), assume populations are like animals, and then assume these aggregates of plants and animals are like populations, call them ecosystems and build a theory for them and find that we are adrift in what appears to be chaos and unimaginable changing variability … and are surprised that to get from them what we want and need, all of the benefits for an expanding, diverse population with changing needs, we must create and manage them. "Wild" is a condition that only by chance meets a few citizens' needs. We praise and seek to preserve special wild places. We can recover from this intellectual and hard-won mess for forests and other Rural Systems, concentrate on individual processes, and manipulate them and other factors related to specific needs of plants and animals and other rural resources.
In Rural System we rely heavily upon describing and developing predictive expressions (equations and graphs) of aggregates, structures, and individuals and how they predictably change with age, given adjacencies, and biotic and abiotic factors. I discuss this major process below under The Dominant Transition Process.
Relating
As described above, a key part of a definition of ecology is that it is a study of relations. That is appropriately general for a definition but several definitions include the word "interactions." "Relations" I view as processes. A sun-and-plant relation or relationship is the process of absorbing sunlight at the leaf surface. What happens after that is a chain of other processes. A relation I symbolize for teaching (and personally mentally) as a one-headed arrow. The arrow is labeled with a verb like "absorb" in the example with an arrow going from a diagram of sun to plant leaf. There is no return arrow or additional head to it. There is no "equal and opposite" reaction. It is a simple relation.
I know of few "interactions." If there are any, there are almost none approximately equal. I know that there are close relations (e.g., organisms attached to sharks called symbionts). For analyses and management, progress will be the greater when relations are modeled. The needs are so great and the major forces so dominant and in need of modeling and measurement, that these subtleties can be delayed or ignored. The risk of laying them aside for the time until the major system is mastered is not very great. There have been small, catalytic forces discovered, but the demands over thousands of acres of varying forces in the force field of economic change demands work on the dominant driving processes of Rural System.
Synergism
Synergism occurs when the union of substances has results greater than expected from the summation. Buckminster Fuller asked, "When is 1 + 1 + 1 = 4?" and the answer: when 3 triangles are unified along their edges, the fourth is gotten as extra (e.g., the base of the tetrahedron, Fig. 1).
 |
| Fig. 1 When is 1 + 1 + 1 = 4? This situation, called an example of synergism, results when there are 3 identical regular triangles appropriately located, producing a forth triangle (shaded here) "for free." The result is a graphical synergism, but the results also explain the hardness (and light scattering) of diamonds, the stability of water, the bound energy of methane, and allows concepts to be entertained about how some ecological systems are more stable than others, how resource managerial groups might interact or form backups and share resources for greater stability, and even symbolize the tenuous and easily-broken relations that exist for (that define?) rare or endangered species. |
Providing Services A major group of processes, at least for one system perspective, is that of so-called "ecosystem services." We need a way to communicate and model likely changes within rural lands before each decision to change the environment is made. "Services" sounds positive, but there are often negatives effects … which are human value judgments and not "natural" or "ecological" or biophysical. For example, animals disperse seeds but they aggregate others (into caches). They eat some but their gnawing or passage through their digestive system allows others to germinate. Thus they increase some, decrease others. They change the life form of some plants by their grazing, good in some situations for some forms of life, harmful for others. They propagate and influence mycorrhizae, the underground microscopic root hairs beneficial to some plants (which may be competitors to others of great value). Processes are named changing flows of matter or material, energy, and information. They may include physically arranging structures, the "things" in systems and their relations. "Processes" from general systems theory, is a better word to use than "services." "Cycles" seen in nature are observed but are complex sequenced flows … more processes. They can be imagined, but proving that they have equal periods (time between peaks) or equal amplitude (distance between highs and lows) is very difficult and rarely are there enough data to do so.
There are commodities provided from ecological and Rural Systems such as building material, fuel, and other forest products. Plants once contributed to coal and fossil energy buildups and some continue to do so. Whether such action can be called "services" needs to be discussed. The following is a list of the major outdoor processes, those likely to be encountered in Rural System analyses and modeling. A rate +, - or zero may be used with each of the following:
| There are 69 key ecological quot;functions" such as pollination and cavity-creating in Berwick et al. 2001 And others in Daily 1997. |
Receiving Solar Radiation
The land and water system does not radiate sunlight. It may re-radiate it. Solar radiation is a dominant factor within in rural and ecological systems but it is done to the system. Radiation drives these natural systems and while it may be "given" or "fixed," Rural System staff model it not to achieve managerial control over it, but control over knowledge of (1) receptive surface topography, (2) receptive surface color and reflectivity (albedo), (3) growing seasons and crop reception during those probable periods, (4) changing air-quality effects, (5) major periodicities and changes in photosynthetically-active spectra, and (6) solar collector surfaces and cloud cover. The sun cannot be controlled or managed in any active sense, but (1) its energy reception on Earth can be controlled by changing the topography or surface cover and reflective property (called albedo), and (2) optimal decisions for the system being understood and managed can be made among using available areas (spots, grid units, or alpha units) based on their energy reception and that which is desired.
Primary Production
In the above list "28. Building phytomass" we model that process, and eventually model all of the vegetation at a site. We have described this concept and its use within Chapter 7, Objectives. To approach high net profit, we must know maximum net yield and the costs of getting it and lesser amounts. We typically work for extra production, a yield higher than would be expected when the whole process depends on nature only.
We know that nitrogen is easily lost and must be added as needed and so we manage for its natural buildup in nitrogen-fixing plants. Phosphorus, easily leached into the soil and waterways, is needed for crop production in many areas and it has high direct costs as well as polluting effects. It requires increasingly sensitive management. The costs of analyses are high; the costs of additions are also high and have hidden secondary energy transportation and consumption costs. (See Net Primary Productivity in Chapter 12, Working Platform.)
Strategies
There are ten strategies, a special type of process being used to combine and configure processes to achieve the objectives. There are strategic elements to most of the major actions.
Strategy 1 - Land as Complex Volume
Recall that "land" is all of the resource, actual and potential changing physical and esthetic characteristics within and adjacent to an ownership - geographically three dimensional, above and below the soil and water surface but with other legal, administrative, economic, and value-based dimensions. "Land" is not a particularly useful word as discussed in (Chapter 12) . It implies area; it means volume. It connotes soil and rock, but we view it mainly as things seen, water, animals, plants, and the dry (or moist) dirty (or clean) air around leaves and animals. For the modern Rural System person, it is also contiguous, adjacent, or nearby things. This is one of the appeals of "landscape ecology," the so-called broad-scale look at land. Land is what we control as well as that which is nearby and that which affects production from our land both positively or negatively (e.g., proximity to fire sources influences wildfire probability); it is everything with which we work … over which we can achieve some significant level of control. Discussion regarding land should be about what can and should be done with it -- now and over the long run, into perpetuity .… at least 150 years. Using this definition and with "adjacency" (above) has been an important strategy, expanding concepts from those of the mapped field, forest, or pond.
Strategy 2 - Acknowledge Free Products and Services
The listed services are of inestimable value and while I think that they should be recognized by societies as the shared benefits provided freely by forests and related lands, they do not always do so. Society may ask for but not demand in a just and free society that such benefits be provided freely, forever. To have them, there must be forests and people who own land and who retain them in forests or desirable conditions and manage them to provide benefits for which they do not get paid. Benefiting financially seems likely to allow financially-hard-pressed owners to retain rural lands, thus continuing to produce these otherwise-free benefits. The public is now being subsidized by private land owners to the extent of the real value provided by the air quality, water recharge, flood reductions and other services provided by their lands.
Privately-owned land provides many free benefits to society, the non-owners or land-less. I believe there should be some compensation or incentives (e.g., in foregone taxes or direct payments) for people managing land well. Scoring mechanisms for the amount and quality of such management can be created. Several have tried to place value on nature (Bengston 1994, Costanza et al. (1997) and I describe many ways for wild fauna ) and to assign silvicultural options for management of migratory birds (Dickson et al. 1993).
| Table 2. Representative alternative enterprises including non-traditional concepts, opportunities, and services (based in part on Messerschmidt and Hammett 1993). |
| Products Lumber-structural (e.g., housing and mine props) Lumber - from which thousands of nominal products are made Sawn wood - local products such as furniture blanks Boat woods - rafts, dugouts, etc. Fence woods Pulp - whole tree, billet/stick, chips Range forage Charcoal Fuelwood - heating and cooking; steam engines Resin Latex (rubber) Fodder (leaves and stems for livestock) Mulch (gardening and landscaping) Vines Rattan and furniture " cane" Rope materials Basket wood Fibers for cloths/textiles Spices Chemical extracts Grasses - paper products Needles - livestock bedding and mulch Energy woods (biomass, primary or secondary) Carbon storage Extracts (e.g., tannin) Wild animal products Insects - food, cosmetics, biological Insects - shellac supply Insects - butterflies (collector item) Insects - honey Birds - feathers, meat,watching Mammals -
Soft fruits Nuts Spice Medicinal plants, parts, or extracts (e.g., taxol) Insecticides Fungicides Mushrooms Herbs Decorations (e.g., Christmas " greens" ) and Art Supplies Craft woods Dried flower and plant parts Free or Social Products and Services from forests and rural lands
Photo opportunities
Riding - horse, wagon, elephants, etc. Boating and access fees Livestock systems (goat, cattle, horses, mules, etc.) Aquaculture systems Inland fishery system Birds (penned pet birds) Nursery products (forbs, shrub, seedlings and equipment and supplies) Ecotourism Forest gardens Recreational trails Fee hunting Fee fishing, baits, equipment Guide services (fishing, hunting, birdwatching) Educational opportunities Work-force and community stability Potentially Profitable Services for the Forest Managerial services (all related topics) Integrated vertebrate faunal damage management Specialty fencing systems Fire system Insect/disease damage management Software, information, and data analyses Research (for profit, contract) Nature-based organizations (for many of the above) Education programs (for profit units; all ages) Security (physical and other security) |
Strategy 3 - Enlarge the List of Benefits
There are many products of the forest and the list of benefits being sought has already been made. Some are well recognized, others undeveloped, many only potential (but recognizable in nominal groups), and still others unknown but likely to be present based on knowledge of past rates of discovery of new products. Sufficient sources of income are listed in Table 2 to be convincing that there are more than a few non-traditional forest products and several forest services (as in classical concepts of economic benefits as "goods and services." The land with trees also provides products less useful and services that are costly, according to classical economic thought. The collection, processing and sale of many products of the land have been unprofitable. Only when included within a conglomerate, a financial system such as Rural System can they achieve the management, scale, and diversity that may allow stable production and profitability.
| Table 3. Alternative enterprises based on non-traditional concepts of forest products and services (based in part on Giles and Nielsen 1990 and Best and Wayburn 1995 |
|
1. Total Furbearer System - fur, photography, medicinal 2. Managerial Services 3. Avian System - bird walks, tourism, pest control, game bird population enhancement, sales of seed and supplies 4. Fishing - fees, bait, equipment 5. Software and Data 6. Medicinal Plants 7. Livestock - managed herds of goats, cattle, and horses 8. Nursery Products 9. Fencing - specialty fencing woods and services 10. Research - contract, for-profit work 11. Ranging or Ecotourism 12. Gardens 13. Recreational Trails - hikers and horses 14. Fee Hunting 15. Game and Nature-based Organization Operation Management 16. Education - for-profit units; all ages 17. Fruits and Nutmeats 18. Chemical Products - e.g., taxol 19. Mushrooms 20. Floral Products |
Alternative analyses will clarify the past ambivalence about consumptive and non-consumptive uses of one rural resource, wild animals. A deer, legally taken, is a forest product. The opportunity to hunt or fish is a service that may be sold. "Viewing deer" and "fish watching" opportunities may also be purchased. These are valuable dimensions of land, potential services widely known as "option demand." Different land units have different primeness (Giles and Koeln 1983) for supplying these products and services. Land primeness is equivalent to site class difference often discussed within forestry.
Many possible natural-resource-related businesses have been explored. Upland bird populations can be managed as a business (Mullin 1994). Certainly fish and wildlife managers need to be more oriented toward marketing (Salwasser et al. 1989). Fishing, both current opportunities as well as those that can be developed, represent an alternative service and products from land. Unlike hunters, anglers may catch and release animals. This practice is widespread and suggests that the production of land is angling opportunity, not merely the biomass of harvested fish. (Chapter 22). This situation allows repeated benefits to the landowner from presence of a single fish. Potential income, related to such angling, might be, for example, from fishing fees, guide fees, boat access fees, and bait and tackle sales. In many areas, landowners apply more strict regulation on anglers on their waters than on public waters. Strict regulation may accompany access across private land to public waters. Ponds, often created on small tracts of land of low productivity, can be managed intensively for (1) human food production (e.g., catfish, tilapia, hybrid striped bass); (2) recreational opportunity (e.g., where high fish density results in high catch rates popular with children); (3) trophy fish; and, (4) special-gear angling (e.g., fly rod fishing for bass and sunfish).
Strategy 4 - Increase Scope
There is something peculiar in a name that clamps on a brain and limits thought. Loyalties develop and certain things have to be done "in the name of …" There are boundaries on all sides as in orders: "You do forestry ..… we do fisheries." Our strategy and continuing appeal is to lay aside classical nominal issues (except those legal, and then legally appeal those that prevent production) and to get on with production of not unprofitable as well as profitable benefits.
Strategy 5 - Richness
Years ago a pork producer claimed that they processed "everything but the squeal" implying total system processing, use, and no waste. Modern tree mowers suggest that complete tree harvests are possible. We hasten to use the example of the pigs to recall that at one time there were great wastes. These can be called "unused products" with meaning and little humor.
Harvested or not harvested, a deer is a forest product. The hunting of deer (bow, gun, camera, or sighting) is also potential profit-oriented activity or service. A deer is not one product. It is over aggregated as "deer" because it is glands, flesh, tallow, bones, antlers, hide, and hair … and there is a real (or potential) different market for each part. New Zealand has deer farms and people there export deer parts to China. The annual waste of deer flesh in the U.S. is appalling; the failure to convert hides to useful leather products is equally amazing. These "forest products" can be converted by collection, transportation, processing, and advertising … as in all production systems of products or services … into potential profit, at least not wastes or incurred costs.
A walnut log carried from the forest and processed 300 miles away is a product. That same log sawed in or near the forest into furniture blanks is the same tree, from the same land, but it produced employment, salaries, and taxes in the community near the land. The product we see is not the tree but the furniture blank. Good management involves adding net value locally. Often achieving local economic stability means more than gaining high rates of return on investments. Stabilizing a local work force is a service of a productive managed forest. More importantly, that community stability is a total land service if that land is well managed. Shortsighted investors mine land of its trees or other resources. The trees may grow back; the nearby human community may not. Only management can sustain this other service of the land, i.e., community stability and all of its associated financial and social benefits.
"Richness" is used in ecological circles to mean the number of species present in an area. It is sometimes synonymous with biodiversity or diversity. In a total production system, the emphasis is on many products, a diversified product mix. Why? No sense in overlooking a good bet; no waste; diversity is needed to stabilize. Why not? Only if the discounted costs exceed the discounted gains.
Strategy 6 - Use the Mix
When 100 bushels of X crop has been worth $500 and 100 bushels of Y crop worth $500, then it seems reasonable to invest in both about equally. No sense in putting all of your resources into one crop. If the price of crop Y dipped to $2.50 a bushel, most people would, if they could, shift more of their production to crop X. Few people are pure tree growers, but many grow trees to make money. Even those small private woodland owners that claim that profit is fifth or sixth in importance in a list or reasons why they hold woodland (others include pride of ownership, wildlife and nature, family tradition, recreation) will shift their action and cut trees if the price is right or their financial need is great enough. Finding the value at which they will harvest all of their trees is an interesting academic problem. Land in trees obviously may have a monetary value. Once all costs and alternatives are considered, that value may not be positive. It is reasonable to do at least limited financial analyses on land to provide one basis for relative analyses of potential gains from land. (Such analyses themselves can become a land-related service of Rural System.)
Much literature suggests that forestland owners should " provide for wildlife." The connotation is that other use(s) should be given up. This is not necessary. If single-crop wood production is the criterion for success, then some production will be foregone in the perfectly designed and optimized forest that is maximizing present-net value. There are so few such areas that this is a false criterion. In the few that do exist, change in policy and management within the life of a tree is common. There need not be forestland investment loss when wildlife or other products are used. We suggest there can be a profitable mix of products (but hasten to add that determining the optimum mix is not simple). In a simple two-product example there may be two scenarios:
1. Gross sale of forest production of $100,000 present-discounted at 0.06 after 30 years = $17,411.
2. Forest production from 90% of land in the above example in trees but with 10% devoted to wildlife production and annual returns from hunting-opportunity leases over 30 years at $500 per year results in a present-discounted value of $22,465.
The concept illustrated is not one of tree vs. animal competitors but of mutual or joint production discussed by Teeguarden (1982:276-290) and Hof (1993). Scenario 2 above has a larger present value than scenario 1. The rational decision maker would select it (even though annual income is very conservative and a liberal yield of tree profit is foregone to achieve wildlife benefits). I emphasize: there are multiple valued products from a mix of enterprises and activities with products, and there are annual returns possible in the long periods between traditional tree harvests.
Strategy 7 - Expand the Horizon
The above two scenarios within Rural System also suggest a major way to overcome the income and tax disadvantage of forestry as an investment. When land is managed well for forestland owners, they will get annual reports on gains in product sales and production. They will also receive information on land quality increase, land sale value increase, and tax benefits as well as costs and losses in taxes, poaching, trespass, uncontrolled fire, and other losses. The trivial accounting in scenario 1 and 2 will not meet their needs. To concentrate on the harvest date at the planning horizon as the only productive time of the forest misses one of the points of Rural System. Product harvest dates are spaced throughout the ownership life, providing income incrementally to the owner, whereas timber gives income gained only at a few irregularly spaced harvest times.
Just as "forest" turns thoughts to trees, "land" turns thoughts to terrestrial communities. Forests are often managed as watersheds; there are entire wetland forests; riparian systems are as influenced by water as by land. Land and water are inseparable. The Rural System concept and practice includes ocean estuary, wetlands, rivers, streams, lakes, and ponds as well as croplands and rangelands. These are nameable land units, aggregations, and within them we see the ground for productive enterprises - those producing potentially-profitable products and services…all together.
Strategy 8 - Mix Profitable Products
Other people have listed the many products of the forest and the thousands of things for which wood is used. We feel this awareness is needed and that it should be linked to other aspects of the Rural System paradigm. One key aspect of the paradigm is that a product or service must be recognizable by many people. There are many private, "secret" benefits of forestland, which need not be discussed here. These products need to make a significant difference, and need to have the potential, under reasonable management, to produce a positive estimate of expected present net value. We do not insist upon high profit because of the importance of all land resources as well as the importance of community stability, regional population health, and employment opportunities. Society may invest in some of its land and its people even though a positive conventional net-present-value return may not be obtained.
Rural System strives for a positive financial situation with land services and products. This has not always occurred and thus the "other products" of the forest do not have a positive image. We contend (as part of the Rural System concept), that product enterprises need to be developed. By example, we suggest not optimizing "the forest" or "the total private ownership" but each product enterprise over an optimum number of ownerships, forests, communities, or watersheds. The orientation of the enterprise (rather than of the farm or forest) allows the manager to achieve economies of scale, and economies in exports, storage, transportation, drying, management, health, insurance, advertising, storage, and other functions. The enterprise, alone, does not guarantee profit every year. It does, however, produce income between traditional tree and fruit harvest periods. By using the advantages of a planned, multiple-product enterprise system, one with adequate scale, then cash flow problems are reduced or eliminated when compared to those of the manager of a pure tree-cropping system. Many seasonal problems common in forestry and related enterprises (e.g., the hunting and fishing season, fruiting periods, fire season, etc.) can be reduced by shifting labor and equipment among enterprises. Throughout the year, gender differences in work can be accommodated. Lulls in some markets can be disastrous without the protection of several optimized enterprises working together for their mutual long-term continuance with joint profits. As above, we suggest that employment in meaningful work, with low or zero net discounted gain, may be a modest success criterion.
Strategy 9 -Use and Develop Private Land
Public lands are beset by many problems and have their own staffs and financial support to solve them. The Rural System strategy is one of unified, profit-motivated resource work on private land. We are a land service group but also a land contracting group, for we bring lands under contract for our use in about half of the enterprises such as those of Nature Folks, The Forest Group, The Owls Group, etc. That contract work can appear as if we are using, perhaps exploiting land owners, maybe even the land. We are consciously maximizing our profits over the excessively long (compared to conventional plans) planning period of 150 years. We tend to double the income for them from their unmanaged tracts, and we increase land restoration and productivity because we both experience extra financial gains over time…as well as society receiving the so-called "free benefits" or services listed above.
We work with the private lands of willing owners. We believe that their financial gains will be attractive and overcome slight intrusion onto their land and independence. If not, there are likely to be others standing in the market line. We will not be able to serve them all; they will seek us out later as we become more successful and as rural conditions worsen from energy limitations, increased village and county taxes, and as age reduces current owners' ability to work the land profitably by themselves.
Strategy 10 - Use Computer Simulation
Mathematical and computer models are now well known and widely available. They can be used to represent the processes of a plant, animal, population, machine, or community. A simulation is fundamentally a way to use a mathematical or computer model to answer a specific question, usually like "What if I make this change; what will happen to the major output of the system, the "dependent variable"?" The simulation process may run 500 times, making little changes, perhaps with random values inserted for likely changes in weather, predation, or moisture and the results studied for the changes that might be expected. A simulation might be used to see what possible outcomes result from all possible combinations of a set of variables. A computer spreadsheet program may be used as a simulation to answer ,"What will be the profit if I increase the price, increase the quantity produced, and the numbers bought decreases?" One valuable use of simulation technology is "sensitivity analysis," finding the variable to which the system output is most sensitive to change.
Simulation is an invaluable computer based procedure, useful for education about a large system as well improving a variety of decisions about systems. It is most valuable when a specific objective is not available and consequences (plural) are of interest, often in improving objectives and thus leading to using computer-based "expert system" and optimization techniques that lead to maximizing, minimizing or stabilizing output of a system. Rural System uses optimization most fundamentally to explore thousands of reasonable alternatives periodically and selects the one to minimize the expected difference between desired and actual outcomes of a system over time.
The Dominant Transition Process
Most of the above discussed processes are mental and affect organization of ideas and actions of many types. Some relate to natural system, other to Rural System itself. They relate to perceptions of the system with which we work, how it does and might work. Along with them is a unifying and dominant process called probable transition. A transition is a predictable change over time. It is related to economic production functions but is merely descriptive of the probable change in something over time. It can be declining gasoline mileage with car age, increasing doctor visits with age, increasing wood on an acre over time, or declining erosion after grass density increases on a field. The latter example suggests the integrative nature of "age" or "time," neither of which are functional, just descriptive of change (e.g., erosion as a function of changing density of grass).
We model probable transitions within alpha units over 150 years. We work from a modified concept of "ecological succession," a major part of ecological theory for years (e.g., Clements 1916, Knight 1965: 271-310, Odum 1971: 251-267). There have been revisions, refinements and discussion of whether changes in plant communities are deterministic or probabilistic (Drury and Nisbet 1973, Shaffer 1987, and Murphy and Noon 1991). We hold, based on observations, experience, and the literature that changes are highly predictable in plant communities or aggregates from a pioneer or age-0-to-1 class to a widely recognized potential natural vegetation class. There are multiple, but limited (approx 5) likely natural pathways from "age-zero" to "climax" age-class conditions (Rapp 2003). Areas often exhibit equifinality. The path (or limited set of end states) taken on a site can be estimated given information on abiotic factors and nearby communities and given changes and inputs to the site at different times. The emphasis, however, is not on the path (except in very long-lived, plant-dominating communities with nutrient cycling (Young 1967, Perry 1994) but on the end state. The practical importance of the concept for market-based resources is usually on starting- and end-states. There are multiple pathways to a particular end state, usually with a well-agreed type name. Foresters use "yield curves" to describe the average change in wood volume and weight over time in forest stands. Multiple curves on the same graph show different growth that is based on site quality or "site index."
We have advanced and used a concept of specialized "production functions," succession curves, or yield curves since 1968 (Giles and Snyder 1970). These were described in Giles (1978) and advanced by Waldon (1987) and Giles (2001).
Herein, avoiding major issues with "succession," we use the concept of probable transition. We use alpha units to delineate, describe, and evaluate forest and other sites using concepts of Smalley (1979) and Van Sambeek et al. (2003).
We now believe that every alpha unit is probably unique, and that range and mode statistics on units may serve us well (and better than means). We use supervised classification procedures of remote sensing, controlling on GPS-located and field-named conditions with refinements.
From the literature and from experts (as did Waldon (1987) and with experience within TVA (Giles 1978)) we develop transition "curves," and from these a matrix (spreadsheet software) of probable benefits in each 5-year age for each product of named resource benefit for each named community. Figure 1 (showing smoothed plotted results of an hypothetical histogram of relative production over time) provides additional information.
 |
| Figure 1. Relative productivity of benefits (RP) for example bobwhite quail (Colinus) abundance over time starting at a pioneer (plowed, burned, flooded, etc.) stage. The abundance is graphed (A) and scaled to 1.0 at the maximum achieved, shown as E. The actual abundance is not needed and confidence bands may be broad. Conditions in B are those of A multiplied by a factor reflective of modifying factors of the habitat such as edge length, edge-zone width, and juxtaposition and other spatial-diversity measures. C represents the probable population abundance that is very low or absent within the pine and later hardwood forests typical within the area (for quail, it probably occurs after transition age 15). D reflects losses or declining health resulting from pollution, drought related to global warming, or other system changes. |
Relative productivity or transition curves are approximated, expressed as a proportion of the maximum estimate, then improved along with other parts of the total system. Balance in precision throughout these analyses is essential because gaining extreme precision with one species or type can be very expensive and when such numbers are combined with another one of zero or small probabilities, the gains are canceled. There are within the area about 200 large wild animal species, 2000 plant species. In Virginia (and many other states) there are statewide information system for the animals and plants.
Age and time are of dominant importance in these analyses, ususally contributing more to the expressed estimated outcome than any specific measured ecological factor.
Ignoring loss adjustments and refinements to the curves resulting from "habitat improvements," we can see the potentials in and need for multi-species or community transition curves suggested in Figure 2.
 |
| Figure 2. Given the benefits or (profits) from a curve such as A, then in the same area, there may be an ecosystem-entity producing benefits (4) such as shown by curve B. Assuming these are the only two named benefits from an area, then when these are scaled to 1.0 as above, and when they are assigned weights of relative value or importance (V) then they then become " benefit curves" (not, for example, quail and squirrel curves) and so the weighted and scaled benefits from one area over time can be added. At (1) curve B has zero value and is added to A. The shaded area of (2) is added to values of curve B. The dotted line at (3) is the probable total benefits produced by the area. |
Probable transitions are very well known and values can be improved. Gross terrain analyses and more-gross expressions of objectives, and fluctuating prices and interest rates all argue for system-building but with reasonable approaches to data collection and processing, i.e., the rationally robust (Giles et al. 1993). The curves for many benefits being produced from the same area (alpha units) can become complex as seen in Figure 4.
 |
| Figure 3. Complex or highly irregular curves (many of which are mathematically intractable) can result from various ecosystems and from weights assigned by various users. They are rarely " smooth" as suggested in the inset. At A (year 0-1) there may be substantial benefits (grassy areas, viewscapes. There are many early-succession benefits (e.g., game species), B, but few in the often-dense stems of the emerging forest, C. Many watershed, forest, and wildlife benefits are provided in the " mature forest" as suggested in the region of D. |
 |
| Figure 4. A shows the flow of benefits from the past. A harvest is made from the forest at time B; benefits are temporarily reduced. If there had been no treatment the flow would have been that of the dotted line, D. The new transition curve, C, when added to the residual from the past, restores the relative production of benefits to that existing before the harvest, approximately that at B (cf Bragg 1997:149).
These complex curves (Figure 3) are developed for each alpha unit, (each of the same size) then the manager, with computer, can place them in time (equivalent to moving conditions to pioneer status or cutting a forest stand) and then all such curves are added to achieve the stated "level" objective as suggested by Figure 5. The shape of the transition curves can be influenced by adjacencies, by interspersion indices, and a variety of cultural practices such as fertilizing, irrigating, pruning, etc. |
 |
| Figure 5. The sum of the benefits from an area. Each transition curve can be modeled, each as a row in a matrix, benefits over time. Over a very large area (a farm) there are many curves, each starting in a different year, each with a different height (a function of the area of each ecosystem). The starting time for each can then be simulated, then added to produce curve C. That curve is used for scoring how well the system is doing (Figure 2 above). B here is the line for B*, the desired condition over time, the sustained agro-forestry enterprise system. Upper (A) and lower bound lines for the objective are shown. |
In addition to curvilinear benefits, there may be linear and constant ones, or those linearly-declining with increasing costs and depreciation that result from an objective such as " to create an organization." Once created, it and its linear function are assumed to exist for the entire period or the mean time for similar organizations. These singular actions and events, like the ecosystems, are also added, for they too are producing relative potential benefits from the land ownership.
The optimization occurs when the computer inserts curves of the correct amplitude at the proper time (along the horizontal axis) so that the sum of the areas under all curves will equal to the desired amount Q*. (See Chapter 7). The result is a planning sequence for actions that will achieve the desired benefits over time.
Other optimization, as appropriate, is done typically with modern linear programming, and expert systems.
The Rural System processes are appropriate now and for the future. They have precedence in the forestry and other agricultural systems. They provide the practical ground for using research conclusions. They are a reasonable basis for inter- and multi-disciplinary work …at least for the light that its discussion can bring to current rural problems.
| Table of Contents |
About Rural System |
About the Author | Glossary | Groups of Rural System |
The Country Store | Progress | Contact the Author |