The Siracusa problem: primarization and development are not different things
The Syracuse problem is one of the simplest and seemingly unsolvable problems in mathematics. It’s incredibly simple, such that anyone who can add, divide, and multiply can understand it. It works with any number attempted, and so far, no one has been able to refute it or come up with a counterexample.
ChatGPT explains it like this:
Take any positive integer n.
If n is even, divide it by 2 to get n/2.
If n is odd, multiply n by 3 and add 1 to get 3n + 1.
Continue this process with the resulting number, repeating steps 2 and 3 successively. The Collatz conjecture states that, regardless of the initial positive integer chosen, the sequence of operations will always eventually reach 1 and remain in a cycle of 4, 2, 1.
For example, starting with n = 6, the sequence would be: 6, 3, 10, 5, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1.
*It’s also named after the German mathematician who originally proposed it in 1937, Lothar Collatz.
Here’s the parallel. In all types of literature, mathematical metaphors are used to explain situations. If philosophy is the mother of all sciences, mathematics is the common language through which it has instructed all its offspring. I encountered this problem when I watched the movie “Incendies,” used as symbolism for the story’s argument.
In the case of this article, I enjoyed using it to understand that often — in life itself — we don’t realize that all solutions tend towards one, and we mistake them for different paths. Because often they are not; by applying analysis steps to a set of them, they inexorably tend towards just one.
The Straw House
A partially primary-based economy isn’t necessarily the straw house of the Three Little Pigs fable. We’ve been observing political trends in Latin America that establish primary production as opposed to sovereignty, progress, or sustainable development. The production of primary goods was the role assigned to our lands during colonial times in exchange for luxury goods imports, yes, but several ex-colonies worldwide have redefined this role, making it part of their people’s identity and leveraging it to grow. It’s necessary to set aside moralistic structures about which compatriots are responsible for a nation’s delay.
A few years ago, when Danilo Astori was Minister of Economy, he complained that we often fell into a “useless and harmful discussion about the ‘primarization’ of production” in Uruguay, adding that “it gives the impression that producing food was negative.” We’ll soon have elections; we’ll be choosing our country’s leadership again without abandoning the false scenario that one of the two predominant options supports primarization and the other rejects it.
It’s also not the idea to argue this with the classic data of agricultural gross domestic product, generated employment, indirect jobs, relative contribution, etc. We already know that agriculture is the main engine of the economy. The issue here is whether we think it’s good or desirable for it to be so. Or if we believe that this is the impediment to our takeoff. Or if a politician who invests in the service sector development might be interested in genuinely engaging with some of these actors or even considering them strategic allies. Could they be?
Industrialization is the promised land of development advocates. Many authors place their hopes for prosperity in it, and this may be true. But it should be noted that the countries that achieved high levels of relative growth in recent decades — Asia and Oceania — did not do so by substituting strategies of one sector over another (incentive or strategic discussion). On the contrary; this was done in absolute synergy. The substitution discourse locally is often brought from Peronist rhetoric, with understandable justification due to terrible conflicts happening in the neighboring country with the land-owning oligarchy and its conflict of interest with the industry. But it’s not linearly extrapolatable to our reality. We don’t have their industry, their lands, their size, or exactly the same conflicts of interest (there are some, but they’re different).
It’s also honest to say that many of those countries that made leaps in their development received substantial aid. But it’s not true that we can’t seek some of that through cooperation. It’s time to stop putting the laws of economics ahead of nature and understand that these are circumscribed by physical laws, that there are true limits threatening the viability of our systems. The only way to make them last is through innovation that allows them to adapt to climate change and make production viable over time. Also, innovation should allow us to evaluate the impact they generate with our own models.
Agri and Innovation
Let’s bring a clear example of how agriculture and innovation are connected in this country. A few days ago, the former rector of the University of the Republic, Engineer Rafael Guarga, was at the Faculty of Agronomy presenting his book “A History of the Future,” where he encourages young people to study scientific careers. Rafael Guarga is internationally recognized for his innovative career, and one might think that his contribution and approach have nothing to do with a faculty that studies how cows graze. This is a serious mistake. Engineer Guarga’s immense contribution to humanity came through an invention patented in several countries: the Selective Inverted Sump (SIS), a device with multiple applications in agriculture, industry, and transportation (now marketed by FrostProtection). But it’s crucial to highlight that his invention was originally motivated by an agronomic problem: mitigating the impact of frosts. National innovation has an essential repository in our identity-producing matrix; in rural areas, creativity knows no bounds.
There are many ways in which gains from the development of industry or the service sector can be reinvested in the productive matrix to achieve resilient primary systems that produce with technology that maximizes resource efficiency and maintains sufficiency levels to make systems viable. This is a synergy between raw material production and the rest of the economy that allows us to preserve our identity as a countryside country, a long-term vision that doesn’t deprive future generations of pride in food production and the ability to live off it while regenerating the nature that provides resources.
Identity Matrix and Technological Gap
We have our resources, and these identify us. Sánchez Proaño — a recognized Ecuadorian researcher on environmental economics — explains that society-nature metabolism is conditioned by the available resources of a region and constitutes a distinct identity footprint for each society. The revisionist reestablishment of our identity as producers of raw materials and systematic denial (by action or omission of the narrative) leads us to a senseless vacuum and can result in greater conflict and social rupture when superimposing country models.
It’s not primarization itself that places us in subordination to the developed world, but the permanent dogmatic logic that the market will redistribute the wealth that our production generates through the labor of our compatriots.
It’s the neoliberal management of economic development that we must combat, not our roots and identity. The belief that by abandoning our primary bases and fully replacing them with an indefinite “high-value-added diversification” we will position ourselves as a developed power is a false dichotomy.
The technological gap is generated by a cognitive monopoly that prevents us from reaping the benefits of endogenous development. Endogenous development is often associated solely with industrialization, but not seeing how fully carrying it out is crucial for advancing the agricultural and livestock sector or the benefits it could bring to society as a whole. Addressing this gap in this sector could more than compensate for the image of a sector that “doesn’t create value” or “lags behind.” Multiple examples in developed countries show the enormous benefits of technifying primary production while addressing territorial specificities.
Structural change in our country had significant effects on the growth of all sectors. Undoubtedly, industrial policy also managed to benefit the agricultural and livestock sector, which certainly supported its impetus in the 1930s. But after the ISI model came neoliberalism, and after that, we haven’t managed to have the long-term vision needed for the economic development debate (as well expressed in this reading).
The “technological package” importation — fertilizers, herbicides, agrochemicals, genetics, etc. — is often rejected and questioned as a cause of dependence and weakening of our development. Applying the words of Judith Sutz and Rodrigo Arocena in the book “Underdevelopment and Innovation: Sailing Against the Wind” (2003), the appropriation of knowledge by developed countries makes us confuse what is a value judgment on technology itself with the destabilization caused by “social processes of generation, appropriation, use, and control of knowledge.” It’s not the progress or technology itself that we should reject but its imposition under market logic to those of us who depend on it to produce, without necessarily being fully adapted to our needs.
The incorporation of these imported technological packages to produce requires political guidance with notions of sovereignty, without neglecting pragmatism. We can’t adopt any path at any price. But without understanding the needs of producers, it’s very difficult to make this decision assertively.
At the same time, the necessary knowledge to generate national innovation is often gestated but flounders. There aren’t enough formal mechanisms for transferring basic knowledge generated in universities, innovation, and its implementation through the state or the private sector. There’s a real opportunity in all the research we waste, in the innovation that seeps and emerges from various places, which could be giving much more impetus to our systems (such as the invention of the former rector).
Consolidation
Primarization ceases to be fragile as it establishes proactive relationships with the rest of the economy and manages to incorporate the innovation process. The volatility of commodity prices stops having a backlash effect on the country as the sector differentiates its export products, adds value, and consolidates the country’s brand through state policies. The generation of employment by the sector still has a huge impetus to take, especially concerning the incentives it receives. But the same applies to the manufacturing industry; that is, it’s not because one sector is more capable than another of seizing the opportunities that public management administers.
In conclusion, we cannot allow the market to manage development or let the biased vision of development perpetuate fractures between rural and urban areas, thinking that one is responsible for the other’s woes. Bringing to the table aspects like possible feedback in stimulating various sectors and ceasing to associate one or the other with “progress” is fundamental for sovereign growth that considers our own characteristics. Different sectors need to identify key problems of each to — as Sutz and Arocena say — “grasp the specificity of the situation” and apply specific solutions, and the primary sector is far from being an exception. We’re not only gambling on the possibility of continuing to live according to our traditions sustainably but also on finally ceasing to see so many compatriots not enjoying the fruits of our hard work. The strategic application of innovation for subsequent benefit redistribution offers a light at the end of the tunnel in this regard.
This column was published in La Diaria on 08/22/2023.
Article in Spanish here
References
Arocena, R. y Sutz, J. (2003). Subdesarrollo e innovación. Navegando contra el viento. Cambridge University Press.
M. Lavalleja y F. Scalese, “Los incentivos y apoyos públicos a la producción en el Uruguay”, serie Estudios y Perspectivas-Oficina de la CEPAL en Montevideo, N° 45 (LC/TS.2020/11-LC/MVD/TS.2019/8), Santiago, Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), 2020.
Román, C. Willebald, H. (2019) “Structural change in a small natural resource intensive economy. Switching between diversification and reprimarization”. Serie Documentos de Trabajo, DT 31/2019. Instituto de Economía, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Administración, Universidad de la República, Uruguay.
Sánchez Proaño, R. (2021). Análisis de la primarización de la economía en América Latina desde la base material del método dialéctico . ConcienciaDigital, 4(3.2), 79–94. https://doi.org/10.33262/concienciadigital.v4i3.2.1852
