Translations:Manfred Klett: Von der Agrartechnologie zur Landbaukunst/83/en

For industry it holds that the means of production does not renew itself. The place of its manufacture is separated from the place of its performance. The industrial production process consumes finite raw material and energy resources; it generates waste, and the means of production themselves are subject to wear and decay. Refuse arises that, insofar as it cannot be returned to the energy and raw-material cycle except at great cost, accumulates on earth as a mortgage against distant future times (nuclear waste, for instance), burdens water and air, and throws the heat balance out of equilibrium. Industrial production is subject to limits of growth; its energy and raw-material balance is negative. The less nature has a share in industrial production — the more, that is, human intelligence dominates the manufacturing process, as in the case of computer chip production — the more articulated through division of labour the process becomes, and the more independent of a specific location. In theory, high-technology products could be manufactured at any arbitrary place on earth — on an artificial island in the sea, for instance — and from there the worldwide demand for these products could be met.