Translations:Manfred Klett: Von der Agrartechnologie zur Landbaukunst/91/en

From agriculture there emerge products — above all foodstuffs — for which every human being has daily need. These enter into a relationship of value with industrial goods, that is, commodities produced through division of labour, and this relationship is reflected in price. The price of the industrial product is subject to reduction as division of labour advances. If such a price is already incalculable owing to fluctuating environmental conditions, pest calamities, and so on, then the process of price formation for agricultural products remains entirely in the dark. For the endowment — that is, the generative force — of every agricultural farm organism is different from every other. Without a balancing of prices in the framework of economically associative groupings, in which «der Wert der Ware durch ihr gegenseitiges Verhältnis bestimmt wird» ("the value of the commodity is determined by its reciprocal relationship"),12 every farm would then have to have its own market prices. In practice this is approximated in the CSA movement.13