With the spreading credit crunch rocking the world economy to its foundations, the pundits are falling over themselves to advise solutions, with a particular emphasis on the banking sector. Quick fixes, such as more supervision and curbs on bonuses, abound. But some analyses go deeper, suggesting that our economic system is fundamentally flawed and ripe for a radical overhaul. Herman Wijffels is among those who see the crisis as a great opportunity to re-examine all those ‘truths’ we take for granted.

In recent weeks my mind has been exercised by a book written by two journalists, Frank Mulder and Freek Koster, entitled ‘Is Growth Really Necessary?’ To many, that may sound a nonsensical question. Of course growth is necessary: to build prosperity, to keep businesses healthy, and to create jobs. No growth, no progress, they say. The clock is stopped and that can’t be right. What’s more, without growth there won’t be enough funds to tackle other problems, such as climate change.

But their book systematically shows that what seems obvious at first may, on closer analysis, proves much less logical. Could it just be that we have become prisoners of our own convictions? Convictions that we are loathe to question, because that would mean letting go of our old certainties and seeking new truths.

The book has set me thinking. Whilst working on new concepts for sustainable regional agriculture, I constantly came up against the question whether it is possible to set up an economic system that ensures the proper management of common goods, such as soil, water, air and landscape, while simultaneously guaranteeing farmers a decent income. Because that is one of the tensions facing agriculture. More attention for nature and landscape, so many say, leads to a higher cost price or lower revenues. And the consensus is that farms need scale to survive in the longer term. But is that necessarily true? Isn’t it just as plausible that the current economic system compels farmers to grow? And wouldn’t it be a great challenge to seek a system that is not exclusively growth-driven? Production on a human scale. But the next question, of course, is: what would that system look like?

More and more critics are questioning the logic of our methods for measuring economic production. When many people have a mental breakdown because of an excessive workload and have to seek help, then economic production increases in our current system – because the number of mental health jobs rises. Which is a little odd, to say the least. Another consideration is that the harmful environmental impact of our economic production is not reflected in the cost price. An environmental permit basically gives industries an historical mandate to emit emissions, even if nature and the environment suffer as a consequence. Such environmental impacts are not expressed in the cost price of products.

In this sense, agriculture is an exciting field of study – because it combines rational production methods and the management of common goods. We now have an agriculture system where public goods are managed through private companies. Can that be arranged otherwise? And can we think of solutions that not only innovate agriculture, but also spawn new economic systems? The crisis as an opportunity: that’s worth thinking about.