In the latest Victual Reality, I addressed the "eat-local backlash" -- the steady trickle of media reports seeking to debunk the supposed social and environmental benefits of eating from one's foodshed.
Some of the charges are easy to refute. Hey, in Maine, it takes more energy to produce hothouse tomatoes in January than it does to ship them up from South America!
Really? Try eating something besides fresh tomatoes in January in Maine. Hell, if you really want Maine tomatoes in January, organize to invest in community-scale canning infrastructure, and then capture July's bounty for the whole year.
There's another charge that's a little trickier to address: that a strict buy-local ethos harms the interests of farmers in the global south. In this view, consumers in the developed nations have a moral duty to buy from farmers in the south, particularly organic ones, so that these farmers can "pull themselves out of poverty," etc.
A wide range of people cling to this view. Whole Foods CEO John Mackey -- when he's not secretly shilling his company's own stock in chat rooms -- brandishes it as evidence of his social responsibility. Peter Singer, that somewhat daft philosopher and animal-rights enthusiast, pushes it too, most recently in his tome The Way We Eat.
Just last week, The Times of London -- a once-great paper turned into a yellow sheet by its owner Rupert Murdoch, who recently got his paws on our own great Wall Street Journal -- gave it a full airing.
Titled, in full Murdochian subtlety, "Organic Farmers Face Ruin as Rich Nations Agonize Over Food Miles," the piece begins thus:
As she proudly surveys a plantation of avocado trees and bananas, surrounded by pools of fresh cow manure, Jane Kimani cuts an unlikely figure as an ecological villain.
Like other farmers in this village, about 15 miles (25km) outside Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, she lives in a modest dwelling of brick walls and a corrugated-iron roof only yards from cow sheds, a new apiary and vegetable plots. She does not own a car and uses little electricity.
She farms organically without knowing it, simply because, like many people in a country where two thirds of the population live on less than 50p a day, she could not afford fertilisers and chemical sprays. Her carbon footprint is insignificant.
Yet Mrs Kimani and her husband, Charles, face economic ruin because of the alleged environmental impact of their modest farm. The Soil Association, which certifies about 80 per cent of organic produce in the United Kingdom, has threatened to take away the organic certification from farms in East Africa because their produce is transported to Europe by air, contributing to global warming.
Now, this is an extremely complex topic, one I plan to return to in detail.
For now, let me recast it in new terms. In the Mackey/Singer/Times view, what we have here is a case of wealthy-nation enviros crassly sticking it to poor-nation farmers, driving them to ruin over an abstraction (lowering one's carbon footprint).
But let's look at it like this: In Kenya, where millions of undernourished, underemployed people choke the slums of Nairobi and Mombasa, should the fertility of the nation's prime farmland, and the efforts of its most ingenious farmers, rightly be used to grow organic tomatoes for consumers in Mother England?
By the same token, should the best farmland of Guatemala and Mexico be devoted to stocking the off-season produce shelves at Whole Foods outlets in the comfy areas of Austin and Manhattan?
To me, it's an insane economic order that sucks food -- and thus soil fertility and farmers' labor power -- out of countries with high levels of poverty and malnourishment. That people in the rich nations can do so with a thunderclap of self-congratulation -- that defies belief.
Now, it's important to note that an economic order that makes Kenyan smallholder farmers seem dependent on British or U.S. consumers for their livelihoods, while their countrymen scrounge for food, didn't arise from nowhere.
For at least 30 years, supranational institutions like the World Bank and the IMF have been subtly and not-so-subtly pushing farmers in the south to produce commodities for the global market -- a policy that has led very few out of poverty, but has instead caused a rural economic meltdown and the rise of megacities ill-equipped to absorb the literally hundreds of millions of people who have been pushed off the land.
That's a topic I addressed on my old blog, Bitter Greens Journal -- and one I plan to return to soon.
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Comments
View as Flat
David Roberts Posted 2:11 pm
17 Aug 2007
We have to stay in Iraq; imagine what would happen if we pulled out!
One thing's for sure, right? The brown people just can't live without our tender ministrations.
grist.org
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:30 pm
17 Aug 2007
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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caniscandida Posted 2:38 pm
17 Aug 2007
Anyway, this subject is interesting and complicated, and it would be more satisfying if we got a more neutral introduction to it, rather than being ushered simply into the mind of Tom Philpott. Of course Tom is wise, brilliant, gifted, etc., and we shall probably end up agreeing with him. But please let us work that out for ourselves.
On another matter, one of no great importance, which you professional journalists know all about: What exactly does "yellow sheet" mean? In the context of the "paws" of Rupert Murdoch, I am thinking of how we might put on the floor a piece of newspaper for a puppy to pee on. But surely that is not right, is it?
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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Jason D Scorse Posted 3:12 pm
17 Aug 2007
And David, playing the faux paternalism card, that somehow it's condescending to assume that brown people need to export to rich nations is bizarre. No one is suggesting that. All economists and other development specialists are saying is that many agricultural economies will never be able to move to higher value-added products and raise material standards of living if they are cut off from foreign markets. That's all.
What's condescending is for rich white people in the North to somehow think that these people want to remain as peasants working in fields for the next 100 years in order to satisfy some strange notion of "being close to the Earth" and not overly "materialistic" that is concocted almost entirely in the mind of rich environmentalists.
I teach environmental economics and blog at http://www.voicesofreason.info.
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Pangolin Posted 6:19 pm
17 Aug 2007
Simplistic? Please. How do you explain that Kenya is exporting food to that 10 percent of the population that is malnourished? Tell THEM that the food from the field in front of them will travel overseas by jet aircraft so that the wealthy members of the population can purchase I-phones, laptops and medicines that will be withheld from them.
I believe in Nigeria, Iraq and Afghanistan the local populations have evolved a response to extractive economics that leave the local populace impoverished. It seems to involve a lot of nitro-cellulose and trinitrotoluene applied to resource extraction assets.
Extraction of local assets for foriegn markets where the local population is not getting basic needs met always has the hidden tax of military and paramilitary infrastructure required to suppress local populations. (see colonial america, haitian rebellion, Boer war, Indochinese conflict, etc). These taxes are both energetic, (food, fuel, fertilizer) and economic, (subsidies, wage-suppression, labor suppression, preferential tax schemes) and are generally paid by the general populace in order to benefit a few privilidged individuals (the wealthy) in the form of "profit."
In short, even organic imports of commodity crops are subsidized by the poor of both the import and export countries in order to increase the wealth of the very few rich. We're starving poor folks at the point of a gun so you can get those "organic" bananas.
Enjoy.
Put the Carbon Back
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justlou Posted 9:50 pm
17 Aug 2007
So, the economic forces driving bigness in production and marketing are more at the bottom of the problem than any of these organic standards issues. This is one reason why I am skeptical about biofuels helping the poor in the third world. Sure, they might find jobs on the big energy plantations but to think they are going to have ownership or share greatly in the profits of these mega enterprises is ignoring the fact that bigness and efficiency are the driving forces in today's world. The industrialization of the landscape is proceeding to all corners of the world. And our demands here, Globalization Central, are driving the trend.
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Glenn Hurowitz Posted 3:00 am
18 Aug 2007
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nedruod Posted 4:49 pm
18 Aug 2007
The truth is some local eating can be good, but 100% would create all the problems you attempt to discount.
Does the third world need us? Depends on what you mean by need. If we pack up and leave and become isolationist, suffering will initially rise. Likely they won't entirely depopulate, but it could be a long time before anything improves (think Europe in the dark ages). The simple truth is too many people are alive in the third world to be supported without technology which we control. Simple things, like water, for example, which even with the limited amount of technology that has been traded or given is still woefully inadequate.
If you want to stop buying food from third world regions, you should definitely plan to increase investment in the area either through charity or development, or ideally both. I've always thought the solution to the problems of the third world lied in charitable organizations supporting economic development, rather than replacing it. That idea is more and more prevalent these days, and I've seen some benefits from it.
Anyhow, short form, it's a complicated situation, and you're not completely right. More importantly, you're attacking the problem through the most superficial means if all you're doing is trying to insure all your food is grown locally. Also important is that by doing this as an individual action, you may be accomplishing no more than making Guatemalan tomatoes cheaper for the average consumer.
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Ron Steenblik Posted 6:16 pm
18 Aug 2007
But one of the features of the current world trading system that discourages developing countries from engaging in more value-added processing -- in carbon terms, transforming their produce into something that can be shipped by boat rather than jet -- are import tariffs applied by developed countries that are much higher on processed products than raw products.
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ClickClickClank Posted 10:37 am
19 Aug 2007
It is one thing to defend the 'buy local' ethos. It is another entirely to suggest that buying goods from impoverished nations produced under Fair Trade or SA8000 certification is tantamount to propping up a military regime.
And just to be clear, Singer talks about Fair Trade Certified goods, not just any crops. The lengths to which the certification goes to ensure the protection of the producers are extensive.
Also, seasonality affects not only crops grown in the US. Without money, or crops to trade, how does the producer whose land does not support tomatoes or grain for 3 months of the year hope to survive? To say 'they can grow everything for themselves' sounds a bit too much like 'let them eat cake' for my liking.
Whatever you think of it, we live in a global free-market economy. To suggest that a country and its people can participate in that economy when we are busy shoring up all the funds makes no kind of sense.
I think Singer's rationale could best be summed up in the following order of enviro/ethical preference;
Local Organic Seasonal
Imported Fair Trade Organic Seasonal (pref non-air freight)
Local Organic
Non-air freight Imported Organic
Local
Non-air freight Imported
Imported
The primary purpose of the 'eat local' philosophy is to preserve the environment and support local produce. I do not think that buying out of season produce from Fair Trade certified growers in third world countries need necessarily be viewed as counter to either of those goals.
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Brudaimonia Posted 12:27 pm
19 Aug 2007
Something is to be said for self-sufficiency in economic regions. Of course, almost since the dawn of civilization has there been trade, and no region can be 100% self-sufficient, but to rely on exporting goods in order to buy other goods abroad is playing with fire.
In Cities and the Wealth of Nations, Jane Jacobs stresses the importance of import replacement with locally made goods, so as to not be dependent on the whims of outside markets. She makes the case of Uruguay, which after World War II was heavily dependent on exporting meat and a few other goods. When European economies rebounded and started producing their own meat, Uruguay's economy took a huge hit because of its export dependence. It was not ready to manufacture the goods it formerly had the money to import, and inflation and poverty grew.
We have more of a moral obligation to help less developed countries become primarily self-reliant than to perpetuate their dependence on foreign markets. I'm not advocating abolishing food trade, and I wholeheartedly support buying Fair Trade (especially for specialty products), but it should be an exception to the rule of each region producing most of its food for itself.
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Tom Philpott Posted 9:49 am
20 Aug 2007
Too often in quote-unquote developing nations, there's much more investment in food-distribution infrastructure that moves food out of countries than there is in infrastructure for moving food from rural areas to urban ones. These investment decisions tend to be made based on deals between national elites and transnational institutions. Smallholder farmers aren't consulted.
I'd like to see aid polices that consult smallholder farmers, leverage their knowledge, and try to link their interests with those of urban dwellers.
As for Singer and his daftness, I can't abide by his Puritanical disregard, or even disdain, for pleasure. For example, in The Way We Eat, he lays out a vision for "animal-free meat" that I find chilling. He conjures up an image of a "vast lump of meat, hundreds of feet across, growing in a culture fed on algae." He laments that with current technology, "producing muscle tissue in a laboratory equates to $5 million per kilogram," but holds out hope that one day such a process will be economical enough to "supply the entire world with meat." He awards the project with his highest accolade: "we can see no ethical objection to it."
He thus proposes hyper-industrial food production as a remedy for the ravages of industrial food production. To that (yes, daft) vision of a meatless future, I reply: pass the rice and beans.
Victual Reality
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kmp Posted 1:35 pm
20 Aug 2007
I can remember, as a kid, that oranges in winter were a true luxury - something you found in the top of your Christmas stocking and rarely anywhere else. OK - so have your tomatoes in Maine in February - just be prepared to pay $20 for one of them. I'm perfectly in favor of indulgence, and perfectly OK with the import of non-local or non-seasonal foods, so long as people pay the true cost (carbon, shipping & production costs) for these items. IMO, charging the true cost would turn tomatoes (and oranges, and bananas) in winter back into luxury items - occassionally splurged upon for a special occasion, but not relied upon for every meal.
Not black, not white, sometimes brown... but shades of every food stuff there is. What's so wrong with that?
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Brudaimonia Posted 2:24 pm
20 Aug 2007
Good point, kmp. I think what Tom is arguing against is regularly importing a large percentage of our food, organic or not, from long distances.
No one is harping about supplementing seasonal food from farmers' markets with some Fair Trade, organic specialty food products. Indeed, goods like coffee or tea have less of a carbon impact from transportation, because they are relatively light in weight; in fact, when we drink Guatemalan coffee, it's mostly local due to the water we use to brew it.
What's not sustainable is getting most of your diet from Cascadian Farms or other large organic brands. Consider Chad Heeter's article, My Saudi Arabian Breakfast:
Coming from another hemisphere, my raspberries take an even longer fossil-fueled journey to my neighborhood. Though packaged in a plastic bag labeled Cascadian Farms (which perhaps hints at a birthplace in the good old Cascade mountains of northwest Washington), the small print on the back, stamped "A Product of Chile," tells all -- and what it speaks of is a 5,800-mile journey to Northern California.
This is a good example of why local beats organic, ceteris paribus.
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caniscandida Posted 7:26 am
21 Aug 2007
We should remember that "The Way We Eat" has two authors: Singer, and another leader in animal-rights ethics, Jim Mason. Their suggestion about producing an artificially cultured something-or-other that is physically the same as "meat," but involving no abuse and slaughter of sensitive living creatures, might or might not be a joke and nothing more. But I suspect a large part of their point is precisely to get people such as yourself to react by throwing back such judgmental adjectives as "chilling." That reaction is what is really interesting here. What is "chilling" about eating their true-but-false meat, which is not "chilling" about eating true-and-traditional blood-spattered-slaughterer-friendly meat, since samples of either, when served on the plate, do not resemble parts of living, breathing animals at all? You need to ask yourself that. And by provoking that kind of self-examination, Peter Singer proves himself to be an admirable idiot-savant indeed (to use a rightfully out-of-fashion term), however little we may like to have him over as a guest at dinner.
In general, I agree with what you, and our always excellent latitudinarian commenter KMP, have to say about trade, and ethical global responsibility.
One ethical desideratum that I consider important, up there with the local-is-generally-preferable-to-exotic (well, not everyone would agree that ethics comes into it), is encouraging the sense of seasonality, the traditional wisdom that we eat different things at different times of the year. The other side of that coin, of course, is discouraging the self-entitled habit of us in the world's rich countries, which seeks to deny seasonality, and to get whatever we want to eat whenever we want it.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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wackatalpidae Posted 7:47 am
21 Aug 2007
beef
carrots
potatoes
venison when the beef runs out
canned what ever else you can grow during the rest of the year
scurvy
what me worry
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caniscandida Posted 8:25 am
21 Aug 2007
Meanwhile, though, how were the people back home on the mainland getting on? No scurvy there, we suppose. To paraphrase "Jurassic Park"'s Malcolm: Civilization Finds a Way.
"Oh yeah, but then, anyone who lived past his/her fortieth birthday was considered surprisingly long-lived."
Well, perhaps. We should certainly study how health, longevity and trade are inter-related. Generally in antiquity, there could be an abundance in one valley and a famine over the hill in the next (or so I am told), and there was little for the starving population to do to relieve their hunger.
In classical antiquity, prior to the growth of the city of Rome, Italians were apparently able to feed themselves fairly well enough. Following that growth during the late Republic and the Empire, however, it was necessary to import grain to the residents of Rome from Egypt, and control of the grain shipments became an important political bargaining chip.
Of course I am not advocating that we are ethically required to go hungry at certain times of the year, or to get malnutrition-related diseases. But on the other hand, I am hoping that we not confuse "health" with "hedonism."
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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