Jambutter’s Recent Comments

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  Given its size, yes it will be difficult for industrial food to effectively scale down to meet the spirit of local, but this will not stop it from trying. The multi-million dollar budget and marketing campaign to position Lay’s as a local product is the tip of what I fear could be a rather large iceberg. Never mind that Frito-Lay uses two billion pounds of potatoes every year. If it can redefine local, then it can slow or stop the threat.

  Yesterday, I posted "10 Reasons Why 'Local' is Challenging Industrial Food", further examining this issue:

  http://everytable.wordpress.com/2009/05/14/10-reasons-why-“local”-is-challenging-industrial-food/

  Cheers,

  Rob Smart

  http://twitter.com/jambutter

  On Lay's: the locavore's junk food? posted 6 months, 2 weeks ago 3 Responses

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  My guess is that messing with industrial agriculture’s profit model is keeping its emissions out of such legislation. The math is pretty simple. Increasing costs in our food chain will be felt by a lot of powerful interests, as well as citizens, many of who have gotten fat (literally in many cases) on cheap food.

  Start with commodity crop farmers that ultimately make money on government subsidies to produce raw materials for the industrial food system. Any regulatory change making it more expensive to grow these crops (think emissions related to fertilizers and pesticides) will ultimately burden taxpayers who are already propping up farmers.

  Next, you run into the industries capitalizing on these subsidized raw materials: livestock and dairy (feed source); and sweeteners, oils and other derivative ingredients found in today’s highly processed foods. Again, as suppliers of materials to value add producers, any increase in their costs will be passed downstream.

  Then there is the fast food industry, which dominates “away from home” consumer food expenditures, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. More expensive raw ingredients, including ground beef, would have a devastating impact. The same goes for major food manufactures, e.g., Kellogg, General Mills, Coca-Cola.

  Having said that, I think capping our unsustainable food system's emissions is exactly what we need. It will challenge America's ingenuity to create alternative and sustainable food systems, something I look forward to being part of.

  On New climate legislation overlooks a major GHG source: industrial ag posted 7 months, 3 weeks ago 21 Responses