We have to keep sending dollars to Kenyan farmers; imagine what would happen if we pulled out!

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

Why is Peter Singer "daft"?  Not because he is a leading proponent of animal rights, I hope? -- is supporting animal rights a sign of immediately excommunicable eccentricity?  (Yes, he is a leader in the field of animal-rights ethics, which is somewhat more than an "enthusiast.")  He does indeed come across as a bit autistic at times.  But generally the way his mind works is impressive and interesting, whether or not we quite agree with him in the end.  It is a misfortune that so many dismiss him at once as being a purveyor of evil counsel.

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!

The size scale of the market within many developing countries has undermined many small farmers.  Small local markets within these countries are being replaced by large grocery stores and chains.  These larger stores demand more production from larger producers.  So many small farmers are being shut out from their own country's marketing system.  And the large growers replacing them are most likely to be the ones with the capacity to export their productions to the developed nations.

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.  

Biodiverst has it right.  The correct way to balance the concerns is through carbon taxes.

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.

In all these discussions -- especially involving food miles -- there is a frequent assumption that exports of agricultural products from the South to the North necessarily involves airplanes. That is not always, and need not, be the case.

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.

...your argument assumes a lot (I don't any modern examples or references), is lazy in its attempts to persuade ('daft' indeed), and is at least partially countered (with a dose of rationality seemingly absent from your own text) in Singer's book.

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.

To those trying to inject rationality into the food export dependence of less developed countries, I suggest you view Darwin's Nightmare, a documentary about the invasive lake perch in Lake Victoria, the European demand for perch filets that necessitates such an imbalanced system, and the impoverished, hungry Tanzanians who are left to chew on the fish carcasses after the filets have been air-cargoed north.

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.

This issue, as so many here on Gristmill, seems to me not one of black & white, but of many shades of the rainbow.  Why is it that we cannot be happy buying local, organic tomatoes in season, while still happily supporting a fair-trade, organic, shade-grown, bird-friendly, non-sweatshop, etc., etc., coffee farmer in Guatemala? Are our moral green codes so strict that they will not allow us to responsibly, and sparingly, indulge in meat from a small, local, humane animal farm?  Can we not enjoy the best of fresh produce in the Northeast all summer long, while still importing the finest olive oil from Greece and Chauteauneuf-du-Pape from France?

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?

On Peter Singer noch einmal: OK, Tom, I think I see how you are using "daft"; it is apparently close to, if not the same as, how I am using "autistic."  The reason my adjective is better than yours in this case (not that I am trying to compete, God forbid!), is that autistic people can say many true and indeed remarkably brilliant things to which we may find it worthwhile to pay attention, whereas the conversation of people called "daft" is simply dismissed as a waste of time.

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!

all winter

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

Yipes!  Visions of those poor young sailors back in the Age of Exploration and Exploitation, snuggling in their cramped hammocks to find the only kind of consolation left to them, even as their teeth were falling out!

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!