Food Miles is a Crock

[JohnL]

Much of the world's population does not live in areas where local sustainable (we won't bother with the convoluted definitions) makes any sense.

So you won't accuse me of "zenophobia" let's take the New York metropolitan area.

It is nice to have more produce that is locally grown available--farmer's markets are a good thing. But to think that a population of twenty or thirty million (and expanding) is going to be fed largely from these farms is sheer folly. especially where there is a relatively short growing season.

There is simply not enough land for these farms.

I don't think this is prima facia true. If it were, human society wouldn't have survied a single generation before the advent of modern farming and distribution systems. The entire world had not choice but to eat locally and put food by for off seasons for centuries.

But I think you're correct in the sense that the way society is structured now is inextricably linked to global distribution networks and economies of scale, and thus the shift towards purchasing locally will not work from the top down.

I think the original argument is flawed, because if you assume that a consumer will either be driving to a supermarket or driving to an equidistant farmer's market or CSA distribution point, fuel usage on the end is equal. If I drive to the farm to pick up my produce at the point of origin, I've saved fuel. If I pick a salad from my garden, I've saved fuel. You also didn't take into account the amount of fossil fuel consumed in the industrial growing process versus a small farm where much of the labor is human rather than fuel intensive. Interesting thought excercise though, to be sure.

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Good points. As I see it this is a matter of consequences and trade offs.

You are right in noting that human society was once basically agrarian. Keep in mind that the world's population as well the distribution of that populaton was much smaller. What worked then will not logistically work now not so much for how society is structured but rather the sheer size of it.

Not that we can not learn from what worked in the past--we should.

Forests once gave way to farms which --for better or worse--are giving way to housing and industry. I see technology as a good thing--a way to facilitate a balance between what was good in the past and what will work now.

[JohnL]

The growing season in the Hudson Valley is neither terribly long nor terribly short. The CSA I get produce from delivers for 24 weeks, roughly half the year. It's not hard to imagine taking half the delivery each week and freezing, canning or otherwise preserving it (in frozen soups, etc) so as to be able to eat vegetables and fruits for the other half of the year.

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would that be the fat guy, or the mrs. fat guy who is going to give up their job to manage the homestead?

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Another factor would be the cost.

Say there was eough land

What would the food cost in terms of money? Do we go for the organic free range chicken at six bucks a pound or do we improve the mass market chicken and keep the price down.

What would be the cost in terms of the environment--even sustainable farms create problems--water run off--my understanding is that the Chesapeake Bay has been dramatically impacted by farms.

Also--odors.

Anyone who has driven route 78 across central Pennsylvania knows what I am talking about.

How much and in what ways would our lives change going back to a more agrarian society?

[Jensen]

Another factor would be the cost.

Say there was eough land

What would the food cost in terms of money?

You mean without the massive farm subsidies? Those of us who shop at the grocery store don't pay the real cost of food now.

How much and in what ways would our lives change going back to a more agrarian society?

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I had an "out there" idea last week that shopping outside the industrial foodway is an inherently subversive act.

The US didn't become a major world power until after World War II. That rise to power and increase in wealth coincided with the beginning of farm subsidies and the subsequent decrease in price of food.

What would happen to this country's wealth if all of its residents had to start paying the real cost of food? And without wealth, would a decrease in power be far behind?

[moosnsqrl]

I find it amusing that this seems like such a foreign concept. I am hardly ancient, yet I remember a time when fresh fish and seafood wasn't available in the midwest. Do I want to go back to that time? Sometimes I think I would like to - it made travel much more special.

True, I cannot remember life without bananas and citrus fruits, but I believe we were eating far more seasonally and what we were eating came from nearer here, because the vast network of subsidized farming, trucking and shipping was not yet developed. Why is it so hard to imagine living this way again?

If the objection is (as I suspect) being lectured-to by the 'lunatic fringe', then I suggest turning the other cheek. If you really, truly believe that year-round everything coming from everywhere is better than seasonal eating . . . that's a different story and I urge you to not throw the proverbial baby out with the bath water. Eating parsnips, rutabaga and the like isn't so bad and it makes you really appreciate the spring stuff when it arrives (and, subsequently, the summer and again the fall).

[ghostrider]

The food-miles issue that irks me is the expenditure of resources on shipping bottles of wine all over the globe. What a waste! Do we really need this stuff?

(Beer, of course, is another matter altogether.)

[srhcb]

What would happen to this country's wealth if all of its residents had to start paying the real cost of food? And without wealth, would a decrease in power be far behind?

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Who pays the "real cost" for our food now?

I'd like to thank them.

SB

[Fat Guy]

would that be the fat guy, or the mrs. fat guy who is going to give up their job to manage the homestead?

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As a card-carrying Costco member who buys Chilean extra-pesticide cherries in winter I can say there's no danger of either of us giving up the jobs we don't have in order to put up a six month supply of preserves. Still, I think there's a tendency to overstate the case against local, seasonal foods. It's not like when you cross the California border you all of a sudden can't get any fresh food in winter. The chickens still lay eggs, or you can kill the chickens and eat them. The cows still give milk, or you can kill the cows and eat them. The pigs, well, you can just kill them and eat them. There's plenty of delicious food all year round, even in New Jersey.

[srhcb]

would that be the fat guy, or the mrs. fat guy who is going to give up their job to manage the homestead?

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The chickens still lay eggs, or you can kill the chickens and eat them. The cows still give milk, or you can kill the cows and eat them. The pigs, well, you can just kill them and eat them. There's plenty of delicious food all year round, even in New Jersey.

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People usually wouldn't kill the chicken until it stopped laying eggs, or the cow when it stopped giving milk. Unfortunately this coincided with their lowpoint as a desirable food product.

Also, while chickens may only eat "chickenfeed", it costs something, as does hay.

Pigs eat scraps, and I don't know how they decided when to butcher them, but I suspect it had more to do with bulk than succulence? And remember, once you've killed and eaten your animal it was gone forever, and had to be replaced.

The agrarian economy was historically crude and brutal for the vast majority, and still is in many parts of the world. We're lucky to have missed it, or, if we wish to, and are wealthy enough, to be able to create a romantic facsimile of it if.

SB

[Fat Guy]

Mr. Return to Agrarian Society is a straw man; he's not posting here and he's not all that common in the literature. I just think it's stupid that I can go to my local market at the height of apple season and nine tenths of the apples on display are from the Northwest or from other countries altogether. They certainly don't taste better than New York apples by the time they get schlepped all the way here -- I doubt they even tasted better right off the tree at the point of origin, since they're from stock bred to be shippable, attractive and long-lasting. I don't know, I guess somebody somewhere figured out that if you grow a zillion apples in Washington and ship all of them across the country at the lowest possible per-apple cost they wind up being a few cents a pound cheaper than apples grown in New York. But they suck, and it's a big waste to ship apples from Washington to New York when we have plenty of better apples here.

[srhcb]

Mr. Return to Agrarian Society is a straw man; he's not posting here and he's not all that common in the literature. I just think it's stupid that I can go to my local market at the height of apple season and nine tenths of the apples on display are from the Northwest or from other countries altogether. They certainly don't taste better than New York apples by the time they get schlepped all the way here -- I doubt they even tasted better right off the tree at the point of origin, since they're from stock bred to be shippable, attractive and long-lasting. I don't know, I guess somebody somewhere figured out that if you grow a zillion apples in Washington and ship all of them across the country at the lowest possible per-apple cost they wind up being a few cents a pound cheaper than apples grown in New York. But they suck, and it's a big waste to ship apples from Washington to New York when we have plenty of better apples here.

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If all the apples eaten in New York were home grown, what would the increased orchard space have displaced?

SB (wasn't Straw Man in the Wizard of Oz? )

[Jensen]

What would happen to this country's wealth if all of its residents had to start paying the real cost of food? And without wealth, would a decrease in power be far behind?

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Who pays the "real cost" for our food now?

I'd like to thank them.

SB

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Look in the mirror, bud. It's the taxpayer!

[russ parsons]

Mr. Return to Agrarian Society is a straw man; he's not posting here and he's not all that common in the literature. I just think it's stupid that I can go to my local market at the height of apple season and nine tenths of the apples on display are from the Northwest or from other countries altogether. They certainly don't taste better than New York apples by the time they get schlepped all the way here -- I doubt they even tasted better right off the tree at the point of origin, since they're from stock bred to be shippable, attractive and long-lasting. I don't know, I guess somebody somewhere figured out that if you grow a zillion apples in Washington and ship all of them across the country at the lowest possible per-apple cost they wind up being a few cents a pound cheaper than apples grown in New York. But they suck, and it's a big waste to ship apples from Washington to New York when we have plenty of better apples here.

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It may only be a few cents difference--i'm inclined to think it's a lot more since the cost of farming is far greater than the cost of transportation--but even so, that's the measure by which most americans buy their food today. you can bemoan it all you want (and i do, frequently), but the fact is that we pay 11% of take-home pay for food--less than half of the wwii figure-- and yet most people's primary concern about the food supply is that it costs too much.

if i might suggest a solution, it would be to dump the cherries, get out of line at costco and go to the farmers market and support the few people who are still growing those new york apples you love so much. it's more trouble and it might wind up being a few cents more, but you'll almost certainly have better tasting apples. if you're not willing to do that, you really shouldn't be complaining.

[danf]

To me just focusing on the fuel aspect of local/global food debate seems kind of short sighted, no matter which side your coming from. While I'm not an agriculturist there seems to be a lot of other byproducts or side-products (to awkwardly coin a term) of agriculture that effect life and the environment as much as fuel consumption. Just like driving a hybrid car doesn't really won't solve any problems in the oil producing areas of the world, by local food kind of misses the forest for the trees. There's a lot more than just fuel going wrong with food production. Animal waste, pesticides, fertilizer, water usage, soil depletion are all accelerated by large-scale industrial farms but that doesn't mean that something from your favorite local farm couldn't be killing the trout in your favorite local stream.

I realize that this discussion is about food miles as a flawed concept, and I appreciate the de-bunking of what seems to me to be a rather elitist and classist (at least in the United States and most of the industrialized world) concept, but maybe it can serve as a starting point (like it did here) for a wider re-evaluation of our food system.

my two cents...

Dan

[MarketStEl]

Let us note, before going any further, that the line between agrarian and urban society was crossed the moment we figured out, thousands of years ago, how to produce more food than we needed for our own (personal or family/kin group) survival. This inevitably requires that some -- nay, much -- of the food production take place well away from the locus of consumption. To an extent, this whole argument is merely one over degrees of separation.

Forests once gave way to farms which --for better or worse--are giving way to housing and industry. I see technology as a good thing--a way to facilitate a balance between what was good in the past and what will work now.

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Actually, in most of the Northeast, those farms have reverted to forest. If they hadn't, we might have an even bigger global warming problem on our hands.

If all the apples eaten in New York were home grown, what would the increased orchard space have displaced?

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See my comment immediately above.

What would happen to this country's wealth if all of its residents had to start paying the real cost of food? And without wealth, would a decrease in power be far behind?

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Who pays the "real cost" for our food now?

I'd like to thank them.

SB

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Look in the mirror, bud. It's the taxpayer!

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IOW, we already pay the "real cost" of food; it's just that we pay part of it indirectly through our taxes. (This resembles how we pay for transportation in many ways.)

[Jensen]

IOW, we already pay the "real cost" of food; it's just that we pay part of it indirectly through our taxes.  (This resembles how we pay for transportation in many ways.)

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This only holds true if taxpaying were an equal proposition for all taxpayers. That is not the case at all.

[Fat Guy]

if i might suggest a solution, it would be to dump the cherries, get out of line at costco and go to the farmers market and support the few people who are still growing those new york apples you love so much. it's more trouble and it might wind up being a few cents more, but you'll almost certainly have better tasting apples. if you're not willing to do that, you really shouldn't be complaining.

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I'm sure I spend more money on local produce, including greenmarket apples (the closest greenmarket to me is now actually closer than the supermarket), than 99% of the city's inhabitants. I also buy the occasional out of season cherry. Indeed, everybody in the business of producing food anywhere in the world, whether it's New York or New Zealand, should love me because I spend more like 111% of my income on food. I hope you'll allow that I've earned the right to complain about the lousy apples that dominate the supermarkets, but if not I guess I'll have to do so without your permission!

[rooftop1000]

I knew this would end up being all about those Costco cherries

tracey

[Fat Guy]

It always comes back to the cherries!

To me, though, there's a meaningful difference between buying imported cherries in the middle of winter when no cherries (or any other fresh fruits except stored apples) are available here and buying imported apples at the height of the local apple season. Even Michael Pollan allows that, "In fact, even the most fervent eat-local types say it's okay for a 'foodshed' (a term for a regional food chain, meant to liken it to a watershed) to trade for goods it can't produce locally -- coffee, tea, sugar, chocolate -- a practice that predates the globalization of our food chain by a few thousand years." Although, I guess, since there are some edible cherries grown in New York for a short time each year, buying cherries from anywhere else or at any other time of year doesn't fit within the localvore rules. I could certainly live without them, but I'm not sure buying them is any worse for the planet or the food culture than buying cherries from Washington.

[Fat Guy]

If all the apples eaten in New York were home grown, what would the increased orchard space have displaced?

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I don't think apple self-sufficiency would be a stretch or even a yawn for New York. We're the second largest producer in the country. New York produces 25 million bushels of apples a year.

[slkinsey]

If they turned those NY apples into Applejack, they'd be a lot cheaper to ship. And they'd have a better shelf-life.

[MarketStEl]

IOW, we already pay the "real cost" of food; it's just that we pay part of it indirectly through our taxes.  (This resembles how we pay for transportation in many ways.)

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This only holds true if taxpaying were an equal proposition for all taxpayers. That is not the case at all.

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I understand what you're saying and at the same time hope you don't begrudge the double benefit the poor get in the form of food that's cheaper than it otherwise might be* and the Earned Income Tax Credit. (And the third benefit of food stamps for certain poor people and many graduate students.)

*Though since a lot of that cheap food is highly processed and loaded with ingredients of dubious nutritional value, this might not be as great a benefit as it looks on the surface.

Edited December 7, 2006 by MarketStEl (log)

[Portia_Smith]

I'm really fascinated that this seems to be such a North American-centric thread. Where are the europeans? the australians? the asians?

I note that there seems to be a general agreement that maybe reducing our carbon footprint is a good thing, but being a locavore is a bit of, well... trustafarian wank. OK if you're a well paid yupster who can thrill over the organic chicken at £20 a pop, but not ok if you are someone who needs to be more economically minded.

I'm wondering how many of the posters on this thread who are debunking the food miles myth try to find other ways to make a difference to the planet or approach eating ethically? Do you walk to the grocery store? Buy meat from a traceable source? Support your local grocer and not the big scary chain? Or is this all part of the 'don't like being lectured to buy a lunatic leftie' argument too?

[JohnL]

I'm really fascinated that this seems to be such a North American-centric thread.  Where are the europeans?  the australians?  the asians?

I note that there seems to be a general agreement that maybe reducing our carbon footprint is a good thing, but being a locavore is a bit of, well... trustafarian wank.  OK if you're a well paid yupster who can thrill over the organic chicken at £20 a pop, but not ok if you are someone who needs to be more economically minded.

I'm wondering how many of the posters on this thread who are debunking the food miles myth try to find other ways to make a difference to the planet or approach eating ethically?  Do you walk to the grocery store?  Buy meat from a traceable source?  Support your local grocer and not the big scary chain?  Or is this all part of the 'don't like being lectured to buy a lunatic leftie' argument too?

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For me.

There is a tendency to oversimplify things.

Big is bad small is good.

National (or global) bad, local good.

Domestic good, imports bad.

Things are not so simple.

Why is a big chain "scary" and the local guy friendly? I know a lot of very scary local guys!

There is also something bothersome about this whole "eating ethically" thing. Ethics? Whose?

I would prefer to eat well. That is to make choices based on flavor and quality as well as price and not worry so much.

At the same time I am concerned that all producers of food are making an effort to improve methods etc. --to do the right thing so to speak.

Also the situation varies from country to country. Europe?--the very size of most countries compared to the US--both physical geography and population-- needs to be taken into consideration.

There is a lot more to this issue!

We are all tied up in knots attempting to define terms like "free range" and "organic" etc.

How about just good tasting!

As for concepts like sustainable farms etc. and 100 mile approaches --well there is no easy answer--there are consequences good and bad to most everything.

I prefer to be pragmatic and see both sides (maybe even more than two sides) and then make decisions.

I also have a problem starting with the doomsday premise--we are killing ourselves--the earth is being destroyed! evil corporations are colluding with government to destroy the planet!--news at ten.

But I prefer to be optimistic--after all we managed to get through the dark ages!!!

[MarketStEl]

I'm really fascinated that this seems to be such a North American-centric thread.  Where are the europeans?  the australians?  the asians?

I note that there seems to be a general agreement that maybe reducing our carbon footprint is a good thing, but being a locavore is a bit of, well... trustafarian wank.  OK if you're a well paid yupster who can thrill over the organic chicken at £20 a pop, but not ok if you are someone who needs to be more economically minded.

I'm wondering how many of the posters on this thread who are debunking the food miles myth try to find other ways to make a difference to the planet or approach eating ethically?  Do you walk to the grocery store?  Buy meat from a traceable source?  Support your local grocer and not the big scary chain?  Or is this all part of the 'don't like being lectured to buy a lunatic leftie' argument too?

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"trustafarian" Is this a common personality type in Britain? (And can they get their hair into dreadlocks?)

I'm sort of half-in, half-out on this issue. I'm not much of a moralist to begin with, so I really don't work myself up into a righteous lather over the sins of our current system, but within my own bias towards economy, I do try to do things that might help. I live in the middle of a large city and do not own a car, so you bet I walk to the supermarket (all three of the ones I patronize) and the two public markets near me (about which I've posted on both my foodblogs).

I'm an agnostic on the know-where-your-meat-comes-from issue, and besides, quality and taste matter more to me than how the cow was raised or killed, and price is an even more paramount consideration (though quality can and does trump price). However, when it comes to produce, I do try to buy local in season because it's fresher and usually tastes better.

If you've seen other comments from me on other topics, you may already know that I'm not hostile to chains per se. Likewise, I wouldn't patronize a mom-and-pop store that featured bad merchandise and indifferent service.

[Shalmanese]

I'm really fascinated that this seems to be such a North American-centric thread.  Where are the europeans?  the australians?  the asians?

I note that there seems to be a general agreement that maybe reducing our carbon footprint is a good thing, but being a locavore is a bit of, well... trustafarian wank.  OK if you're a well paid yupster who can thrill over the organic chicken at £20 a pop, but not ok if you are someone who needs to be more economically minded.

I'm wondering how many of the posters on this thread who are debunking the food miles myth try to find other ways to make a difference to the planet or approach eating ethically?  Do you walk to the grocery store?  Buy meat from a traceable source?  Support your local grocer and not the big scary chain?  Or is this all part of the 'don't like being lectured to buy a lunatic leftie' argument too?

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I don't think any debate is enhanced by the widespread belief of dubious facts. Theres a lot of legitimate arguments about ethical eating but also a lot of specious arguing and I think it's a disservice to the pro-ethical food lobby to be arguing using factually false data.