The Locavore's Dilemma (3 page)

Fortunately, the Japanese people have had the opportunity in the relatively recent past to specialize in other types of economic activities and to trade whatever they produced for food grown elsewhere. As a result, they developed new technologies and products that increased living standards the world over and enjoyed a much more abundant, diverse, and affordable diet in the process. What was wrong with that? Should the Japanese people have instead committed hara-kiri on a societal scale because nature had denied them the prime agricultural land that Americans, Brazilians, New Zealanders, and Frenchmen have in abundance? Or perhaps the distinguished professor would rather deal with the military backlash that might ensue if Japan had its access to foreign resources curtailed? After all, in the early 20th century the proponents of Japan's imperialistic drive often justified their actions, such as taking over Manchuria in order to grow soybeans, by invoking the risks of relying on foreign food producers and the unwillingness of other nations to open up their markets to Japanese goods. As the old saying goes, if a man misses his meals one day, he will lie. If he misses his meals two days, he will steal. If he misses his meals three days, he will kill.

So, admittedly inspired by having been insulted, we took a closer look at locavorism. We learned that its main critics were, by and large, scholars based in engineering schools who had painstakingly documented why the movement's key concept of “food miles”—the distance food travels from the location where it is grown to the location where it is consumed—was a worthless measure by which to assess the environmental impact of agricultural production. Among other findings, they reported that transportation accounts for only approximately 2% of total American energy use. Moving things from farms to distant retail stores, it turns out, was only one-twentieth as significant in terms of overall environmental impact than other stages of food production, such as preparing the ground and planting seeds; mining, manufacturing and spraying fertilizers and pesticides; irrigating fields; harvesting, drying and preserving crops; and powering the necessary
machinery. Producing food in the most suitable locations and then delivering it over long distances, especially by highly energy-efficient container ships, these scholars argued, made more environmental sense than growing vegetables or manufacturing dairy products in nearby locations that required energy-guzzling heated greenhouses, massive amounts of irrigation water, and large volumes of animal feed to make up for pastureland of poor quality.
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More food for less money and reduced environmental impact—what wasn't to like about international trade?

Unable to counter the facts regarding food miles, committed “locavores” instead claimed broader economic, health, and security benefits for their prescription, but these struck us as old biological myths and economic and political fallacies. Yet, no one had systematically challenged the locavores' expanded rhetoric. With Japanese pride at stake, we set other projects aside and got to work on what we originally planned to be a brief policy memo on the subject.

Like everybody else, we came to the subject with a few preconceived opinions, such as a conviction that small subsistence farmers the world over should be given the opportunity to pursue whatever aspirations they might have, especially if these go beyond mere survival and backbreaking labor. Another was that in a system as complex as our modern economy, the law of unintended consequences often rears its ugly head and even derails the most well-intentioned interventions. We also had a few nagging questions, such as: Why had countless individuals worked so hard and for so long to create our globalized food supply chain if things were so great when most food was produced and consumed locally? And why did earlier generations of consumers so readily purchase items produced far from them? Looking for answers, we quickly realized that there was little in the policy agenda of the present generation of food activists that hadn't already been argued over, tried, and convincingly disproved many times.

Our short memo quickly turned into a more substantial piece of work that was published in the fall of 2008 by the Mercatus Center, a
public policy think tank based at George Mason University in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, where some researchers study the African agricultural exporters who have become the main victims of locavorism.
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To our knowledge, it was the first, and remains the only, policy primer that succinctly addressed
all
the main arguments put forward by local food activists in recent years.
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Because locavores roam over very large intellectual pastures, however, neither our supporting evidence nor our arguments were as broad and detailed as we wished them to be, but we thought our key facts and conclusions unassailable. Locavorism, we argued, is “at best, a marketing fad that frequently and severely distorts the environmental impacts of agricultural production.” At worst, it constitutes “a dangerous distraction from the very real and serious issues that affect energy consumption, the environmental impact of modern food production, and the affordability of food.” If pursued on a large scale, it would result in greater environmental damage, reduced economic growth, and significantly more food insecurity than is now the case. The road to agricultural, economic, environmental, and food safety and security hell, we concluded, was paved with allegedly fresher and more nutritious local meals.

To our delight, the piece received much attention in the Canadian media as well as press coverage in the United States, Latin America, and Europe. In time it would also be referred to in a number of policy papers and government reports. Even more amazing, much of this coverage was positive! Clearly, we weren't the only people who felt that locavorism was too simplistic a concept and that it created unnecessary anguish among grocery shoppers.

Our publication, in turn, led to numerous debates with local food activists. These experiences confirmed our prior impression that locavorism couldn't be dissociated from romantic beliefs about nature, food, rural life, and self-sufficiency that had been coupled with a profound disdain for the anonymity and profit-driven nature of long-distance trade and large corporations. Most locavores we encountered were quite taken aback that anyone might sincerely challenge their convictions
that nature is inherently wholesome and that tampering with it can only result in catastrophe; that “happy peasants” should forever remain restricted to subsistence farming; that using vast amounts of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers for quick profit will kill the fertility of the land; that the nutrient-depleted and cancer/heart attack/diabetes/obesity-causing offerings of agribusiness kill more people every year than the shortage of synthetic fertilizer in sub-Saharan Africa;
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that everything “local” by definition implies greater care and community benefits; that a shortage of usable energy resources is just around the corner; and that local soil (wherever it might be) has the surprisingly universal quality of being uniquely beneficial. Several locavores further argued that their physical and mental health had improved significantly after their adoption of a chemical-free/organic/vegan/local diet that supported nearby producers who had also become good friends. How dare we be opposed to all these good things and efforts to promote them?

Trained as economic policy analysts, we brought up statistics, contemporary case studies, historical parallels, discussions of standard research protocols, and some personal anecdotes. Especially frustrating was how quickly many activists resorted to challenging our motives rather than our arguments. We were told that we were in the remunerated service of agribusiness, Big Oil, the logistics industry, and even the New Zealand government. (Strangely, though, our mortgage debt is still significant.) Based on the volume of hateful correspondence sent our way, we sometimes felt that questioning the existence of God at a revival meeting would have elicited more measured and polite responses.

While we were pleased with our original policy paper, we felt the need to spell out our case in more detail in order to counter the broader intellectual underpinnings of locavorism; hence, this book. Although our discussion is anchored in one particular controversy, we cannot avoid taking sides in the current culture war over modern farming. As the late agricultural economist Bruce Gardner summed it up, the basic facts about American agriculture over the past century are not really in question, but they have paved the way to two bitterly opposed sets of interpretations
by equally well-meaning individuals. In the left corner, the farm sector is viewed as “a chronically troubled place, with farmers typically hard pressed to survive economically and continually decreasing in number.” Modern farming technologies are “environmentally suspect,” farm laborers “exploited” and the wealth farming generates “increasingly concentrated on relatively few large farms” that benefit from “billions of dollars taxed from the general public.” More optimistic analysts emphasize instead “the increased acreage and output of the average farm,” the “sustained growth of agricultural productivity,” and the “substantial improvements in income and wealth of commercial farmers, the predominant role of the United States in world commodity markets, and American leadership in supplying both technological innovation and food aid for the developing world.”
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In the international development arena, a similarly bitter divide exists between individuals who advocate large-scale commercial agriculture and the phasing out of smallholder farming as the only practical way to escape the poverty trap in which many countries are mired, and the anti-globalization activists who view all large-scale agriculture as a source of social inequality, a threat to the peasant way of life, and subordinating human needs to the profit motive.

Because our emphasis is on long-term trends rather than current difficulties and imperfect practices, our overall stance on most controversial issues is typically of the “glass half-full” type. We do not deny the severity of many agricultural and social problems, most importantly that, according to official statistics, around one billion individuals are still malnourished and therefore less productive and more prone to disease, poor health, stunting, and wasting than they would otherwise be.
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This being said, the available evidence convincingly demonstrates that long distance trade and modern technologies have resulted in much greater food availability, lower prices, improved health, and reduced environmental damage than if they had never materialized. Indeed, more trade and ever improving technologies remain to this day the only
proven
ways to lift large numbers of people out of rural poverty and malnutrition. To revert to former practices can only deliver the
world of yesterday, exemplified in the poorest sections of our planet today with its attendant widespread misery, malnutrition, hunger, and famine.

To tell you a little bit about ourselves: One of us was born in the greater Tokyo area and spent most of her life in other big cities, including Zhengzhou (China), Kyoto and Osaka (Japan), Baltimore (United States), and Montreal and Toronto (Canada). Trained in history, economics, and public policy, she has visited about a third of our planet for both professional and personal reasons. She is also “wise” enough to remember a time when bananas were expensive in Japan (and something that you would only be given when you were sick) and shrimp was a luxury item that would mainly be consumed in a special New Year's Eve dish called
osechi
. She eventually married a French Canadian and spent the better part of the last decade in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), one of the world's most cosmopolitan urban agglomerations. To this day, her favorite thing about the GTA is the true cornucopia of culinary opportunities it offers, from Portuguese bakeries and Polish meat shops to vegetarian Indian restaurants and giant Chinese supermarkets. Living close to the Niagara peninsula, she also enjoys the local farmers' markets for a short period of time each year, but never quite understood why she should be made to feel guilty about being an unabashed “globavore” and having the opportunity to enjoy the best our planet has to offer.

The other member of this writing duo is a French-Canadian raised in a rural village in the Saint Lawrence Valley, an agricultural area of Quebec characterized by fertile soils and abundant water, but also a rather harsh climate. He held a number of low-level agricultural jobs in his youth (including a short stint working for the Quebec Farmers' Union), formally studied agricultural trade barriers and is now gainfully employed as an economic geographer, a small academic sub-discipline whose practitioners are given incredible latitude to consider subjects such as business location decisions, transportation and energy systems, regional economic growth, and a range of related topics. A few years
ago he was convinced that the remainder of his career would be devoted to studying urban and industrial problems—but then he never planned to marry a Japanese city girl either . . .

Our goal in writing this book was to redress the one-sidedness of current discussions on locavorism. We make no bones about the fact that what we present is our personal take on several complex issues. To the open-minded locavores who are still with us, be assured that our conclusion that a balanced diet includes a healthy portion of foods grown far away from your favorite farmers' market is entirely derived from our research and best judgment. By all means, let us know where you think we went wrong in matters of economic logic and factual arguments. We look forward to answering your challenge.

 

Kampai!
À votre santé!
Rockwood, Ontario

SOLE Food

Again and again I hear leading men of our state condemning now the unfruitfulness of the soil, now the inclemency of the climate for some seasons past, as harmful to crops; and some I hear reconciling the aforesaid complaints, as if on well-founded reasoning, on the ground that, in their opinion, the soil was worn out and exhausted by the overproduction of earlier days and can no longer furnish sustenance to mortals with its old-time benevolence.