The Locavore's Dilemma (8 page)

This mindset characterized a dominant segment of the Athenian elite more than two millennia ago when they made economic self-sufficiency (
autarkeia
) one of their main goals. Autarky, they argued, would make their compatriots freer by
minimizing
their dependence on international trade. Because all geographical territories, even the largest ones, suffer from resource shortcomings of some kind, this stance inexorably led to the creation of an “Athenian empire” to access vital commodities that were in short supply locally. In later centuries, classical Roman agricultural writers such as Cato the elder, Pliny the Elder, and Varro all praised self-sufficiency, and autarkic instincts undoubtedly played their part in shaping the course of Roman imperial history.
³⁹

Closer to us, a century ago in Japan, the push for greater autarky became ever stronger after agricultural protectionists politically defeated industrialists (and their workers) and managed to block rice imports in
1904. Even though this policy stance resulted in domestic prices that were 30% above world prices during World War I and, later, shortages that caused food riots, the Japanese government went ever further down that road by embarking on an imperialistic drive with the avowed goal of producing all of their own rice, mostly by developing production in its Korean and Taiwanese colonies. One result of the “fortress Japan” pursuit was that, by the late 1930s, Nippon rice prices were 60% above the international rate. Despite having been crushed soon afterwards, Japanese authorities never changed course in this respect and decided by the end of the Second World War to expand this tariff protection to a wider range of agricultural products, thus essentially taxing over 99% of the population to support a few uncompetitive agricultural producers.
⁴⁰

Historically, the push for greater agricultural self-sufficiency was never limited to political and military leaders bent on imperialistic pursuits, but also often included a fair number of romantic ideologues, politically connected nationalists, supporters of “good old” and “small is beautiful” ways, and farmers who had no qualms about using the latest technologies but insisted on keeping out the products of their foreign competitors. By and large, past initiatives reminiscent of today's locavore movement were motivated either by economic recessions (to boost regional economic activity or as a form of protection against price inflation), wars or their threat (to increase local food security), romantic impulses during relatively prosperous times (as a way to live in greater harmony with nature and as a form of dissent from market-oriented society), a deep-seated belief that modern transportation systems were inherently inefficient and wasteful (compared to direct links between producers and final consumers), and a profound dislike of allegedly redundant (if not outright parasitical) profit-seeking intermediaries. A brief discussion of some past American initiatives to promote increased community food reliance will now set the stage for a broader discussion of the inherent flaws of locavorism.

As should be expected, the American pioneers of what could be termed the “romantic” wing of the local food movement originated
from some of the wealthiest and most economically advanced regions of the country. After all, “moving back to the land” implies that you have other opportunities available, something that was obviously not the case for subsistence farmers. Best known are the New England Transcendentalists, who rejected science and objective experience as a basis for developing knowledge in favor of intuitive thought processes that transcended the physical and empirical world. Their creed included the dismissal of “urban life in favor of nature in all its wildness.” Their best known representative was Henry David Thoreau, whose classic 1854 work,
Walden; or, Life in the Woods,
criticized the division of labor on the grounds that it removed people from a sense of connectedness with society and with the world at large and nature in particular.
⁴¹

There were other attempts by New Englanders of the era to experiment with various alternative lifestyles, including efforts to rebuild community spirit around small-scale and self-sufficient farming communities. One was Brook Farm (also known as the
Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture and Education
), a socialist cooperative of the early 1840s where each member could select the work he or she found most appealing and where all would be paid equally, regardless of gender or the task performed. Revenues for the community were to be based on farming and from selling handmade products (especially clothing), through fees from paying visitors, and from tuition fees for the school located on the premises.

Another was Fruitlands, whose founders wished to pursue the ideals of simplicity, sincerity, and brotherly love. This would be best achieved, they thought, by withdrawing from the market economy, which the leader of the experiment, Bronson Alcott (the father of Louisa May Alcott of
Little Women
fame), described as having selfishness as its roots, property as its trunk, and gold as its fruit. Its members would forego trade and strive for self-sufficiency by growing their own food, holding all property communally, and keeping material possessions to a minimum. While residents were expected to subsist on farming, they were forbidden to use animal labor and to eat or use any
animal substance, including milk, honey, eggs, and wool (in modern parlance, they were ethical vegans). Other peculiar rules included interdictions to drink anything other than water (this rule specifically targeted stimulants such as tea and coffee), to use artificial light, and to heat water for bathing.

Not surprisingly, if Brook Farm managed to last a few years, Fruitlands was abandoned after less than one.
⁴²

Similar sentiments would later be echoed by a wide range of Americans, from the so-called American Dutch Utopia painters at the turn of the 20th century who created visions of Holland that celebrated a preindustrial lifestyle,
⁴³
to the Southern Agrarian writers of the 1920s and 1930s who opposed the urbanization, industrialization, and internationalization of their country. And then there were the hippies of the 1960s and 1970s. Perhaps as many as a million of them temporarily moved “back to the land” and attempted to live from it before most eventually abandoned rural bliss and returned to the trappings of civilization.

There is also a long history of politically-driven attempts to promote local food production in urban settings in times of economic depression. Much like the rise of agrarian romanticism, it was a reaction—in this case to the fact that much old-fashioned urban food production had vanished. One such initiative was the “Urban Potato Patches” launched in Detroit during the depression of the 1890s, in which municipal authorities asked owners of vacant lots to allow unemployed individuals to grow vegetables on their land. The measure was soon copied by mayors of other large cities at the time, while urban gardening as something of a social welfare policy would reappear in various forms and labels (“Garden City Plots,” “Depression Relief Gardens,” “Welfare Garden Plots,” and “Community Gardens,” among others) over the next century.
⁴⁴

Many readers will no doubt be familiar with the “Liberty Gardens” and “Victory Gardens” of the First and Second World Wars. Among the most interesting sources on the topic is a collection of wartime local food posters now available on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) website.
⁴⁵
With little tweaks in language, design, and content, some of these, such as the one found in the figure on the opposite page produced in 1917, would not seem out of place in today's farmers markets.

 

Source
: USDA 1917: War Era Food Posters
http://www.good-potato.com/beans_are_bullets/chapter2/ch2gallery6.html

The spirit behind such efforts during World War I was well captured by Charles Lathrop Pack, the President of the National Emergency Food Garden Commission, who observed that it was

These results, he later added, were especially remarkable in light of the fact that this food was raised where none had “been produced in peacetime, with labor not engaged in agricultural work and not taken from any other industry, and in places where it made no demand upon the railroad already overwhelmed with transportation burdens.”
⁴⁷

Less well-remembered than wartime gardening policies are the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Administration's promotion during the 1930s of “subsistence homesteads”—the best known being Arthurdale in West Virginia—into which impoverished laborers and coal miners could relocate and revert back to the land. From their beginnings, however, these experiments proved to be money-losing propositions that only lasted as long as their government funding.
⁴⁸

Sophisticated critiques of the modern food supply chain and proposals remarkably similar to those now put forward by locavores also have a long history. For instance, in 1918, Morris Llewellyn Cooke, then a former Director of Public Works of the City of Philadelphia, asked why

Cooke added that the berries lost between 25 to 35% of their value during the trip, a “relatively simple and obvious example of the want of organization in the marketing of our local products.” To his amazement, however, the railroad managers of the time “ridiculed all proposals to effect any advantageous changes in the cities' food supply through the encouragement of local shipments and the local consumption of locally grown foods.”
⁵⁰

In another study published in 1913, Clyde Lyndon King, a political scientist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, argued that perhaps as much as a third of the price of foodstuffs in northeastern American cities could be traced back to “cartage and delivery costs” and “retailers' profits,” a share he deemed excessive.
⁵¹
In 1916, Henry W. Collingwood, editor of the
Rural New Yorker
, described the distribution system of his time as “so costly, cumbersome, and complicated that it is little short of robbery of both producer and consumer.”
⁵²
The future American President, Herbert Hoover, similarly attributed the high cost of food in cities at the time to “faulty transportation” and the multiplicity of “wholesaler, transportation agent, commission man, cold-storage warehouse, food manufacturer [and] retailer,” that each needed to make a separate profit on their investment.”
⁵³
(More recently, Michael Pollan apparently hit upon the same line of thought when he suggested that the USDA “should make grants to rebuild local distribution networks in order to minimize
the amount of energy used to move produce within local food sheds.”
⁵⁴
)

Early 20th century American local food activists were given an opportunity to test their ideas during the First World War when the Hoover-run U.S. Food Administration promoted a “policy of local consumption of the vicinity-grown produce.”
⁵⁵
King believed that wartime conditions would make it possible to demonstrate that “to clear the way from the farm to the city and from the city to the farm” would “decrease the farmer's transportation costs and the amount of time spent in marketing his goods; . . . enhance the facilities through which the stores in the small towns can handle more economically both their incoming and outgoing freight;” and “extend the bounds of social life in each agricultural district.” Efficient trolley freight service to outlying areas, he added, would “give to the retail stores a smaller transportation charge; give to Philadelphia's manufacturing establishments and stores increased facilities for sales; and give to Philadelphia's consumers fresher produce at better prices.”
⁵⁶