I don’t know. That’s why I asked: what will it cost? I wouldn’t trust MP to have to done the calculations accurately, if he even tried to.
I enjoyed his book and have heard him on NPR a few times. He really doesn’t com off as some wild-eyed idealist. I think he has some good advice, but we’re just not going to implement some kind of “sustainable agriculture”, whatever that even is. Still, his advice to “eat food, not too much, mostly vegetables” is sound. Food = real food, not processed. If you can afford it, that is.
Well, there’s a qualitative difference in the infrastructure required for food “manufacture” vs. other types. Got dirt? Water? Seeds? An area that gets sunlight? You could raise crops, at least for personal consumption.
Please note that I’m not saying that local agriculture is the answer to all (or even any, necessarily) woes (if any there be), nor am I saying to abandon any of the things you list. However, I am saying that I don’t think the comparisons you’re making hold up very well.
I’ll at least take a stab at this, assumung for a moment that these cites are spot on.
There are very high barriers of entry to this industry.
The cost of converting existing conventional farmland to organic is also extremely high. It involves replacing equipment and undoing the damage years of chemical fertilizer have inflicted on the farmland. It also requires reversal of industrial monoculture, so there is a steep learning curve for farmers who have specialized in eking as many bushels of corn as possible out of their acreage.
It is more labor-intensive. I am going to go out on a limb and guess that right now, the organic labor supply is not large. I am talking less about day laborers than about agricultural experts required to maintain organic production. I expect this to change in the long term.
Demand is insufficient for edible organic produce and is too high for processed food products. Demand for the former is increasing very rapidly (at least based on the public financials of organics corporations), and I can only hope that demand for the latter will decline. Inexpensive processed food products are made possible by the subsidization of the inedible corn monoculture.
Capital investment to drive productivity and increased demand need to occur at the same time to justify the changeover of existing farms to raising organics. Our current subsidy scheme is a big barrier to the more universal consumption of organic produce, since it creates a large spread in price between organics and conventional products. Everyone isn’t doing it because in order to reach a stable equilibrium, there needs to be a costly readjustment. Whether it is worth the cost depends on one’s priorities and how one judges social welfare. For my part, I think the externalities of a poisoned earth and terrible health are inadequately paid for by the producers of industrial agriculture, so I make my consumption decisions accordingly. I am not a complete lunatic about it, but I do the best I can under the circumstances I find myself in. Fortunately, I live in a major city and have some disposable income, so I can shop at Whole Foods for produce and never buy any meat if not from my neighborhood butcher, who gets all of his merchandise from farmers he knows upstate.
Not all arable land is created equal. Southern Alberta can only grow crops because of irrigation farming. Other areas get less sunlight, or have soils that have fewer nutrients for certain crops. Some crops grow better in colder climates, others in warmer climates. Some areas get more sunlight than others. Specialization in trade means that the crops that grow best in certain areas can be grown en masse there, and then the people who need diversified foodstuffs can trade some of them with people in other areas. We could make apples and bananas in Canada, but we’d have to use greenhouses to do it and they’d be wildly expensive. So we don’t. We raise cattle and grow hardy wheat and canola and such, and trade our wheat and beef for apples and peaches.
Localized farming would mean a serious lack of diversity, and much more expensive food. If our region allows us to grow far more wheat than the local population can eat, and we can’t ship it abroad for other stuff, the net result is less wheat manufacture. California would grow less fruit. Alaska would catch less crab. Our overall production of foodstuffs would plummet. And since we DO need diversified foods, we’d have to divert our highly efficient wheat and cattle operations (which we don’t need any more) into making stuff at much higher cost. So the cost of food would skyrocket and the overall production of food would decline.
Yes, of course (although that’s actually three words ;)). Again, my only bone to pick was with the comparisons made – local, even individual, agriculture is actually possible with little to no additional infrastructure, whereas car, computer, etc. manufacture really isn’t.
Perhaps I should’ve just refrained from making that post, as I’m not sure it substantively contributes much. On the other hand, I do feel that the comparisons to impossible situations needlessly weakens the idea of localized agriculture.
I don’t think it’s true, either. Have you seen how much infrastructure you need for modern farming? Alberta has irrigation pipelines all over the place, graineries, flour mills, trucking routes, power lines, and all kinds of other infrastructure directly tied to agriculture. You don’t just plop seeds in the ground and run around with a tractor. You need feed lots, tractor repair companies, slaughter houses, packing and rendering plants, rail lines, etc. Modern farming is just as industrial as most other forms of manufacture.
Personally, I liked his first book The Botany of Desire, a little better. It outlined 5 fruits, veggies, plants that changed the world as we know it. I don’t see him as a whild eyed environementalist either, more of an enviro-writer who happens to have a stance on organic, sustainable living.
No of course not. Like I said, I’m not an Organic-Nazi. I don’t force people to believe in living a more sustainable life, or to even live a more green life. But as this is the SDMB and I value the basic premise behind fighting ignorance and seeking of truth, and I don’t wish to be labled an official disturber of the peace, I’ll elaborate alittle on some of your points now that I am home and not at work.
Here is a cite on the efficacy of natural vs synthetic pesticides. It was an eye opener for me, however, I’ll point you to a particular comment here :
How about yoru question as to whether or not Orgnic farming is better for the environment than conventional farming? The answer is somewhat ambiguous but in all ways the debate isn’t over. Here is a cite from Carbon Commentary which gives pros and cons of each. It’s light don’t worry.
The main idea a lot of the populace has towards organic living comes from a wont to be healthier, believing that conventional wisdom is bad and “organic” wisdom is not. People are easily convinced either way, depending on who you are and what your habits are. One of my goals is to find ways to limit peoples everyday carbon footprint which is the measure of the impact human activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of green house gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide. Doing that and trying to break down barriers some people have against change is what I strive to do. Working in conservation and natural resource management is not a glamorous job, but one that is rewarding when you find the right facts, and aren’t afraid to say - “wow, I didin’t know that.”
Simply writing this Sam I found out a few things that I didn’t know. To end on a lighter note, if you’d like to check out a video of the carbon footprint of a Cheese Burger - check this out.
Well, to be fair though, how much of that is because we don’t farm locally? You don’t need trucking routes if you’re not trucking the stuff out of town. The whole point is to unindustrialize things. Not that I agree with that point, but I think you’re kind of missing it in that post.
No, my post was responding to the notion that agriculture can be made local in ways that other industries should not be, because agriculture is somehow less ‘industrial’. Hey, you could make cars locally, too. They’d be less ‘industrial’, because you wouldn’t have huge auto factories cranking them out by the hundreds of thousands. You’d have small local shops welding up frames and hammering out bodies. The cars would suck and cost an order of magnitude more, but you could do it. The same is true of farming. If you’re going to make it locally, you’re going to dismantle the huge feedlots and the huge, highly efficient flour mills and rendering plants. Then you’re going to have to employ people do to these things by hand or in small, inefficient shops. The costs will skyrocket.
My simple point is that farming is not intrinsically less ‘industrial’ than other goods we ship around the world, and therefore is not exempt from the benefits of specialization and economies of scale. There are lots of products that are far less ‘industrial’ that we still find much easier to trade for than make ourselves. Most textiles, for example. Hell, my grandma could make me a shirt while sitting in front of the fire. I don’t need to ship one in from Bangladesh. But how expensive do you think our shirts would be if we stopped all trade in shirts and forced people to ‘buy locally’? And how much more expensive would our other products be if we took a percentage of our workforce away from the things we’re really good at and forced them make shirts all day?
Sam, I agree with all that (at least up until the last part, which I’ll get back to). As I said, my quarrel was with what I felt were the weak comparisons. On preview (and I’m falling behind, so I’ll try to be quick), there’s this:
Yes, yes I have, having just last year moved (for the first time in my life) to a very rural area, where farms, orchards, and ranching are the primary professions (at least, that’s the way it appears to me). To some degree, you’re correct: I wasn’t thinking on a large enough scale. On the other hand, it’s also clear to me that there is a qualitative difference between the feasiblity of local agriculture vs. other types of manufacturing, which has everything to do with (local) resource availability. The last sentence of the post containing the quote above is: Modern farming is just as industrial as most other forms of manufacture. Yes, it is. My contention is that it doesn’t need to be. On point with the last post you made (again, on preview):
I’m not claiming that other industries should not be made local but agriculture should; rather, I’m saying that agriculture can be localized to some degree, whereas many other industries simply cannot (due to the infrastructure required).
To be clear, I’m not trying to push a “back to nature”, “modern production is evil”, “can’t you see we’re killing MOTHER EARTH” crapola. Instead, I’m reading this thread with interest, because I think that “industrial agriculture” does have some bad aspects that would be mitigated by more localized agriculture. Which is better? I don’t know, but I can at least bring up places where I think you’re overstating your case.
Which brings me back to that last part, namely, what is a “serious lack of diversity”? Above, you said:
Now, while you did posit “local-only” agriculture, it’s clear to me that no one can seriously advocate for a complete cessation of all food transport while retaining our current population size and distribution. To address this, while possibly weakening my point, I should note that one of the Polyfarm principles says:
As a principle, I can agree with that. As an absolute, I think it’s unreasonable. Is the current state of agriculture the closest we can get to that principle? Probably not, in my view, but maybe I’m wrong. However, to say “cancer deaths would skyrocket” is to go just a little Chicken-little, isn’t it?
“Do you understand the ramifications of ‘local only’ food? For one thing, cancer deaths would skyrocket as fruits and certain green vegetables would no longer be available to large portions of the population.”
While we're doing the cite thing,got one for this?I'm well aware of current theory.Has this been proven?
SuaSponte, I just want to apologize for the slight hijack. While I think that the feasibility of localizing agriculture is a valid point of consideration, I also think that I’ve distracted from the OP question: namely, is an “organic” and localized approach to agriculture sustainable in and of itself?
To which I’d add: given that such an approach shows both some clear benefits (fossil fuel use, etc.) and detriments (availability, etc.) over “industrial agriculture”, what degree of tradeoff between the two is possible?
I’d be willing to bet that Mr. Pollan’s book isn’t being published and distributed locally is it? It is a 400+ page hardback too, I wonder if they are being made from locally grown and harvested trees as well. No, of course not. He is using a major international publisher and distributor (Penguin Press). The reason being that it allows him to reach the greatest number of people and most importantly, allows him to make more money. So we should only buy and eat locally grown food, but we should pay to have his book shipped all over the globe? If mass-produced and distributed products like books allow him to reach more people and make the creator, distributor and publisher more money, why shouldn’t that same opportunity be afforded to the farmers, and food distributors and grocers? IOW, Do what I say, not what I do. He seems a hypocrite to me.
I have a really hard time with this sort of argument. Not that a person might or might not be a hypocrite, but utilizing various aspects of our global economy and infrastructure in order to make suggestions about how to use less of it in specific aspects of production is not hypocrisy.
The other aspect of localism that hasn’t yet been considered is land prices. Local agriculture is expensive agriculture for the reasons Sam Stone outlined, and it’s made even more expensive when land is a million dollars an acre, as opposed to $50,000 in acre in the Plains. Here in Massachusetts, there are some state programs to preserve agricultural land as such, but geez, if we had to get all our crops from within 50 miles of Boston, not only would February look kind of bleak, but we’d be paying through the nose for a tomato even in August. Not to mention the impact that housing prices have on the wage rates of agricultural workers…
A piece of information that hasn’t yet been mentioned but that should be taken into consideration: There is a growing body of research that industrially produced comestibles are nutritionally inferior to “naturally” grown plants and animals, and that our reliance on an industrial diet is a major contributor to our significant and increasing health problems.
I think this could be tenable but it would require a total retooling of society so that everyone operates locally. It would mean the end of the global economy, and every person would have to have a more direct and personal relationship with the acquisition of their food.
It wouldn’t mean an end to a global economy, you could still buy your jeans made from children in Bangladesh. Local terra firma groups where I live in Connecticut have taken some of this idea of Locavores to the extreme, planning huge biosphere type greenhouses for year round growing above the continental frost lines. It’s a little extreme, but some people really do want to be self-sufficient in a changing global economy.
