 |
| editor's
NOTE |
| Farmer and
commentator Tom Philpott recently deconstructed
a
long article in the UK publication The Economist
that pretty much dismissed the organic, local food
and fair trade movements as so much wishful thinking.
He says, “Think again.” |
|
Posted January 12, 2007: Last month, the
influential British newsweekly The Economist took
the measure of the sustainable-food movement and found it
wanting.
"There are good reasons to doubt the claims made about
three of the most popular varieties of 'ethical food': organic
food, fair-trade food, and local food," the journal declared,
and proceeded to subject each to withering analysis.
Like an uncle emboldened by wine at the holiday table, The
Economist sought the role of truth-teller to the complacent
and self-satisfied. "People who want to make the world
a better place cannot do so by shifting their shopping habits,"
the magazine lectured.
The coverage sparked a mini-sensation in sustainable-food
circles, peppering blogs and listservs for weeks. My inbox
groaned with emails alerting me to the phenomenon. In person,
some people brought it up in a tone almost of condolence.
Shame about how local food doesn't really work, they said,
and didn't need to say the rest: given that you've devoted
your life to it.
The Economist occupies a unique niche within U.S.
media. Unlike homegrown weeklies like Time and Newsweek,
the venerable British journal doesn't pretend to be objective.
It champions European-style liberalism: capitalism fettered
only by minimal and carefully considered government intervention.
Thus when The Economist arrays
its considerable cultural clout against one's pet movement,
it pays to take note. Has the sustainable-food movement
been right and well debunked?
The magazine's admirable openness about its biases confers
on it an authority that must be envied by its U.S. counterparts.
While Time and Newsweek frantically chase
relevance (and straying readers) by devoting cover after cover
to celebrities and God—the ultimate celebrity, perhaps—The
Economist has emerged as the thinking person's weekly
in the U.S., read by academics, policy wonks, politicians
and corporate decision-makers across a broad political spectrum.
Thus when The Economist arrays its considerable
cultural clout against one's pet movement, it pays to take
note. Has the sustainable-food movement been right and well
debunked? Should we stop "voting with our trolleys"
(British for shopping carts) and learn to love industrial
food?
As The Economist itself has put it in countless
articles: not so fast.
The Other Side of the Story
The magazine opens its critique by implying that the sustainable-food
movement has abandoned politics in favor of enlightened consumerism.
"Voter turnout in most developed countries has fallen
in recent decades, but sales of organic, fair-trade, and local
food—each with its own political agenda—are growing
fast," the magazine reveals.
This is an odd juxtaposition. Are shopping at the farmers'
market and voting mutually exclusive acts? By doing the former,
are you absolved from the need to do the latter? If you think
so, consider your argument eviscerated. The magazine demonstrates
with convincing force that consumer choice alone won't solve
the environmental and social depredations of industrial food.
The problem, though, is that few in the movement hold that
position. To be sure, there may be people who think they're
saving the planet by piling their shopping carts high at Whole
Foods. But the great thrust of the food-politics movement
is, well, extremely political.
Take the Los Angeles-based Community Food Security Coalition
(www.foodsecurity.org),
arguably the most effective nationwide sustainable-food group.
Its annual conferences draw hundreds of people from across
the country who are doing the nuts-and-bolts work of reestablishing
local food networks, through inner-city farming, farmers'
markets in low-income areas, and other initiatives.
To be sure, there may be people who
think they're saving the planet by piling their shopping
carts high at Whole Foods. But the great thrust of the
food-politics movement is, well, extremely political.
At the two CFSC conferences I attended over the past five
years, I heard little rhetoric about how we could shop our
way out of our food problems. Instead, the farm bill—the
federal government's twice-a-decade commitment of largesse
to agribusiness—dominated discussion. The CFSC's broad
coalition of food-justice advocates hardly embody the idea
that "the supermarket trolley has dethroned the ballot
box," as The Economist so cheekily put it.
The sustainable-food movement's very DNA is shot through
with a commitment to political engagement. "Eat responsibly,"
declared Wendell Berry in his seminal 1990 essay "The
Pleasures of Eating." By that, he didn't mean blithely
hop into the SUV and head to a national supermarket chain
to pick up a pricey bag of anonymously grown organic salad,
as The Economist's caricature would have it.
Instead, Berry urged people to become active participants
in food production. He hoped that by gaining knowledge about
where food comes from, people would become more, not less,
politically engaged. The feel-good consumerism skewered by
The Economist has little to do with Berry's influential
ethos of knowing and active participation—an intellectual
tradition that thrives today in the work of Michael Pollan
and other writers.
If The Economist's overriding premise—that
the sustainable-food movement has decayed into a sort of self-congratulating
shopping club—is fundamentally ridiculous, it doesn't
do much better on the particulars.
To make the case that organic farming threatens tropical
rainforests, the magazine trots out Nobel laureate Norman
Borlaug, perhaps industrial agriculture's greatest apologist.
Borlaug, a sort of anti-Wendell Berry, spearheaded the Green
Revolution movement, financed by U.S. foundations, to promote
the use of hybrid seeds, pesticides, and fertilizers by farmers
in the global south.
The Economist's scolding of
consumers who strive to "buy local" is scarcely
more convincing . . . the magazine ludicrously attempts
to paint such efforts as "protectionist" . .
. The U.S. market is currently flooded with cheap garlic
grown in China. Is an individual consumer being protectionist
by opting to pay a premium to buy garlic from a local
farmer?
Borlaug's efforts have incited bitter controversy in agricultural
and social-policy circles, but you'd never know that from
The Economist, which cites him without question to
support the notion that conventional farming delivers higher
yields than organic. "The more intensively you farm,
Mr. Borlaug contends, the more room you have left for rainforest,"
The Economist states, with an air of "case closed."
But is chemical-dependent farming really more productive
than organic? Samuel Fromartz, author of Organic
Inc., debunked that claim in a recent
comment on Gristmill. Fromartz points out that chemical
farming may churn out more food per acre under ideal conditions,
but over the long term—including drought periods—the
yield difference dwindles. Moreover, pummeling the soil with
chemicals may eventually sap land of any productivity at all.
As Fromartz points out, India—which bought Borlaug's
Green Revolution package wholesale, and is often cited as
one of the effort's great successes—is now experiencing
a severe soil- and water-depletion crisis.
The Economist's scolding of consumers who strive
to "buy local" is scarcely more convincing. For
one, the magazine ludicrously attempts to paint such efforts
as "protectionist," which implies a resort to government
power. But in the United States, at least, I know of no one
calling for the erection of trade barriers against foreign-produced
food. The U.S. market is currently flooded with cheap garlic
grown in China. Is an individual consumer being protectionist
by opting to pay a premium to buy garlic from a local farmer?
How so, precisely?
And on what grounds does this journal, which exists to champion
free choice in free markets, denounce consumers for exercising
that power?
The Root of the Problem
More fundamentally, the magazine's contention that food
hauled in from long distances burns less energy than locally
produced food rests on shaky ground. The piece cites a British
government report, concluding that "a shift toward a
local food system, and away from a supermarket-based food
system, with its central distribution depots, lean supply
chains, and big, full trucks, might actually increase the
number of food-vehicle miles being traveled locally, because
things would move around in a larger number of smaller, less
efficiently packed vehicles."
As The Economist points out,
people often live closer to supermarkets than to farmers'
markets; but the answer needn't be to boycott farmers'
markets . . . And in fact, reestablishing accessible,
neighborhood retail points for locally grown food is a
major motivating force.
True enough, no doubt, in the U.S. as much as in the U.K.
But in the U.S., at least, government policy for at least
50 years has decisively favored consolidation of the food
industry. The built environment has been explicitly rigged
to facilitate the long-haul transportation of food, while
local food-processing infrastructure has been dismantled.
So yes, as The Economist points out, people often
live closer to supermarkets than to farmers' markets; but
the answer needn't be to boycott farmers' markets.
Just as logically, citizens could organize to pressure local
governments to invest in more farmers' markets. If energy
efficiency is the goal, such efforts could be coupled with
a movement to reinvest in public transportation. And in fact,
reestablishing accessible, neighborhood retail points for
locally grown food is a major motivating force for groups
associated with the above-mentioned Community Food Security
Coalition.
But that's not the sort of political organizing The Economist
would prefer to see from food-justice advocates. The magazine
wants us to return to the chain supermarkets and spend our
energy instead on pushing politicians toward action in the
form of "a global carbon tax; reform of the world trade
system; and the abolition of agricultural tariffs and subsidies."
It's bizarre advice, coming from a free-market magazine:
severely limit your own options and ask the government to
solve your problems. And while the political goals it supports
are no doubt worthy, they in no way absolve citizens from
the need to wrest control of their food decisions from corporations
and actively create the food system they want. 
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