Food for thought

I was reading an interview on Salon.com this morning with philosopher and ethicist Peter Singer about his new book, The Way We Eat. Singer, who researched factory farms, organic farms and the idea of eating locally for his new book, argues against eating locally in some very thought-provoking and compelling ways. It definitely gave me pause. At the end of the article, Singer states that becoming a vegan reduces your individual carbon dioxide emissions by 1.5 tons -- 50% more than if you traded your SUV for a Prius.

Excerpted from "The practical ethicist" by Oliver Broudy, Salon.com, May 8, 2006. (To read the full interview, you need to be a Salon.com member.)

In your book you say that socially responsible folks in San Francisco would do better to buy their rice from Bangladesh than from local growers in California. Could you explain?

This is in reference to the local food movement, and the idea that you can save fossil fuels by not transporting food long distances. This is a widespread belief, and of course it has some basis. Other things being equal, if your food is grown locally, you will save on fossil fuels. But other things are often not equal. California rice is produced using artificial irrigation and fertilizer that involves energy use. Bangladeshi rice takes advantage of the natural flooding of the rivers and doesn't require artificial irrigation. It also doesn't involve as much synthetic fertilizer because the rivers wash down nutrients, so it's significantly less energy intensive to produce. Now, it's then shipped across the world, but shipping is an extremely fuel-efficient form of transport. You can ship something 10,000 miles for the same amount of fuel necessary to truck it 1,000 miles. So if you're getting your rice shipped to San Francisco from Bangladesh, fewer fossil fuels were used to get it there than if you bought it in California.

In the same vein, you argue that in the interests of alleviating world poverty, it's better to buy food from Kenya than to buy locally, even if the Kenyan farmer only gets 2 cents on the dollar.

My argument is that we should not necessarily buy locally, because if we do, we cut out the opportunity for the poorest countries to trade with us, and agriculture is one of the things they can do, and which can help them develop. The objection to this, which I quote from Brian Halweil, one of the leading advocates of the local movement, is that very little of the money actually gets back to the Kenyan farmer. But my calculations show that even if as little as 2 cents on the dollar gets back to the Kenyan farmer, that could make a bigger difference to the Kenyan grower than an entire dollar would to a local grower. It's the law of diminishing marginal utility. If you are only earning $300, 2 cents can make a bigger difference to you than a dollar can make to the person earning $30,000.

Comments

[Alanna]

Fascinating ... I've also been thinking that buying locally might create more risk of food shortages, say. If you think about California's wet spring and the impact on local crops, you realize that a globalized food market mitigates the risk of, hedges against, any single crop's, any single system's, any single region's, catastrophic loss. This book's on my wait list at the library ... itself a 'regional' system to balance supply/demand over a larger geography than my small suburb. Thanks for the reason to anticipate its arrival sooner than later ...

[jenny]

Wow, thats really interesting! Thanks for that. I'll stop feeling guilty for failing completely to try the local challenge (although I do get a bi-weekly CSA box and I did get stuff from the farmers market this weekend).

[tanvi]

This is a fascinating excerpt! I'm going to have to try and get a hold of this book asap. Thanks for posting it

[Nerissa]

It was something that was haunting my mind already. I wondered about the people making a living with their food on the other side of the world. On the one hand, they might be taking huge risks with the environment if the crop is not a local one and they grow only one subspecies. On the other hand, like you mentioned, it is that little chunk of money that keeps the wolf away from the farmer's door. As a person who tries to be ethical, it can be a hard position in which to be.

[Jennifer]

Wasn't that a riveting article? Definitely made me think... as always, there are multiple sides to any story, and it makes sense to try and gather as many insights as possible.

Glad you posted the excerpt. It should provide some stimulating blog-chatter!

[Robyn]

Catherine, thanks for posting this. I've been thinking about the whole eat local thing alot lately. It sure looks different from where I live - for me, eating locally can mean supporting child labor and the excessive use of chemicals, for one. And in the US, eating locally might mean choosing government-subsidized catfish over that that grown by an impoverished Vietnamese fish farmer who literally lives on top of his fish farm. It's such a complicated issue, and I've been thinking about doing a post on it .... I'm going to see if I can find Singer's book today.

[Catherine]

Good, I'm glad people are finding this as intriguing and worthy of investigation as I am. Cooking with Amy did a post last year about why she doesn't fully support eating locally, and it's got some further interesting points in it: