Sole food
: food that claims to be Sustainable, Organic, Local, and Ethical
A new generation of food activists has come to believe that “sustainable farming” and “eating local” are the way to solve a host of perceived problems with our modern food supply system.
By combining healthy eating and a high standard of environmental stewardship, these locavores think, we can also deliver important economic benefits and increase food security within local economies. But after a thorough review of the evidence, economic geographer Pierre Desrochers and policy analyst Hiroko Shimizu have concluded these claims are mistaken.
In The Locavore’s Dilemma, they explain the history, science, and economics of food supply to reveal what locavores miss or misunderstand: the real environmental impacts of agricultural production; the drudgery of subsistence farming; and the essential role large-scale, industrial producers play in making food more available, varied, affordable, and nutritionally rich than ever before in history.
At best, they show, locavorism is a well-meaning marketing fad among the world’s most privileged consumers. At worst, it constitutes a dangerous distraction from solving serious global food issues.
The Locavore’s Dilemma proves that:
• Our modern food-supply chain is a superior alternative that has evolved through constant competition and ever-more-rigorous efficiency.
• A world food chain characterized by free trade and the absence of agricultural subsidies would deliver lower prices and more variety in a manner that is both economically and environmentally more sustainable.
• There is no need to feel guilty for not joining the locavores on their crusade. Eating globally, not only locally, is the way to save the planet.
Hum!?...
They’re both overstated.
Most notably, they studiously fail to consider an issue integral to any serious discussion of organic agriculture: the place of animals in the American system.
The vast majority of plant matter grown in the U.S. is not only grown conventionally—it’s grown to feed livestock. Most of the chemicals sprayed and natural gas burned in conventional agriculture goes toward the production of chemically dependent monocultural crops—namely corn and soy—occupying vast amounts of agricultural space.
Radically reducing our reliance on animal husbandry would thus liberate huge tracts of land to grow a greater diversity of crops (organic and conventional) to feed directly to people.
The prospects of organic are now, in one sense, vastly improved, as more arable land means less concern over low yields. In another sense, with the corn and soy now fed to livestock removed from the equation, the justification for spraying synthetic chemicals is also potentially strengthened, as they could be applied more judiciously in an agricultural system dedicated to a diversity of high-yielding plants.
Either way, the important point is this:
there’s more room for both methods in any viable blueprint for agricultural reform!
A new generation of food activists has come to believe that “sustainable farming” and “eating local” are the way to solve a host of perceived problems with our modern food supply system.
By combining healthy eating and a high standard of environmental stewardship, these locavores think, we can also deliver important economic benefits and increase food security within local economies. But after a thorough review of the evidence, economic geographer Pierre Desrochers and policy analyst Hiroko Shimizu have concluded these claims are mistaken.
In The Locavore’s Dilemma, they explain the history, science, and economics of food supply to reveal what locavores miss or misunderstand: the real environmental impacts of agricultural production; the drudgery of subsistence farming; and the essential role large-scale, industrial producers play in making food more available, varied, affordable, and nutritionally rich than ever before in history.
At best, they show, locavorism is a well-meaning marketing fad among the world’s most privileged consumers. At worst, it constitutes a dangerous distraction from solving serious global food issues.
The Locavore’s Dilemma proves that:
• Our modern food-supply chain is a superior alternative that has evolved through constant competition and ever-more-rigorous efficiency.
• A world food chain characterized by free trade and the absence of agricultural subsidies would deliver lower prices and more variety in a manner that is both economically and environmentally more sustainable.
• There is no need to feel guilty for not joining the locavores on their crusade. Eating globally, not only locally, is the way to save the planet.
Hum!?...
They’re both overstated.
Most notably, they studiously fail to consider an issue integral to any serious discussion of organic agriculture: the place of animals in the American system.
The vast majority of plant matter grown in the U.S. is not only grown conventionally—it’s grown to feed livestock. Most of the chemicals sprayed and natural gas burned in conventional agriculture goes toward the production of chemically dependent monocultural crops—namely corn and soy—occupying vast amounts of agricultural space.
Radically reducing our reliance on animal husbandry would thus liberate huge tracts of land to grow a greater diversity of crops (organic and conventional) to feed directly to people.
The prospects of organic are now, in one sense, vastly improved, as more arable land means less concern over low yields. In another sense, with the corn and soy now fed to livestock removed from the equation, the justification for spraying synthetic chemicals is also potentially strengthened, as they could be applied more judiciously in an agricultural system dedicated to a diversity of high-yielding plants.
Either way, the important point is this:
there’s more room for both methods in any viable blueprint for agricultural reform!