Local food reconsidered
September 2, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Opinions & Thoughts , trackback
As a self-professed more-than-occasional geek, I am susceptible to splitting-hair optimizing theories about just everything. Here is my confession: though I am enthusiastic about both organic and local food, I have never been able to convince myself, let alone anyone else that organic and local food are ABSOLUTELY the way to go.
It’s been observed that organic standards are under the threat of dilution to pave way for corporate profits. Horizon organic milk, for instance, has been criticized by many as barely hanging on to the text of the organic label by the skin of its teeth and wholly lacking the spirit of the organic concept.
We’ve all seen organic labeled frozen vegetables imported from countries with dubious food health standards.
What about local food? Is the concept bullet proof?
A couple of years ago, I happened upon an interview of Peter Singer, a professional ethicist (who knew there was such as profession?) who was best known for his 1975 book “Animal Liberation” – a canonical text of the animal rights movement.
In his book The Way We Eat, aside from discussing ethical issues with animal husbandry, he provided a curious example against the local food movement. Singer argued that the “socially responsible folks in San Francisco would do better to buy their rice from Bangladesh than from local growers in California.”
(image courtesy of www.greenpeace.org)
Why? California rice is produced using artificial irrigation and fertilizers that involve intensive energy use. Rice grown in Bangladesh takes advantage of the natural flooding of the rivers and does not require any artificial irrigation. It also doesn’t require as much synthetic fertilizers since the river washes down nutrients. The energy used for the Bangladesh rice to get to our table is quite efficient compared to the artificial irrigation and local trucking. Shipping, it seems, is ten times more energy efficient than trucking.
Interesting food for thought.
Then another article this year pointed out that local fruits and veggies might have more food-miles than produce at the supermarket. Wandering about San Francisco’s famous Ferry Plaza farmers’ market, the author observed that most farmers there drove their “Ford, Isuzu or Chevrolet trucks, packing anywhere between 200 and 2,000 pounds of goods”. They trucked their produce an average of 117 miles.
In comparison, the produce from a conventional distributor who buys from California, Arizona, Washington, Texas and Mexico averages 942 miles.
But they mostly use semi-trailer trucks that can pack 40,000 pounds of food. After a bunch of detailed carbon calculations later, the author concluded that the wholesaler won for the most part as far as CO2 emission was concerned.
The author of the article proceeded to provide a few other examples of local food losing out when it came to overall energy usage. “Raising lambs on New Zealand’s grassy slopes required four times less energy than U.K. lamb, which relied more heavily on fertilizer”.
More good food for thought.
I got a splitting headache when imaging tremendously controversial and detailed carbon calculation for each food. To be complete, shouldn’t we also throw in factors such as local fair land use, environmental standards, impact on endangered species, and fair labor regulations into the gigantic ethical food formula?
I gave up on splitting the hair of ethical food.
A friend came to visit with her young children this weekend. She and her husband have been expats in Malaysia for the past three years. Like on most Sundays, we went to our local farmers’ market.
My daughters’ went straight to berries and peaches. My friends’ 5 year old boy suspiciously eyed the strawberries my girls were devouring. He stuck out his tongue, “bleh.” After some inaudible exchange among the kids, apparently he was convinced to try one. A couple of seconds later, he asked in his perfectly polite English accent, “Can I have another one?”
Before long, two baskets of strawberries were gone. The only trace left was the stains on their shirts. I asked my friend what changed her son’s mind about these berries.
She laughed, “believe it or not, in our local market, we get strawberries from Watsonville.”
“Watsonville? You mean the town 30 miles south of here? All the way to Malaysia?” I was amazed.
“Yep. But the strawberries we get are always so horrible. Rubbery and bleh, like he said,” my friend pointed to her son.
“I am sure the ones we get are picked not quite ripe and sprayed with bloody anti-rot juice,” she semi-joked.
“Wow!” I was still thinking about how these strawberries got shipped all the way to Malaysia.
“Obviously he loves real strawberries,” my friend quipped as she watched her son’s stained mouth and fingers.
It was then I threw the big hair ball of food calculation out of the window. Though legitimate issues have been raised about local food, as of now, it is still a far better option for many foods in many parts of the world.
The satisfied look on the face of my friends’ son also told me that what got lost in all the calculation was the enjoyment of “real” food. Can you put an index on that?
Unless a clean, complete and convincing theory is formed, I am sticking with eating and enjoying local food.
CindyW at Organicpicks
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Comments»
This is a good article, Cindy. Nothing is cut and dried is it? When you wrote about “nutrients” being washed down river in Bangladesh, all I could think of was raw sewage-ew! But nothing beats freshly picked food that hasn’t had to sit on a loading dock somehwere.
Just back from Slow Food Nation, I’d have to vote for local and organic and humane and biodiverse every time. Here in California, we can have it all! And it tastes better too.
As your friend’s son discovered.
Eating local food for better taste only makes sense to a certain extent. It does not make sense, AT ALL, when it comes to dried foods like beans, or rice as was mentioned in your post. Shipping has no impact on the flavors of those foods at all, so it only makes sense to grow them where they can be grown most efficiently, with the least amount of environmental impact. Buying rice from California *is* absurd and there is absolutely no reason to buy “local” rice, save if you’re living in a place like Bangladesh or China.
When I read blogs written by folks in the cold wintery north, I thank my lucky stars for a year-round CSA in sunny Arizona. Some argue that growing food in the desert is bad, but my CSA farmer grows native and drought-tolerant varieties, and uses good soil/crop management and mulching to grow with low water use. Produce for 500 people is trucked fresh from the farm (about 100 miles) twice a week. Most of the CSA members live or work close to the pick-up site, and quite a few bike each week. All in all, I’m comfortable with the distance it travels, especially since I know he’s using sound organic and sustainable growing principles.
Joyce: you have the voice of wisdom. Indeed nothing is as simple as it seems. However one can also get boggled down by analysis paralysis, like I am capable of doing
Greenbean: We do feel incredibly lucky to live in California whenever I visit farmers’ markets. I do worry about our drought though. We haven’t had a drop of rain for like 4 months now?
Presley: I totally see your point. Nothing is black or white. There are always shades of gray in between. It doesn’t serve anyone to be dogmatic about a specific concept. My issues with non-local foods are: 1)It gets really confusing for most consumers to figure out which foods to buy local and which foods are better in an faraway place; 2)Even if one knows rice and beans can be produced far more efficiently in other parts of the world, which parts? 3)Aside from energy efficiency, how do we monitor the environmental impact and labor fairness in other parts of the world. They are very complex issues. Most consumers can barely figure out the ingredients on the boxes from their grocery stores.
Chile: What produce is more drought-tolerant other than tuna? You mean there are more drought-tolerant broccoli and carrots? That’s interesting.