Local Food

CC sends me one possible means of turbocharging the local food movement: Give people all the information that they could possibly want.

The government should also throw its support behind putting a second bar code on all food products that, when scanned either in the store or at home (or with a cellphone), brings up on a screen the whole story and pictures of how that product was produced: in the case of crops, images of the farm and lists of agrochemicals used in its production; in the case of meat and dairy, descriptions of the animals’ diet and drug regimen, as well as live video feeds of the CAFO where they live and, yes, the slaughterhouse where they die. The very length and complexity of the modern food chain breeds a culture of ignorance and indifference among eaters.

But wait, how do we maintain those local farms? What if bar codes don't increase demand by enough? We can regulate our way to the "proper" outcome:

National security also argues for preserving every acre of farmland we can and then making it available to new farmers. We simply will not be able to depend on distant sources of food, and therefore need to preserve every acre of good farmland within a day’s drive of our cities. In the same way that when we came to recognize the supreme ecological value of wetlands we erected high bars to their development, we need to recognize the value of farmland to our national security and require real-estate developers to do “food-system impact statements” before development begins. We should also create tax and zoning incentives for developers to incorporate farmland (as they now do “open space”) in their subdivision plans; all those subdivisions now ringing golf courses could someday have diversified farms at their center.

Quite honestly, I doubt whether more than 20 percent of people will care enough to scan the barcode, and I doubt that landowners will be interested in having their property condemned for local food production.

Compare this "do the right thing" scenario to the case of water conservation. I estimate that about 20 percent of people conserve water for intrinsic reasons. The other 80 percent will not care about conservation until they face higher prices. I think that the same is true for local food and local lands, where price signals can be powerful.

Do I advocate these regulations? No -- they are more likely to mess things up than make them "right". People will move to local food when imported food becomes more expensive, and $4/gallon gas was pushing us in the right direction. (Gas prices will rise again). The only way to hasten the process (that I support) would be taxes on carbon and the other externalities of food production (pollution, water quality, etc.).

Bottom Line: Don't regulate us into [some subjective vision of] "sustainability"; tax us for being unsustainable!

Addendum: Blattman has a good summary on the local food movement, pointing out that most of the carbon footprint from food comes from consumers truck deliveries, consumer shopping and cooking. Very little comes from sending food across the ocean.