act:ualise | what we think

This is a long-overdue response to SavageSays’ excellent post rebutting the idea that protectionism (even if in the form of buying local or FairTrade) can ever be a good idea.

He argues that buying local isn’t necessarily better for the environment, citing three pieces of research:

• A study by Lincoln University in New Zealand arguing that producing dairy products, lamb, apples and onions in NZ uses less overall energy than producing them in Britain;
• Cranfield University research which found it is greener for Britons to buy roses from Kenya than the Netherlands because they have to be grown in heated greenhouses in Holland;
• A DEFRA report which showed that half of the food miles associated with British food accrued by the British public travelling to and from shops, and that a local-based system away from the supermarket model could actually increase food miles as food distribution would become less efficient.

Indeed, SavageSays goes a step further and refutes the claim that organic food is better for the environment because “it is extensive, limits pesticides, and bans the use of GM crops, thereby lowering crop yields.” He asks, “surely the less space used the better for our agriculatural [sic] needs (and therefore more space for things such as rainforests), as long as care is taken not to damage the land, or surrounding lands/sea (which isnt something that is beyond farming)?”

Let’s be clear, in my earlier post, I didn’t argue that it is always the case that food grown abroad is less energy efficient than local food. Instead, I argued that giving consumers the ability to make a free and informed choice is the right thing to do. Sometimes, that means arming them with the tools to make an ethical decision, and sometimes that means giving them the ability to make an informed economic decision. The ability to accurately assess which product is (truly) cheaper is where we all need to get to, and that is why exposing hidden costs in retail prices is so critical. There is simply no other way that consumers can be fairly expected to make a reasonable analysis of what is such an incredibly complex issue.

To understand how complex the range of issues that need to be analysed is, consider the following:

• Ronald R. Davis from the Biochemical Institute of the University of Texas found inverse relationships between crop yields and the nutritional concentrations within that food, ie, fertilisers and pesticides may be giving us more food, but the resulting food may be as much as 40% less nutritious.
• A study at Cornell University’s Department of Agronomy considered the effects of modern agriculture on its environment, identifying the following detrimental effects of intensive, industrial-scale farming: soil erosion, impaired air quality, sedimentation of water courses and destruction of marine species habitat, contaminated drinking water supplies, pesticide and herbicide runoff to streams and lakes causing contamination, soil trace element depletion, indiscriminate destruction of wildlife species owing to pesticide use, and the persistence of pesticide compounds in animal tissues.
• Modern intensive monoculture farming has led to a reliance on a very small number of animal, vegetable and fruit breeds and the loss of thousands of heritage breeds, many of which had natural defences against pests, but may have produced a lower yield than desired.
•  As they lose breeds and ancient techniques, farmers lose knowledge and become dependent on global multinationals to even farm the same crop from one year to the next.

These issues don’t even start to consider energy consumption in farming, or the food miles involved. But they do go to show that higher yield isn’t necessarily better for human food production.

Again, to be explicit, I am not (here anyway) arguing that organic, local food production is always better for humanity than conventional farming. Instead, my argument is that we need to have a way to evaluate all of these combined effects together if consumers are ever going to be able to make informed purchasing decisions. And only by being well-informed can we be justified in any individual-level protectionism on which we might choose to embark.