[Vision2020] Where in the World???

[Kenneth Marcy]

On Monday 25 May 2009 21:54:02 Paul Rumelhart wrote:
>
> I would argue that pickles from India don't cost more than locally-grown
> pickles, otherwise they would be buying locally-grown pickles and saving
> on shipping costs.

We have a terminology opportunity here. Pickles aren't grown; cucumbers are 
grown, harvested, and then processed into pickles, containers of which can be 
stored for a while, or shipped wherever they're salable. Fresh cucumbers stay 
salable as cucumbers a few days; processed pickles can remain in good shape 
for a year or two.

> There may be a few reasons for this, such as the efficiencies of scale you  
> get when you ship 20 million pickles at a time (just pulled that number out 
> of thin air) or India simply had a banner year for growing pickles and are 
> selling them cheap.

If cucumber cultivation were highly localized in particular climates, perhaps, 
but actually not. The cost of growing the cucumbers is a small percentage of 
all the costs of harvesting, processing, transportation, distribution, and 
marketing and retailing. Most of the costs of Americans' food don't pertain 
to the farming operation that actually cultivates and grows the food. It's 
the subsequent operations that add up the costs to our supermarket prices.

Here's a paragraph from page 68 of Barbara Kingsolver's book:

     "The business of importing foods across great distances is not, by its 
nature, a boon to Third World farmers, but it's very good business for oil 
companies. Transporting a single calorie of a perishable fresh fruit from 
California to New York takes about 87 calories worth of fuel. That's as 
efficient as driving from Philadelphia to Annapolis, and back, in order to 
walk three miles on a treadmill in a Maryland gym. There may be people who'd 
do it. Pardon me while I ask someone else to draft my energy budget."

Without getting into the details of Kingsolver's numbers, I think you can see 
that food transportation adds significant cost to the food we eat, but we're 
so used to it being rolled into the supermarket price we don't notice it. 
There are powerful corporate forces that would like to keep that lack of 
knowledge from consumers generally, but country of origin labeling has been 
approved, and is supposed to be implemented nationally. Perhaps better 
numbers will be available on this subject in the not-too-distant future.

> I'm behind the idea of eating locally-grown food, but I don't see it
> becoming a reality on a massive scale anytime soon.

I agree that many, and probably most Americans, will be loathe to surrender 
our abundant food choices just to save a few petrodollars, even if the amount 
of such energy expended in absolute and percentage terms is large. We love 
our available food choices, and will not give them up without good reasons.

Americans comprise about 306 million of the world's 6,780 million population, 
and used about 3.35 TerraWatts of the 15 TerraWatts of world energy 
consumption in 2004. So, about four and a half percent of the world's 
population used about twenty-two and a third percent of its energy 
consumption. I don't have readily available an estimate of energy devoted to 
transporting food within America, but likely it's a noticeable percentage of 
total petroleum consumption. 

> If we did go that route on a large scale, won't we start running into the   
> problems that cheap transportation and globalization was designed to fix?

Certainly it is the case that since the end of World War II, with a newly 
built national highway system, fuel prices not a concern, and mobile 
refrigeration a practical reality, the movement of a variety of foods from 
farmers to families began to accelerate in earnest. Where before America was a 
nation of regional cuisines and diets informed by locally available foods, 
the second half of the twentieth century brought food choices, not to mention 
dietary homogenization, throughout the country. Local farmers serving local 
markets were replaced by national distribution and marketing organizations 
that sucked agricultural profitability from localities to central locations 
and the interests of financial as well as agricultural managers.

> Such as a bad growing season in the Northwest causing a shortage of food    
> here? Or giving up mangoes because they don't grow within 100 miles?  I'd  
> rather not have to freeze-dry or can food just in case we get a             
> colder-than-normal year.

Well, it's not just you. Most American families don't live on arable land, and 
can not, even if they knew how to, and might prefer to, grow and preserve 
some of their own food. So we have to have a substantial food distribution 
system. Whether we can become more energy efficient, both in terms of food 
production, processing and transportation, and in terms of optimal food 
energy for best human health and longevity, are other substantial questions. 

> I'm all for supporting local farmers, but they can't handle all of our
> needs.  I'd rather put more time and energy into greener transportation
> and reap the benefits of  both worlds.

I think we can agree on this. Investigating and becoming better educated about 
the intersections of our food life cycles, energy use, and human health are 
subjects with interesting facets and important policy implications.


Ken