Just a Barbed-Wire Fence Between Us
Kerry Howley at least avows some puzzlement as to why, in her personal experience, "locovorism" seems to have supplanted "fair trade" as the current fashion in food activism. In addition to some possibilities she doesn’t consider – Kerry’s own life has changed to the point where she just runs into locovores more than she sees fair-trade activists; actual conditions in the world have changed such that the environmental worries behind localism have gained relative importance versus teh economic impetus behind fair trade – let me offer another consideration: food-localism is fun for people. Going to farmer’s markets is fun. So is getting to know the producers. Visiting a local farm is an enjoyable way to spend a weekend afternoon. As a bonus, the stuff tastes better than the crap you get in the grocery store.
As a "local yokel" in training, I got into the practice out of animal-welfare concerns. This probably counts as a flavor of the "puritanism" Kerry adduces – I’d just call it humanism but never mind. For a certain amount of incremental money and time, I contribute marginally less to the (state-subsidized) torture of animals, poisoning of fisheries and destruction of topsoil. That in itself makes me "happy," but the intellectual and social activity around localism offers additional satisfaction beyond that: I meet people I wouldn’t have otherwise met and learn things I wouldn’t otherwise learn. My neighbor, who belongs to a CSA out of the same farm market, is in it for the plant food: he gets fresher, tastier produce, and he likes the fact that the subscription format pushes him to try new things. Topping it off, our overlapping experiences and interests give us one more thing to talk about in each other’s driveways.
Point being, the relative merits of "fair trade" aside, it doesn’t seem to offer much enjoyment beyond the satisfaction of participating in, by the fair-trade-consumer’s own lights, ethical commerce. Locovorism gives you something to do. Plus, when the financial system collapses I’m hoping Mrs. B. will take me on as a hand. her stable is almost preternaturally clean, and there’s plenty of nice warm hay in the loft.
Now needless to say, going to farmer’s markets, visiting farms and learning about soil repletion isn’t everyone’s idea of a fun way to spend one’s time. Other people have different values regarding the status of animals and different tolerances regarding food taste and texture. This helps explain why not everyone is a full-bore localist about food. But when in doubt, cherchez le fun.
Comment by Kerry Howley —
October 12, 2008 @ 1:40 pm
I don’t think concern for animal welfare is puritanical, but nor do I think that there is anything inherently wrong with being puritanical. Or buying local, for that matter. As for this:
“Other people have different values regarding the status of animals and different tolerances regarding food taste and texture.This helps explain why not everyone is a full-bore localist about food.”
That’s stacking the deck a bit, isn’t it? Essentially you’re saying “Not everyone gives a damn about animal suffering or decent tasting food; thus, not everyone buys local.”
A Fair Trader might say: “Other people have different values regarding the status of the global poor. This helps explain why not everyone is a full-bore fair trader, and some people go so far as to refuse to buy agricultural products from developing countries.”
But I don’t actually think your decision to buy locally grown food suggests that you don’t care about poverty.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 12, 2008 @ 1:54 pm
Actually Kerry, I was trying specifically NOT to say “not everybody gives a damn about animal suffering” in that passage. Hell, many vegetarians and vegans will say the humane-care movement completely misses the point of animal status. At least one vegan (no one you know) has told me to my face that “there’s no such thing as ‘humane’ animal husbandry.” Other people who are perfectly fine folks really don’t believe animals have any claims on us that industrial husbandry traduces. I actually think these people are wrong, but I myself am an imperfect exponent of my own, admittedly hazy, standards on the matter, so I can’t kill and eat those people.
As for the food taste and texture, I’m more mindful than most what an individual thing that is because I’m a picky eater. So I meant what I said there as I said it: different standards.
Right, and I’d have no problems with their making that argument in that way, if that fairly summarizes their views. These are values arguments and there’s no way to have a values argument that does not threaten the way people think. My point in this entry was that, beyond the “values payoff,” locovorism offers straight-up hedonic bennies that I don’t find in fair-trade consumerism. Now, I was never into fair trade, so it’s entirely possible I’ve missed “the fun part.” If so, I’d love for actual fair-traders to educate me.
Is that any clearer?
Comment by Kerry Howley —
October 12, 2008 @ 2:15 pm
Sure, the hedonic argument is very persuasive, and is just the kind of insight I was hoping for when I posted. So thanks!
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 12, 2008 @ 2:26 pm
Awesome!
Comment by Rojo —
October 12, 2008 @ 2:41 pm
I’m mostly a localist because our transportation system is entirely unsustainable.
Comment by Will Wilkinson —
October 12, 2008 @ 4:17 pm
Indeed, our transportation system will never survive the heat death of the sun.
Comment by Rojo —
October 12, 2008 @ 4:43 pm
har-de-har.
What it won’t survive, in its present form, is increasingly expensive energy and a bankrupted government.
Comment by digamma —
October 12, 2008 @ 5:40 pm
This smells like another case of “What annoys you more – state tyranny, or damn dirty hippies?”
Comment by y81 —
October 12, 2008 @ 9:17 pm
Isn’t this a little like asking why skirt lengths, or tie widths, or whatever, change from time to time? Some obvious partial explanations are: the need for producers to sell new products, the need for people who live well above the subsistence level to occupy their mental energy by creating complicated new rituals and fashions, the fact that politically correct acts of the fair trade variety don’t actually change the world, so people seek new fads rather than admit the unobtainability of their goals, etc. But obviously none of these factors is determinative, as witness the fact that no one could predict what skirt lengths, or politically correct food fashions, will be like in three years.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 12, 2008 @ 10:50 pm
Rojo, let me please try to understand your meaning here a little more clearly: Do you mean you want to be personally prepared by having a working food channel when the transportation system collapses, or do you mean you’re encouraging the growth of an alternative food-delivery system with your buying power, so that said alternative will have a chance ot supplant the current global system?
NB: Sincere question. Not being socratic on you.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 12, 2008 @ 10:56 pm
Your instinctive anti-apocalypticism resonates with me, Will. That said, right at the moment Google News results for “credit crisis grain” are plentiful.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 12, 2008 @ 11:10 pm
I have the same reaction to a lot of the libertarian writing on foodshed issues, digamma: industrial agriculture is about as “state” as state capitalism gets, and features a heaping helping of the sort of regulatory capture libertarians nominally despise: just for starters, the impunity with which Big Ag can externalize its costs via pollution (runoff). And the actual locovore movement is about as close to a genuine free market as this country comes – complete with the interference of obtrusive bureaucrats. For instance, because the Official Chickener to the Henley Family processes (okay, kills and guts) her own birds, she has to display a “pet food only” sign at her booth to get past the health department. Meanwhile her friend at the end of the row sends her birds to the USDA approved commercial processor, who ruins the damn things. The best ones come back with the skin torn. The worst aren’t even completely usable. With the last batch she could tell that, in several cases, the birds had had their legs broken before death. For organic, humane producers and consumers that’s just unforgiveably callous – plus, it costs her money. You would indeed think that the participants in completely voluntary, mutually beneficial exchange would arouse instinctive libertarian sympathy, yes.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 12, 2008 @ 11:23 pm
Translating your entire argument from wingnuttese, I generally agree with it. Farmer’s markets have been around for decades, but foodshed advocacy as a movement is still pretty new, and hasn’t proved its staying power. And its products are more expensive than those from state-subsidized industrial agriculture. Partly this is because of the usual disadvantages regulatory capture imposes on small business. Partly it’s supply and demand. Partly it’s an inherently higher production cost.
Whatever the reason, locovores who are not themselves gardeners or ranchers incur higher food costs, and they put more time and effort into acquiring their food besides. I wouldn’t quantify a likely dropout rate, but there will be dropouts. And as a matter of social psychology, there will be new concepts that grab the public attention, yes.
Comment by Thoreau —
October 13, 2008 @ 1:30 am
As concerned as I am with transportation costs and state subsidy, the corporate grocery store happens to be across the street from me. I take my reusable cloth grocery bags and walk less than 300 feet instead of burning fossil fuels to drive to a farmer’s market. The apartment complex that we’re looking to move to when our lease expires (just a short drive from my job and walking distance from one of my wife’s jobs) is also a very short walk from a corporate grocery store.
Yes, the food there has a carbon footprint, but the convenience and low cost of walking my ass across the street is still compelling, and arguably virtuous in its own way.
Comment by matthew hogan —
October 13, 2008 @ 2:06 am
Damn, I’m hungry now.
Comment by derek —
October 13, 2008 @ 5:37 am
If a farmer’s market is like a church, there’s worse religions to have. See you on Sunday! (Saturday, in my market’s case)
Comment by stephen —
October 13, 2008 @ 11:16 am
good talkin’ all around.
this is a fun topic because there is so much ideological intersection. crunchys, paleos, libys, lefties, everyone has a claim! even the pro-agro-lobby-hamiltonian-corporatist types (you know who you are) can join the party on foodie grounds.
anyway, its all a little too trendy for me at the moment (give me a couple of decades for the retro revival, preferably in prom format), but for realz, to each their own, and thats a good thing.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 13, 2008 @ 12:37 pm
There’s something to that. Without the “this is our way of fighting back against our evil corporate overlords in their corporationey buildings who want to sell us food for money!” rhetoric that libertarians often encounter when they look into the locovores and other political foodies, many wouldn’t have the “damn hippies” reaction. At the risk of sounding wingnutty, once the left-wing equivalents of the keyboard commandos – the ones who Fight Globalization by bragging online about how they went to a farmer’s market for the first time – drift off to the Next Thing, the entrepreneurs and earnestly interested, non-crazy people will loom larger, and you’ll see less knee-jerking. Not none, just less.
Comment by mds —
October 13, 2008 @ 12:38 pm
This has the makings of an awesomely cryptic T-shirt.
Indeed. Back in Rochester, NY, we shopped at the thrice-weekly farmers’ market downtown, which was very well-provisioned by stubborn holdouts against large-scale agribusiness (Yay, Upstate!). It was located in a lower-income neighborhood, and was reasonably accessible by transit. And the prices were pretty good, with no supermarket middleman. Add in the heavy hand of government via WIC, and things were great.
Upon moving to Connecticut, we found that farmers’ markets were either (1) sad little displays of lettuce, or (2) targeted to wealthy urbanites who think nothing of $10 for a dozen eggs. Yet we’ve heard much more foodshed advocacy here. So unless there’s already a longstanding tradition of local smaller-scale agriculture, it can be difficult to create something that’s more than Elite Cause of the Month (God rest Paul Newman, but that’s pretty much what his Westport farmers’ market was).
It’s good that those with plenty of disposable income are disposing of it in this way, but it needs to make it to the masses. Notice how much more convenient it remains for Thoreau to use the conventional model. How do we make the alternatives more accessible? I think farm shares and NY’s greenmarket system are promising, for example. (You can find fairly cheap vegetables and crazy-expensive bacon at Union Square. And there are lots of greenmarket locations.)
Comment by Dave W. —
October 13, 2008 @ 5:11 pm
The focus is on the wrong corporations here. The most relevant corporations are the “competing” (but not really) supermarkets.
They sell space to the highest bidder, and large food sellers use market power this as a tool of exclusion to quash meaningful competition upstream of the supermarket choke point.
In other words, the market is broken and eliminating government subsidies (in cash and in regulation) will not necessarily (or even likely) fix the problem. The problem is collusion within and between thoroughly oligopolized markets. Government participation, such as it is, is but a convenient distraction (read excuse) for the libertarian crew.
Comment by Gene Callahan —
October 14, 2008 @ 8:22 am
“They sell space to the highest bidder, and large food sellers use market power this as a tool of exclusion to quash meaningful competition upstream of the supermarket choke point.”
Why would anyone bid more for space than they could make from it? And if they bid less than they can make, then the space is going to the producer that can make the best use of it, whether big or small. In fact, plenty of small producers get shelf space, and many sections such as produce) aren’t done that way at all.
Comment by Gene Callahan —
October 14, 2008 @ 8:24 am
Oh, and having spent a number of years working at a supermarket, the idea that they “don’t really” compete is just stupid. Haven’t you noticed all those sales they run, Dave?
Comment by joe from Lowell —
October 14, 2008 @ 4:32 pm
Notice how much more convenient it remains for Thoreau to use the conventional model. How do we make the alternatives more accessible?
At least in my neck of the woods, the UbermarKKKets (heh) are picking up on the trend, just as they picked up on the organic movement.
Comment by Dave W. —
October 15, 2008 @ 5:07 am
Why would anyone bid more for space than they could make from it? And if they bid less than they can make, then the space is going to the producer that can make the best use of it, whether big or small.
For example, Coke is willing to pay so that Pepsi and “Supermarket Brand” are the only sodas competing in flavors that Coke sells. Pepsi is willing to pay so that Coke and “Supermarket Brand” are the only sodas competing in flavors that Pepsi sells.
Coke and Pepsi each increase their volume and basically pay for the shelf space out of that. Low volume cola manufacturers aren’t capitalized for this kind of competition so any low volume cola manufacturers that exist are marginalized to meaninglessness. Coke and pepsi rake in profits based on the market power they achieve this way and share that with the stores (especially the large store chains) that help them achieve and maintain the cartel.
Same with ketchup. and mustard. and relish.
heck, in my area they are trying, with creative partnerships, to expand it to gasoline.
Comment by Dave W. —
October 15, 2008 @ 11:18 am
Or to put it a slightly different way, competition is not a boolean variable, on or off.