Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

livingontheland - [Livingontheland] Local organic food: An answer or a sure path to disaster?

livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Local organic food: An answer or a sure path to disaster?
  • Date: Sun, 04 Jul 2010 13:52:22 -0600


[I'm sure there are some disputes with this one]

Local organic food: An answer or a sure path to disaster?
Behind the collapse of past civilizations was the collapse of a food industry
-- each and every time
By Randy Shore, Vancouver Sun July 3, 2010
http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/Local+organic+food+answer+sure+path+disaster/3230713/story.html#ixzz0skFYo0pm

Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly
By James E. McWilliams
Little, Brown and Company, 272 pages ($28.99)

Empires of Food: Feast, Famine, and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations
By Evan Fraser and Andrew Rimas
Random House Books, 320 pages ($35.95)
---

I there is a hotter topic in the publishing industry than local organic food,
I don't know what it is. Two books that recently crossed my desk take
decidedly divergent approaches to the problem of commercial agriculture,
though both authors agree that commercial agriculture is a problem.

There the similarity ends.

James E. McWilliams argues in Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How
We Can Eat Responsibly that the locavores have it all wrong and that organic
farming is not only NOT the answer, but a path to certain disaster.

He quite rightly points out that the local foodism promoted by Alice Waters
is elitist in the extreme and that organic farming as it is practised today
provides high-end groceries for the relatively rich.

He is dismissive of the concept of food miles, arguing that transport is only
a tiny fraction of the energy inputs that go into food production as though
that was the only problem with the globalization of food systems.

The premise of his book is that we have to do something drastic to ensure
that we are able to feed a rapidly growing global population, but the author
doesn't properly consider that rapidly expanding food production is exactly
the reason that we have so many mouths to feed in the first place. Countless
times in human history, advances in agriculture led to population booms. The
collapse of those food systems, usually due to soil depletion or climate
change, led to the collapse of the population. Each and every time.

If we, as a race, are committed to uncontrolled population growth, then yes,
Williams is right to say that genetically engineered crops are the only way
to support the nine billion people we will have to feed in a couple of
decades. But the bubble will burst, because commercial agriculture devastates
the soil's natural capital, and famine will result, as it has throughout
human history. Each and every time.

We can only hope that biotechnology leads to a solution to soil depletion.

Just as informative and less annoyingly pedantic is Empires of Food: Feast
Famine and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations, by Evan Fraser and Andrew
Rimas. The professor and his reporter pal take us on a ride through time,
noting those moments that changed history. Civilizations arise when the
people growing food produce more than they can eat, giving rise to trade and
urbanization. All civilizations are built on a foundation of food. Without
productive agricultural systems, cities collapse into ruin and, more often
than not, revolution results.

We got a tiny taste of the fragility of our own civilization just a few years
ago when a single crop of rice faltered and six countries closed their
borders to rice exports. When prices spiked, there were riots in many Asian
cities and a run on all available supply here in Vancouver.

McWilliams calls locavores "cynically populist, isolationist, and
protectionist." I say if we can produce enough food to feed ourselves -- and
British Columbia produces only 42 per cent of the food we consume -- the
world's problems need not be ours. At least not right away. When push comes
to shove, most nations will take care of their own and you can kiss your
Chilean grapes and New Zealand apples goodbye. Maybe cynically populist,
isolationist and protectionist isn't such a bad thing.

The food empire that feeds the globe is built on a rapidly decaying
foundation. Agribusiness runs on nitrogen and chemical fertilizer, which
comes from the petroleum industry. We can all see the demise of the petroleum
industry on the horizon, and we are planning for alternative forms of energy
to run our factories, but where will the chemical energy that fuels
agriculture come from?

Even slightly more expensive oil is going to have dramatic impacts of the
amount of food we are able to produce, and given the condition of the world's
soils. We cannot dream of doing without it.

Chillingly, Fraser and Rimas describe how the scenario of collapse has played
our through history, from Roman times forward, and how food was the pillar
that gave way. Each and every time.








Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page