The foie gras debate has spurred me into thinking about what I buy and eat. And, because they're probably reading my mind, Salon has posted an interview with an ethicist named Peter Singer about the way we eat, perhaps in order to promote his new book, The Way We Eat (imagine that).
While my hackles go up when I encounter anyone (especially someone who's a "professional ethicist") promoting stark veganism (sorry friends-who-are-vegans...I love you, but I'd probably sell you out for some gorgonzola.) with a book called Animal Liberation on his C.V., but it's a really great interview, and I'm interested in reading this new book, for which he did quite a lot of field research at slaughterhouses and whatnot.
Anyway, here's an excerpt of his thoughts on the "Buy Local" movement:
In your book you say that socially responsible folks in San Francisco would do better to buy their rice from Bangladesh than from local growers in California. Could you explain?
This is in reference to the local food movement, and the idea that you can save fossil fuels by not transporting food long distances. This is a widespread belief, and of course it has some basis. Other things being equal, if your food is grown locally, you will save on fossil fuels. But other things are often not equal. California rice is produced using artificial irrigation and fertilizer that involves energy use. Bangladeshi rice takes advantage of the natural flooding of the rivers and doesn't require artificial irrigation. It also doesn't involve as much synthetic fertilizer because the rivers wash down nutrients, so it's significantly less energy intensive to produce. Now, it's then shipped across the world, but shipping is an extremely fuel-efficient form of transport. You can ship something 10,000 miles for the same amount of fuel necessary to truck it 1,000 miles. So if you're getting your rice shipped to San Francisco from Bangladesh, fewer fossil fuels were used to get it there than if you bought it in California.
In the same vein, you argue that in the interests of alleviating world poverty, it's better to buy food from Kenya than to buy locally, even if the Kenyan farmer only gets 2 cents on the dollar.
My argument is that we should not necessarily buy locally, because if we do, we cut out the opportunity for the poorest countries to trade with us, and agriculture is one of the things they can do, and which can help them develop. The objection to this, which I quote from Brian Halweil, one of the leading advocates of the local movement, is that very little of the money actually gets back to the Kenyan farmer. But my calculations show that even if as little as 2 cents on the dollar gets back to the Kenyan farmer, that could make a bigger difference to the Kenyan grower than an entire dollar would to a local grower. It's the law of diminishing marginal utility. If you are only earning $300, 2 cents can make a bigger difference to you than a dollar can make to the person earning $30,000.
I highly recommend checking out the full interview (if you're not a Salon member, you have to watch an ad... it'll be over soon and definitely worth it... would I lie to you?). While I'd likely chalk some of his ethical absolutism to being a total wingnut, I am increasingly interested in critical explorations of our modern production and consumption of food, and perhaps even wingnuts say relevant things now and then.
image from (duh) toothpastefordinnner.com
2 comments:
peter singer (from my understanding, at least) seems to be one of the few "ethicists" who practices what he preaches. he believes in a radical redistribution of wealth, and thus lives basically at a subsistence level, despite having the means to do otherwise (um, i read a lot of his writing when i was a self-righteous vegetarian as opposed to an apathetic vegetarian).
i still resent him, but because he's a better human being than i am, rather than because he's a hypocrite.
Right, I got that sense about him. He donates something like 20% of his salary to charity. I am mightily interested in his book, though I'll likely read about species discrimmination with a raised brow.
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