F.A. Farm

The April 19th issue of Pacific Northwest, a Sunday magazine for the Seattle Times, featured an article by Tom Watson called "From Farm to Fork." This was quite a good article but  had a couple of flaws, which I mentioned in an email to the article author. Even though I take exception to a couple of statements, the article was quite good and I recommend it. The main points in the email are reproduced below.

1) "Inefficiencies from a single pickup bringing a farm-load of produce for a weekly event." [This refers to Farmers Markets.] This is a common error now being used by mainstream economists to actually assert a semi-trailer bringing produce from California is more efficient than local produce (and I did hear this at the Food Justice Conference in Bellingham on April 18th from a supposed "environmental" economist). The trap is that economists have kept a proprietary stranglehold on "efficiency" for so long because they refuse to use a common metric that crosses all platforms. For instance, a semi for interstate commerce weighs 80,000 pounds loaded and can carry 40,000 to 50,000 pounds of freight (higher weights require special permits, so I am just using the standard weights for convenience - I am sure you get my point). If the average distance produce travels in the US is 1500 miles, a semi gets 5 miles per gallon and diesel is equivalent to 35,000 calories per gallon (all checkable on the Internet, by the way), we can calculate the average calorie load of a pound of produce arriving at the store. This is 300 gallons of diesel, for 10.5 million calories divided by 45,000 pounds of produce. The calorie load calculates to 233 calories per pound - just for the fuel. If the truck has a maximum freight of 50,000, the calorie load is still 210. This does not include the embedded calories in the semi's steel, platinum in the catalytic converter, rubber in the tires, etc. These are hard to measure and one of the actual costs of transportation the nerdboys should be investigating. The point is that an average pound of tomatoes has a calorie load in excess of 200 calories by the time it gets to the supermarket. Tomatoes have a caloric value of 91 calories, so a pound of tomatoes ends up with a calorie value of 300 or more.

In comparison, let's say I drive 12.5 miles (25 miles round trip) to the Bellingham Farmers Market with 1000 pounds of produce on my pickup, which gets 22 miles per gallon and the calorie value of gasoline is 31,000 calories per gallon. My produce now has a calorie load of only 35 calories for the fuel. If I only haul 500 pounds to the market, my calorie load is 70 calories per pound. This is still only one-third of the average calorie load of a pound of produce in the supermarket. Also, note that I sold at the Ferndale Farmers Market last year, which is only 3 miles away from our farm, so my calorie load for 500 pounds was only 17 calories per pound of produce. [This does not include the embedded calories of my pickup, but as I mentioned earlier, I cannot find good approximations of the embedded calories for my pickup vs. a semi.] Of course, we can lower our calorie load even further, such as with satellite-distribution networks, as mentioned in your article. I have been working on this here in Whatcom County for three years now, but there are difficulties - mostly with the modern mindset and the restaurants having their needs catered to for so many years.

My point is that the use of calories (or even joules) takes all the air out of the economists' argument for long-haul transportation, as well as globalization in general. This is not a radical concept anymore, as anthropologists have been using calories in evaluating traditional cultures for at least 40 years and the Post Carbon Institute uses calories and joules in their analyses. For a fuller discussion, you can go to my blog http://www.localharvest.org/blog/15945/entry/the_calorie_cost_of_using

2) "May lead to waste if customers don't like or eat what's in their boxes." [This refers to CSA programs.] This is a common complaint heard by CSA farms, but it misses the point entirely. If I give someone a pound of sunchokes (345 calories) and they don't eat them, their waste is MINIMAL compared to what the average consumer is wasting every day in the normal course of events. Americans are incredibly wasteful, so making a big deal out of not eating a small amount of food that can be composted or given away to someone else is really about scoring points on a cheap shot, rather than a valid ecological question. The packaging on a box of cornflakes thrown in the garbage has many more calories than the pound of sunchokes in the CSA box - and they are among the highest calorie values in a CSA share! The actual "waste" of a pound of New Zealand spinach (65 calories), for example, is much less.

The actual problem here is that the shareholder got something they couldn't use. However, any CSA share program can make adjustments the next week and the shareholders usually get so much more than they paid for each week, it is still a great value - even accounting for the occasional produce not eaten. I even give my shareholders credit for what they didn't like, so they win all the way around. This also touches on another point. I am subsidizing all my customers on the farm with my labor. I do not make a fair wage, nor even anywhere close to the minimum wage. The shareholders and other customers may have an office job, or even work in a factory, but they still get a much higher wage than I do. This is a problem for all farmers and is the real reason family farms are in such short supply. The system of exploiting farmers, peasants, serfs and slaves has been in existence for at least 5,000 years, since the first glimmerings of civilization. It doesn't rise to our attention very often because of the overabundance of material goods in this country. However, once petrol is in short supply, there is a chance for the farmer to actually make a living and be appreciated.

The bottom line for me is that we need to question the academics and the coporate types who have had a stranglehold on ideas for so long. The postmodern business model provides a metric that allows us to actually measure efficiency. I know that my produce has a lower impact on the environment than that grown in the Imperial Valley and shipped across the whole country. I shouldn't have to listen to nonsense that simply reinforces globalization and status quo by kinking the argument.