F.A. Farm

As promised in my last post, I will give you my take on Paul Roberts' article in Mother Jones. It was titled "Spoiled: Organic and Local Is So 2008," and was published in March 2, 2009. Here is your online link. http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2009/02/spoiled-organic-and-local-so-2008

This is an important article for several reasons. Paul Roberts is a well-respected author, whose previous books, The End of Oil (2005) and The End of Food (2008), have influenced many people and given him a high profile in the peak oil and sustainability debates. I have only read The End of Food, but it was quite good in pointing out how farmers have to grow 2-3 times more food than needed in order to have the "perfect" produce retailers and restaurateurs have come to expect from the industrial agribusiness distribution system. Of course, the "less than perfect" produce sells at commodity prices and requires secondary markets that focus on value-added products. Thus, even if you get $3.00 per pound for some of your tomatoes to a high-end restaurant, most of your tomatoes may go for 35 cents a pound to a sauce company. This also assumes you actually have these secondary outlets, which have declined in number over the years. For example, Ferndale used to have a Simplot carrot processing facility but it is long gone and the Bellingham food processors are all gone too. Thus, the secondary markets are donations to the food banks and the resultant tax breaks - a pitiful substitute for anyone actually wanting to make a living on the farm. The upshot is that Roberts extends the logic of his investigations to show you some of the results that are not readily apparent.

In the Mother Jones article, however, he only implies what the end point is. This is unfortunate, as he seems to realize he will eventually end up supporting Monsanto and BP in their greenwashing. In his article, he starts out presenting an eastern Washington farmer, Fred Fleming, who is using no-till methods to grow wheat and stop erosion, which has become a real problem in eastern Washington. Unfortunately, no-till requires a lot of herbicides, since the lack of mechanical cultivation encourages weeds. This, of course, engenders no respect from what Roberts calls "the alternative food crowd" and Roberts next asks the question, "What should replace the bad old industrial system?" So far, Roberts is right on target. He delineates the problem, presents one alternative and focuses in on the crux of the matter. However, his next steps in his argument fall under the broad banner of spin and this is where he and I disagree.

Roberts is correct in stating that, "We're going to need not only new methods for producing food, but a whole new set of assumptions about what sustainability really means." However, he falls into the realm of spin when he focuses on food miles and repeats the tired old argument that it is more efficient in energy usage to get produce on a semi from California, rather than from a local farmer. I have addressed this issue with all the calorie numbers necessary in other blog posts, so I will only state a quick recap. My produce has a calorie load of 17 calories per pound if I go to the Ferndale Farmers Market and 62 calories per pound if I go to the Bellingham Farmers Market. The calorie load for the average produce that travels 1500 miles on a semi is 263 calories per pound. Now if I were to truck produce down to Seattle (100 miles away), I would have 620 calories per pound because of the size of my pickup and this would indeed be more than the calorie load from the semi-hauled produce. Thus, there will be an actual mileage point at which the local produce ceases being efficient. This is FAR, FAR different from a blanket statement that locally produced and transported produce is not efficient. This tired old argument (Or should I say tired NEW argument?) also ignores the transport calories required to get the produce to the central distribution point where it is packed and loaded onto trucks, something that is included in the local farmers market calorie calculation. In short, Roberts sets up a straw man and proceeds to demolish it.

Roberts makes other arguments in the article which also seem cogent, but are revealed as unworthy once you deconstruct them. For example, his assertion that, "The local-food movement, too, must learn to bend. The reality of 21st-century America is that food demand is centered in cities, while most arable land is in rural areas." This is a valid introductory salvo, but it does not necessarily lead to specialization of food products on rural lands far removed from the cities themselves, as Roberts maintains. This specialization is part of the current structure of modern agriculture that has gotten us into this problem and it is still heavily dependent on cheap oil. Roberts' alternative of "much larger geographic systems," while still smaller than the globalization model of mid-winter raspberries from Chile, for example, still runs into the same difficulties of excessive amounts of energy used in transport of specialized moncultures produced far away from the cities themselves. In other words, Roberts is advocating for a smaller version of the same old cheap oil model. Right now our food is distributed via fossil fuels that are still cheap and the distinctions are merely stopping points on the same continuum. Raspberries from Chile use more energy to get to us than produce trucked from California, which uses more energy than pears grown in Hood River, Oregon, and shipped to Portland. However, pears or raspberries grown right in Multnomah County (the county where Portland is situated) will still have a smaller energy footprint than those grown in Hood River. [Disclaimer: I picked pears in Hood River when I was a migrant worker, so I have some knowledge of this industry.] As I said in the previous paragraph, you can measure the energy load, whether you use calories (actually kilocalories - a blip that is from the nutritionists and will probably be with us forever) or kilowatt hours (KWH) or British thermal units (BTU) or joules, all of which are mathematically interchangeable. Once you calculate the energy load you will arrive at a quantitative assessment. Making assertions without quantification is just another form of spin based on your credibility as an author and Roberts really should know better.

Another difficulty is that Roberts assumes the locavore model is mature (which it isn't) and that it actually has a significant impact on food distribution (which it doesn't). Currently, local food feeds between 1-4% of people across the US (depending on your source - Roberts says 2%) and in statistical terms, is only as significant as a Type I error due to randomness. In other words, the locavore movement is more important for educational and propaganda purposes than in actual food delivered. Setting it up as a straw man that "must learn to bend" is disingenuous.

Okay, bottom line time. Is Roberts' article worth a quick read? Yes. Is it worth a close read? Yes. However, is he poised on a "slippery slope,"  to use his own words? Yes. Does this slippery slope lead to more of the same - subsidies, monoculture, specialization of human endeavor, disassociation of city and country, and net profits for farmers so low that no one in their right mind would go into farming? Yes. Have Monsanto and BP already staked out their claim to this "new" territory? Yes. Does Roberts actually propose viable alternatives? NO.

Here's an alternative. You must reach down into your pockets and pay sustainable farmers a fair price for the food they grow with low fossil fuel inputs. You must do your own marketing and devise more alternative forms of transport. This will leave the farmer more time to farm. Once the farmer can make a living, there will be plenty of starry-eyed young newbies who will continue past their first year or even six-month efforts. While you are doing this, you should till up your lawns and grow food. Eventually, we will get to the point where 75% of a city's food comes from within 25-50 miles of the city (my personal measurement of local). At this point we should have achieved the 20% Solution. As I have maintained for some time now, there is no real solution to the peak oil/climate change crisis without 20% of the adult population working as full-time farmers. Many people disagree with me on this. Paul Roberts thinks that sustainability needs a modification of our current system, with smarter management. I don't buy it. Do you?