Chillian nationalism

Practical solutions to invented problems:

1. Get friendly with someone who has an allotment. Plenty of seasonal fruit & veg. No carbon footprint. Happy days!

2. Learn to embrace the Union flag, not in a jingoistic, nationalistic right-wing American way, but in a Swiss way (this little white cross on a square red flag means excellence in watchmaking, cheesemaking and managing your money). This mishmash of many red, white and blue crosses means we are wealthy tourists from the country that invented mass production, and we have so much leisure time and post-imperialist angst to use up, we have to find cruel and unusual new neuroses to beat ourselves up with.

Nothing will grow near Preston. It’s a barren hostile place, like the farm in HP Lovecraft’s Colour from out of Space.

But, hang on, setting aside the nationalist/jingoism worries, that something was produced locally doesn’t mean that it’s been produced at all efficiently, carbon- or any other -wise. There’s absolutely no way to produce large quantities of food at high latitudes without artificial stimulants and supplements of various kinds, all of which require lots of energy so at the very least one has to look very carefully at energy supplies before assessing carbon intensity: ‘food-miles’ labeling doesn’t do any of that deeper analysis hence it’s a scam/implicit subsidy for/rent-seeking by inefficient European farmers (who, yes, tend to get indulged in that for partly nationalistic/jingoistic reasons – well at least I *tried* to set that aside!).

For example, there’s absolutely no chance that UK farmers will ever be able to produce as carbon-efficiently as farmers in southern France with nuclear energy for their electricity supply (or future farmers in a hydro-working, on-its-feet-again Zimbabwe) notwithstanding their extra distance to the UK market.

‘Eat locally’ if you want, but the case that you’re doing anything especially good for the environment by doing do is incredibly weak, and economically it’s mostly just a waste of money propping up inefficient local producers for political reasons. Don’t ‘Eat natively’ (i.e., only foods grown in and native to your region), that way madness lies!

does swanstep’s term “efficient” take care of the quality of the produce properly? the cheapest tomatos to grow may not be the best to eat (in fact we pretty much know they aren’t: tomatoes are redder, more rubbery and much more tasteless); where they’re grown presumably has some bearing on this, as does how they’re grown

the visible-airmiles idea is manifesting an external cost — separating out an element that’s hidden what you pay — but it’s true of course that ceteris paribus a tomato you grow in your own garden (airmiles=zero, presumably; hidden cost yr hot-house bills) is highly unlikely to be identical to a tomato grown anywhere else… so which do you prefer?

(an element of preference injected into in all western consumption — which i think it is worth naming if not shaming somewhat — is the aspect that’s “conspicuous consumption”: as in “i eat expensively because it makes me look and feel fancy”; everyone does this now and then, but someone who eats tomatoes grown at and flown from the south pole SIMPLY BECAUSE this is expensive and they can, and they like being seen to be able to, is a bit of a c0ck… except maybe Polar Tomatos taste unbelievably amazing on a blindfold test etc… )

there was a fashion in the 70s — ignited iirc by richard mabey — for “hedgerow cuisine”, meaning basically an awareness of all the interesting, tasty and beneficial plants (it was all plants) (sadly: mmm mole) that have been overlooked or squeezed out of the retail economy

but of course there’s an immediate economic consequence of any shift of preference: mabey’s cuisine ended up pretty much a rural middleclass fad because no one else had the leisuretime to identify gather and prepare these nice roots and grasses (i think a taste for sorrel is the one thing that’s come down to me from my mum and dad’s brief interest in this: my dad being a botanist who specialised in grasses, we had a better-than-most reason to explore, i suppose)

for it to spread beyond quirky experiment, there has to be an economy of scale, which means growing stuff other than where it “naturally” occurs: and yes, as soon as you do this, there are add-ons (cost of transport; cost of technics of cultivation, small or largescale; EFFECTS — ie on taste consistency etc — transport and technics of cultivation) (and of course effects on taste and consistency may be beneficial: i pretty much guarantee that no one reading would prefer the potatoes that grew naturally in the mountaintops of peru: plant husbandry is often a GOOD THING, and mankind learned to cultivate hundreds of different types of potato, in many climes, to many tastes)

britain can’t support itself agriculturally: has HAD to import since i think the 18th century — seems to me there’s a metric for “efficiency” re the support of the island as a whole, which would surely not just be the aggregate of all the individual farming “efficiencies”; and there’s also a very complex preference curve, wherein, for example, all manner of locally grown, now-forgotten apples and such, distinct to the region, would offset (excluding conspicuous consumption excesses) the scaled-up economies of vast orchards in far-flung places… lots of vegetables and fruits grown very deliciously in the UK, and some of their value is surely that these types and flavours are somewhat unavaiable elsewhere

on the other rather less rambly hand, when i’m actually in a shop, i’m very often there to make snap decisions based on someone else’s expertise: the “free market” embeds some streams of this expertise, and to the degree it hides and disguises all kinds of information this is a time-saving (=money-saving) shortcut for many… essentially the problem with any re-emergence of this information, in any form, is that it’s going to be partial and political, unless there’s a way for it ALL to re-emerge (so that every bean comes with its own complete provenance-book/DVD/app) (haha and reviews of the book/DVD/app saying where it was wrong, skewed, had rubbish themetune etc…)

^^^thinking this out as i was writing in case you couldn’t tell!

The internet for every bean thing is important in a weighing your stats way in the supermarket. Particularly with fresh produce the things to weigh up when buying are
a) quality of produce (based on history / trust of supermarket / how it looks)
b) provenance
c) cost
d) how much you want it.
e) nutritional information
f) the inertia of habit

The only one of these which can be absolutely measured in the shop is cost. Flags, sourcing, whatever nutrition scheme is being used can only be measured up to a point. Whilst we don’t live in a fantastically numerate age, weighing all of these aspects against each other to make a decision is mainly based against f) – buy what I bought list time.

Minor point, really, but I’ll make a case for local foods in local places by saying I don’t agree with “pretty much guarantee that no one reading would prefer the potatoes that grew naturally in the mountaintops of peru”.
Not been to Peru, but eating potatoes in Colombia* ( mmmm, papas criollas ) really did make me feel I’d previously been denied the whole point of them – they’re not a side food, they’re something with an intense, delicious flavour of their own.

*Apologies for sounding a bit like one of those smug travelling idiots who says “If you haven’t dived the Great Barrier Reef, what’s the point in ever having swum?”

ok totally busted on the peruvian potato, i have never of course et one — but vegetables growing in the actual wild are often not that interesting since their prior purpose is feeding themselves not people

Oxfam did a pretty good report on this issue in 2009, called ‘Fair Miles’, available as a free download here:

http://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/publications/download?Id=365276&dl=http://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/oxfam/bitstream/10546/115389/1/bk-fair-food-miles-101209-en.pdf

It reviews the available evidence on the environmental and economic impacts of buying globally or locally, and tries to answer lord sukrat’s “internet for every bean” problem with a few usable rules of thumb. One of which is “buy from developing countries”.

(The internet for every bean problem is real, of course. One of the problems often cited in this area is the debate between dried and tinned chick peas, where the verdict depends on whether you cook your dried peas with gas or electricity, and whether that electricity comes from a wind farm or a 1960s-vintage coal plant.)

And if you are REALLY interested, you can go along to the Excel Centre on November 17, to watch a debate titled ‘Can Counting Food Miles Do More Harm Than Good?’

More details on that here:

http://www.internationalsupermarketnews.com/news/4693

You’re right that Oxfam makes the leap from “long-distance food is not necessarily worse in terms of its carbon footprint” to “we should all buy African beans” without really filling in the gaps. But I think that given their purpose, which is to fight against poverty, it’s fair enough for them to do that.

If we are trying to save the world – which we should be – it’s perfectly reasonable to argue that we should not do it by screwing some of the world’s poorest people.

On a lighter note, The Onion has pretty much the definitive take on what to think about climate change:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/we-need-to-do-more-when-it-comes-to-having-brief-p,21295/