Tom picks up on a piece of economic illiteracy from Michael Pollan:
Michael Pollan was on Fresh Air a moment ago. It's part of his world/public radio tour in support of Farmer In Chief, last week's NYT Magazine article asking the next president to adopt better agricultural policies. I heard him giving pretty much the same spiel on a Philadelphia-area NPR station over the weekend, too.
I don't want to quibble with the man's larger crusade, but he keeps making one particular point that really bugs me. Pollan is fond of pointing out that since 1960 the average American household's spending on food has dropped as a share of income, from 18 percent to 10.
I'm pretty sure this is dumb. Or half, dumb, anyway. I'm sure food has gotten cheaper in absolute terms, and that those savings have been paid for in animal suffering and environmental cost.
But it's also the case that household income tends to increase faster than the rate of inflation, while human nutritional requirements do not. Wikipedia says that real median income has increased about 30% since 1967. Unless I'm missing something, that means that if a family used to spend $1800 on food, today they spend $1300 -- not $1000, as Pollan implies. If median household income data was available for 1960, rather than 1967, you can bet that the differential would be smaller still. And if you consider the fact that household size has declined from 3 to 2.6 people since 1967, the gap shrinks even more.
I sort of approve of Michael Pollan's larger crusade. I think in general it would be nice if we ate less processed food, and had a better idea about things like the American food chain's extraordinary reliance on corn. I'm with him on farm subsidies. I think things like fertilizer runoff need attention. And obviously, I would like farm animals treated better.
On the other hand, processed food tastes good, and to note the obvious, not all of us can spend hours each day lovingly hand-preparing our food from scratch, nor afford to pay others to do same. And the notion that cheaper food is some sort of a disaster is frankly terrifying. Cheaper food is, literally, the foundation of modern civilization; it is why so many of us can afford to do something besides spend all day seeking sustenance.
So, what's his point? Is he trying to say that somehow, American farmers are getting the short end of the stick?
Last I checked the census results, there are a whole lot more families in 2008 than there were in 1960. Taking his numbers, 10% of today's household spending his a hell of a lot more than 18% of 1960's household spending.....and there are a lot fewer farmers to day than there were then.
Well, for one, the median is not equivalent to the average.
processed food tastes good
Because it is high salt (look at the sodium on the nutrition labels) and often high fat.
Since I'm on a low sodium diet (for Menieres Disease) and low fat diet (because I need to lose another 30 pounds or so (at least) and have high cholesterol) I pay attention to that.
I haven't RTFA, but how do farm subsidies fit into this discussion? I hardly think our farmers are struggling when, as JWH said, there are less farmers while we're spending more, plus the added abomination that are subsidies.
Ummm, is Pollan really arguing against cheap food because it is cheap? I haven't really been paying attention, so I don't really know, but I would be pretty surprised if that was his point. I wonder if we are setting up a straw man here. I thought the point was that the cheapness of cheap food is actually illusory if you factor in the adverse health and environmental effects as well as the adverse effects of the subsidies that artificially lower the price.
Home cooking doesn't really take hours, but it sure seems that way. Planning the menu and shopping for ingredients takes almost as much time as the actual cooking.
What home cooking does take, though, is a chunk of time, even though not all that time is spent in actual cooking or food prep. Take a simple loaf of bread, which I make regularly, and being allergic to wheat, I make using spelt. Initial mixing takes around 5 minutes actual work, then 30 minutes of waiting for the starter to begin rising, then around 5 minutes of actual work while I finish the mixing, then 60 minutes of waiting for the first rising, then 2-3 minutes of actual work for the punchdown, greasing the loaf and shaping the dough into a loaf, then another 60 minutes of waiting for the final rising, then about 1 minute of actual work to place the loaf in the pre-heated oven and setting the timer, and then about 40 minutes of waiting while the bread cooks. Then another 2 minutes of actual work to take the loaf out of the oven and onto a drying/cooling rack.
So maybe 16 minutes of actual work, but a little over 3 hours from start to finish. Just right for a Sunday while watching football, or in the evening watching the pennant races.
This is an extreme example, but there certainly are dishes that take a bit of such time. These sorts of dishes are just right for the weekend, and then you have yummy leftovers the remainder of the week. But doing a simple steak and baked potato, maybe with some brocolli on the side, takes less than 1/2 hour (assuming microwave for the baked potato). There is very little excuse for eating only processed foods.
I really hate people saying we need to pay more for food so we'll appreciate it more. The cost of a higher education has sky-rocketed over the last decade but the quality is worse than ever. Medical insurance has ballooned but coverage has shrunk. Just because you pay more for something doesn't directly translate to higher quality. Cheap food is one of the few remaining benefits of living in this country. Don't take that away.
"The cost of a higher education has sky-rocketed over the last decade but the quality is worse than ever."
No, you made that up.
interesting discussion by tom. nobody seems to be arguing with Pollen's overall arguments - only with fringe-points and implementation issues (processed foods taste good).
Well - yes, processed foods taste good but it is not necessarily an expensive part of the true cost of food? Your French sour-dough baguette is not necessarily an ecological and economic disaster - nor is paying for a good chef and some service. Requiring to keep food frozen, however, is always an expensive component - no matter how you slice it. Unless of course we were to switch from oil, gas and coal to cleaner energy.
Assuming we had 100% clean energy - consuming animal products will always be ecologically and economically inferior to plant-based nutrition. Freaking cow farts alone account for more CO2 than all planes, cars and trucks combined!
But how we plant what we later process or not - is of underestimated importance. There is only one Farmer in Chief that i would appoint - it is much easier to find a good Fed Chairman. His name is Masanobu Fukuoka. He, for me, is the Hayek or Von Mises of farming.
From the Natural way of Farming, Masanobu Fukuoka. Numbers indicate kilocalories in diet assuming 200,000 kcal per 1,300 lbs of rice:
Natural Farming Medium-Scale (native Americans) mechanized(1970s)Human labor 10-20 12
Machinery 0 350
Fertilizer 0 54
Pesticides 0 72
Fuel 0 45
Total 10-20 533
Energy input 0.1-0.2 5
Energy output 100-200 4
It got only worse with large-scale industrial farming after the 1980s (with energy inputs of a factor 10 and outputs of a mere 2).
The argument here is that industrial farming is a loss maker compared to natural farming when factoring in all variables. In this case we have not even included the ecological costs but only the true economic costs (species loss, soil erosion, global warming etc).
(And - no - producing fertilizers, machinery and energy does not in this case create more jobs, economically speaking - we are laboring in vain to get something virtually free and would be better off just sitting around doing nothing - economically speaking. ecologically we are following Zeus' punishment ,for stealing fire to the dot!)
Looking at it from this perspective - we are paying more and more for our food each day!
Good news - industrial farming is not sustainable with 7 billion - it was with 3 billion if we had dropped meats and fish etc. we have stop if we want it or not. the sooner the cheaper!
In this case we have not even included the ecological costs but only the true economic costs (species loss, soil erosion, global warming etc).
Species loss and erosion are going to be a lot worse if we go back to manual subsistence farming and thereby both slash per-acre yields and make subsistence hunting an attractive option.
I'm not clear on what the inputs and outputs represent. Clearly it's kcal/something, but what is the something?
Another point is that the kcal input is a little deceiving. You can't eat oil, so the food return on food invested is huge when there's just one guy burning oil to run the machines. On the other hand, manual laborers need to eat, so the FROFI is much, much lower. Granted the oil won't last forever, but in that sense "unnatural" farming is much, much more efficient.
And like a breath of fresh air sweeping away a stagnant stench, Rob Lyman quickly and efficiently points out the most obvious way in which Hugo Pottisch's post was purest nonsense.
Rob Lyman for President!
Rob Lyman for President!
Send me a bumper sticker. (Recycled paper and biodegradable organic glue, of course, hand-crafted by skilled artisans in a Fair Trade program.)
You forgot one major input of energy into the farming system. Solar energy.
So your figures are now:
Natural Farming Medium-Scale
(native Americans) mechanized(1970s)
Human labor......10-20..................12
Machinery............0.................350
Fertilizer...........0..................54
Pesticides...........0..................72
Fuel.................0..................45
Solar Energy...751 000.............188 000
Total..........751 020.............188 533
Damn it! It looks like the stupid old farmers didn't adopt the new methods because they wanted to be less productive after all.
And yes they do have to pay for the solar energy, its called "buying the land in the first place"
Note that the old method also uses about 4 times the water...
(Yield on rice typically 20 000 pounds/hectare for traditional methods, which is 650 m^2/1300 pounds (why choose that number?)
650 m^2 at 2 crops/year is 182 days*24hrs*60mins*60sec*0.2solaravailability*1kW/m^2
Modern methods give 4 to 6 times the yield/area)
Rob Lyman for President!
I'm afraid I'm one of those single-issue types who has a positively religious devotion to a non-negotiable talking point.
So what I need to know before endorsing this statement is, Does Rob Lyman have a long and spectacular tail?
Engel's Law (yes that Engel) is that % of household spending on food declines as income rises. Seems intuitively appealing and in fact holds true almost universally both over time within populations and across contemporaneous populations with different income levels.
"Cheaper food is, literally, the foundation of modern civilization; it is why so many of us can afford to do something besides spend all day seeking sustenance."
This is a good point, and one worth keeping in mind.
It will be interesting to see, from a political perspective, how liberal policies on energy and agriculture play out. On the one hand, liberals are in favor of making our tax system more progressive, but on the other hand, they tend to favor policies that would make food and energy more expensive. Since food and energy consume a larger percentage of the income of lower income Americans, the effect is regressive. It's no surprise that the one issue that Republicans got some traction with in this election cycle was their calls to increase domestic energy production ("Drill here, drill now, pay less"). The recent correction in oil prices took this issue off of the front burner, but high oil prices will come back.
Maybe if the food service industry weren't so regulated, we'd eat more home-cooked meals. In the ghetto, for example, women often run what amount to illegal restaurants. In India, there's a huge industry in selling home-cooked food. Both of these places lack something that the West has: very stringent and exclusive health and licensing requirements for food services.
Doesn't that calculation above assume an income elasticity of zero for food? Even Engel's law assumes it is greater than zero. Something feels wrong there.
Pollan and the other food activists tendency to pursue complicated policies frustrate me to know end.
Instead of blathering on about slow food, or raw food, or organic food, etc. they would be much more effective if they simply all worked to end farm subsidies.
The simple way to improve the lot of farmers and the environment is to end farm subsidies.
my keyboard has committed mutiny.
I typed
frustrate me to no end
somehow the keyboard output
frustrate me to know end.
Bad keyboard bad bad bad.
So what I need to know before endorsing this statement is, Does Rob Lyman have a long and spectacular tail?
That's a very good question, and I'm glad you asked.
We have work to do to fight a real war, not a phony war, against taillessness. I want to call a hemispheric summit just as soon after the 20th of January as possible to fight that war.
A few facts from ERS, USDA:
U.S. agriculture relies almost entirely on productivity growth, primarily from innovation and changes in technology, to raise output. Total production nearly tripled between 1948 and 2004, while land in agriculture fell by one-quarter and labor declined by three-quarters. Because of high productivity growth, agricultural commodity prices rose at less than half the rate of economy-wide prices over those 56 years.
I think you and Tom are missing (or at least glossing over) a very fundamental point of Pollan's: namely, that food subsidy programs are largely responsible for the lowered cost of food in this country. In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Pollan points out that this has happened in two ways:
1) Farm subsidies directly reduce the cost of producing cereal grains, and encourage overproduction.
2) As a result of these lowered costs and overproduction, along with the chemical versatility of these crops (particularly corn and soy), food manufacturers use them endlessly to replace other ingredients in food. This further decreases the overall cost of food for consumers.
It has also resulted in our society consuming more of these two crops (and their byproducts) than any other civilization in history. This has undetermined but potentially deleterious nutritional effects; it also makes us more vulnerable to blight due to a lack of diversity in the food system.
Which is to say: according to Pollan's argument, you cannot practically be in favor of cheaper foods while being simultaneously against food subsidies. Nowadays, one is the same as the other.
Let's quote him:
"Cheap food is only cheap because of government handouts and regulatory indulgence (both of which we will end), not to mention the exploitation of workers, animals and the environment on which its putative 'economies' depend. Cheap food is food dishonestly priced — it is in fact unconscionably expensive."
This of course completely ignores the fact that it's possible to simply eat less processed food (or eat food that's less processed) as opposed to drop processed food in favor of organic, home-cooked meals, which is ridiculous and which nobody but militant vegans is advocating. The environment, our health, and the lot of the animals we eat would be dramatically increased by simply doing less of what we do now. Ending it entirely might be nice, but we at least make a start.
Maybe this isn't clear, but there is a vast world of difference between pre-historic sustenance farming and our present methods of food production. Highly processed foods are a recent invention, and I'm not sure that going back to how we made food fifty years ago would result in the end of civilization as we know it, either here or around the globe.
I am sure that UC-Berkeley Journalism Department is a hotbed of research into agricultural economics and agricultural science. However, that expertise simply does not show through in Pollan's essay. Granted, he seems to have two sensible positions:
1) Reduce fossil fuel reliance
2) Reform agricultural subsidies
However, he quickly goes of the tracks. It seems he has not subjected his theories to checks of technical feasibility (or internal consistency).
I have a crazy idea - why doesn't Pollan first advocate increasing fossil fuel taxes and ending agricultural subsidies instead of planning for the Age of Aquarius?
Which is to say: according to Pollan's argument, you cannot practically be in favor of cheaper foods while being simultaneously against food subsidies
While there are a lot of American policies that make food cheaper, there are also a lot that make food more expensive (price support, import tarrifs, paying farmers not to grow crops).
It's worth noting that there are many countries in the world. Many of them have negligible to zero farm subsidies, almost all of them have cheaper food than 50 years ago.
One of Pollan's points is that cheap (inexpensive) food is also cheap (poorly made, shoddy) food.
From "In Defense of Food":
The point is that a system that produces cheap calories and expensive nutrients is biased towards creating overweight and undernourished consumers.
From above:
Most restaurant food is more wholesome, less processed than what most Americans eat at home. On the other hand most food from fast food chains is toxic. I buy my lunch from cheap food carts in downtown Portland and it's all fairly real unprocessed wholesome food. And not particularly highly regulated. Minimal standards of hygiene and refrigeration are not what is getting in the way of Americans eating better.A loosening of regulation of our food supply by the current administration has had an impact on the quality of what we eat.
September 2006 Spinach - e. coli.
September 2007 - Dole salad - e. coli
February 2008 - 148 million pounds of beef recalled - downer cows in food supply
March 2008 - Honduran Cantalopes - salmonella
June 2008 - Tomatoes - salmonella
September 2008 - Lettuce - e. coli
October 2008 - Frozen chicken products - salmonella
I've worked in the food service industry most of the last 20+ years. This is new.
Marc, you are right. No one ever heard of salmonella and e. coli until recently. Those recalls that I heard about in the 1990s never happened.
Unfortun ately, the argument for "cheaper food" food misses the point. It's not necessarily "cheaper food" vs. "more expensive food," it's better thought of as "food-like substances" vs. "real food."
"Food;like substances," aka cheaper food, are not cheaper, they're paid for through our health care system. These are the things sold for your eating pleasure in the typical convenience store and in many fast-food places; they're usually shy on anything resembling a fresh fruit or vegetable. The main ingredient in these food-like substances is corn, in a host of artfully processed ways.
If you want to have this discussion, please have it on honest terms, so that Rob Lyman analyze the cost between a diet based on salad and roast chicken vs. chicken mac-pieces and fries, including the long-term costs of diabetes, cancer, etc.
Nathan: "Medical insurance has ballooned but coverage has shrunk."
You fail it. Your skill is not enough. Good bye.
Medical insurance costs more because there are far more expensive treatments available today than in the past. Coverage is much larger, and include all sorts of things that didn't even exist 10-20 years ago.
zic, so increasing the cost of food and abandoning modern production technologies will cause people to eat healthily?
The fundamental error in Pollan's analysis is that the modern food infrastructure allows people to eat more healthily than they did 50+ years ago. They just choose to not do it. Do you really think that people really eat more healthily when the only produce they can buy at their local "Four Season's Market" for 6 months out year are onions and potatoes?
"People will appreciate food more when they have to pay more for it."
Yeah, because rising college costs have led to students taking their educations WAY more seriously than they did back in the 60s....
Look, I work 14 hour days some days. Adding on another couple hours to search for "locally grown" food that is organic and such - I can't do that AND then cook up the beans or beets or whatever I've had to go out and forage for.
And I even LIKE a lot of the less-processed foods. It's just, some days may mean eating something somewhat processed or not eating at all.
I get irritated by people who say, "Oh, the world would be perfect if..." and then fail to consider that not everyone has access to giant farmer's markets, or has "help" that work for them, or that are independently wealthy and can work 8 hours a day or less, or can walk everywhere and not have a giant carbon footprint or or or....
MnZ,
No. Given the choice, people opt for the Western diet, and make themselves sick. Are you familiar with the work of Western Price? My grandmother and her sisters fit right in, could have been subjects of his.
But people are intelligent enough to learn from their mistakes and intelligent enough to make better choices, particularly when it comes to large-scale food production that's subsidized by the government, and those choices seem to cost billions on in health care costs.
What really disturbs me is that we still aren't even having the real conversation. We're still talking around the edges.
Might I suggest some of you who haven't read the piece take some time to do so before throwing arguments out there?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html?_r=1&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink&oref=slogin
He's saying foods like corn/soy, and meats are being subsidized by taxpayer money, giving you the illusion that food is cheaper when it's not...and that this system created by subsidies has deleterious effects for national health, pollution (CO2, runoff), biodiversity in crops, energy consumption, etc. His argument that food is a national security issue is also compelling.
He did not argue that cheaper food in of itself is a disaster at all, but that our system artificially drives the prices on corn/soy/meat down in such a way that the cost of "cheap" food is actually very very expensive on many levels.
Pollan's written a couple of fantastic books related to plants/agriculture: The Carnivore's Dilemma and The Botany of Desire. Both worth a read and definitely thought-provoking.
The best-kept secret in America is that the cheapest food is actually the healthiest food. Fruits and vegetables are extremely affordable. McDonalds is at least 3 tiems more expensive by comparison.
Anyone who disagrees is obviously someone who has no experience actually shopping for fruits and vegatables at a small local market.
Yet another example of how hippies are at heart genocidalists that want nothing more than the extermination of 90%+ of the human race. Pollan is no different from your average Greenpeace, NRDC, or Sierra Club member, making plans that would make the world better if most people had the nicety to die.
The Left is inherently genocidalist and membership is a crime against humanity. They supported Mao, they supported Stalin, they supported Ho, they supported Pot, they support Kim, and they want to kill you all. And yet we're supposed to accept them as legitimate, just because they've got a nice veneer to their hate and plans for murder by starvation. Meanwhile, capitalists and libertarians are the evil ones.
From what I know of Megan McArdle, I think she eats out far more often than she partakes in the exotic and quaint activity of buying fresh fruits and vegetables, and using them to cook at home.
And no, this does not cost time. The time you spend in preparation will be paid back by extending your life by 10-15 years on the back-end, AND reducing the days you spend in a hospital bed.
when "natural farming " was the only way to go, how many civilians were supported by that natural farmer??
three??
Processed-food may taste good Megan, and I’ll never try to take away your right to eat what you want, but I think Pollan’s larger point is that that processed food has a hidden but significant cost. And that is the tremendous health costs linked to the consumptions of processed-foods. I’m not a scientist or researcher, so I’m not gonna cite studies, but I think we can all agree that processed-foods contribute to the general unhealthiness of our population. Higher rates of obesity, diabetes, etc.. Perhaps because it is so cheap, it is targeting segments of the population that, as you say, just can’t worry about determining the source of everything they eat. Cheap food becomes truly expensive food in the long run and that’s a cost that all of society has to bear. Cheap processed-foods are a disaster, an environmental one, a health one and ultimately, a cultural one. One of Pollan’s most powerful ideas is that we have turned food into something that we don’t have to think about, but that is not an overall plus. By side-stepping the activity and effort of connecting where our food comes from, how it was raised, etc… we have abbrogated that responsibility to the instruments of the market. Those instruments have in turn ruined the health of the environment and the population. I don’t want to come off as a Michael Pollan defender, but I will acknowledge I am sympathetic to many aspects of his mission and enjoy his writing .
"They supported Mao, they supported Stalin, they supported Ho, they supported Pot, they support Kim, and they want to kill you all. "
...and they support Obama.
Yes, the left rarely saw a genocide they did not like. The ONE genocide they condemn was Hitler, as he was the only genocidal dictator that was not left-wing.
That is why 'Hitler' is the one insult they are quick to hurl. Hitler is the only genocide that they can bring themselves to condemn.
I fully agree with Pollan that the industrialization of our food supply, as supported by cord subsidies, is bad.
Other developed countries like France and Japan have much healthier diets, even though their hourly wage and living standards compares to our own. We certainly don't HAVE to eat unhealthily.
"Ummm, is Pollan really arguing against cheap food because it is cheap? "
He is not, actually. He is arguing that subsidies make food cheap at the store, but that the hidden costs are substantial and only emerge later, in terms of health decline, medical costs, obesity, etc.
He is arguing that removing subsidies will make it more expensive in the store, but save other costs elsewhere. Hard to argue with that.
Subsidies for agriculture in the US do not take the form of direct payment to the grower for crops harvested. Farmers are paid to "soil bank" some or all of their tillable acreage; this has the effect of maintaining a potential growing reserve while sustaining a higher market price for the reduced farm crop output. How does that make for cheaper, folks?
If you want cheaper, then let them plant every inch and watch world farm commodity prices collapse. Of course, at the end of that time, prices will go to the roof because of the famine the next year.
Remember, food shortages and famine is a political result, not a market one.
"He is arguing that subsidies make food cheap at the store, but that the hidden costs are substantial and only emerge later, in terms of health decline, medical costs, obesity, etc."
Hmmm. Then may I conclude that he is also against alternative energy production due to the huge hidden costs (like the deaths involved in mining, refining, and erecting windmills and solar energy panels)? Is he similarly against CO2 reduction because of the hidden costs?
I'm betting not.
I refuse to listen to any argument for natural food or natural farming or morality based vegetarian from anyone who isn't producing all their own food. If *anyone* else is going to produce food for you, there has to be an inducement. I prefer it not be the lash or death. Money works for me.
Also, we hear more about e. coli and so on due to the increased reporting requirements put in a few years ago. People used to die from eating improperly processed home-made food all the time. (Home-canned green beans really can kill you.)
Finally, if processed food is so bad for you, why does the average age of death keep going up? Shouldn't we be dying early from eating all that useless stuff?
hugo - Someone else pointed out that your not factoring in land and water use. But more importantly your not factoring in labor. Yes you include an entry for the number of kilo calories consumed by the labor that that vastly underestimates the cost for the labor. Having a person expend X kilocalories laboring to achieve an end is normally much more expensive in poor countries, and about always vastly more expensive in wealthy countries, then consuming the same number of kilocalories through burning fuel.
As for the idea that since we get less kilocalories out (in terms of actual calories people eat) then we put in that we are losing on the deal its beyond silly. The work a person does burning say 2000 kilocalories a day is normally going to be worth a lot more than the cost of 2000 kilocalories of raw input in to farming.
re" only considering "the true economic costs" the true economic costs is not the number of kilocalories used. A better figure would be the number of dollars used (not perfect because of externalities and because of exchange rate issues, but it would be much closer).
Analyzed that way non-mechanized farming might have lower economic costs per unit of food produced in some situations in poor countries (but even in poor countries it often won't be the case), but its quite the opposite in wealthy countries.
Processed foods taste good? Not to me!
I don't think he's saying cheap food is a disaster.
I think his point is that while processed foods are cheaper, good, organic food is not. Yet people would rather pay for cell phones and cable than real food.
Hey and Toads,
How about if I just give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're being satiric? More funny jokes, please!
Greg,
I am quite serious. Thankfully, more normal people are seeing what the left is truly about.
That they call anyone on the right 'Hitler', while defend every other genocidal monster, is a giveaway.
Leftists never say 'Bush is Stalin', or 'Cheney resembles Mao', because coming from leftists that would actually be a compliment.
Why all this emphasis on "organic" food? Regular food is just as good for you. Canning does not destroy nutrients. Meat is and always will be a better form of protein than plants.
"Meat is and always will be a better form of protein than plants. "
Wrong. Meat can be replaced with dairy and eggs.
Among plant proteins, soy and lentils pack a punch.
So meat consumption is certainly not necessary, if you are eating enough dairy and eggs.
Wrong. Meat can be replaced with dairy and eggs.
Among plant proteins, soy and lentils pack a punch.
So meat consumption is certainly not necessary, if you are eating enough dairy and eggs.
Wrong. Sort of.
Right about the dairy and eggs...but only if it comes form cows and chickens on their natural diets and able to live a life according to their natural habitats - i.e. the free range pasture.
But Soy? Not only is is a poor substitute, it is downright dangerous to your health.
Educate yourself and understand that Soy is nowhere near "Health food.
http://www.soyonlineservice.co.nz/
"Educate yourself and understand that Soy is nowhere near "Health food. "
Wrong again. Asian countries have been eating a lot of soy for 2000 years. This is long before America even existed, you know. They have better health than Americans, particularly after adjusting for wealth.
The campaign to discredit soy is junk science from the meat industry. The meat industry is powerful, they have even battled Oprah Winfrey when she said unfavorable things about meat consumption.
steve-
He's saying foods like corn/soy, and meats are being subsidized by taxpayer money, giving you the illusion that food is cheaper when it's not...and that this system created by subsidies has deleterious effects for national health, pollution (CO2, runoff), biodiversity in crops, energy consumption, etc. His argument that food is a national security issue is also compelling.
So? We only spend $50 billion/yr on farm subsidies in a $1.1 trillion "food" market.
"Health Care" is said to be more than 16% of the American economy ($13+ trillion GDP)- call it $2 trillion/yr.
Meanwhile, the Gov't currently pays for more than 60% of all "health care" expenditures- do these higher "subsidies" create a more effective illusion that "Health Care is cheaper when it's not"?
Or, does the system created by these subsidies have deleterious effects on national health, quality of service, future innovation, or even "personal responsibility"? (I'm one of the "47 million" that doesn't have health insurance)
The State of Ohio paid about half when I rolled my car... I deducted the rest from my Fed. taxes.
His argument that food is a national security issue is also compelling.
That's why we still subsidize mohair, helium and the TSA...
Look, I work 14 hour days some days. Adding on another couple hours to search for "locally grown" food that is organic and such - I can't do that AND then cook up the beans or beets or whatever I've had to go out and forage for.
And I even LIKE a lot of the less-processed foods. It's just, some days may mean eating something somewhat processed or not eating at all.
Thanks for posting that, Ricki; the commenter who seemed to imply that "everyone" has time to cook at home certainly doesn't work a schedule like you or I do.
When you don't finish work until 7:30 or 8 (like I do some nights), there's another factor at play: How late I'll end up eating. If I have to go home and cook something that takes even 45 minutes to prepare, that puts dinnertime at 9:00. It's not too healthy to eat that late on a regular basis.
But if I stop off at a (non-fast food) restaurant on the way home, I can take my first bite at a tad after eight (and if I eat at the New Urbanist retail area, I can walk off my meal afterwards by traversing the streetscape). You probably know which choice I make, more often than not.
I get irritated by people who say, "Oh, the world would be perfect if..." and then fail to consider that not everyone has access to giant farmer's markets, or has "help" that work for them, or that are independently wealthy and can work 8 hours a day or less, or can walk everywhere and not have a giant carbon footprint or or or....
Another good point. One size rarely fits all...
"If you want cheaper, then let them plant every inch and watch world farm commodity prices collapse. Of course, at the end of that time, prices will go to the roof because of the famine the next year.
Remember, food shortages and famine is a political result, not a market one."
He did argue that food shortages are political in nature and that changing our food system could actually prevent this in the states (A strategic grain reserve for instance). He argues that we could use less fertilizer (and thus oil), prevent soil erosion, by crop/animal rotation, etc. etc.
"Meanwhile, the Gov't currently pays for more than 60% of all "health care" expenditures- do these higher "subsidies" create a more effective illusion that "Health Care is cheaper when it's not"? "
Ironic that part of Pollan's argument is that healthcare is so expensive in part because people eat so poorly as a result of our current system.
He's made an argument that changing our food systems may cost more on the food end and cost us less in healthcare, in energy and our environment.
He is arguing that the current way subsidies work has given farmers huge incentives to grow corn and soy and little else, which then appear in most of our foods in forms like high fructose corn syrup, soy cooking oil, etc. etc. because they're so cheap; that food is lower in nutritive value now, but high in calories.
Also, his position isn't to end subsidies, but to use them in the opposite way they're used now in order to give American farmers an incentive to produce higher quality food for its citizens.
I'm not saying Pollan is realistic in what he wants done, but that a good chunk of people here (including Megan judging by her reaction) don't seem to have even read his arguments thoroughly before throwing out misleading statements or objections that he's addressed.
Anecdotally, one of my coworkers goes to the doctor for herself or her daughter at least 3 times a month because they're both diabetic, she's already had a heart attack (she's in her 40's), and despite regular exercise these days for herself and her daughter, they still don't lose body fat.
So why does my health insurance cost more? The X-factor here is how they eat. They control the amount of carbs/sugars they take in, but they have little to no understanding of nutrition.
Since food and energy consume a larger percentage of the income of lower income Americans, the effect is regressive.
That is a very intersting point. I've made a similar argument in response to Democrats insisting that the price of gasoline in this country should be higher; perhaps it should, but that would hit rural people pretty hard, considering that there is no access to public transportation. Since rural people are, overall, less affluent than urban people, that is also a kind of regressive tax. Then again, I think Democrats in the past few years have become quite openly hostile toward rural people.
Also, I find the need Americans have to constantly assert how busy they are--so busy that I can't make my own food--to be incredibly annoying. The average American works less now than previously and finds much more time for activities of obvious importance, like comment on blogs and watch TV (the average now is about 5 hours a day). Most of us are busy, but how you spend your time is primarily a question of priorities. If eating homecooked food is a high priority for you, whether for environmental, cultural, health, or social reasons, you find the time. My mother, for example, was a single parent who went to school full time, worked full time at night, and still packed my lunches and made a homecooked meal every day. For one thing, we didn't have the money to go out to eat (let alone to bring in "help" to do it for us). This was her priority, that she make sure I had healthful food. She gave up other things to make sure that she had time for that. Now, I realize that this is just an anecdote, but I don't buy at all that anyone is "too busy" to be able to do something that is important to them.
Seriously, I find this constant American need to be very busy--busier than you! and more stressed than you!--to be a kind of narcissistic sickness. I'm not judging anyone for the kind of food they eat or serve, because we all do have different priorities. But it is totally dishonest to say that, on the one hand, you realize the environmental or economic ramifications of what you're doing, then on the other hand assert that you are powerless to make other choices. If something matters to you, in my experience, you find a way to do it. If it doesn't matter to you where your food comes from or what its nutritional value is or how the animals in the feedlot were treated and your priorities are elsewhere--which is true for most Americans, I would guess--then just be honest about that and don't use the "But I'm too busy!" line. I really have no use for the urban liberals who claim to want to change our food culture but who "cannot" find the time to make changes in their own food culture; I guess they just expect someone else to do it for them. Bah.
"Educate yourself and understand that Soy is nowhere near "Health food. "
Wrong again. Asian countries have been eating a lot of soy for 2000 years. This is long before America even existed, you know. They have better health than Americans, particularly after adjusting for wealth.
The campaign to discredit soy is junk science from the meat industry. The meat industry is powerful, they have even battled Oprah Winfrey when she said unfavorable things about meat consumption.
Wrong again, Toads.
If you had BOTHERED to click on the links and do some reading, you would understand the following:
Soy is ONLY healthy for you when consumed in the traditional methods of fermentation that Asian's have used for the centuries they've been eating soy - Shoyu, Miso, Natto. All fermented products for which the fermentation process neutralizes the harmful phyto-nutrients that are present in raw soybeans.
Furthermore, the SOY industry is by and large a much larger source of corporate propaganda meant to fool people into believing the garbage that soy is a "health" food, than the "meat industry" you villify.
Instead, you regurgitated vegetarian extremist talking points.
Understand that I am absolutely opposed to the modern, industrial/corporate feedlot methods of producing meat.
Free range, grass fed pastured animals are the ONLY means of producing healthy, natural meat.
But soy?
Educate yourself.
Read the links I provided, look at their sources they link to...none of which trace back to the "meat" industry.
Approach this with intellectual honesty and you will discover the TRUTH: The Corporate/Agricultural behemoths that make $$$$ on federally subsidized soy and corn crops are the largest source of health destroying foods and the primary contributors to the state of ill health of the average American.
Here's the FAQ's on Soy Myths:
Myth: Use of soy as a food dates back many thousands of years.
Truth: Soy was first used as a food during the late Chou dynasty (1134-246 BC), only after the Chinese learned to ferment soy beans to make foods like tempeh, natto and tamari.
Myth: Asians consume large amounts of soy foods.
Truth: Average consumption of soy foods in Japan and China is 10 grams (about 2 teaspoons) per day. Asians consume soy foods in small amounts as a condiment, and not as a replacement for animal foods.
Myth: Modern soy foods confer the same health benefits as traditionally fermented soy foods.
Truth: Most modern soy foods are not fermented to neutralize toxins in soybeans, and are processed in a way that denatures proteins and increases levels of carcinogens.
Myth: Soy foods provide complete protein.
Truth: Like all legumes, soy beans are deficient in sulfur-containing amino acids methionine and cystine. In addition, modern processing denatures fragile lysine.
Myth: Fermented soy foods can provide vitamin B12 in vegetarian diets.
Truth: The compound that resembles vitamin B12 in soy cannot be used by the human body; in fact, soy foods cause the body to require more B12
Myth: Soy formula is safe for infants.
Truth: Soy foods contain trypsin inhibitors that inhibit protein digestion and affect pancreatic function. In test animals, diets high in trypsin inhibitors led to stunted growth and pancreatic disorders. Soy foods increase the body’s requirement for vitamin D, needed for strong bones and normal growth. Phytic acid in soy foods results in reduced bioavailabilty of iron and zinc which are required for the health and development of the brain and nervous system. Soy also lacks cholesterol, likewise essential for the development of the brain and nervous system. Megadoses of phytoestrogens in soy formula have been implicated in the current trend toward increasingly premature sexual development in girls and delayed or retarded sexual development in boys.
Myth: Soy foods can prevent osteoporosis.
Truth: Soy foods can cause deficiencies in calcium and vitamin D, both needed for healthy bones. Calcium from bone broths and vitamin D from seafood, lard and organ meats prevent osteoporosis in Asian countries—not soy foods.
Myth: Modern soy foods protect against many types of cancer.
Truth: A British government report concluded that there is little evidence that soy foods protect against breast cancer or any other forms of cancer. In fact, soy foods may result in an increased risk of cancer.
Myth: Soy foods protect against heart disease.
Truth: In some people, consumption of soy foods will lower cholesterol, but there is no evidence that lowering cholesterol improves one’s risk of having heart disease.
Myth: Soy estrogens (isoflavones) are good for you.
Truth: Soy isoflavones are phyto-endocrine disrupters. At dietary levels, they can prevent ovulation and stimulate the growth of cancer cells. Eating as little as 30 grams (about 4 tablespoons) of soy per day can result in hypothyroidism with symptoms of lethargy, constipation, weight gain and fatigue.
Myth: Soy foods are safe and beneficial for women to use in their postmenopausal years.
Truth: Soy foods can stimulate the growth of estrogen-dependent tumors and cause thyroid problems. Low thyroid function is associated with difficulties in menopause.
Myth: Phytoestrogens in soy foods can enhance mental ability.
Truth: A recent study found that women with the highest levels of estrogen in their blood had the lowest levels of cognitive function; In Japanese Americans tofu consumption in mid-life is associated with the occurrence of Alzheimer’s disease in later life.
Myth: Soy isoflavones and soy protein isolate have GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) status.
Truth: Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) recently withdrew its application to the FDA for GRAS status for soy isoflavones following an outpouring of protest from the scientific community. The FDA never approved GRAS status for soy protein isolate because of concern regarding the presence of toxins and carcinogens in processed soy.
Myth: Soy foods are good for your sex life.
Truth: Numerous animal studies show that soy foods cause infertility in animals. Soy consumption enhances hair growth in middle-aged men, indicating lowered testosterone levels. Japanese housewives feed tofu to their husbands frequently when they want to reduce his virility.
Myth: Soy beans are good for the environment
Truth: Most soy beans grown in the US are genetically engineered to allow farmers to use large amounts of herbicides.
Myth: Soy beans are good for developing nations.
Truth: In third world countries, soybeans replace traditional crops and transfer the value-added of processing from the local population to multinational corporations.
Tim
I should have checked back earlier as I have missed your genuine discussion. You raise some valid points - for example, I welcome some pondering regarding the best currency for judging food security. I am aware that my quote uses kcals and not $s and I would like to come back to this discussion after have cleared up something more basic first:
Tim: Someone else pointed out that your not factoring in land and water use.
I am not factoring in land and water use? I think that I am among some very few who actually value land and water more than can be imagined by the average consumer or even farmer. I think that many of us are not factoring in land and water use when we for example chose to raise livestock or to consume meat and dairy. E.g. what good is to get 5 times more out in grains per acer based on the Green Revolution's fertilizers, pesticides, mono-culutres and machineries when we raise animals for meat where we have a ratio of 8:1 in calorie conversion? In other words - what good is to increase your revenue 5-fold when you increase your costs 10-fold etc?
But let us examine the claims of the Green Revolution... everybody knows the idea: by the end of the century nuclear energy will be so cheap that energy costs will equal a virtual zero. No wait - it is even better. Thanks to the Green Revolution we have and will increase agricultural productivity per acer every year - thereby lowering the prices for food and enabling the poor to feed themselves?
Sounds great, no? Who would be against all this - unless of course you are some misguided marxist who hates free private enterprises? Wrong - it has nothing to do with right or left in this case. The Eastern Block was just as capable of practicing the Green Revolution. If anything - the Green Revolution itself is a statist practice from an ecological point of view - where we try to regulate and control something that we do not understand. We too borrow from the future and call it productivity gains. That is wrong and misleading.
Let me explain. When we speak of the infamous productivity gains associated with the Green Revolution we do not mean the same productivity as we are for example experiencing through information technologies. Our CPUs do show real productivity gains in terms of speed, size, energy consumption and cost. Following Moor's Law - CPU speed doubles every two years while the amount of resources required decreases. It is also a real productivity gain that we do not have to send paper pieces around by car and air in order to communicate etc.
This is not the kind of productivity gains that the Green Revolution has brought. We are not experiencing more output with less input. We have more output with more input and it is not only the shift towards more livestock agriculture that I have talked about.
cont...
Like "productivity", the term "sustainability" is tossed around often these days without a definition. When scientists at John Hopkins and other Ivy Leagues and at the UN claim that industrial agriculture is not sustainable - they usually imply that there is a borrowing effect from the future going on. If this is true - one has to examine the productivity claims again and extend the equation. more output - more input - some interest rate... the productivity gains suddenly do not look so good.
In other words - when comparing the sustainability of natural farming vs. organic farming vs. mechanized farming vs. industrial faming - one is always trying to compare apples with apples. How sustainable is which method in the long-run for a fixed amount of land and a varying population/consumption. With 7 billion people what we consume matters as we have seen with the plant : animal exchange rate - but how we produce it does too.
Again - even simpler: it is an obvious given that one compare 1 acer with 1 acer (so obvious that it is usually not even mentioned)! And sustainable means just that. Who care what productivity you can have for two years if you subsidize an industry. What happens in 20? Again - the claim by natural farmers like Fukuoka above but also by other ecologists and scientists is that there are better ways to increase food security than the "Green Revolution".
cont...
(the spam filter is killing me again..)
Of course we cannot practice absolutely free, laissez faire, farming as goes on in nature - we need some intervention in nature and some "regulations". But we do not understand how the system really works - we do not know how a handful of soil works and what it does. We do know tough that too much intervention as with the Green Revolution has shown to kill the real market (ecology) and threatens future production (soil erosion, species loss, genetic weaknesses). We might be discussing more regulations and nationalization for Wall Street (or the Fed) right now - but in the case of industrial agriculture we are talking about full oppression of nature ala fascism/communism which kills the individual free agents of nature. There might be a free market in the politburo regarding positions in the party (companies that sell machinery, grains, seeds, fertilizers, pesticides etc) but the people who can keep the country alive and rich are suffering (nature).
Industrial farming ala the Green Revolution is a constant war with nature where we plunder one treasure after another and burn it to make up losses elsewhere. Unfortunately - it is nobody's top priority to change all that. Modern farmers have nothing to do with "the land". They run around in suits and their main job is to pick and shop for products in catalogues and at fairs and conventions and to run budgets. They are like any other factory run by Hockey moms.. eh dads. An average pet owner in the city spends more time with animals than a farmer (owner). They do not know "the land".
The same is true for white coats in laboratories that use enzymes to reassemble DNA for GMO. We only know a fraction of the biology behind how soil works and we are happy to release some new stuff before trying to learn something from nature. No thank you very much. The Green Revolution has a face.
I believe strongly that it should be our individual right to put whatever we please in our mouths and bodies. Be it healthy or unhealthy, processed or not. But how we derive it is definitely not a question of personal individual rights to me unless we factor in all individuals involved.
I'd love to move on to some chatter about kcal vs. $ but as you can see... it's gotten long for today.
I am not factoring in land and water use?
Yes your not. Your calculations didn't include those things.
I think that I am among some very few who actually value land and water more than can be imagined by the average consumer or even farmer.
Perhaps. I was going by what you posted, not by what you think (I don't read minds), and not even by what you may have posted elsewhere. Just what you pun in to the calculations in a specific comment.
One reason that many farmers don't value the water to the extent that they should is that they get subsidized water. I'd rather let them pay a real market rate for water, it would then be used more carefully and efficiently.
In other words - what good is to increase your revenue 5-fold when you increase your costs 10-fold etc?
Except you don't increase your costs 10-fold. Not all kcals are equal in cost.
But let us examine the claims of the Green Revolution... everybody knows the idea: by the end of the century nuclear energy will be so cheap that energy costs will equal a virtual zero.
Your basically attacking a straw man. The green revolution isn't dependent on, and generally is advocated on the basis of near zero energy costs.
The Eastern Block was just as capable of practicing the Green Revolution.
"Just as capable" was probably an exaggeration. Generally it was less capable in many areas.
If anything - the Green Revolution itself is a statist practice from an ecological point of view
That statement doesn't make a lot of sense. Something is statist or not.
To an extent the green revolution was statist, because states got themselves involved, but that has nothing to do with "an ecological point of view".
where we try to regulate and control something that we do not understand.
The private sector trying to control aspects of nature, whether or not they understand them, is not statist. Statist refers to the actions of a state.
This is not the kind of productivity gains that the Green Revolution has brought. We are not experiencing more output with less input.
1 - More output with more input can represent a productivity increase. As long as output increases more than input.
2 - By reasonable measures we have experienced a productivity increase in agriculture, in fact a rather massive one. We have more fossil fuel energy input, but we have less land, less water, and much less labor per person fed, or amount of food produced, and often less money (in real terms) per unit of food produced.
As for sustainability, "natural farming" (sort of an oxymoron but I'll use the term anyway) isn't sustainable. It would take far to much land and water, and thus cause a lot of environmental damage and species loss. It would also use too much labor, reducing the output in every other area (and in agriculture as well).
An actual shift to purely "natural farming" methods across the world would be a far worse disaster than WWII. Billions would die, and those who where left would be much poorer.
Of course we cannot practice absolutely free, laissez faire, farming as goes on in nature
Farming doesn't go on in nature. Its an artificial thing.
Laissez faire has nothing to do with "natural" or "organic" farming, in terms of farming its "let people farm anyway they want to".
to kill the real market (ecology)
However important ecological concerns are (and they can be very important), they are not "the real market". Conflating the two is neither interesting nor productive.
Tim,
Again - the table that I have quoted above does compare 1 acre with 1 acre. What else do you want to hear from me, really?
And you are right - one can speak of more productivity as long as output increases more than input. But that is not what the Green Revolution has brought us as ecologists at Ivy League universities and the UN (see links above) do argue rightly in my book.
Again - when one uses the term "unsustainable" it is just that and it does not matter if one can show some productivity gains during a short period and out of context. It means that this practice cannot support food security in the long-run but only in the short-run.
Fukuoka, for example, has experienced real productivity gains - more output with less input - and his practice is ecologically sustainable.
And of course nature functions as a real market which the economy is build upon and not the other way around. What I mean by laissez fair farming is an ape picking and eating a mellon. It is those kinds of non-intervention transactions that make life possible on earth and without which we could not add an artificial layer on top like the economy or regulated agriculture.
I do not mean: let people farm what they want. I mean: allow for nature to grow what she wants. Don't plan it like communists - don't say this is a weed that has to go, this is an insect that has to be eradicated, I want to see only corn for miles and mile etc... horrible - what does this remind you off?
And you are right - one can speak of more productivity as long as output increases more than input. But that is not what the Green Revolution has brought us as ecologists at Ivy League universities and the UN (see links above) do argue rightly in my book.
It is what has happened. Less land per unit produced, less labor per unit produced, less water per unit produced, typically less real cost in terms of currency per unit produced. Productivity has increased a lot from the green revolution (and from improvements before it).
Again - when one uses the term "unsustainable" it is just that and it does not matter if one can show some productivity gains during a short period and out of context. It means that this practice cannot support food security in the long-run but only in the short-run.
I know what the term means.
And the methods of the green revolution are far more sustainable than purely "natural"/"organic" farming for the whole world is.
I do not mean: let people farm what they want. I mean: allow for nature to grow what she wants.
Nature isn't a conscious agent. Laissez-faire as an English term is centered on economic activity, and refers to the actions of conscious agents. It doesn't apply to "letting nature grow what she wants", largely because nature doesn't want anything.
Also "organic" farming is still an imposition on nature. It isn't letting nature "grow what it wants", its humans deciding to grow what they want.
And the impact on nature would be far greater because more water and much more land would be needed. Not only because of the lower productivity in terms of using land for such methods, but also because as you start requiring more land you have to start using more marginal land that inherently is less productive.