I've not gotten around to reading Paul Roberts new book The End of Food
, but it's on my list. After reading this interview with Roberts, though, it might have to jump the queue. Roberts makes a couple points you see too rarely in discussions of food policy. The first is that "food miles" are a tricky concept. The environmental argument behind eating locally relies on a fairly crude calculation of distance. But not all transport is created the same. Ocean liners are more fuel efficient than rail are more fuel efficient than trucks. As Roberts says, "if I was to take produce from the Salinas Valley, load it into a freight car, and ship it to Seattle near where I live, that would be much more fuel efficient and have a smaller carbon footprint than would taking 50 pickup trucks, loading them up in farms around Seattle, and driving them into the farmers’ market downtown." He also warms my heart by arguing that a big part of the problem is that the occupational attraction of farming has deteriorated, and the fix to that isn't genetically-modified crops, but health care. "Farmers are leaving the farm, not because they hate farming, but [because] it’s just too hard [to make a living]. … In many cases, they can’t afford health care, so they need to have an off-farm job. So if you’re looking for these weak links, and you’re looking for ways to strengthen these links, then maybe finding a way to offer affordable health care to farmers would be one of those tipping points. But it’s not romantic; it’s not dramatic like some breakthrough seed." I'm not sure if that's correct, but it certainly plays well to my biases.
