Here’s a provocative post from Felix Salmon on why local self-sufficiency is preferable to free trade in the context of agricultural production.
Will
Will writes from Washington, D.C. (well, Arlington, Virginia). You can reach him at willblogcorrespondence at gmail dot com.
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I’m struggling to take him seriously. That he brings up the 2009 commodities chrisis as an indictment of global food markets but conveniently forgets to mention how biofuels were strongly responsible for that particular event (biofuels being a child of his own pet global warming concerns) makes it hard for me to take him seriously.Report
Politically speaking, they were actually a child of the oil shocks in the 70s, back when people were still worried about global cooling. Now they’re a child of rural interest group politics. Beyond the recycling of waste oils, biofuels are actually worse for global warming than petroleum-based fuels, due to land-clearing and fuel use associated with farming them.Report
He has interesting points, but I am skeptical, too. Why does large scale production have to equal monoculture? It might lead in that direction, but wouldn’t it be POSSIBLE for Ohio to grow more than one strain of soybean, and still reap the economies of scale associated with Big Ag? WalMart can sell more than one brand of toaster. Toyota can make a car and a truck. Why can’t the ADM subsidiary here or there diversify? There might be reasons not to, and it might not be easy to make it happen. But going local for your legume needs isn’t necessarily easy either.
And this: “Because the cash-crop model, as we’ve seen many times, is far too prone to disastrous failure.”
Well, the subsistence model has been known to fail from time to time, too. As has every other model. And sure, we had the tomato blight. But nobody starved because of it.
I just wonder where the localism ends. And it’s usually at a level of taste or aesthetics. Of course we should not import asparagus out of season, says the guy who drinks Columbian coffee in the morning and Australian Shiraz with dinner.Report