John Quiggin has an excellent post on locavores and their critics. I agree completely, and this passage is especially good:
"As far as GDP measurement is concerned, if
locavores are willing to pay $2/pound for fresh local strawberries,
while non-local strawberries sell for $1/bound, then the local variety
is worth twice as much, even if the two physically identical. A huge
part of GDP consists of intangible values llike this, created by marketing campaigns or popular perceptions."
Of course, market value isn't welfare but this is exactly right. If locavores want local goods critics have a very steep uphill battle to fight unless they want to jettison subjective utility, which I don't think is a very good idea.
To the extent that I buy local (which I would describe as a conscious but modest effort), it really has only one goal: supporting other people in my community and developing a sense of community in my own consumption patterns (I like, when I eat or use something, to know on a personal level "where it came from" and in some cases even "who it came from" - that makes me feel good). It's surprising to me for one thing how so many people can be outspoken critics of personal preferences in the way critics of locavores can be, but it's also surprising how badly they diagnose the nature of the preference. That having been said, as Quiggin points out, a lot of locavores can also benefit from learning more about exactly what their decisions imply. I have these sorts of arguments with Evan on occasion, who (at least a little while ago) always insisted to me that small scale agriculture was more efficient than large scale. Some of these things just aren't true. We need the green revolution to sustain the population. We need globalization of the food chain. Localism cannot be autarky (and it rarely is - who do you know that only buys locally? - although critics often treat them like they're one and the same). I wish some locavores would have a more balanced view of things like the green revolution. In that sense education is always a good thing.
But buying local is prevalent for one reason and only one reason: people value it.
Monday, July 9, 2012
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You need to read more Increasing Marginal Utility
ReplyDeleteI'm a faithful reader, and as sharp as Ryan is all he's managed to convince me of on this is that (1.) some locavores say dumb things, which I already knew, and (2.) his own preferences include strong disutility associated with the existence of locavores.
DeleteOne thing I didn't mention here that he often notes is that local consumption is a status symbol. Maybe - he and Gene and I had a few things to say on that and it doesn't seem convincing to me at all, since for most local consumption it's hard to broadcast that status symbol (which doesn't make it that strong of a signal). But let's grant that that's all it is.
DeleteSo? Who cares? In this day and age all kinds of things we buy and use are essentially status symbols.
Quiggin sounds like he believes libertarians are real-life versions of Stephen Colbert's on-air persona. "I used to believe locavores were wrong about the benefits of eating local. But I went to Fresh Market and saw local strawberries selling for a premium! I WAS WRONG! THE MARKET HAS SPOKEN!!!"
ReplyDeleteSure, some of the criticism of locavores may be about mood affiliation. But that doesn't really change the fact that most claims about the benefits of eating local (particularly wrt reducing carbon emissions) are bunk. And unless the folks at Mercatus are calling for local eating campaigns to be banned, there is nothing contradictory or paradoxical about pointing out the flaws in locavorism.
Tyler Cowen was right. The folks at Crooked Timber spend way too much time engaging in middle brow speculation about what libertarians should or should not believe about this or that policy. Why can't we just talk about food policy without going all meta?
If I read Quiggin right I'm quite sure he praised the Mercatus work for pointing that out about carbon emissions and said that for people who care about carbon footprints, they should take note. So I'm not really sure what you're getting at. You seem to be getting mad at him because you think he didn't say something he quite explicitly said.
DeleteYour last paragraph is a little funny in the context of the locavore issue. I would have thought there's an awful lot middle brow speculation by libertarians on what locavores should think. Quiggin, it seems to me, strikes exactly the right balance: (1.) The Mercatus work has good info on carbon footprints, and (2.) people like what they like - preferences are subjective. What so wrong with saying that?
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ReplyDeleteThe problem is that that's not why most people eat locally, although it is something that you hear out there - and the claim by many libertarians is that localism makes people poorer. You are straw-manning what the local food movement actually argues and you are providing a much weaker version of what is often heard about it from libertarians.
DeleteYou are very quick. I literally deleted the post the moment after I published it so I could re-write some bits. You will find my revised post below.
DeleteIn any case, you seem to be speaking with some authority about why most people eat local and what the the local food movement argues. If you have data supporting these assertions, that would be interesting to see.
Of course, that is beside the point that Quiggin's post is built around a straw-man version of libertrianism (see revised post), which was my primary complaint.
Just my experience with the movement, no data. Do you have data that the food miles issue is somehow definitive for the local food movement? That seemed like an odd claim to me. People obviously hold inaccurate views and there are surely people out there who include this point, but I've never understood it to drive the local food movement. These sorts of movements have been around long before we even knew or worried about climate change or anything like that, after all!
DeleteYa - I was a little confused by your revision. Like this: "isn't your entire reason for existence to bitch about the government?". And you think Quiggin is the one strawmanning here? I don't remember Quiggin saying that.
I think you and I have incredibly different understandings of what the competing claims are here. Yours seems to require that Quiggin is a nasty sort of guy, while mine just requires that Desroches is somewhat misinformed about the locavore movement. I think I'll stick with mine in the absence of any evidence to the contrary.
DeleteThree things.
Delete#1. This is the problem with these sorts of discussions. I think a discussion on actual food policy would be very interesting and hopefully enlightening. Instead, we're talking about what other people believe food policy and neither of us have any data to back up the discussion (which is why i've tried to avoid saying things like "most locavores believe"). Out of all the thousands of words written in this thread and Quiggin's, were any of them worth typing?
#2. My experience has been different. As someone interested in environmental policy, I engage recent ag movements (organic, locavore, antiGMO, etc) almost exclusively on their environmental benefits. So I have heard and read claims about the GHG benefits of locavorism many MANY times. Is the issue "definitive" for "most" locavores??? I have no clue. Does that mean no one should bother addressing it? Seems like an odd claim.
#3. Who said Quiggin is a nasty guy? My argument only requires that Quiggin doesn't understand libertarianism (maybe he is spending too much time talking about libertarianism rather than to libertarians). Your claim...well...like I said before I'm not sure what it is. It isn't like Desroches made up the "food miles" issue. There are actual people out there that care about how far their food travels and the carbon emissions associated with the journey. He is responding to specific claims made by actual people. So I guess you're claiming that those arguments are not worth addressing? If that's what you're saying, you have not really made the case for why that is (other than relaying "your experience with the movement"). *shrug* To each his own, I guess.
re: "Out of all the thousands of words written in this thread and Quiggin's, were any of them worth typing?"
DeleteSure!
Quiggin (1.) made me aware of this book and the Mercatus paper, and (2.) highlighted something I think is important - that local preferences are legitimate subjective preferences for people to hold. A $2 local tomato and $1 imported tomato may be the "same product" in other respects, but people attach value to the local production. That was his point, I liked it, and I got a chance to share it with my readers. Those points were definitely worth typing.
On your point #2 - sure, if you engage the environmental discussions primarily, I guess you'll see the locavore/environmental nexus to the extent that it does exist.
re: "So I guess you're claiming that those arguments are not worth addressing?"
Ummm, no. I thought I was pretty clear that it was good that Desroches was clarifying the food mile point. I made a point of saying that I correct my brother Evan on a lot of these misconceptions about local food too.
See my first point on this comment for what my claim has been here.
Then how is Desroches misinformed about the locavore movement?
DeleteI've gone off of two interviews I've read about this. He seems to hold your view - that the environmental point dominates the argument. In fact he cited an absurd locavore who claimed that the Japanese live parasitically because they import so much. In other words, he is citing to interviewers some of the dumbest people out there with no sense of good economics at all and identifying that with locavores.
DeleteIf that's what he thinks, it strikes me as misinformed.
If that's not what he thinks, then it seems to me that he is contributing good information that's really good for locavores to know (and probably more already know than he suspects) but that doesn't really change the point of the movement (although it may change how some people promote it).
You seem to take this and Quiggin's as a hit piece on Desorches. Mine certainly isn't and I didn't get the impression Quiggin's was either. Notice Quiggin talks about a locavore author too. All he's really saying is that each of them are really making points the other should appreciate.
DeleteI'm not sure "misinformed" is the best word. There are clearly some people eat local to reduce their carbon foot print. And for those people, maybe Desorches' brief could change their minds. Maybe those people represent the typical locavore and maybe they don't. Trying to nail that down is pure speculation unless someone bothers to collect the data.
DeleteI don't think Quiggin's post is a hit piece in the sense he is trying to smear Descorches. I just think Quiggin shows how little he understands libertarianism when he asks why "true believers in the free market" are not "indifferent" to locavorism. I was initially thinking you were also endorsing that portion of his post, but I am now pretty sure you are not.
Well I do find it pretty creepy how the community of people who seem to care about how I eat locally are almost exclusively libertarian. Some, like Russ Roberts (and maybe Ryan Murphy?) have said the practice itself leads to poverty. There is some strange stuff out there, Starving Economist. One does wonder why so much libertarian ink is spilled on the topic in the first place. It does seem like it's the sort of tribalism that Quiggin describes sometimes, (i.e. - "promoting local foods is something liberals do ergo we must publicly disapprove of it).
DeleteBut I agree the information Desroches provides is good stuff... I don't feel like I have quite a grip on whether he's on the Russ/Ryan end of things or whether he's somewhere else.
I re-read my post and I don't see anything about me being mad at Quiggin for not agreeing with Mercatus on debunking the concept of food miles. Which makes sense because, like you said, he DOES agree that food miles are bunk.
ReplyDeleteI am annoyed at Quiggin because the entire point of his post is to say that libertarians criticizing the claims of locavores is somehow paradoxical. But it isn't really clear why he thinks that. You and Quiggin both seem to want say that buying local is all about preferences. But that simply isn't the case. Mercatus isn't saying "your preferences for local food are bad". They are saying "the actual arguments made by many locavores regarding the benefits of eating local are misguided or flat out wrong." AND QUIGGIN AGREES!!!
So where is the paradox? It comes from Quiggin's distorted view of libertarianism. He is basically saying "sure, many locavores offer bad arguments for buying local, but why should libertarians care? isn't your entire reason for existence to bitch about the government? there isn't much govt involvement on this issue. it's all about individual choices! so why do you bother?"
I don't think I'm being unfair to Quiggin here. You can re-read his post and tell me. If I am mis-reading him, maybe you can help me answer this question.
The problem with locavorism as I see it is that it can actually have very negative environmental consequences that may not be reflected in market prices under the current institutional structure. This is a bad thing. So, by extension, promoting locavorism using compelling but false arguments is ALSO a bad thing. Yet, Quiggin says " true believers in the free market should be entirely indifferent" to these arguments and locavorism in general. WHY?
I'm not sure I've "always" said that local food is more efficient, or that it is just more efficient, period. In fact, I remember arguing at one point that its inefficiency could be good because, so long as people are willing to support the greater expense of the intangible value of it, an inefficient local system could provide more people with jobs.
ReplyDeleteMuch better, though, to do something efficiently and then spend the savings employing people elsewhere doing other good things.
DeleteRelative inefficiency is not a deal breaker. There are lots of reasons to demand a product and if we really like something we are willing to pay for a little inefficiency. But I'm not sure its a virtue in itself.
I haven't looked back at the original articles that Quiggin links, but I wonder whether they discuss more than just the efficiency of transport. Issues like biodiversity obviously come into play as well. Even if a more long-distance, industrial agricultural set up can more efficiently feed people in the most stable of all possible worlds, various real-life instabilities (pests, disease, inflexibility to changing climates, etc.) could drastically affect a global monoculture in a way that it wouldn't affect many enclaves of regional agricultural practices. Hence the draw of heirloom tomatoes, non-GM crops, etc.
ReplyDeleteYes, this is a really good point. It's understandable but unfortunate that "environmental" often reduces to "climate change" these days.
DeleteFrom my vantage point, the driver of environmental problems is a combination of uncertainty about the future but especially externalities. As long as we're talking about a carbon footprint or pollution or something like that, buying local doesn't really improve on that outcome much at all. It might improve somewhat on biodiversity, but probably in a small way (and at the cost of much less efficiently getting food to the world). So normally this sort of stuff is something of an aside for me, and I like to think of it more in terms of community building.
Good point. But would moving to a system of regional agriculture make us more resilient to disease and weather conditions or less?
DeleteMonocultures can leave a food supply open to disruption through disease. That is true. The ultimate example is the Irish Potato Famine. But would promoting regional agriculture lead to a more diverse planting practices? I don't see why that would be the case. If we want to promote biodiversity, why not promote biodiversity directly through subsidies and the like? Growing local seems beside the point.
As far as resilience to changing climate conditions, I think a global food system has a clear advantage over regional practices. A century before the Irish Potato Famine, there was the Irish Famine of 1740, which killed approximately the same number of people. This famine was brought on by harsh weather conditions resulting from the Little Ice Age. If Ireland did not depend so heavily on food grown on the island, maybe this travesty could have been avoided?
And this isn't to mention the environmental cost of growing more things locally. Think about growing tomatoes in the UK versus importing them from Spain. This typically entails using hothouses which means using more energy not to mention more fertilizer and more water. That could mean not only more GHG emissions, but nutrient pollution through fertilizer runoff. These types of costs should be considered. And when they are, I am not sure eating local comes anywhere close to being environmentally friendly.
PS* I meant to address my previous post to Evan specifically, but forgot. So Evan, those comments are for you.
DeleteFWIW... Several of my family are vegetable and plant growers, tomatoes are one of their main crops. They grow tomatoes in greenhouses in England. "Starving Economist" is quite right that this process uses more energy and water than growing them outside, I'm not sure about fertilizer or fertilizer run-off. In the winter it takes a lot of fuel to heat a greenhouse to allow tomato plants to live, though not so much in other seasons. The energy intensity of growing them probably varies a lot throughout the year.
ReplyDeleteThis has been kind of in the background to this discussion, but it's important to keep in mind that the environmental movement is still trying to figure out what are good practices, and part of the process involves trying things that are going to fail (this is beyond the problem of often-competing goals). E.g., sustainable farming methods haven't been the focus of decades of academic and industrial study, so there are going to be problems to work out. Also, consumers don't necessarily understand the issues involved, so even if they agree with the overall goal, their purchases may not reflect it (e.g. "natural" is meaningless, "organic" and "free-range" don't necessarily mean what people think they do, "local" is not necessarily sustainable).
ReplyDeleteBut as people learn more and stores make the necessary information easily available, interested people will change their habits. My mother, for example, has gone from trying to buy organic, to local, to in-season (and appropriate to the region). If she lived in England, she just wouldn't buy many tomatoes (maybe during the summer; I'm not familiar with the climate there).