Peregrinator
Hooded On A Hill
- Joined
- May 27, 2004
- Posts
- 89,482
eating food from a long way off is often the single best thing you can do for the environment, as counterintuitive as that sounds
"so ludicrous" that I had to publish it on my own website "because hey, the New York Times is only willing to go so far." But in fact I made exactly the same point in my Times article, when I pointed out that by using modern, high-yielding farm technologies and concentrating the production of crops where they grow best, we have
spared hundreds of millions of acres for nature preserves, forests and parks that otherwise would have come under the plow. . . . The best way to make the most of these truly precious resources of land, favorable climates and human labor is to grow lettuce, oranges, wheat, peppers, bananas, whatever, in the places where they grow best and with the most efficient technologies — and then pay the relatively tiny energy cost to get them to market, as we do with every other commodity in the economy. Sometimes that means growing vegetables in your backyard. Sometimes that means buying vegetables grown in California or Costa Rica
This is the crux of the entire matter. We can grow tomatoes and cucumbers and pumpkins and basil near cities both because these crops are practical for small acreages and because the economics work: they generate high returns that make it pay to grow them on expensive land. But fresh vegetables suitable for local production account for only about 5% of the land that directly feeds human beings (I'm leaving animal forage, exported grain, and the entire corn crop out of the equation altogether, so you don't need to start telling me again about the evils of corn-fed beef and high-fructose corn syrup).
"Reverse the Columbian Exchange."
Brilliant.
"so ludicrous" that I had to publish it on my own website "because hey, the New York Times is only willing to go so far." But in fact I made exactly the same point in my Times article, when I pointed out that by using modern, high-yielding farm technologies and concentrating the production of crops where they grow best, we have
spared hundreds of millions of acres for nature preserves, forests and parks that otherwise would have come under the plow. . . . The best way to make the most of these truly precious resources of land, favorable climates and human labor is to grow lettuce, oranges, wheat, peppers, bananas, whatever, in the places where they grow best and with the most efficient technologies — and then pay the relatively tiny energy cost to get them to market, as we do with every other commodity in the economy. Sometimes that means growing vegetables in your backyard. Sometimes that means buying vegetables grown in California or Costa Rica
This is the crux of the entire matter. We can grow tomatoes and cucumbers and pumpkins and basil near cities both because these crops are practical for small acreages and because the economics work: they generate high returns that make it pay to grow them on expensive land. But fresh vegetables suitable for local production account for only about 5% of the land that directly feeds human beings (I'm leaving animal forage, exported grain, and the entire corn crop out of the equation altogether, so you don't need to start telling me again about the evils of corn-fed beef and high-fructose corn syrup).
"Reverse the Columbian Exchange."
Brilliant.
you...
