Back to the land

Following is a very worthwhile post from Freakonomics.

Although not clearly addressed in the post, it is again bringing into focus the difference between what is efficient and what is sustainable.  They are not the same thing.  Sustainable production of any sort should have built in redundancies that will tend to mitigate against maximizing output.

Local production is all about having lots of litte (redundant) sources of supply so that you are not putting all your eggs in one basket - so to speak.  I think that is an extremely worthwhile goal, but I also think we should stop kiddding ourselves into thinking there is no cost associated with it.

One possible trade off they did not seem to mention was to add more labor into the equation to trade off against lower inputs in other areas.  I suspect that this can be done.  If I had to point at an example I would suggest that the various small homestead farms (see all my blog links) probably have more output per area than the mass production facilities.   But they are not likely to be people efficient compared to the factory-food producers.  Some of the early agrarian societies produced a lot of food, they just didn't produce a lot of net food:  the people farming it ate it all up.

So one way to support our large population might be form more of us to go back to the land.  If food had more labor inputs involved the increased cost of food would certainly be an imputes to at least more urban gardening.  Of course going back to the land with an aging population is not easy.

The Inefficiency of Local Food
Steve Secton Freakonomics 14 November 2011 (hat tip: Big Picture)

Two members of Congress earlier this month introduced legislation advancing a food reform movement promising to help resolve the great environmental and nutritional problems of the early 21^st century. The intent is to remake the agricultural landscape to look more like it did decades ago. But unless the most basic laws of economics cease to hold, the smallholder farming future envisioned by the local farming movement could jeopardize natural habitat and climate change mitigation efforts, while also endangering a tenuous and temporary victory in the battle against human hunger...

In order to maintain current output levels for 40 major field crops and vegetables, a locavore-like production system would require an additional 60 million acres of cropland, 2.7 million tons more fertilizer, and 50 million pounds more chemicals. The land-use changes and increases in demand for carbon-intensive inputs would have profound impacts on the carbon footprint of our food, destroy habitat and worsen environmental pollution.

In order to maintain current output levels for 40 major field crops and vegetables, a locavore-like production system would require an additional 60 million acres of cropland, 2.7 million tons more fertilizer, and 50 million pounds more chemicals. The land-use changes and increases in demand for carbon-intensive inputs would have profound impacts on the carbon footprint of our food, destroy habitat and worsen environmental pollution.

(blogger is being uncooperative: thus the unusual quote format above)


As a secondary note, the blog post mentions that it is not particularly clear that local production is particularly green.  To the extent that green is equated with the efficient use of resources, that is a reasonable point.

Of course Wired has an article on this little guy (gal?) that might help as well:

Agricultural Droid (see article)