Food Politics

Can’t access the entire article unfortunately:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB108994396555065646.html?mod=todays_us_page_one

I didn’t, but you got me interested. From a quick search, I found out that Mercatus is known for pushing–hard–for deregulation where the environment, health and safety, water quality, etc., are concerned. Here’s a blurb from Media Transparency:

[Mercatus] was recently described by the Washington Post’s Al Kamen as “the staunchly anti-regulatory center,” [and] owes much of its existence to Koch Industries Inc., the oil and gas company run by the Koch (pronounced “Coke”) brothers of Kansas.

Gee, a fossil-fuel-funded think tank positing that being concerned about food miles is foolish. Imagine that.

You’ve caught my attention. I want to read their study, do some more research, and do an analysis of their report on my site. Do you mind if I link back to the ongoing conversation here? Thanks for calling attention to this!

Excellent research. By all means, link away. I understand that the Wall Street Journal piece is not available to non-subscribers so I will fix that as soon as I can.

Marion’s link to the paper was broken. Is the paper entitled ‘Yes, We Have No Bananas: A Critique of the “Food Miles” Perspective’? If so, the new link is

http://www.mercatus.org/PDFDownload.aspx?filePath=/uploadedFiles/Mercatus/Publications/Yes,%20We%20Have%20No%20Bananas%20_%20A%20Crititque%20of%20the%20Food%20Miles%20Perspective.pdf

I’ve cached a copy here, in case that link goes dead again:

http://laniels.org/papers_to_read/yes_we_have_no_bananas_a_crititque_of_the_food_miles_perspective.pdf

Thanks. I inserted the cached link.

Some of the Mercatus Bd members have links to the Hudson Institute. That should tell us a lot about the suggested agenda!

see http://www.hudson.org/

[...] food miles important in the argument for local [...]

I like the idea of keeping information about food simple and not critiquing all the factors that surround the issues of healthy food. It’s so complicated for people already!
*Michael Pollan says: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. (food = something your grandmother would recognize as being edible).
It is pretty amazing how when someone eats a varied diet that is mostly (or even fully) minimally processed Plant-Based using Local– *In Season* –vegetables and fruits when possible, it is the best thing for their bodies, AND for the environment.

If “Food Miles” is a major concern, it is because the amount of energy expended–wasted–to get the food to us, wherever we are in the world. If this is the real concern wasted resources relating to food then why not focus our attention to the biggest culprit of waste? The meat and dairy industry are a tremendous burden to the environment, especially in the United States, with the manure lagoons of factory farms that eventually seep into our water supply, the huge amounts of water wasted, the vast quantities of GMO grain needed to be planted, harvested, shipped to these industrial protein factories. And we can’t forget the petroleum based fertilizers and pesticides that are produced, transported to corn fields, often over-sprayed and also end up reeking havoc in our water, contributing to things like the Dead Zone in the Gulf Of Mexico. http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/01/06/gulf-of-mexico-dead-zone-expanding-possibly-due-to-corn-bubbl/ We need legislation to stop the governmental support, at all levels, for these factory farms.
It is great to be concerned where our food comes from to make sure it is safe http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/press/releases/fda-bans-milk-products-from-china-for-the-time-being-article11132008, and compare the wasted energy in getting it to us if a comparable food can be made closer to home, but why is it that people are not focusing on the main environmental issue relating to food?
**Reducing your meat and dairy consumption is the most important thing the average person can do to be “green;” to lessen their impact upon the environment. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/07/food.foodanddrink
Is this because meat and dairy consumption weigh so heavily upon the Standard American Diet?
Are we ready for the truth or do we just want to dabble around with less important issues such as “Food Miles” that might be easier to deal with than taking a look at our own diets.
People used to have all kinds of misconceptions about the use of tobacco. We now know that its use is detrimental to our health. The culture changed to accept that tobacco use is a habit we can live without.
When will be ready to accept that our greatly excessive meat and dairy consumption are concurrently putting great stresses on our bodies and on our Earth?

[...] Nestle at What to Eat posted an interesting blurb on Sunday about a report from the Mercatus Center of George Mason University entitled, “Yes, We Have No [...]

Does anyone know if there is a good counter-argument to the points presented by the Bananas paper?

Their data is from public, government-funded sources (mostly the UK) and it’s hard to believe it was simply made up. Some of the points are common sense (e.g. most of the lifecycle energy of eating a potato happens at cooking time).

If they’re wrong, it should be easy to refute the paper on the facts, not on where they get their funding.

I agree with Daniel that a more important issue to be debating and having angst about is the meat and dairy issue, given the huge amounts of energy required to bring animal products to our plates and the horrific cruelty involved. But that said, I still think buying local, in-season foods is important for a number of environmental, social, food safety and quality reasons. And I agree with others that we shouldn’t be taking reports about food miles from anti-regulatory and oil and gas industry funded think tanks seriously.

I especially like to eat local as much as possible. I intern with the Eat Well Guide, and we’ve teamed up with Consumers Union (publisher of Consumer Reports) to issue the Local, Organic Thanksgiving Challenge this year. Will you join us? And share a recipe? Read more on the Green Fork http://www.blog.eatwellguide.org/2008/11/take-the-local-organic-thanksgiving-challenge

As promised, the first installment in a full analysis of the Mercatus study,
“Yes We Have no Bananas,” is up at Simple Spoonful. More will be coming, but this paper covers a lot of ground and requires substantial source consultation to fairly critique. It may be a while to get the whole thing cranked through.

Richard:
I believe funding can and should raise eyebrows when examining policy recommendations. However, I agree that it should never, on its own, determine if the claims contained in the paper can be accepted or dismissed. I’m backtracking to the sources the authors cite, as well as examining the logical flow of their argument. Come check it out.