We Are What We Eat

The Union of Concerned Scientists tells us there are three really important things that we consumers can do to reduce our negative impact on the environment: 1) reduce our energy use in the car and home, and 2) choose sustainable food choices. It shouldn't surprise anyone that both of these arguments boil down to reducing the use of fossil fuels, but I think it does. Everyone knows that we use non-renewable energy for transportation and for heating and cooling our homes, but fewer people understand the relationship between food and oil.


In the aptly labeled "industrial food system" we obviously use polluting non-renewable energy to run the vehicles that transport the food from far away, but the fertilizer and pesticides we use are also both largely made from petroleum and requires a great deal of energy to produce, not to mention the packaging. So, for every calorie of food that is produced in this system we have burned an awful lot of oil. Producing and transporting meat is even worse, especially when you consider the tremendous amount of plant food it takes to raise meat producing animals. In The Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices, the UCC concludes that two of the most beneficial changes in food consumption are to eat less meat and eat more organic foods.

I won't argue with that advice except to say that I would suggest emphasizing local food more than organic food. Author Michael Pollan determines in The Omnivore's Dilemma that buying organic food produced far away provides far less benefit than does buying conventional food grown locally. The main problem is that the industrial farm system has co-opted "organic" and seriously diluted the relative benefits it provides.

In contrast, conventional food grown on relatively small, local farms generally use significantly less fertilizers and pesticides than factory farms and the transportation factor is obviously greatly diminished.
As you consider what you might do to strive for a sustainable Frederick, consider buying food from people who love where you live as much as you do -- local farmers.

Hope gets going.

In You Want Hope..., I discuss the hope that the market for green technologies will finally get off the ground and that at some point we'll actually have renewable energy that is competitive in price with fossil fuels.

The next part of the story is how things really get going.

But first, can I suggest you just ignore it when some bozo claims energy efficiency and reduction in fossil fuel use will hurt the economy, because the opposite is true.

Now, consider this: if we work to generate cleaner power and learn to be increasingly efficient, we will develop skills -- a national creation of knowledge -- that will provide a new competitive advantage (a sustainable one!). Just one example benefit: if our energy costs less and we use it more efficiently, we will attract investment because energy intensive industries like steel and cement production will find it profitable to locate facilities here near the cheaper power and more knowledgeable energy efficiency experts.

Imagine that! Foreign capital invested in the U.S manufacturing industry! It'd be like a do-over for what we should have done in the 70s and '80s.

It's called First Mover strategy. If a company (or nation) is the the first to exploit a market innovation, it will get to the lower costs from economies of scale while everyone else still faces the higher costs. That means we get time to keep refining the technology while others are just trying to adopt it. It's like getting a power boost that jumps us ahead of other nations and renders petro-dictatorships increasingly neutered.

The nation that gets closest to a sustainable economy first will have an economy in overdrive, maybe even warp-drive.

Charity and Economy begin at home

The economy of an area -- in this case the Frederick area -- consists basically of what the community of the area produces and consumes plus money flowing in and minus money flowing out. There is miles of gray between these blacks and whites, but it works as a basic model.

Of course, we should first recognize that from most economists' perspective, we are really just kind of a slow moving side side show of the Baltimore Washington Area economy. The reason they see us that way is that our economy, like the whole area, is largely driven by U.S. Government money.

That's true and I see it differently -- I think Frederick has a distinct enough economic identity that we should seek to grow how we want to grow, as opposed to us becoming just another extension of DC and the East Coast sprawl. We have unique natural, economic and community resources that deserve local stewardship.

Still, let's be honest, we do depend economically on the Federal government -- at least as an employer of so many people, but also because of the spending the Feds do on construction and rent other locally provided services. So we are part of that larger economic area, and it is to our benefit as much as we might think or pretend otherwise.

So the Frederick economy has inflows of money from the Federal Government. We export -- in that the work is done here and someone not from here pays for it -- some biotech and some professional services, some agricultural products, some building and development services, and little bits of this and that.

Our money leaves our economy when we buy things brought here from somewhere else.

It's generally true that the more money we bring in from elsewhere, and the more we spend on goods and services produced right here, the healthier our economy will be. Don't get me wrong, I am happy we live in a global economy where I can get coffee, for example, from across the world. I believe the globalization of the economy is a good thing, by and large and if we don't screw it up.

Still, home is home. The closer our money stays to home, the better for all of us.



p.s. Look what great work the Frederick County Office of Economic Development is doing.

Something bursts forth to fill the gap

Agriculture in Frederick, and specifically local produce, is an interesting case study in possibility.

There is plenty of viable agricultural land in the county, some being used and much not. The economics of farming are such that for most farms the best bet is on large fields of commodities like soybeans, corn and hay. Some farms maintain success as vegetable producers, but its rare and requires specialized marketing like farmer's markets, this local organic(!) farm and this local orchard that are getting it done. The bottom line is that produce farms in this area depend on local markets, and to some extent tourist purchases.

The good news is that by all accounts, the Frederick market has demand for just this kind of local produce. Consumers want the produce, and many have proven they will pay a little extra for local produce. Of course, American consumers want something most of all and that's convenience, which leads us to the bad news.

The bad news is that since not enough people are buying local produce through existing sales channels, farmers aren't provided incentive to bet on growing more produce. Since not enough farmers grow produce for local markets, there are only a few retail options and there are no guarantees that what you want is what they got.

See how that gets in the way of the convenience thing?

For what it's worth, the farmer's markets and various local agriculture promotions do a great job. So far they haven't been of sufficient scale to kick start a market.

But, do you see how the elements for a new system are mostly in place, and that what may come is some innovation that gets us over the humps? The possibility is there for consumers to buy up enough local produce to persuade more farmers to enter the market and more fresh options will become available through more outlets. A few new jobs get created here and there.

Ultimately more of the money we pay for food stays here and gets spent here. Again and again.


Questions:

What will the businesses that distribute local produce look like? Will it be an against all odds year round mega farmer's market, or the existing markets beefed up, or some kind of network of CSAs? Will some entrepreneur figure out a new way to get it done or will some big chain find a way to get it started?