The Problem(s) with Slow Food

Published on Thursday, April 29, 2010, by James Norton / Edit Post

Hey, sustainable/local/organic food proponents: Stuff it, because poor people are starving in Africa and Asia, and your hoity-toity philosophy ain't helping anything. That's the really, really crude distillation of a thought-provoking story in Foreign Policy on fighting hunger in the developing world. The thesis of Robert Paarlberg's article: "Influential food writers, advocates, and celebrity restaurant owners are repeating the mantra that 'sustainable food' in the future must be organic, local, and slow. But guess what: Rural Africa already has such a system, and it doesn't work."

Paarlberg, in working to make his point, paints food advocates with a broad brush; advocating passionately for more farmers' markets and stricter domestic organic standards, for example, doesn't necessarily reflect a demand that the same solutions be applied in Africa or South Asia. As with many aggressively contrarian works of opinion, an ax to grind results in statements of dubious breadth and focus. A lot of the story seems to be beating up on a straw man who would demand that Congolese peasants entirely give up on modernization regardless of the human cost.

A number of the points Paarlberg raises are worth consideration, however. He observes that the Mayo Clinic has failed to see health gains resulting from eating organic produce, and that "less than 1 percent of American cropland is under certified organic production. If the other 99 percent were to switch to organic and had to fertilize crops without any synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, that would require a lot more composted animal manure. To supply enough organic fertilizer, the U.S. cattle population would have to increase roughly fivefold."

Over the course of the piece, Paarlberg wrestles intelligently with the many views on the "Green Revolution," points out some interesting advances in precision farming, and highlights the feel-good side of the industrial food system, namely better production, better distribution, and fewer food-borne illness and contamination problems. (He's also happy to concede that the cheap, thoroughly distributed, generally safe food we're eating is often terrible from a nutritional perspective.)

In many regards, Paarlberg's story is a squarely aimed broadside directed at the "farm and eat like our great-grandparents" crowd. Much of it may be debatable, but the data and claims are challenging and at times enlightening. It's food for thought worth chewing.

Image source: Flickr member TheBusyBrain under Creative Commons

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  • Agree that conservatives need to be recruited into the healthy food movement. After all, it is big government that has created many of the problems with our food supply with subsidy programs. It is big government that wants to limit the health claims food producers make about fruit and veggies, or comply with stringent FDA drug certification. It is big government that is threatening to lower or...+READ

    Agree that conservatives need to be recruited into the healthy food movement. After all, it is big government that has created many of the problems with our food supply with subsidy programs. It is big government that wants to limit the health claims food producers make about fruit and veggies, or comply with stringent FDA drug certification. It is big government that is threatening to lower or eliminate food labeling requirements, so that the "small business people" in the organic farming industry may be driven out of business. The issues of government and our food supply will come to a head soon, because what is happening is so outside of common sense, and affects everyone so much.-COLLAPSE

  • Instead of writing a book to refute most of Paarlberg's reasoning, here's a few quick points. A big reason African farmers are fighting hunger is because EU subsidies have forced them out of the fields. "A recent study from the Institute of Economic Affairs in Britain estimates that EU agriculture policies have reduced African exports of milk products by more than 90 percent, livestock by nearly...+READ

    Instead of writing a book to refute most of Paarlberg's reasoning, here's a few quick points. A big reason African farmers are fighting hunger is because EU subsidies have forced them out of the fields. "A recent study from the Institute of Economic Affairs in Britain estimates that EU agriculture policies have reduced African exports of milk products by more than 90 percent, livestock by nearly 70 percent, meat by almost 60 percent crops by 50 percent and grains by more than 40 percent." More here: http://bit.ly/d2bvut
    For a real-time example of what subsidies will do to farmers, see the Haiti rice crisis and Clinton's apology: http://huff.to/bk3Fkx-COLLAPSE

  • Ah, I wish Sam Fujisaka were here to comment on this!

    My comment is that the argument that we'd need more fertilizer to maintain the industrial food system is bogus because our industrial food system is already producing too much food. I just heard a story this morning about the fact that subsidized US corn is putting farmers in Mexico out of business, contributing to our immigration issues....+READ

    Ah, I wish Sam Fujisaka were here to comment on this!

    My comment is that the argument that we'd need more fertilizer to maintain the industrial food system is bogus because our industrial food system is already producing too much food. I just heard a story this morning about the fact that subsidized US corn is putting farmers in Mexico out of business, contributing to our immigration issues. We need to produce less artificially cheap food in the US and stop undercutting the ability of people around the world to be self-sufficient.

    What we need is a sane food policy that is "local" in that it takes into account the needs of each region. It's interesting to me that conservatives who are against big government and a centrally planned economy are the ones who make fun of the local food movement which supports hard working independent farmers (those "real Americans" they're always talking about), and favor what is essentially a government-run agricultural system that's centrally planned by means of its subsidy policies.-COLLAPSE