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Just as I finish complaining about the low quality of the debate and pervasive misinformation an exception surfaces.
Proponents of urban and peri-urban agriculture, ourselves included, have a poster-child: Cuba. In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union as a big market for sugar exports, the Cubans became more self reliant and replaced the food they could no longer afford to import with bounteous harvests from small urban plots.The "masses of evidence" are apparently disputed by those who know best: the growers themselves.Alas, all is not quite so rosy in the organopónico. A new book, noted at HungryCity, points out that these plots supply just 5% of Cuba’s food. Furthermore, 75% of Cuban farmers use agrochemicals, and 83% would apply more if they could. Despite masses of evidence that organic land in Cuba really was more productive than conventional farms, the country is reverting to a conventional model.
Urban agriculture is a hobby and a quality of life hack, just like growing flowers and lawns. People feel good about it. But it has little to do with food production. If there was a prolonged disaster that made food scarce in urban environments then the tiny amounts that can be so produced would be valued, but society would be far better off at far lower cost to invest in food storage rather than production. Even in situations of socio-political disaster such as Cuba - or in earlier times such as the world war era when "Liberty Gardens" served a similarly morale boosting role - being better prepared by having food stores would have been more beneficial. Seven fat years follwed by seven lean years: this is not a modern insight and those who have been paying attention all this while have better plans.
I wish I had the skills and time to do a decent analysis of an idea that has long intrigued me. At the moment global food supply is dominated by cheap refined carbohydrates and appalling meat. People are not fools; they buy the cheapest calories they can. And that does not include good nutrition. So, why not integrate intensive (but preferably less harmful) production of storable, shippable commodities with local production of the extras that are so vital for a diverse diet that is tasty and nutritious?Global food supply is dominated by grains. Period. It has long been so. They are not truly cheap, though they are merely carbohydrates, and that's a nutritional disaster that has plagued humanity for the past 10,000 years. Local production is irrelevant to good nutrition since agriculture is seasonal. People eat all year long, but crops aren't available except in short seasonal windows. The size of the window varies, but all places need to store food, import food, or go without for much of the year. Once you face the whole problem then the idea of self-sufficiency is far less charming.
There are food supply problems with both quality and availability, so it is in our interests to reason in good faith from good data about how to improve our prospects, and begin at long last to meet the needs of the hundreds of millions of people who are food insecure or worse, and the extra billions that will soon arrive to exacerbate the problem.
I'm sometimes not sure whether you are agreeing or disagreeing. When you say "The 'masses of evidence' are apparently disputed by those who know best: the growers themselves" do you really believe that the growers themselves examined the evidence? Each probably knows about their own bottom line, but is also open to all sorts of other forces. Farmers, especially ones in a cash economy, are subject to pressures and ideas that are nothing to do with evidence.
The best "evidence" I have of this is the barley growers of eastern Germany. When they were East German farmers they were told, effectively, to plant mixtures of barley varieties, and enjoyed superior and more stable yields without the benefit of fungicides. Brewers were told to malt mixed barley varieties, and managed to brew very good beer. Now that the farmers, in a united Germany, are free to follow the "evidence," they've decided to go back to single varieties and fungicides.
Do you think, just possibly, that their collective decision could have been based on what the sales market said was best for the farmers, and what the buyers' market said it wanted? I think the farmers were free to do as they were told in a way that is fundamentally different from being told what to do by diktat.
Posted by: Jeremy at August 11, 2009 10:00 AMOn the question of cereals, you seem to have missed the point about nutrition completely. There's plenty of calories and protein to go around, even if they don't always reach the people who need them. I specifically said "cheap refined carbohydrates" because chronic malnutrition as a result of lack of micronutrients is a far bigger problem than acute hunger, or famine, of not enough calories and protein.
I don't think that humanity has been plagued by the so-called diseases of affluence -- which are really diseases of simplified diets -- for the past 10,000 years. Far from it.
So my point was that I suspect it would be a good idea to grow the cereals (and pulses) where it is efficient to grow them, and ensure that urban, or local, growers are able to provide the additional food that will keep people healthy. It needn't be either a hobby or a hack (except for people who want it to be), and it can certainly provide nutrition year-round in many environments. It could be an important contribution to meeting the needs of all those hundreds of millions of people.
I simply do not understand how you can say that "Local production is irrelevant to good nutrition since agriculture is seasonal". Perhaps I need to understand better what you mean by "good nutrition".
Posted by: Jeremy at August 11, 2009 10:14 AMWhat you have done with your line of reasoning is to substitute your values and definitions for evidence and productivity, and those definitions differ from those of most practitioners. Productive of what? Why do they farm?
A market is a discovery machine for ideas, methods and materials - in short: wisdom. This is true for any economy or social mind, and though it can get stuck on local optima when information flows are impeded it is always the best long term method of problem solving. Cherry picking the few instances of command economy success while neglecting to mention all of its failures and net negative consequences fails to engage reality.
There's a meta argument that the nutritional plenty of grains is a myth, an artifact of low expectations and long practice. I think of the analogous example of the Panda bear, which subsists on low value bamboo leaves though it is a bear, an omnivore with a digestive system and nutritional requirements that favors and requires better food, but from evolved habit doesn't pursue those better nutritional avenues. Needless to say, it is not a thriving species.
The hunker down approach to our current problem set fails at every level. More realistic engagement with current and expected issues requires larger scope and longer time frames. You can't go back, you can't stand still. Deal with it.
Posted by: back40 at August 11, 2009 10:51 AM