Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Some sustainability science of interest
I saw this article which does a nice job of summing up some of the thoughts and concerns regarding the impact of ecological damage. I don't know why exactly this topic interests me, other than that it seems to be a part of politics where I'm right of left and left of right and don't have much in the way of company in the discourse. Still, I'll keep posting informational articles until I get bored or form some substantial opinions that can stand on their own in the company of the evidence.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Validation!
Just for the record, there are some economists just as skeptical about local foods as I am.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2011/LuskNorwoodlocavore.html
There you go. I'm not a crazy person. May still be wrong, but officially not crazy.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2011/LuskNorwoodlocavore.html
There you go. I'm not a crazy person. May still be wrong, but officially not crazy.
Monday, March 19, 2012
In which I bullshit about some things I'm skeptical about in the local food movement
I'm not nearly as well informed on environmental and sustainability issues as I am, for instance, on macroeconomic ones, largely because I know a lot of people who are very well informed on those issues and I can just ask them questions when I'm curious. Recently, though, I've been finding myself in disagreement with my favorite ecophiles (yes, I did just make that up) on the local food movement.
Basically, I think that local food advocates--especially the organic local small farm variety--are ignoring economies of scale. The reason organic local food is expensive is that it's made inefficiently. Some of the stuff that makes local organic farming inefficient also makes its products healthier and more delicious, like eschewing piles'o'antibiotics and using real soil and actual animal food for your plants and animals. But, there are real economies of scale, both in terms of price negotiations for production inputs like seed and equipment, and also in leveraging advantages from high capital cost - high efficiency machine like automatic milkers, irrigation systems, &c. The higher-prices-due-to-negotiating-position thing might not make much difference in terms of impact, but any yield increasing efficiency basically means that it takes fewer inputs to make the same amount of output. Since a big part of sustainability is not using too much stuff to make things, it seems like inefficiency is anathema, or at least at cross purposes, to sustainability. So why do we sustainability freaks want to do things inefficiently?
Basically, I think that local food advocates--especially the organic local small farm variety--are ignoring economies of scale. The reason organic local food is expensive is that it's made inefficiently. Some of the stuff that makes local organic farming inefficient also makes its products healthier and more delicious, like eschewing piles'o'antibiotics and using real soil and actual animal food for your plants and animals. But, there are real economies of scale, both in terms of price negotiations for production inputs like seed and equipment, and also in leveraging advantages from high capital cost - high efficiency machine like automatic milkers, irrigation systems, &c. The higher-prices-due-to-negotiating-position thing might not make much difference in terms of impact, but any yield increasing efficiency basically means that it takes fewer inputs to make the same amount of output. Since a big part of sustainability is not using too much stuff to make things, it seems like inefficiency is anathema, or at least at cross purposes, to sustainability. So why do we sustainability freaks want to do things inefficiently?
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