Cage-Free Hens and Taco Bell

The Post reports Taco Bell has joined the cage-free egg grouping of fast food restaurants.  (Note, the math in the piece is flawed, as I take pleasure in pointing out to them in comments.)

It seems I've done a number of posts on cage-free eggs, but without a tag for it; you have to search the blog to find them.

Fake Meat and GMO's

Nicholas Kristof has a piece in the NYTimes describing the progress being made in developing edible fake meat.  It sounds promising.  I've no problems with the effort.

I do wonder though how the food movement and the environmentalists will react if fake meat becomes a reality.  A fake steak would be good for global warming, given the methane production of cattle.  But it seems to me that fake meat should raise all the concerns which the food movement voices in connection with genetically modified organisms.

Small Farmers in the Past

One of the frustrations of dealing with proposals like Mr. Bittman's to create more small farmers is a knowledge of history.  We've been there, done that. Our history shows small farms being consolidated into large farms, small farms going out of production and reverting to trees (see New England and New York), small farms being converted to suburbs.  Our history also shows repeated "back-to-the farm" movements, sometimes with government support, as here. 

My point is, not that small farms are bad, but they have vanished for economic reasons. Unless and until the food movement comes up with structures which change the reasons, small farms are doomed.

Now niche markets will work for some, but they don't represent an "answer" for America, just for a subset of Americans who can afford the tab.

We Need More Farmers

So writes Mark Bittman in the NYTimes.

Logically he's saying we need higher food prices, in order to attract more people to farming. 

That's not the way he's going. Instead, while he acknowledges beginning farmer programs which assist people to buy land, he suggests that we forgive student loans for people who farm for 10 years.  Needless to say I don't like the idea--it's bureaucratically messy and, I suspect, economically inefficient.

Ridiculous Headline

On a Grist post:" 90 Percent of our diets could be local, if we nix Big Ag"

What's omitted is the fact we'd have to nix most of our way of life. 

In Defense of Fast Food

A good long piece here defending "Culinary Modernism" (fast food etc.) against the snobbery of the food movement. "Rachel Laudan is a historian and philosopher of science and technology. She is the author of Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History. The following essay originally appeared in Gastronomica."

What USDA Does--Back to the Beginning

One of the early functions of what eventually became USDA was the gathering and publishing of data, both production and sales data.  Based purely on anecdotal data, one of the big benefits of cellphones in some areas of Africa and India is that suddenly farmers can find out what markets are doing.

In this context USDA touts their new service for grass-fed lambs and goats, reflecting their rising popularity.  I assume the popularity has several causes: a growing market from the immigration of people whose native cuisine features lamb and/or goat meat and rising interest among the foodies in such gras-fed meat plus the fact that lambs and goats fit a small farmer's operation much better than beef or pork.

Food Movement and China

One advantage of community-supported agriculture is the idea that the customer knows the source of her food.  But this Times article on China shows there's another way for the customer to know the history of her food, by using technology.  Because China has a bigger problem with adulterated food (ie. the communist state is weaker in regulation than our free enterprise government is), there's a greater incentive to come up with innovative solutions to the problem--at least that's my take on the situation.

When Less Is More

Fairlife is less than whole raw mil--the question is whether the manipulation of the "natural whole milk" into something which might better suit some people will pass the scrutiny of the food movement.

Revkin on Technology and Small Farms and "Factory Man"

Here's a post at the Times covering meetings on technology and small farms.

Just finished reading the book "Factory Man", on the history of the rise and fall and persistence of the furniture industry in Henry County, VA.  The factory man is John Douglas Bassett III, who's able to compete with Asian furniture makers, not on cost but on customization and speed.  So, as of now, the US factory can use automation to be more responsive to customer desires because the Asian makers are limited by the time it takes to move a container across the Pacific.  (Not sure why a manufacturer in Mexico or Central America couldn't do better than the Asians.)  So the bottom line is the mass of furniture is made in Asia, but the niche markets which require customization can still be served by US manufacturers.

I see a possible parallel with American agriculture.

Pollan, Bittman, et. al Play Fast and Loose

Michael Pollan dusts off his 2008 appeal to President Obama and updates it with help from Mark Bittman and others, calling for a "national food policy".  Along the way he touches on his lame history (Nixon did not change food policy in the 70's) and makes projections which are dubious (to me).

An example of their playing fast and loose with facts:

"Today’s children are expected to live shorter lives than their parents."

What does the link tie to?  An academic article which pushes the importance of obesity and challenges SSA's projections of steadily increasing lifespan.  But it says, in the last paragraph:

"Unless effective population-level interventions to reduce obesity are developed, the steady rise in life expectancy observed in the modern era may soon come to an end and the youth of today may, on average, live less healthy and possibly even shorter lives than their parents."

Emphasis added--there's no way a college professor like Pollan should create a flat statement from such a carefully hedged sentence.
 
They come up with a $243 billion cost of diabetes in a context which implies out-of-pocket costs, but don't mention that a quarter of that is not healthcare costs, but estimates of loss of productivity. 

While they concede that Congress is responsible for agricultural policy, they ask for an administration food policy, unsupported by Congress, without any discussion of how their proposal would change the position of Congress or last beyond this administration.

Note: Although I'm crediting Pollan with the piece, it's possible one of the others is responsible for the problem.

Mark Bittman, Farmers and Markets

The NYTimes is running a Food Conference, which means Mark Bittman is again writing on food.

He gets one thing half right:

The difference between you and the hungry is not production levels; it’s money. There are no hungry people with money; there isn’t a shortage of food, nor is there a distribution problem. There is an I-don’t-have-the-land-and-resources-to-produce-my-own-food, nor-can-I-afford-to-buy-food problem.

I agree it's a poverty problem, but he goes on to say that poverty often comes from people displacing traditional farmers. The rest is a mish-mash, mostly attacking "industrial model of food production".

IMHO China is simply the latest and most dramatic example of the truth.  Allow private possession of land and provide incentives to increase production  by having a market for agricultural products and to increase productivity by using modern "industrial" methods.  That correlates with agricultural labor moving to cities for higher wages/better living conditions, allowing greater returns to the farmers who remain.  In other words, the city workers get money and the non-traditional farmers get money; money means markets.  The traditional agriculture model has failed to provide people what they want, as shown by what they'll pay for and what they'll move for.

Now having said all that by definition the market doesn't handle bad externalities, it doesn't enforce standards (witness Chinese baby formula) and the structure of the market with multiple producers with no pricing power and few buyers with much power leads to boom and bust. So there's many problems with industrial agriculture, but producing enough food to feed the world is not one of them.

WaPost on Small and Large Farms

Compared to her peers, Ms Haspel does pretty well in considering the pros and cons of small and large farms in this piece in the Post today.

The Foodies and Their Myths

Nathaniel Johnson at Grist ties in a New Yorker piece on Vandana Shiva to talk about her big ideas, which he likes, and her analysis of the details, which he doesn't:

Romantic environmentalists tend to get the big-picture problems right, while fudging the details. Rationalists nail the details, but sometimes become so immersed in the minutiae that they lose sight of the big picture.

I don't agree with Johnson on the total big picture, but I greatly respect his willingness to look at the holes in some foodie arguments.

A more ascerbic person might consider "fudging" to be the same as "lying", but today I'm feeling generous, and willing to admit all parties have their myths: liberals, conservatives, foodies, production ag.

Foodies Lose in Public Vote

Burger King tried "Satisfries", which are french fries with less fat and sodium.  After their trial, they allowed their franchises to choose whether to keep them on the menu or not.  Apparently 3 out of 4 franchises opted to stop cooking Satisfries.  

GMO's and Drugs

Buried in an article on the experimental drug cocktail given to the Ebola patients is the information that the contents of the cocktail derive from genetically modified tobacco plants.  Tobacco has attracted a lot of research interest, partly to find an alternate use instead of cigarettes and partly because it has characteristics which make it adaptable to producing proteins in its leaves (my memory of the science--likely to be inaccurate).

This raises a question for those foodies who diss GMO food: will you also diss GMO drugs?  Seems to me the arguments against both are the same. The possibility of harm to humans from something new.

A Reality Check for the Food Movement?

Mark Bittman says French cuisine has gone to les chiens.  Years ago some French farmer achieved fame by attacking a McDonalds.  And French government policy has been to subsidize the smaller farmer. The fact that these measures don't seem to have worked should tell the food movement something about the difficulty of moving beyond a niche catering to the better off.  Should but won't.

Bittman and Blah on Cheeseburger Freedom

From a Mark Bittman post at the Times:

If those externalities were borne by their producers rather than by consumers and society at large, the industry would be a highly unprofitable, even silly one. It would either cease to exist or be forced to raise its prices significantly.

In this discussion, the cheeseburger is simply a symbol of a food system gone awry. Industrial food has manipulated cheap prices for excess profit at excess cost to everyone; low prices do not indicate “savings” or true inexpensiveness but deception. And all the products of industrial food consumption have externalities that would be lessened by a system that makes as its primary goal the links among nutrition, fairness and sustainability.

That's the concluding sentences of an argument that industrial ag, as symbolized by the cheeseburger, has very costly externalities: it has a big carbon footprint, it contributes to obesity, obesity contributes to poor health, plus a handful of more minor effects. I've no problem with Bittman's pointing out the negative externalities, but I do have two problems with the piece:

• First, if you're going to discuss externalities, fairness means you need to talk about positive ones as well.  The cheeseburger is one of the great American contributions to the cause of freedom.  It frees women to do something other than cook 3 meals a day, as my mother did.  Whether it's to pursue a career or just to get a second income for the family, that freedom, that ability to choose is important.  (Obviously men and children also gain more freedom, more choice as well, but women are the greatest gainers.)
• Second, I find these words simply incoherent: "Industrial food has manipulated cheap prices for excess profit at excess cost to everyone".  I defy anyone to expand the statement in a way which makes sense.

The Ridiculous II

This article at Modern Farmer shows the extent to which our wealthy society can extend the ridiculous.

I can understand the logic of this dairy farm: maximizing the welfare of dairy cows.  Late breeding, no slaughter--cows dying when they "naturally" would.  It's not 100 percent clear, but apparently they don't send their bull calves to slaughter either.  It all fits the touchy-feely ethos of the food movement, but more so.

I can accept that 100 years from now wealthy nations will get most of their milk and meat from truly industrial process (i.e., bypassing animals altogether).  The remainder of the supply might be subdivided with various approaches, some organic, some slaughter free, etc.

But I won't be around to see it and I'm too much a man of my time and place to find it other than ridiculous.   A quote:

"At $10 per gallon, the price of slaughter-free milk is almost triple the cost of whole milk, which retails for an average of $3.69 per gallon. The price reflects the cost of producing the milk as well as calf care and “retirement” costs for the herd. (The cost of labor isn’t factored into the price because the farmhands are volunteers).

 So the true price is probably closer to $20 per gallon, because the labor is being paid/supported by trust funds, etc.  Might one be able to find suckers customers willing to pay more than three times the price of conventional milk?  Might one be able to find suckers people willing to get up at 4 am to milk the cows for no pay?  Yes, I suppose one might.  I still say ridiculous.

Sustainability and Markets: Pet Peeve Again

One of my biggest problems with the studies from Rodale et. al. comparing the productivity of organic farming versus production ag relates to markets.  Typically the studies compare a corn-only  cropping series, a corn-soybeans rotation cropping series, and something like corn-alfalfa-wheat-soybeans cropping series, and finds that the corn productivity is roughly equal.   My peeve is the studies ignore the question of marketing; they assume that everything grown can be marketed.  Back in the old days of horse-drawn ag, you could rotate oats and hay crops with your corn and find a market for any fodder not consumed on the farm.  These days, not so.  California can grown alfalfa to be exported to China, but Iowa not so much.

A little bit of market recognition is the theme of this piece in the NYT, though I suspect the author (Mr. Barber, the chef and foodie) is drastically oversimplifying. (Yes. mustard makes a good rotation crop for the soil, and can be cooked/prepared for human consumption. But being able to provide mustard greens to chefs and CSA's over an extended period is probably not realistic.  If you're planting greens in the garden, you know you want succession planting to extend the season, which is doable in small plots but possibly not on the scale of a farm.)  Despite my doubts, it is a good step towards greater realism on the food movement, at least that part of the movement which reads the Times.