By Neil B. Miller | December 14th, 2011
If asked, most self-identified locavores and buy local advocates presumably can list one or more reasons why buying local, organically grown food is good for themselves and their families, better for the environment, and beneficial for their communities. The “food movement,” as it has come to be known, has been around now for several decades (the Slow Food Manifesto was signed in 1989), and its intellectual and political forebears – the pioneering generation of environmentalists, organic farmers, and authors that includes Rachel Carson, Frances Moore Lappé, and Wendell Berry – dates back to the 1960s and 1970s.
So, I’ve been wondering of late, why hasn’t the food movement made more progress? Why are advocates still arguing the merits of local and organically grown food? Why is the battle for localism, relocalization, or buying local, whatever you want to call it, still being fought?
Why, in short, aren’t more American consumers, not to mention consumers in other rich, developed nations, already buying local and eating organic?
Numerous answers to this question have been proffered by advocates as well as critics, most of which, though partially convincing, fall short of a fully satisfying explanation. Advocates of local, organic farming point to the enormous resources Big Food and Big Ag have at their disposal to sway public opinion, subsidize scientific research, and influence public policy. One need only note the lack of progress that’s been made on mandating GM food labeling, in the face of overwhelming public support, or the recent effort to secret a Farm Bill through the Congressional Super Committee, to appreciate the cozy relationship large food producers and agricultural interests have with many elected officials, including the Obama administration.
Critics, such as Steve Sexton, author of a recent article on “The Inefficiency of Local Food,” published on the Freakonomics blog, have their own explanations.
It’s not my intention to detail all the various arguments for and against local, organically grown foods. Rather, I want to summarize several of the most widely publicized arguments, and to suggest why these arguments haven’t gained greater traction with American consumers. Very briefly, I believe advocates of local food and organic farming rely too heavily on rationalistic arguments that appeal to the head rather than the heart. Too often what is missing in these food fights, I believe, is the politics of desire, and the articulation of a clear, compelling vision of how local food contributes to a qualitatively better world.
Taste, Flavor, and Nutrition. In this argument, locally grown, organic foods are described as better tasting, riper, more flavorful, and more nutritious. All true, but unconvincing. Taste is socially conditioned, which means that what tastes best to many Americans is the product of food science and sophisticated marketing as much as personal experience. What tastes best is what we grew up eating, which for most of us is mass-produced, mass-marketed food that has been manipulated by food scientists to satisfy primal evolutionary urges. Place an organic apple and a bag of Doritos in front of most Americans and see what happens, if you don’t believe me. To argue the merits of taste and flavor, therefore, or to counter the addictive qualities of salt, sugar and fat with rationalistic arguments about nutrient density, is to fight Big Food on their own turf, and lose.
Environmental Benefit. Organic farming is better for the soil and better for the environment, and it’s sustainable. Buying locally grown foods or locally manufactured goods is in all likelihood also better for the environment, involving lower energy inputs and decreasing the carbon footprint of our purchases. Those of us who support and advocate organic farming and the merits of buying local have read the studies and know these claims to be factually true.
Here again, however, rationalistic arguments fall short. My friend Bill bought eight Purdue chickens last week for $2.50 each. He touts the fact that he buys canned corn at Aldi’s for $ .39/can, and can afford to lay up a pantry full of shelf stable foods. No amount of arguing with Bill about the conditions in which those chickens were raised and slaughtered, the environmental consequences of factory farming, the health risks posed by the BPA that’s leached into his canned corn, or the hidden costs of our industrialized food system can persuade Bill that his $2.50 Perdue chicken isn’t a great deal, especially in comparison to an organic bird that costs $4.50/pound.
The problem with the environmental argument in favor of local, organic food isn’t that it’s wrong, but that it’s overly rationalistic and unconvincing. Common sense and a narrow understanding of self-interest tell Bill, and many other Americans just like him, that a national food system and supply chain that can put a whole chicken in his fridge for $2.50 must be doing something right, and that the critics of this system must be wrong. This is the argument Steve Sexton makes in his Freakonomics article “The Inefficiency of Local Food,” and although I disagree with Sexton’s reasoning, I can’t deny the power and persuasiveness of his argument, which for many Americans seems self evident and irrefutable.
Community. The argument that supporting local farmers and small, independently-owned businesses benefits local communities comes closest, I believe, to offering a compelling reason for why more Americans should buy local. Everyone has been personally affected by the current economic crisis, or knows someone who has, and most Americans, I believe, understand that the interests of Wall Street no longer mirror the interests of Main Street. Convincing people that things need to change, accordingly, should be an easy task. All too often, however, the argument in favor of community gets bogged down in facts and statistics.
Numerous articles and websites touting the communal benefit of buying local cite a 2002 study done in Austin, Texas, that shows that $100 spent in an independently owned bookstore results in $45.00 of local economic activity, while $100 spent at Borders, a national retail chain (that recently filed for bankruptcy!) generates only $13.00 of local economic activity. Alongside this and other statistics, many articles also cite increased investment and employment, more efficient use of taxes revenues, and greater retention of communal character and distinctiveness as reasons for buying local. A mere shift of 10% in consumer spending at local businesses, it is argued, would realize all these economic benefits.
The issue, however, isn’t whether more consumers should shift their spending 10%, but why they haven’t already done so and what’s stopping them from doing so. The explanation, I believe, is that all these economic arguments, despite their grounding in facts and reason, fall short of offering an emotionally satisfying, holistic vision of a world made better by buying local.
Social change isn’t simply a matter of more and better information. It is the end result of reaching people where they live, and connecting with people’s values and desires as much as their reasoning. This is the truth about human nature that the British philosopher David Hume recognized long ago, and that marketing executives and ad copywriters have exploited ever since: that desire – or what Hume called passion – rather than reason, motivates human beings to act. Connect with people’s passions and desires, and you can change the world.
Many advocates of local food and organic farming have fallen short in connecting with people’s desires, and in articulating a holistic vision of a world made better by buying local. For me, that vision begins first-and-foremost with the realization that the food movement is about meaningful personal relations rather than fresher or more healthful produce. What I value most about supporting local farmers and food producers are the face-to-face relations: the friends I’ve made, and the smiles that greet me whenever I visit my local farmers markets. This is a qualitative form of added value that no economic calculus can factor, and that no rationalistic argument can accommodate, but it is the primary motive for why I buy local.
Efforts to educate consumers on the quantitative benefits of buying local, that fail to connect them emotionally with the qualitative benefits, are not wrong, they just are unlikely to succeed regardless of whether the facts cited are all correct. What we need, accordingly, are not more and better facts, but a conversation with our neighbors, within our communities, about the type of world in which we want to live, and a clearer understanding of our how our choices and decisions as consumers get us closer to or further away from reaching this goal.
Many Americans, I believe, desire a world of greater meaningful connection with their neighbors, increased social and economic security for themselves and their families, and a more intimate, community-level economy where major corporations do not dominate every aspect of our lives. If that world is to be realized, it needs to begin with a compelling, holistic vision, and to draw upon the motivating power of passion and the politics of desire.
