http://tinyurl.com/345yxb

Ricardian comparative advantage implies that every nation needs to produce what it does best, and agriculture is where developing economies tend to have comparative advantage. The cost of the U.S. spending its time doing agriculture is very high. The supposed better alternative is to leave that activity to someone who can do it better, move to an area where the U.S. does best (hi-tech, services, or whatever) and trade with other economies. Because everyone is producing that they do best, there is simply more stuff out there. High supply, lower prices, market efficiency, blah blah invisible hand.

Now, the question becomes a more realist analysis when you think, well do I really want to trust my agricultural base to another state. Are there security issues involved in this? Are there power implications if I lose an entire sector of economic activity?

It is also said that the farm bloc is often a very powerful constituency in democracies, because they tend to be very reliable voters, and they tend to be single-issue voters. If you provide generous agricultural subsidies, you’d earn their votes very easily. The low-hanging fruit of election calculations, some would say.

Whatever the reason, the end result is that agriculture is the one sector that is NEVER opened up for free trade. Whether that’s inefficient protectionism, security concerns, or social consciousness, that depends on who you ask It also introduces an element of hypocrisy into international trade negotiations, when developed states are pushing free trade in everything that they have comparative advantage in. When it comes to a sector that they’d lose, suddenly, free trade doesn’t apply there anymore.

since the u.s. is the most energy inefficient country in the world, it’s no big surprise that we also waste energy when we grow our rice. the solution shouldn’t be to ship in rice from countries who do grow it efficiently. instead, we should make our own farming practices more efficient. i suspect it’s only because our farming energy costs are so high that the energy cost of shipping pales in comparison.

also, the point of eating locally isn’t only to avoid shipping costs. eating locally also means eating what’s locally available SEASONALLY as well. so, if we insisted on having ripe tomatoes all year round, it likely would be more energy-efficient to ship them in from china (or wherever) than it would be to grow them locally inside a hothouse.

#8: I once threw (organic) eggs at people who were noisily playing football in my street at night. I think I hit one of them… in the crotch. I don’t know if I should feel bad, because I think they were tourists.

Now questions:
While dutifully applauding Mackey’s “I’m announcing tonight…”s, I couldn’t help but wonder whether the added price of the initiatives (Whole Trade, Artisinal support, etc.) would outpace the added cost to the company. In other words, to what extent might these initiatives be excuses to charge more for these products, given Whole Foods’s reputation?

There was thunderous applause at Pollan and Mackey’s appeal to end farm subsidies in the U.S. My understanding is limited, but I think of such subsidies as price-fixing, in a way, to keep farms in business and to sell food cheaply (I welcome corrections from the economists in the audience). Therefore, I wondered how the budget for these subsidies compares to the total budget for support programs such as Food Stamps, WIC, etc. (Given more time, I reckon I’d start here.) How big would the resulting spike in food prices be?

Lastly, when I mentioned the talk to a friend, she said, “Did he talk about how he hates unions?” Trader Joe’s, too, is known for anti-union policies. I guess that one’s not so much a question as another perspective.

What do y’all think?

Kesava: as usual, your back of the envelop beats my lazy research. As k7 mentioned Mackey was citing assertions in The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter. As quoted on Mackey’s blog, they wrote,

“If air freight is the most energy-extravagant way of moving food, sending it by sea or rail are the most economical ways. Rice is grown in California, under irrigation, but it takes a lot of energy to grow it there–about 15 to 25 times as much energy as it takes to grow rice by low energy input methods in Bangladesh. The energy used in shipping a ton of rice from Bangladesh to San Francisco is less than [sic] difference between the amount of energy it takes to grow it in California and in Bangladesh, so if you live in San Francisco, you would save energy by buying rice that has traveled thousands of miles by sea, rather than locally grown rice.

As this Berkeley food blogger points out, though, there are other concerns, like transparency (another topic broached in the talk).

k7: the Trader Joe’s comment was pretty ad hominem. In general, I thought Mackey was rhetorically sloppy, but that, of course, is itself an ad hominem criticism. Still, always good to call out BS.

More link madness:

• UC Berkeley News: Michael Pollan, Whole Foods’ John Mackey usher Berkeley foodies into ‘ecological era’
• Bay Area Bites: Michael Pollan & John Mackey

Mackey also got some jabs in about Trader Joe’s, being subject to inhumane suppliers, and demonizing them for being owned by the “richest family in German.” I personally was a bit turned off by that, he was being borderline xenophobic.

But I do think Trader Joe’s has ducked a lot of criticism because they’re so damn affordable, their workers are affable, and they are apolitical and stay out of the media. That’s skillfully done, shining in every facet where consumers experience the grocer.