Is it possible for an econ professor to commit malpractice?

[Hauldren Collider]

@ everyone defending local food

As Jaguar noted on facebook a while back, "The logical conclusion of eating locally grown food is to hope that 50 million people abandon the coasts and move to Kansas."

[Dauphin]

I don't understand why local food is any more desirable than local goods of any kind (e.g., cars, televisions, etc), except when it's perishable. For sure I don't want my milk shipped on a slow boat from China, but I'd rather my bananas from the Caribbean than from the Yorkshire moors.

[snoopy369]

You shouldn't just go straight to the extremist locovore position; there's plenty that even New Jerseyites can do to increase their consumption of local produce. I speak as someone who lived most of his life in Essex County. We had gardens, we had farmers come in from as near as Morris, Sussex and Hunterdon counties to sell vegetables off trucks. Now, the entire population could not subsist off local agriculture, true, but that's no reason to simply throw out the whole idea.

Again, sure, a few people could, but not enough to matter, and they would be doing significant harm to the economy and possibly the environment if enough did that it DID matter. Solutions to problems should be workable with the fewest possible side effects; this solution (locavorism) to this problem (global warming/etc.) is neither workable nor does it have few side effects. If even a large number of people began eating just what they found at local farmers' markets, food prices would spike, people would go hungry, and other economies would collapse as their food prices dropped precipitously. Of course this assumes the government doesn't screw around with price subsidies, but that would be even dumber in the long run.

[kentonio]

The idea of eating local foods is that you mainly eat things that are actually produced locally and in season, not that you locally grow stuff that is alien to your climate. I don't follow this personally, but the reasons for advancing it are pretty obvious.

[regexcellent]

My professor explained that she doesn't eat local food because tomatoes that are right out of the ground are tastier, but rather because she thinks it's the socially responsible thing to do. Which is where my complaint lies. She's just retarded.

[regexcellent]

Also, in an unrelated instance she claimed that lawyers, doctors, and dentists don't have doctorate degrees because they aren't PhDs.

[snoopy369]

Honestly, why do you want more people in New Jersey to eat New Jersey produce? Will that increase the number of farms built in New Jersey? What are they being built at the expense of? What else could we do with that capital/land/labor? The amount of all of the above necessary to produce anything useful would be very high compared to doing it in the food basin in California, or in Mexico, or Chile, or any of the numerous other places that are very good at farming due to coincidences of climate and land. Why take land that would be better suited to a car factory, or a oil refinery, or a Costco, and turn it into barely sustainable farmland that costs a mint to get a few heads of lettuce out of it?

Seriously, even environmentalists should want nothing to do with locavorism. The damage done to the environment in order to make New Jersey land arable is far more than that done in California/Mexico/etc., where nature has done this for us already.

Ask yourself, when thinking about an environmentalist plan: "What would the native americans do?" I can tell you right now, what they would NOT do is try to grow food in New Jersey. They'd move to Kansas and grow corn there, or Virginia, or California. They'd recognize in a heartbeat that you can't grow 10,000,000 peoples' worth of food in New Jersey, and get the heck out of dodge - or, perhaps, TO Dodge...

[snoopy369]

The idea of eating local foods is that you mainly eat things that are actually produced locally and in season, not that you locally grow stuff that is alien to your climate. I don't follow this personally, but the reasons for advancing it are pretty obvious.

Unless those reasons are anti-humanism or anti-modernism, no, they're not. Who the heck cares when what I eat is in season? If I want a banana, I want a banana, and I don't think either my health or the environment gives a **** that I'm eating a banana out of season in Illinois (where they're out of season 12 months out of the year). All the BS about "your body knows" or some **** like that is just that - BS. You're far healthier eating a balanced diet all year round, because it's a balanced diet all year round. You want to be a true Locavore in Michigan? You can eat about 3 dishes, total, because you don't actually grow much of anything within 100 miles of Michigan, or 200 miles, or 10 days' hike, or whatever useless and arbitrary distance the locavores claim is appropriate.

Even the local tomatoes and whatnot aren't truly local - they're originally from somewhere warm and sunny, and the plants were brought to Michigan thirty years ago by a band of hippies, or Monsanto, or somewhere in between. Why should I limit myself to eating nuts and berries, which is basically what was grown in the Chicago area, along with swamp ferns and whatever grows in swamps. Mushrooms, I guess, though not even very many good ones, those are all in Washington State.

The only true advantage to locavorism - and the reason I do shop at farmers' markets when I have the chance - is that you know under what conditions your food is grown. You can ask the farmer what pesticides they used, while you can't ask your Jewel-Osco clerk and expect a truthful answer other than "how the heck should I know". But that's not truly related to locavorism - it's related to the communication of information, which is very possible to do via methods other than locavorism.

[MRT144]

The reason locally grown food is dumb is because more people live in New Jersey than in Iowa.

I should say, rather, that's one of many reasons.

Does NJ not have farms?

[kentonio]

Everything doesn't have to be so black and white. There will be places where it's not practical, but there are also places where it would be perfectly possible for farmers to grow crops but they don't because its cheaper for supermarkets to buy in produce grown on a different continent and ship it over. That is not something you can justify environmentally.

[regexcellent]

It doesn't have enough farms to feed its population. It is a net food importing state. Iowa has more food production than it consumes locally. It is a net food exporting state. The implication is that there would have to be net population transfer from NJ to IA.

[MRT144]

It doesn't have enough farms to feed its population. It is a net food importing state. Iowa has more food production than it consumes locally. It is a net food exporting state. The implication is that there would have to be net population transfer from NJ to IA.

Are you saying that the farms in NJ are defective in producing even a small amount of food for the locals?

[Dauphin]

The idea of eating local foods is that you mainly eat things that are actually produced locally and in season, not that you locally grow stuff that is alien to your climate. I don't follow this personally, but the reasons for advancing it are pretty obvious.

My point is, why would someone want their strawberries from Kent and their turkey's from Norfolk, but not care that their car is from Germany and their TV is from Korea.

[snoopy369]

Oh, and what are you eating in January or February in Michigan, exactly? Snow peas? Nope, those aren't really found in the snow, sorry. Winter wheat? Yeah, that's a great diet. Nothing but wheat products three months out of the year. Brilliant. Four thousand years of learning about husbandry, food preservation, and storage, all thrown out the window because some idiot thinks it's a good idea to live like a Native American. **** you, idiot, go live in your grass hut and freeze to death while the rest of us actually have civilization. There are plenty of solutions to global warming and whatnot that have not a single thing to do with idiotic ideas about seasonal eating that were millennia out of date in Cleopatra's time.

[regexcellent]

ken, there's no place where locavorism makes any sense. The whole ****ing world is local now, because we have this amazing technology called "transportation." It enables something economists (like my professor) call "trade." Things that can be produced at a higher quality, more cheaply, and in a manner that is better for the environment in one place are traded for other things from other places on trains, trucks, and ships.