Is it possible for an econ professor to commit malpractice?

[Aeson]

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.

Tomatoes from a local greenhouse

[Aeson]

@ 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."

It's ironic that the free market cheerleaders are the ones who most doubt the ability of the free market to respond to a change in demand ...

[Aeson]

You can. The money you save can be used to plant trees or other environmental projects that outweigh the environmental cost of shipping.

There is a 1:1 trade-off here. The producers (likely the workers) will have less money that they can use to plant trees or other environmental projects. (Ignoring that neither group is actually going to do so.)

[Aeson]

It's cheaper because local food production is difficult and/or there is something MORE USEFUL to do with the land.

Generally shipping from overseas as kentonio was talking about is due to relatively lower labor costs created by immigration restrictions, and relatively lower land cost due to relatively poor economies (in large part due to the first item, as well as other limits on free trade/markets) that together are so massive that they cover up higher costs (and environmental impact) in virtually every other regard.

This isn't a matter of things being black or white. This is a matter of something being truly idiotic. No degree of locavorism makes any sense whatsoever, from an environmental or economic point of view. It's a silly philosophy practiced by silly people who don't think about what they're doing. Things must be taken out to their logical conclusion, and if locavorism is, either it's irrelevant in which case shut up and eat whatever you ****ing want but stop telling others to, or it does SUBSTANTIAL ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL HARM if practiced at a relevant level. There's nothing in between.

This is decidedly not true. While a poorly implemented market response to local food movements could be damaging, there exist potential responses that would be beneficial to the environment and economy.

[notyoueither]

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.

I think foodies tend to place value on freshness for flavour (and possibly nutrition). That may be a good guide for tomatoes while not so much for TVs.

[Uncle Sparky]

I'm saying just like a $30k bottle of wine doesn't taste better than a $300 bottle of wine, and is purely a veblen good, $6/gal milk does not taste better than $3/gal milk. It's just like when people buy Priuses even though they drive like 6 miles a week. Some stupid vague notion of saving the environment. Then again, Priuses have at least in principle value over other cars and the milk doesn't.

I suspect a $30,000 bottle of wine tastes much better than a $300 bottle. Personally, the most expensive wine I've tried is about $750 per bottle, and it was very, very good.

[Jaguar]

There is a 1:1 trade-off here. The producers (likely the workers) will have less money that they can use to plant trees or other environmental projects. (Ignoring that neither group is actually going to do so.)

No. Costs reflect actual difficulties of production. They aren't just imaginary mechanisms by which we shift around a fixed amount of wealth.

The logic you just used could justify a plan to pay Robert Downie Jr. $20 million a year to be a cashier at your grocery store, because you think it would make your people happier. Dauphin asked you "why don't you just buy people free balloons with that money instead?" And you said "There is a 1:1 trade-off here. If I don't hire Robert Downie Jr., my cashiers will have $20 million less that they can use to buy people free balloons. (Ignoring that neither group is actually going to do so.)"

"1:1 trade-off." You talked about redistributing production in a different way, and still believed that society's wealth would be the same. This reveals everything about your level of competence at understanding the world.


* * *

Raising cattle in New Jersey destroys wealth, because to do so, you have to displace people with more productive uses for the land - like warehouses for Amazon.com to deliver to New York, or pharmaceutical companies that want to be near Rutgers and Princeton. New Jersey has about 3% of the US population, and about 0.07% of the milk production. This isn't close. This isn't some sort of debatable point that British leftists can weigh in on and feel like their opinions should be treated like they're valid. Trade happens for a reason, and just because the new-age left has developed a mysticism about random commodity markets doesn't mean that we should entertain their nonsense.

Some areas of New Jersey are reasonably used for a small number of cattle (about ten or fifteen thousand.) Most of that milk, you'll be happy to know, is actually drunk in New Jersey. Nobody ships milk from Newark to Tulsa just to spite you, although perhaps they should.

[Jaguar]

With modern technology we definitely could grow food for 10 million people in New Jersey. Probably making it a much nicer place to live in the process (lots of high value jobs in clean industries). We won't do it ... but we probably should. (Not necessarily "New Jersey for New Jersey", but by moving agricultural production closer to centers of consumption by utilizing the high-tech solutions we already have available to us.)

Wow. Let's set aside the leftist catnip for a moment about "high-tech" and "clean industries." You really don't do math good, do you? You're so very sure, and so very, very wrong.

"Definitely," you said.

The US uses 900 million acres of agriculture. It has a positive net agricultural balance of trade, obviously; more like 600 million acres are required to actually sustain 300 million Americans. That's two acres per person, approximately one of which is for livestock, and the other of which is for crops. Two acres per person.

"Definitely," you said.

New Jersey has 9 million people and 5.5 million acres. I don't know whether you watch football, but give yourself the area from a team's own endzone to its 40 yard line; a distance Devin Hester can cover in under five seconds. That's the amount of space per person in New Jersey. The amount of space you want to use to feed someone - assuming, of course, that you don't use the land for anything else whatsoever, including houses or roads.

"Definitely," you said.

[dannubis]

.

[Traianvs]

Unfortunately, no.

Freakonomics did a podcast about why locally grown food is not environmentally beneficial, sometime back in like May or June (unless you live in the food basket in CA, anyway, in which case you're probably eating locally by default). Economically speaking, and environmentally speaking, it's better to eat widely - supporting Chilean grape farmers or whatever is more valuable than supporting local grape farmers, particularly when grape farming in whereveryouare is probably inefficient and requires all sorts of pesticides and soil erosion and potentially invasive grape species or whatever. Chile is a great place to grow grapes, doesn't require pesticides or whatever because local Chilean grapes are properly adapted to the local pest culture. (Example partially made up.) Just because it might travel across a long distance doesn't really contribute all that much to environmental harm - there are potentially more greenhouse gases used to provide the chemicals you'd use locally (even organic stuff involves some chemicals, and watering, and other necessary transport).

Sigh, again this argument. Of course it's ridiculous to grow non-local food locally if the climate, soils and what not are unfit for that specific crop. Eating local food means adapting your diet to crops that can grow locally without the need of additional (chemical) fertilizer, a diet which follows the seasons. This is supplemented with ingredients that come from afar. A varied diet is a good thing after all, it's just that these exotic ingredients shouldn't be at the core of your meals. It's also about buying from producers directly, yet another benefit for local farmers.

[kentonio]

The US uses 900 million acres of agriculture. It has a positive net agricultural balance of trade, obviously; more like 600 million acres are required to actually sustain 300 million Americans. That's two acres per person, approximately one of which is for livestock, and the other of which is for crops. Two acres per person.

Maybe you should try using less than 2 acres, and as an added benefit stop being a nation of fat-asses?

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

There is one form of obtaining locally-sourced organic food that makes undeniable sense. Foraging.

I am currently making some lovely blackberry preserves and crumble. I might go catch some crayfish later. And then it's mushroom hunting time.

[Aeson]

No. Costs reflect actual difficulties of production.

In that example (buying local (I will use US since I'm more familiar with it than UK) vs imported as indicated by kentonio's use of "another continent") a very large portion of the cost difference, perhaps more than the price difference total, is simply how much the workers get paid. The workers do not have to work harder in the US to get more pay. (It's actually opposite in most cases, imported food will generally use more laborers, longer work days, less days off. It's just the labor is so cheap it's still much cheaper than labor in the US.) The only other factor driving costs down for imported food is the cost of land. In my experience, the savings are about 5:1 ratio workers:land, though it can vary quite a bit. Since yields in the US tend to be higher for most crops, you end up using more land and thus further reduce the land's savings factor.

All the actual material and energy costs favor local production or are similar. You use more sprays, more fertilizers, more land, and more labor outside the US for the same food production. It's just the cost of labor (and to a lesser extent land) is so much lower that the cost of the produce is less than it would be grown in the US.

The logic you just used could justify a plan to pay Robert Downie Jr. $20 million a year to be a cashier at your grocery store, because you think it would make your people happier. Dauphin asked you "why don't you just buy people free balloons with that money instead?" And you said "There is a 1:1 trade-off here. If I don't hire Robert Downie Jr., my cashiers will have $20 million less that they can use to buy people free balloons. (Ignoring that neither group is actually going to do so.)"

Why not just say that we could use the money to reanimate the corpse of Hitler and give him lasers if you're going to go for an absurdly inapplicable and hyperbolic interpretation of my position?

First, having Robert Downie Jr. as a cashier would be awesome. Who knows, for a big enough brand the publicity might even be worth the cost.

As for what my logic actually was ... it's that very close to all (it probably isn't ever exactly 100%, it can be more or less) of the "savings" between locally grown food and that which is shipped in from overseas is due to the wages paid to the workers. The requirement for agricultural inputs (including amount of land and labor) are generally more for food shipped in even before getting to the shipping.

Thus, if the consumer chooses to save a few dollars and buy the cheap imported stuff ... the food they eat will have had more money spent on it for transportation, fertilization, and pesticides. (Also, most modern farm equipment will cost quite a bit more in developing nations.) The only thing they aren't paying as much for is the labor, which is actually more labor, just cheaper. So it can be viewed as transferring money (in the form of wages paid to fill demand for a product) from local workers to the consumer with no actual "savings" in agricultural inputs (because it is in fact using more inputs).

You took that logic, ignored it, and invented a strawman.

Wow. Let's set aside the leftist catnip for a moment about "high-tech" and "clean industries." You really don't do math good, do you? You're so very sure, and so very, very wrong.

"Definitely," you said.

The US uses 900 million acres of agriculture. It has a positive net agricultural balance of trade, obviously; more like 600 million acres are required to actually sustain 300 million Americans. That's two acres per person, approximately one of which is for livestock, and the other of which is for crops. Two acres per person.

"Definitely," you said.

New Jersey has 9 million people and 5.5 million acres. I don't know whether you watch football, but give yourself the area from a team's own endzone to its 40 yard line; a distance Devin Hester can cover in under five seconds. That's the amount of space per person in New Jersey. The amount of space you want to use to feed someone - assuming, of course, that you don't use the land for anything else whatsoever, including houses or roads.

"Definitely," you said.

Yes, we definitely have the technology necessary to feed that many people in that much area. (Much less actually.)

You're just a moron who doesn't understand agricultural and what is possible with the technology we already have. (And why we don't make as much use of it as we should.) Thus you don't understand what actually is possible, because you're blinded by the inefficiencies we choose to inflict on ourselves.

There are many reasons why we tend towards low yield per unit of area production techniques and produce. Some of it is simply consumer demand, but in the hypothetical that is changing towards local food massively, which would also drastically change the relative cost efficiency of various forms of production. IF all these people are willign to pay higher prices for locally grown food, it would be a huge boon to our economy as we build a lot of high-tech food production rather than relying on wasting resources shipping things around from caged labor sources to save a few bucks.

Some of the other reasons we are so unproductive on a per unit of area basis:

Infatuation with grains. Grains are low yielding, about 1kg/sq m per year. This is largely due to how cheap they are. (They are subsidized by the government.) This would change in a hypothetical market where people wanted local produce. Grains would become more expensive because they don't lend themselves to that sort of production. Not only would this be a good thing in regards to productivity per unit of area, but it would be a good thing health-wise for our nation as well. The other factor is they store very well. Some veggies (root crops and squash for example) store just about as well without refrigeration. We'd be moving towards year round production methods with everything else in the hypothetical, utilizing methods that aren't as disruptable by natural phenomenon ... so storage becomes less of an issue.

Infatuation with meat. Take the low yields from grains and cut in in a 4th. Again, the price of meat has a lot to do with it. Grains are cheap. (Artificially so even.) Feeds are thus cheap. Meat is thus cheap. Some of that is just nature, some of it is government intervention. This would also change in the hypothetical, as the cost of meat would go up more than veggies and fruits do, reducing demand for meat to the point where production is feasible.

While you can't see other possibilities (even the ones that are essentially givens in the hypothetical where local produce is heavily favored by most consumers), it doesn't mean they couldn't exist.

We could definitely feed the people. We could do so in a way that would suit much of the given consumer demand in the hypothetial. (There will always be people who want something they can't afford, no matter the situation of course.)

So for the math that isn't stuck wearing "how we do things now" blinders in regards to a hypothetical which would change how we do things:

(This is what is possible ... not necessarily what we should do ... we have plenty of leeway)

Produce: 20kg/sq m/year
Consumption: 1000kg per person per year (this is what the average American eats, we could actually reduce this quite a lot but also we would probably have fewer calories per unit of weight on average, so rather than spending a week researching calories per unit of weight and viable diets, we'll just assume it would work out similarly.)
Required Area/Person: 50 sq m/p (as the ecofarm debacle would suggest, we're using a number about 5x theoretical minimum here, even though we're dramatically increasing stability of production)
Population: 9m people
Required Area Total: 450m sq m (about 111,000 acres)

So we need 111,000 acres minimum to feed the people of NJ. We could do this pretty easily without resorting to the extremes of current technology like multi-level greenhouses powered by nuclear plants.

[Aeson]

No. Costs reflect actual difficulties of production.

In that example (buying local (I will use US since I'm more familiar with it than UK) vs imported as indicated by kentonio's use of "another continent") a very large portion of the cost difference, perhaps more than the price difference total, is simply how much the workers get paid. The workers do not have to work harder in the US to get more pay. (It's actually opposite in most cases, imported food will generally use more laborers, longer work days, less days off. It's just the labor is so cheap it's still much cheaper than labor in the US.) The only other factor driving costs down for imported food is the cost of land. In my experience, the savings are about 5:1 ratio workers:land, though it can vary quite a bit. Since yields in the US tend to be higher for most crops, you end up using more land and thus further reduce the land's savings factor.

All the actual material and energy costs favor local production or are similar. You use more sprays, more fertilizers, more land, and more labor outside the US for the same food production. It's just the cost of labor (and to a lesser extent land) is so much lower that the cost of the produce is less than it would be grown in the US.

The logic you just used could justify a plan to pay Robert Downie Jr. $20 million a year to be a cashier at your grocery store, because you think it would make your people happier. Dauphin asked you "why don't you just buy people free balloons with that money instead?" And you said "There is a 1:1 trade-off here. If I don't hire Robert Downie Jr., my cashiers will have $20 million less that they can use to buy people free balloons. (Ignoring that neither group is actually going to do so.)"

Why not just say that we could use the money to reanimate the corpse of Hitler and give him lasers if you're going to go for an absurdly inapplicable and hyperbolic interpretation of my position?

First, having Robert Downie Jr. as a cashier would be awesome. Who knows, for a big enough brand the publicity might even be worth the cost.

As for what my logic actually was ... it's that very close to all (it probably isn't ever exactly 100%, it can be more or less) of the "savings" between locally grown food and that which is shipped in from overseas is due to the wages paid to the workers. The requirement for agricultural inputs (including amount of land and labor) are generally more for food shipped in even before getting to the shipping.

Thus, if the consumer chooses to save a few dollars and buy the cheap imported stuff ... the food they eat will have had more money spent on it for transportation, fertilization, and pesticides. (Also, most modern farm equipment will cost quite a bit more in developing nations.) The only thing they aren't paying as much for is the labor, which is actually more labor, just cheaper. So it can be viewed as transferring money (in the form of wages paid to fill demand for a product) from local workers to the consumer with no actual "savings" in agricultural inputs (because it is in fact using more inputs).

You took that logic, ignored it, and invented a strawman.

Wow. Let's set aside the leftist catnip for a moment about "high-tech" and "clean industries." You really don't do math good, do you? You're so very sure, and so very, very wrong.

"Definitely," you said.

The US uses 900 million acres of agriculture. It has a positive net agricultural balance of trade, obviously; more like 600 million acres are required to actually sustain 300 million Americans. That's two acres per person, approximately one of which is for livestock, and the other of which is for crops. Two acres per person.

"Definitely," you said.

New Jersey has 9 million people and 5.5 million acres. I don't know whether you watch football, but give yourself the area from a team's own endzone to its 40 yard line; a distance Devin Hester can cover in under five seconds. That's the amount of space per person in New Jersey. The amount of space you want to use to feed someone - assuming, of course, that you don't use the land for anything else whatsoever, including houses or roads.

"Definitely," you said.

Yes, we definitely have the technology necessary to feed that many people in that much area. (Much less actually.)

You're just a moron who doesn't understand agricultural and what is possible with the technology we already have. (And why we don't make as much use of it as we should.) Thus you don't understand what actually is possible, because you're blinded by the inefficiencies we choose to inflict on ourselves.

There are many reasons why we tend towards low yield per unit of area production techniques and produce. Some of it is simply consumer demand, but in the hypothetical that is changing towards local food massively, which would also drastically change the relative cost efficiency of various forms of production. IF all these people are willign to pay higher prices for locally grown food, it would be a huge boon to our economy as we build a lot of high-tech food production rather than relying on wasting resources shipping things around from caged labor sources to save a few bucks.

Some of the other reasons we are so unproductive on a per unit of area basis:

Infatuation with grains. Grains are low yielding, about 1kg/sq m per year. This is largely due to how cheap they are. (They are subsidized by the government.) This would change in a hypothetical market where people wanted local produce. Grains would become more expensive because they don't lend themselves to that sort of production. Not only would this be a good thing in regards to productivity per unit of area, but it would be a good thing health-wise for our nation as well. The other factor is they store very well. Some veggies (root crops and squash for example) store just about as well without refrigeration. We'd be moving towards year round production methods with everything else in the hypothetical, utilizing methods that aren't as disruptable by natural phenomenon ... so storage becomes less of an issue.

Infatuation with meat. Take the low yields from grains and cut in in a 4th. Again, the price of meat has a lot to do with it. Grains are cheap. (Artificially so even.) Feeds are thus cheap. Meat is thus cheap. Some of that is just nature, some of it is government intervention. This would also change in the hypothetical, as the cost of meat would go up more than veggies and fruits do, reducing demand for meat to the point where production is feasible.

While you can't see other possibilities (even the ones that are essentially givens in the hypothetical where local produce is heavily favored by most consumers), it doesn't mean they couldn't exist.

We could definitely feed the people. We could do so in a way that would suit much of the given consumer demand in the hypothetial. (There will always be people who want something they can't afford, no matter the situation of course.)

So for the math that isn't stuck wearing "how we do things now" blinders in regards to a hypothetical which would change how we do things:

(This is what is possible ... not necessarily what we should do ... we have plenty of leeway)

Produce: 20kg/sq m/year
Consumption: 1000kg per person per year (this is what the average American eats, we could actually reduce this quite a lot but also we would probably have fewer calories per unit of weight on average, so rather than spending a week researching calories per unit of weight and viable diets, we'll just assume it would work out similarly.)
Required Area/Person: 50 sq m/p
Population: 9m people
Required Area Total: 450m sq m (about 111,000 acres)

So we need 111,000 acres minimum to feed the people of NJ. We could do this pretty easily without resorting to the extremes of current technology like multi-level greenhouses powered by nuclear plants.

[snoopy369]

It's ironic that the free market cheerleaders are the ones who most doubt the ability of the free market to respond to a change in demand ...

That is entirely the opposite of what I'd argue. Local food, when it makes sense economically, is better, economically. Locavores aren't saying you should eat local food when it's cheaper to do so; they're saying you should do so always, because of some imaginary environmental benefit that doesn't exist for the most part - see the paper by the guys in the podcast I linked to.

I'm not arguing this just randomly based on my personal opinion and logical reasoning; it's actual science, folks. Environmentalists are irritating to me for doing this - claiming to be on the side of SCIENCE because of global warming studies, but then ignoring studies that say other things (other methods of solving global warming, studies showing certain things aren't bad, etc.) That's what is happening here - the only study to actually cover this showed it wasn't relevant.

I won't speak towards greenhouse efficiency, as the only actual data I have on it is that it's not more efficient right now; but it is certainly likely that it, some day, will be (and perhaps some greenhouses are, now, particularly for certain crops - peppers are a great example of a crop that should be greenhouse grown due to their adaptations for climate/soil conditions). But you do need to consider things other than solely the efficiency of growth; in particular, there is a trade-off in the land you would use to grow food versus the other possible uses. Comparative advantage is still an important factor, both economically and environmentally - after all, if we are going to have an office building somewhere, and a greenhouse/farm somewhere, if we build the greenhouse/farm near the urban center (say, in a suburb) on land you otherwise would use for an office building, you now have to build the office building somewhat further away - which is bad for the environment, as well (takes more gas for people to get to work). More than likely this won't be a big issue - but it's not a non issue.

Quality wise, again, I have no problem with eating local due to higher quality food - I do that myself in some instances. The entire point of my argument (not speaking to anyone else) is that, strictly from an economist's standpoint, locavorism, as practiced now, is at best irrelevant and likely a distinct harm; and further, even if it is in some way relevant to economics, it is not relevant to microeconomics. It is a macroeconomic phenomenon. So the fact that an econ professor would bring this up in class #1 in a microeconomic class is probably an indication that the professor is not an unbiased purveyor of learning.