Serious

Bitter Greens gets after what is f-ed up about our food supply:

Historically, people of limited means have tended to scrape by on what's locally available, while the wealthy have used their resources to draw in fancy food from far away. Now, that situation has turned upside down.

Economies of scale brought on by increasing consolidation, vast subsidies, and wholesale, unchecked exploitationof immigrant labor have created a system of cheap, plentiful, and dreadful food.

In a much more limited way, I have wondered about this paradox. There are no solutions here, and perhaps some shots wide of the mark--not sure how Puritanism figures in--but if you eat, and are rich or poor, you should read this.

Comments

[CAAF]

Yeah. I was recently reading an article (at CNN money) about the strategies "regular families" were employing to make up for the increase in gas prices. And one woman said, Not eating fresh fruits and vegetables. She'd switched her fam to canned foods.

Seems like a completely ass-backwards system that makes fresh fruits and vegetables "a luxury item."

[max]

The problem is that no one takes the possibility of a sustainable local food system seriously. I have written about this in the past, more or less impenetrably. I don't see why it is a priori impossible, Malthus or no. If anyone knows of a serious discussion of the macro limitations on a rational local food system, please tell me.

[Fesser]

I think the stumbling block might be "rational," but it is an interesting question. It strikes me, just maybe, that part of the problem is the fetishization of the very freshest and finest of local produce pioneered by the likes of Alice Waters, in that as the elite gravitated to that pattern of consumption, what was left for the masses declined in quality, like pay phones after cell phones became the norm, or most urban public schools after white flight. This is entirely speculative, but it is the vegetal side of my beef with the $11 pork chop at the Greenmarket. Certainly, once upon a time, working people ate local produce, because they produced it, and now they generally do not.