Ethical food , Good food?

Dec 7th 2006
From The Economist print edition


If you think you can make the planet better by clever shopping, think again.
You might make it worse

"You don't have to wait for government to move... the really fantastic thing
about Fairtrade is that you can go shopping!" So said a representative of
the Fairtrade movement in a British newspaper this year. Similarly Marion
Nestle, a nutritionist at New York University, argues that "when you choose
organics, you are voting for a planet with fewer pesticides, richer soil and
cleaner water supplies."
The idea that shopping is the new politics is certainly seductive. Never
mind the ballot box: vote with your supermarket trolley instead. Elections
occur relatively rarely, but you probably go shopping several times a month,
providing yourself with lots of opportunities to express your opinions. If
you are worried about the environment, you might buy organic food; if you
want to help poor farmers, you can do your bit by buying Fairtrade products;
or you can express a dislike of evil multinational companies and rampant
globalisation by buying only local produce. And the best bit is that
shopping, unlike voting, is fun; so you can do good and enjoy yourself at
the same time.
Sadly, it's not that easy. There are good reasons to doubt the claims made
about three of the most popular varieties of "ethical" food: organic food,
Fairtrade food and local food (see article). People who want to make the
world a better place cannot do so by shifting their shopping habits:
transforming the planet requires duller disciplines, like politics.


Buy organic, destroy the rainforest
Organic food, which is grown without man-made pesticides and fertilisers, is
generally assumed to be more environmentally friendly than conventional
intensive farming, which is heavily reliant on chemical inputs. But it all
depends what you mean by "environmentally friendly". Farming is inherently
bad for the environment: since humans took it up around 11,000 years ago,
the result has been deforestation on a massive scale. But following the
"green revolution" of the 1960s greater use of chemical fertiliser has
tripled grain yields with very little increase in the area of land under
cultivation. Organic methods, which rely on crop rotation, manure and
compost in place of fertiliser, are far less intensive. So producing the
world's current agricultural output organically would require several times
as much land as is currently cultivated. There wouldn't be much room left
for the rainforest.
Fairtrade food is designed to raise poor farmers' incomes. It is sold at a
higher price than ordinary food, with a subsidy passed back to the farmer.
But prices of agricultural commodities are low because of overproduction. By
propping up the price, the Fairtrade system encourages farmers to produce
more of these commodities rather than diversifying into other crops and so
depresses prices-thus achieving, for most farmers, exactly the opposite of
what the initiative is intended to do. And since only a small fraction of
the mark-up on Fairtrade foods actually goes to the farmer-most goes to the
retailer-the system gives rich consumers an inflated impression of their
largesse and makes alleviating poverty seem too easy.
Surely the case for local food, produced as close as possible to the
consumer in order to minimise "food miles" and, by extension, carbon
emissions, is clear? Surprisingly, it is not. A study of Britain's food
system found that nearly half of food-vehicle miles (ie, miles travelled by
vehicles carrying food) were driven by cars going to and from the shops.
Most people live closer to a supermarket than a farmer's market, so more
local food could mean more food-vehicle miles. Moving food around in big,
carefully packed lorries, as supermarkets do, may in fact be the most
efficient way to transport the stuff.
What's more, once the energy used in production as well as transport is
taken into account, local food may turn out to be even less green. Producing
lamb in New Zealand and shipping it to Britain uses less energy than
producing British lamb, because farming in New Zealand is less
energy-intensive. And the local-food movement's aims, of course, contradict
those of the Fairtrade movement, by discouraging rich-country consumers from
buying poor-country produce. But since the local-food movement looks
suspiciously like old-fashioned protectionism masquerading as concern for
the environment, helping poor countries is presumably not the point.


Appetite for change
The aims of much of the ethical-food movement-to protect the environment, to
encourage development and to redress the distortions in global trade-are
admirable. The problems lie in the means, not the ends. No amount of
Fairtrade coffee will eliminate poverty, and all the organic asparagus in
the world will not save the planet. Some of the stuff sold under an ethical
label may even leave the world in a worse state and its poor farmers poorer
than they otherwise would be.
So what should the ethically minded consumer do? Things that are less fun
than shopping, alas. Real change will require action by governments, in the
form of a global carbon tax; reform of the world trade system; and the
abolition of agricultural tariffs and subsidies, notably Europe's monstrous
common agricultural policy, which coddles rich farmers and prices those in
the poor world out of the European market. Proper free trade would be by far
the best way to help poor farmers. Taxing carbon would price the cost of
emissions into the price of goods, and retailers would then have an
incentive to source locally if it saved energy. But these changes will come
about only through difficult, international, political deals that the
world's governments have so far failed to do.
The best thing about the spread of the ethical-food movement is that it
offers grounds for hope. It sends a signal that there is an enormous
appetite for change and widespread frustration that governments are not
doing enough to preserve the environment, reform world trade or encourage
development. Which suggests that, if politicians put these options on the
political menu, people might support them. The idea of changing the world by
voting with your trolley may be beguiling. But if consumers really want to
make a difference, it is at the ballot box that they need to vote.