by Jayson Lusk
THE FUTURE OF FOOD
A couple years ago, I had the pleasure of giving a speech about the economics of the U.S. beef industry to a group of visiting Vietnamese businessmen and government officials. In the course of my talk, I showed two maps of the United States, to illustrate where cattle are raised and subsequently processed. At the conclusion, I received several questions from members of the audience wanting to know why cattle were raised all over the country and then shipped to feedlots and packing plants primarily located in a relatively small geographical area spanning the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma and extending up into Kansas and Nebraska. I answered with all the economic rationalizations I could muster, citing weather, corn prices, transportation costs, and economies of scale.
My answers were apparently unsatisfactory, because the queries persisted. Finally, the interpreter—a Vietnamese native who had spent several years living in the States—stopped me, switched to English, and said, “You have to remember they live in a Communist country. The government decides where firms locate.” Suddenly I realized that my listeners had no conception of how this sort of efficient outcome could have resulted from the free interaction of ranchers, feedlot owners, and agribusinesses all trying to make a living satisfying consumers’ preferences for beef. These Vietnamese businessmen wanted to know who decided. I had to reveal that we have no cow czar, but I could tell they were still a bit bewildered. It was beyond their worldview to consider the possibility of a prosperous and successful agricultural economy running on the backs of unplanned markets coordinating people’s free choices.
This experience opened my eyes to how strongly our beliefs and perceptions are influenced by the culture in which we live, and how, over the course of several decades, entire worldviews can change. The free-market apologist and queen of individualism, Ayn Rand, immigrated to the United States in the 1920s as the Communists began overtaking Russia. She left behind a sister for whom she had fond memories. In 1973, after years of believing her sister had died, Rand learned that she was in fact alive and well, and arranged for her to visit New York. Rand, who fondly remembered her older sister as spirited and enamored of Western fashion, was dismayed at the changed woman who arrived. Rand’s sister, who by now had lived a near-lifetime under Soviet rule, “disliked American conveniences, which left her nothing to do all day; she preferred her old routine of waiting in the food lines and gossiping with her friends.” She was also overwhelmed at the variety offered by American grocery stores. Like the Vietnamese I addressed, Rand’s sister was perplexed by choice. She “went into a store to buy a tube of toothpaste and found herself overwhelmed by the number of brands and sizes and became angry when a clerk wasn’t willing to help her choose.”1 Two sisters who had once rejoiced in their similarities found they had little in common, in no small part because such divergent cultures and ideas had permeated their thinking.
One of the ways we make it through life with even the tiniest sliver of sanity is by adopting ways of thinking to give order to the capriciousness that surrounds us. Some folks spend years trying to develop a view on life, a worldview, to make sense of their happenings. But no matter how reflective or thoughtful, we are all unconsciously influenced by the culture in which we live. Yet ideologies and worldviews have real implications for how we interact in our world and the outcomes we can expect to enjoy.
I write about the food police because they have been spectacularly effective in influencing how our culture thinks about food. A generation of Americans far removed from the farm is one that lacks the tangible hands-on experience to judge for themselves the veracity of claims about modern food. Missing is the connection required to know whether a worldview should be kept or checked at the door.
It’s hard to know what to believe about food, and sometimes it’s easier to take our cues from those around us than to think deeply about controversial issues. I write to those who, perhaps unconsciously, have absorbed the messages of celebrity chefs, urban journalists, and daytime talk show hosts and who have adopted certain attitudes toward food and agriculture without previously having stopped to think. Charles Mackay, writing about the Madness of Crowds, argued that “[m]en, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”2 Sometimes it is useful to stop, look up, see where the crowd is heading, and ask if you still want to be on board.
I grant that among the folks I’ve called the food police there are many intelligent, well-meaning people who truly care about our health and the environment. Here’s the thing. I care about these, too. It isn’t a question of who is more compassionate; it is a question of how we can best achieve the things we all want. It is a question of costs. It is a question of who is best suited to make decisions about the tough trade-offs. It is a question of the kind of future we hope to create. It is a question of worldview.
A danger embedded in the worldview of the progressive food elite is romanticism with nature and the past. The food progressives reject modern, technologically advanced food for older, slower, more “natural” food. The answer for the future of food, in their assessment, lies in the past. This mind-set is destructive because how we view our future affects not only who we are but what we eventually will be. We travel to Athens and Rome to admire who they were and what they did, but seldom do we think they represent what we should become. According to the economist Deirdre McCloskey, the modern Western world is incredibly wealthy today not so much because of the industrial revolution and capitalism per se but because of changes in how we came to think about commercialism, private property, innovation, and trade.3 Aspirations are more than wishes—they affect who we become.
A worldview that celebrates naturalism in food as a core tenet is one inherently hostile to innovation, growth, and progress, even if those things reduce poverty and bring about improved food safety, quality, health, and environmental outcomes. The food police type away on their iPads and Tweet to followers. Yet, ironically, they have rejected biotechnology, irradiation, cloning, synthetic fertilizers, and all kinds of technology, mechanization, and innovative processing in agriculture. Each of these developments admittedly has risks and downsides, but all can make food more abundant, more convenient, more consistent, sometimes less reliant on input use (especially labor), and sometimes more environmentally friendly.
The policies of the food police will usher in a more stagnant, less dynamic world, and will breed a generation of children unwilling or unable to imagine how to improve their diets through mathematics, chemistry, biology, and engineering. I don’t want a future where my kids brood over the oldest heirloom tomatoes but one where they dream about how to get corn to produce its own fertilizer, feeding the world’s hungry with higher-yielding, more nutritious crops, and developing space-age technologies that make tasty food at the push of a button. Those dreams may never materialize, but they are destined to fail if we never try.
It is almost unfathomable to imagine how our current world would look had previous generations adopted the thoughts about food that now pervade our culture. Over the last century there has been a threefold increase in the world’s population. The spike occurred in large part because innovators figured out ways to get more food from the same planet we’ve always occupied. According to Vaclav Smil, author of Enriching the Earth, the key catalyst was the discovery of synthetic fertilizers. That development, Smil argues, has been “of greater fundamental importance to the modern world than the invention of the airplane, nuclear energy, space flight, or television.”4 However much the food police love organic, chances are that without “unnatural,” synthetic fertilizers, they wouldn’t be here today—nor in all likelihood would you or I. So, when we promote or even subconsciously adopt a worldview hostile to innovation in food, we are closing off a bright and optimistic future in favor of remnants of the past.
The food police not only hail naturalism but promote utopianism—denying the reality of the tough trade-offs that face us in
life. They have taken boutique food made for the rich and fancifully imagined a world where the poor can afford it, too. It is a beautiful vision, but one at odds with reality. However much they wish it were different, organic, local, slow crops are typically lower-yielding crops. Even if we didn’t have the distorting effects of farm policies and even if all the negative and positive externalities were fully internalized (in both organic and nonorganic production systems), it would probably remain the case that the fashionable food would cost more. What I’m at least willing to admit, and what the food police seem to deny, is that there is a trade-off between an abundant food supply that can feed a growing population and a higher-quality, boutique food supply that can suit the fancy of foodies. It doesn’t in the least bother me that there are niche markets catering to the whims of a few, but when the food police act as if national policies promoting fancy food are a net plus, it is a triumph of ideology over reason.
The French have a saying describing the gauche caviar—the political leftist who says he wants to help the poor, just not live next to them: “Il a des idées à gauche, mais le portefeuille à droite”—which roughly means the person has his ideas in his left pocket but keeps his wallet in his right. The food elite are brimming with ideas on how to make over the food system, imagining that their plans will produce flowering fields, wealthy communities, and thin waists. But rarely do they take out their wallets to cover the costs. And even when they pay the higher costs of local and organic for themselves, seldom do they consider the effects of their policy ideas on others who have different wants, needs, and budget constraints.
The food elite’s worldview causes them to see large farms, agribusinesses, and restaurants as evil conspirators who will stop at nothing to earn an extra buck. Never mind that none of these folks can earn a living unless we are willing to buy what they offer. Big Food, in the mind of the food police, is an omnipotent opinion maker with powers akin to those of Darth Vader. Meanwhile, I see meatpackers and fast-food restaurants that are one food safety scare away from bankruptcy; agribusinesses constantly trying to innovate to make food tastier, less expensive, and more nutritious than that of their competitor. Because, despite all their advertising, you and I are the ones with the wallets, and thus we control what Big Food can actually sell.
Where the food police see a benevolent government with the ability to rein in the power of Big Food, I see the development of arbitrary rules breeding the worst kind of crony capitalism. Ironically, the food police can see this, too, in our current food system. They blame farm policy, fertilizer subsidies, and agribusiness lobbyists for everything from obesity to topsoil degradation. Rather than accept the obvious reality that a government willing to dole out favors and subsidies is one that invites corruption and, through its actions, creates externalities and unintended consequences, the food police see a savior for our food ills. There is no perfect government except in textbooks.
That government is imperfect does not imply that markets are free from error. Yet the ideology of the food police is hostile to the good that even imperfect markets provide. Markets are the enemy of the food police because they undermine the food police’s power to enact their preferred plans for us. The truth is that we all have different preferences and unique knowledge that cannot be rationally subsumed in a grand food plan. Markets decentralize power and let us each satisfy our desires in unique ways. McDonald’s, ADM, and Monsanto seem big and all-powerful—until one realizes that they must compete with Wendy’s, Cargill, and DuPont for the dollars we spend. These corporations may not provide a lot of organic veggies now, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t if folks were willing to pay for them. That many of us are unable or unwilling to pay the higher price is anathema to the food elite, who seem to think that we all should eat as they do. The food police see themselves as fighting on our behalf to stave off the power of Big Food, but it is raw condescension to provide help when it hasn’t been asked for.
Allowing us to buy and sell freely and as we wish denies the food elite their role as holders of special knowledge. My call for calm in the rising seas of food regulation is a plea for humility from those who think they know how to guide our nation’s food choices. I honestly don’t know whether, all things considered, organic is better for the environment. What I do know is that most people aren’t willing to pay the price it takes to make food that way. I don’t know with absolute certainty whether biotechnology has made farmers more profitable or helped the environment. What I do know is that farmers all over America, of their own volition, choose to pay a little more to plant it in the fields next to their homes on their family-owned farms. I don’t know precisely why Americans—and people all over the world, for that matter—are fatter than they once were. What I do know is that most of us eat better and live longer lives than our ancestors ever dreamed possible. The food police, confident in their own academic insights and neat explanations, boldly tell us all how to eat, blind to their own ignorance of the complexity of the world that surrounds them.
The prevailing wisdom about food that permeates popular culture has been formed by muckraking journalists, cookbook authors, and celebrity chefs. These folks know a lot about how to write compelling exposés and make tasty food using the finest ingredients, but are they really qualified to step into the public arena with pronouncements about how we all should eat? When they claim to know more about how to run a farm than the flesh-and-blood people who work it, surely something is amiss. Deciding what to eat can be difficult enough in its own right without the morally laden subtexts that have been thrown into the matter by the food elite.
Make no mistake about it, you are in the middle of a food fight. The problem is that many of us have joined sides without even realizing a battle is at hand. As the economist Walter Williams put it, “The anti-obesity movement is simply another step down the road to serfdom and, what’s worse, Americans are voluntarily assisting the nation’s tyrants.”5 There will no doubt be detractors who deny the existence or seriousness of the food fight. After all, where are the wounded with battle scars? Fair enough. Americans do not currently face an existential threat to their food supply (that is, unless you believe some of the food progressives’ apocalyptic prophecies). But we should at least be aware that there is an ideological movement afoot that has plans for farm and fork.
Many have bought hook, line, and sinker into the local, organic, and natural food movements without carefully considering where they are being led—or in many cases pushed. It has been accepted as gospel in many quarters that genetically modified foods are one of the greatest evils to enter the food supply. We are told that local-food systems will save the economy, the environment, and our health. But sometimes our sacred cows must be slaughtered to get closer to the truth.
No doubt my perspectives will earn me the label of shill for corporate farms and agribusinesses, so it is important that I not be misinterpreted. On Saturday mornings, I like nothing more than to drive my children down to the local farmers’ market in my hybrid SUV. (Yes, I drive a hybrid.) I love to shop at Whole Foods and Dean & Deluca. Walk in our house any weekday evening and you’re likely to find us watching the Food Network. My family spent most of last year in Paris, in part because we are fascinated with how the French relate to food.
I do these things not because I am convinced of a moral imperative to eat or act a certain way with regard to food, but because I want to and because I can afford to. But it isn’t always this way. When I don’t find what I want at the farmers’ market or when the budget gets tight at the end of the month, I have no qualms about stopping by Walmart on the way home (and truth be told, most of our family’s food is bought there).
Knowledge about the reality of agriculture coupled with some rational thinking about food empowers one to eat with freedom and without guilt. Reason should guide food choice, and responsible choices will not necessarily be found in the dictates of the food elite. Responsibility lies not just in thinking about the environment, freshness, or
animal welfare, but also in spending our money and resources wisely.
Many of the world’s most pressing challenges—from feeding the hungry to protecting the environment—require a look forward rather than backward. We should be cautiously optimistic about the role of technological development in food and be leery of the ideologically motivated scare tactics used to denigrate food technologies. If we are concerned about food prices and feeding the world’s hungry, we must be willing to rationally weigh the risks of, and perhaps even promote, technological change in food and agriculture. There are many exciting—and scary—advances on the horizon that will require serious thought and discussion. One benefit of ideology is that it helps us form quick judgments in a complex and rapidly changing world. But an ideology that blanket-rejects any “unnatural” food is one that will ultimately doom us to poverty.
Using fewer pesticides, eating more veggies, or supporting a local farmer can all be good things in their own right. But these choices involve tough trade-offs. The food elite throw caution to the wind and appear willing to make the choices for us. I’m willing to make a tough trade-off. I’d rather live in a world where I’m tempted by fast-food restaurants and weigh a few more pounds than one where I have no choice at all.
It is time to dispense with the food guilt. We seem to have forgotten the achievements of our efficient and safe food system. It is not a perfect system but it is one that has led to the greatest prosperity ever witnessed in human history and has allowed us to feed the world. I am rationally optimistic about the future of food. My optimism lies not in the ability of the food elite to usher in an optimal system of taxes, subsidies, and mandates. My hope is in the dynamism and innovativeness of farmers and grocers trying to make a buck by selling us things we don’t yet know we even want.