Eat Local Challenge 2006

The folks who organized the Eat Local Challenge last year (earlier post) have an even more interesting project this year -- a group weblog by and for people who are exploring the joys and limitations of their own personal local purchase disciplines.

The local eating movement has its detractors. For example, the global culinary perspective from the weblog Too Many Chefs: "There's a movement afoot to eat only food made with local ingredients prepared simply.... To this, I say 'Phooey!'".

Half Changed World argues that other environmental choices -- in particular the choice of where to live, what to drive, and how much meat to eat -- matter more than the local origin of one's food.

In Salon, recently, the ever provocative Peter Singer argues that ethical living demands buying food not from next door, but from Bangladesh:

[T]he idea that you can save fossil fuels by not transporting food long distances... is a widespread belief, and of course it has some basis. Other things being equal, if your food is grown locally, you will save on fossil fuels. But other things are often not equal. California rice is produced using artificial irrigation and fertilizer that involves energy use. Bangladeshi rice takes advantage of the natural flooding of the rivers and doesn't require artificial irrigation. It also doesn't involve as much synthetic fertilizer because the rivers wash down nutrients, so it's significantly less energy intensive to produce. Now, it's then shipped across the world, but shipping is an extremely fuel-efficient form of transport. You can ship something 10,000 miles for the same amount of fuel necessary to truck it 1,000 miles. So if you're getting your rice shipped to San Francisco from Bangladesh, fewer fossil fuels were used to get it there than if you bought it in California.

In fact, if you read closely, the tone of the Eating Local Challenge authors survives this second guessing quite well. Their weblog is nicknamed the ELC, not the ELR ("Eating Local Religion"). I may be too much of an economist to adopt a strict discipline, such as the 100-mile diet, but I am loving the ELC weblog.

Like a "blooming flower": Wal-Mart's conquest of American food retail

About 20 percent of U.S. food sales are in Wal-Mart alone, the New York Times reported last Fall.

In the last five years, Wal-Mart has emerged as a dominant force in the grocery business, selling almost twice the amount of food and grocery items as Kroger, the country's largest supermarket chain. Wal-Mart undercuts supermarket prices by as much as 20 percent but is still able to generate considerable grocery profits because of its enormous volume and huge buying power. Wal-Mart's labor costs are also lower because, unlike workers at most supermarkets, its employees are not unionized.

"Wal-Mart just keeps growing," said David B. Dillon, chief executive of Kroger, which regularly compares the performance of its stores against Wal-Mart Supercenters. "And I don't see any signs of a slowdown in the number of stores."

In recent research, Thomas J. Holmes explains how Wal-Mart came to dominate the American retail scene. While other fast-growing chains, such as K-Mart and Target, sought to grab the "best" retail locations, Wal-Mart focused on perfecting its logistics. In order to keep its transportation and distribution systems as efficient as possible, Wal-Mart carefully maintained a particular density of stores as its business expanded. Holmes explains:

Wal-Mart started with its first store near Bentonville, Ark., in 1962. The diffusion of store openings radiating out from this point was very gradual. And this diffusion didn't just occur in one direction, but spread out in all directions, with the same measured deliberation. Imagine a slowly blooming flower, or a pebble dropped in a pond, with the waves moving across the water in slow motion. It is very helpful to view a movie [below]of the entire year-by-year diffusion path.

Thanks to Marginal Revolution for the link. Credit Thomas J. Holmes for the fascinating movie.



Update (a few minutes later). A reader comments:

Hi Parke. In response to your post today--did you see the article, also in the New York Times, about WalMart focusing hungry eyes on the organic market? Im pretty sure it was up yesterday. I'm a big fan of Michael Pollan's guest blogging on the NYT site and look forward to seeing him next week at the brattle as part of his book tour.

I think Jack from Fork & Bottle may have also pointed out the link about organic foods at Wal-Mart. The Pollan weblog appears to be by subscription only. Also, while looking for the New York Times link, I found this awful story about Wal-Mart buying favorable coverage from bloggers.

Update 2 (May 14). Mark from CalorieLab points out that the New York Times article about Wal-Mart public relations does not document webloggers accepting bribes. Rather, what I called "buying favorable coverage" means hiring an online public relations expert sufficiently persuasive to find webloggers who are willing to reprint Wal-Mart's views as independent opinions.

Division of Labor: 'Bad Prediction c. 1906'

From Craig Depken at Division of Labor:

In the Feb. 10, 1906 NYT The Jungle by Upton Sinclair was announced on page 85 of the NYT Book Review in a four paragraph one column how-do-you-do.

In the May 3, 1906 NYT, Mr. Sinclair offered a letter to the editor asking for a chance to prove his claims about tainted meat and other bad practices outlined in his book. He suggests that a lack of a lawsuit against him by Armour suggests that the charges Sinclair levels must be true.

Then, in the May 5, 1906 NYT [I'm catching up on a week's worth of NYT]:

CHICAGO - Arthur Meeker, the only person authorized to speak for J. Ogden Armour. says he cannot say what Mr. Armour will do about Upton Sinclair's challenge to him to bring a libel suit to test the truth of Mr. Sinclair's charges that spoiled meat is willfully put on the market in various forms at the Armour packing houses here. There is not much likelihood that the firm will notice Mr. Sinclair's attack. Mr. Armour is in Europe.

Oops.

Al Kamen: USDA's talking points on Iraq

Washington Post columnist Al Kamen this morning:

Career appointees at the Department of Agriculture were stunned last week to receive e-mailed instructions that include Bush administration "talking points" -- saying things such as "President Bush has a clear strategy for victory in Iraq" -- in every speech they give for the department.

The funniest part of the column is an attachment that USDA officials are supposed to use as a template, showing how easy it is to change any speech topic to a commentary on our success in Iraq.

Here is a general all-purpose transition:

Several topics I'd like to talk about today -- Farm Bill, trade with Japan, WTO, avian flu, animal ID -- but before I do, let me touch on a subject people always ask about... progress in Iraq.

Here is an example for use by a USDA official who might be giving a talk about civil rights in the administration of U.S. agricultural programs:

So, before I begin talking about the civil rights climate at USDA, I'd like to address the situation in another nation that is just now forging the path to democracy.

Or, what if an official needs to give a speech about the productivity of American agriculture? No problem:

But, before I begin discussing the productivity of American agriculture, I'd like to take a moment to talk about a nation that is just beginning to build its own agricultural production.

Iraq is part of the 'fertile crescent' of Mesopotamia. It is there, in around 8,500 to 8,000 B.C., that mankind first domesticated wheat....

Here is the transition for a speech on U.S. food aid overseas (links added):

Thanks to the work of [Private Voluntary Organizations] like Visions in Action, Techno Serve, and the World Council of Credit Unions, the program is helping farmers in Liberia, Honduras, and Sri Lanka. And USDA-donated corn and soybean meal is helping to revitalize the Iraqi poultry industry. This is the kind of work that rebuilds livelihoods, lives, and nations. And it contributes to the Global War on Terror.

I am sure these organizations will be proud of the credit they get in these speeches. Let us know in the comments if you witness any of this public communication strategy in action.

Tim Wise on the merits of Doha

Tim Wise deserves space for a full and thoughtful rebuttal, following our post last week about his report entitled, "Will the Doha Round do more harm than good?."

The report's on-line summary had contrasted the net gains to developing countries from the Doha Round trade agreement with the tariff losses these countries would face. I wrote, "Do the authors compare projected net gains from trade to tariff revenue losses? If so, that would be misleading."

Tim writes by email:

I'm afraid Parke Wilde may have misconstrued the point of our comparison of estimated net gains from trade liberalization with tariff losses for developing countries. The point was not that the two numbers are directly comparable, as on a true balance sheet. Rather, the point was that the net gains estimated by the trade models include a host of hidden costs that are effectively assumed away in the modeling. One of those is losses in government revenues from reduced or eliminated tariffs. How are they assumed away? The models assume fixed fiscal balances, which means in practice that such losses in government revenue are assumed to be made up in lump sum taxes. In developing countries, where governments on average get about 20% of their revenues from tariffs and where the infrastructure and income base for taxation do not yet exist, that is an absurd assumption. (It's pretty absurd for other countries as well, including the U.S. When was the last substantial tax increase happily approved by our government?) So the "net gains" account for the tariff losses, they just do so in a way is unrealistic and that makes them invisible. Our goal was to make them visible.

For a developing country negotiator evaluating his/her country's prospects under the proposed WTO agreement, pulling out those hidden costs from the modeling is very germane to the decision. Comparing those hidden costs to the small projected income gains from such an agreement is a simple and clear way to put such numbers in meaningful perspective. Countries are not oil companies, and their "management" does not run in any direct way on their "profits" from economic activities. Signing away 20% of your government's operating income in a trade agreement that promises only limited income gains may be a good economic decision in some extreme circumstances, but it should be one made with the full knowledge of its costs.

Meanwhile, if you like the "fixed fiscal balances" assumption in the modeling, you'll love the "fixed employment" assumption, which ensures that in the modeling world if not the real world, trade liberalization can't cause unemployment.

Tim Wise
Deputy Director, GDAE

Soda in Schools

The beverage industry, in conjunction with the Clinton Foundation, today is announcing new voluntary restrictions on sales of soda and high-caloric drinks in schools, the Washington Post (here and here) and Associated Press (via USA Today) reported this morning.

I covered earlier voluntary restrictions by the American Beverage Association with much skepticism, but the new steps actually appear to have some teeth.

At first reading, strengths include voluntary restrictions even on diet sodas and smaller serving sizes even for fruit juices in elementary schools. In elementary schools, these steps are important, because of manipulative marketing to build brand loyalty in young children, and the caloric content even of fruit juice. I think, in modern America, for middle schoolers and high schoolers, the solution to manipulative marketing may be to teach the students sufficient skepticism to undermine the marketing, rather than formal restrictions.

The policy announced today, one day after the release of an FTC report on food marketing to children, would take effect only slowly over several years. Sales of drinks other than high-calorie sodas at high schools would remain permissive, and there would be no limits on sales of sugary sodas at school related events in the afternoons and evenings.

Still, with my fingers crossed that I haven't been fooled by something I missed, I must admit to being impressed by today's announcement. It is one step forward, on one of the leading areas of concern for children's nutrition today.

[Update: Same day. With characteristic good sense and reasonable pragmatism, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) today applauded the new agreement and dropped its lawsuit over sodas in schools.]

FTC releases report on food marketing to children

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today released a report on food marketing to children and childhood obesity. The report calls for voluntary efforts by the food and advertising industry, along with mild changes to the the industry's self-regulation procedures.

“Responsible, industry-generated action and effective self-regulation are critical to addressing the national problem of childhood obesity,” said FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras. “The FTC plans to monitor industry efforts closely, and we expect to see real improvements.”

The reception from advocacy groups concerned about marketing to children was negative. Gary Ruskin of Commercial Alert called the FTC report "a candy-coated present [for] the junk food industry."

Given the blandness of today's report, what may be more interesting is a forthcoming report that the FTC is preparing for a July 1 deadline, at the request of Congress. For that new report, FTC may request advertising industry research that has been proprietary. An Institute of Medicine report on marketing to children noted that the public research record on the effect of advertising is weak largely because the relevant proprietary research has not been shared. The FTC took public comments on its plans for that new report this month and recently published them on the agency website.

These public comments indicate the powerful advocacy coalition that keeps the FTC's hands bound firmly behind its back. Here (.pdf), for example, is the comment from the Promotion Marketing Association (described as "the leading trade association representing the promotional marketing industry").

Furthermore, PMA remains deeply concerned with First Amendment implications of any additional regulation that would unduly curtail non-deceptive and non-misleading practices in this area. The restriction of children’s food advertising, no matter how truthful, merely to satisfy those who might criticize any advertising methods, runs a serious risk of being more restrictive than necessary to achieve the government’s intended goal of protecting American children, all in violation of First Amendment jurisprudence.

PMA remains firmly committed to participating in this debate and aiding the Commission in the task assigned to it by Congress. If the Commission engages in any further inquiry on this topic, PMA wishes to participate fully in any Commission initiatives.

I am sure PMA will get to participate fully.