Weak sauce, or why there really won't be blueberries in Idaho

I'm rusty at this, but essentially, there's a blog I started to follow about 3 weeks ago, Weakonomics, which seems very solid. Unfortunately they just posted this which reads like a deliberate attempt at a misinformed troll article against the local food movement.

A third of it I want to direct to this Science article on how to provide food for the 9 billion people predicted to exist in 40 years. A third of it I want to direct to Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" or just to a basic nutritional class. A third of it I want to direct to the blog Causabon's Book, which, though certainly on the tail of the distribution, has a number of good summary articles in favor of local foods.

The magazine Science estimates that our future food shortage (as there is currently enough food to feed the world's population, but a distribution problem) could be dealt with through 1) decreasing the "yield gap" in developing countries; 2) reducing the current 30-40% food waste in both developed and developing countries; 3) changing diets to be more plant rather than animal based in the developed world. It's easier to feed 9 billion when you're not reducing your food efficiency by 90% by converting all your grains to meat. (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/327/5967/812.full)

These don't sound as sexy as Weak's solutions, but reducing the yield gap and reducing food waste should be local efforts. How could you do that top down?

GG&S:

There are also a number of diets that can be produced locally that are full nutrition. "Enjoy scurvy" seems a little extreme when native diets - corn, beans, squash - and diets in similar climes in Europe - potatoes, cabbage, dairy products - provided complete nutrition. (more examples in Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel)

Additionally, Americans spend less than 10% of their current earnings on food. That's in contrast to other nations and other time periods, where this percentage was more like 40%. While the poor have difficulties obtaining nutritious food, this often seems to be due to both neighborhood distributional problems (food deserts) and priorities in subsidies for corn and soy over vegetables in the American budget. (I forget where I read all this, but some of it's probably in Guns Germs and Steel). For the many, higher prices for food would be possible, though unpleasant, to fit into budgets with, of course, a lower quality of life. Not fun but possible!

CB:

Not all food should be sourced locally. Hardy foods like cranberries (yay Idahoans!) and dried fruit, coffee, and spices have always been shipped from afar. But moving vast sources of water around in the form of delicate tomatoes and pears from dry, irrigated regions such as California is just destroying that farmland in the long term so that you can have your pears in the short term. More economic projections need to build in long term environmental damage as a cost, not just short term gains from ten cent bananas.

Why is local farming wasteful? Building houses and giant useless lawns on what used to be farmland is wasteful. If people turn some of that useless lawn back in to crop plants, that is extremely useful. Why not grow a victory garden? If we did it (and by "it" I mean produced 40% of our fruits and vegetables locally, in WWII) once, we can do it again!!

Essentially, we're in for a shitty ride in the next 40 years. Local food production could ease the sting of massive crop failures due to climate instability or matched virulent diseases to US-wide monocultures. Local efforts could prevent food waste. Local food production could ease the 20% of American emissions that go into moving our food from place to place, which could ease the price of such foods that is correlated with oil costs.

I think Weakonomics' problem is that it assumes that we're only going to try to grow food locally to solve our future food problem. No, it's not the only solution. But it's got to be part of the solution or the food distribution problem will only get worse. Then there really won't be blueberries in Idaho, because they won't grow them there and won't be able to afford to ship them from anywhere else.

Chicago Blizzard! (Slash Snowpocalypse, slash Snowmaggedon)

On February 1st-2nd we had what's being called the third worst blizzard in Chicago's history. Classes were cancelled for two days (the first time since 1999) as snowplows worked to clear what was on average 19 1/2 inches of snow.

So, I went out on the 2nd and took pictures!

Here is the building I work in at the University of Chicago. You can't tell, but in front of it there is usually a big pond. Here, it just looks like a field of snow.

The wind the night before had also done crazy things to the snow, piling it up on one side of the street until it was halfway up the side of a building, and scouring all but half an inch away from the other side of the street. It left cool shapes around objects:

And snow dunes:

There were a dozen people out on my block shoveling once the storm finally cleared up. Notably, this guy in a t-shirt:

(click on the pictures if you want to see them larger)

They'd clearly been working a while, but weren't totally done with the job:

My apartment is on the Northeast corner of the street, and we had barely any snow on our grass or sidewalk to shovel.
In the parking lot across the street from my apartment, people were putting the pile of snow they'd managed to plow to good use sledding.

Later my friends Colin and Laura and I decided to walk out to Lake Michigan to see what had happened out there.

The wind had definitely been fiercer near the lake.

Kids had been making very good use of the snow dunes to make snow caves.

Walking on the snow dunes was probably the most fun part of the whole walk.


To get out to the lake we could actually cross Lake Shore Drive at any point. No crossing under in the tunnel to avoid the 45-60mph traffic for us! It was very post-apocalyptic, with all the pedestrians walking on the empty road.
Out at the lake. What is usually large blocks of stone 3 ft high terraced down to the lake is now just a snowbank.
Frozen waves on the 57th street beach.

Me out at the lake. Aw. The snow boots are coming in handy.

Laura and Colin out at the lake. Aw again.

Frozen waves on the lake shore, frozen waves covered in snow out on the lake, the city (frozen) in the background.

Walking back home. Yep, lots of snow.