Homeland security

Once again I'm a day late, although I doubt anyone has noticed.

First: this relates only slightly to my primary topic, but this is what Alex and I spent the majority of Iowa discussing.

I discovered this weekend that I'm not the only one concerned with the implications of factory farming practices. I can understand that most people don't care that much about how their food makes it too the table as long as it's easy. I can see how local foodies and slow foodies can easily be perceived as strange and elitist. I mean, even vegans can find mass-produced food comparatively easily, and local food is often more expensive and harder to find than the more commercial varieties. The thing is, local, organic, vegan-food eating, Prius-driving, train-taking pacifists are stronger on security than gun-toting pickup-driving hawks. Let me show you how.

First lets talk about local food. I've made arguments before about how this is largely because of subsidies, both on agricultural products themselves, and on fuel, thereby making transport cheaper (apparently the average transport distance of "fresh food" is 5,000 miles for that bought in England and over 1,000 miles in America). One of the main arguments against local food campaigns is that they hurt developing economies that rely on crop exports, but it seems to me that these developing economies are often more hurt by subsidies. This seems to me to be a case of rhetoric used to defend a failing system. For example, we are unafraid to slap a huge tariff on Vietnamese catfish to protect American catfish farmers but tend to dump our own exports on developing markets, decrying oposition to NAFTA or the WTO as anti-liberal. The solution may be food sovereignty. This is good not only for the developing world, but for the US as well.

See here's the thing. Our own reliance on commercial food is making us unhealthy in a number of ways. First, the cheapness and availability of corn derivatives makes processed junk food cheaper than healthier, simpler alternatives. Second, factory farming is subjecting us to mutated bacteria (and see my previous entry). But what Michael Pollan brings up is that we are also subjecting ourselves to terrorist attacks on our food. He tells us that "80 percent of America’s beef is slaughtered by four companies, 75 percent of the precut salads are processed by two and 30 percent of the milk by just one company." We have a very centralized supply train not to the military, but to the entire country! And clearly it's not a very secure one, given that weapons-grade E. coli is already a threat without external sources and that it took the investigation into the contamination a long time to figure out the origin of the problem.

The Department of Homeland Security is aware of this threat. It even puts out guidlines for keeping food from becoming contaminated (for example, pork products). Of course, this is treating the desease rather than preventing it. The mutant E. coli only develops in the stomachs of feedlot cattle, a peculiarity that is almost unique to the US. But instead of advising against keeping cattle in feedlots, or reducing the economic incentives to keep cattle in feedlots (i.e. corn subsidies), they come up with elaborate inspection and irradiation routines to destroy the bacteria that shouldn't have been there in the first place. These requirement, in turn, make it very difficult for small-scale producers to compete, despite the fact that they tend to be naturally safer than the large-scale producers. The price difference between small-scale, local meat and commerically produced meat is due to additional cost of producing graze-fed meat and the additional cost of processing in local plants (offset by the additional costs to ship commerical meat, which is, of course, subsidised to the point of being minimal). Because local meat plants have to meet the same requirements as much larger ones, but without the economies of scale, this is the single greatest factor in increasing the price of local food.

So local food is generally considered elitist because it tends to be more expensive and harder to get. It is more expensive largely due to FDA regulations which do not scale down well. These regulations are largely based on the dangers posed by factory farms and which are not present on smaller-scale and more natural operations. Factory farms are price-effective largely because they can use feedlots, which are based on subsidised grain, and transport cheaply, based on subsidised oil. Oil, of course, is subsidised not only in the immidiate sense, but also through our foreign policy, which tends to increase terror. So subsidies make the world a much more dangerous place. We need to end the subsidies and start rethinking the way we do agriculture. In fact, it may be benificial to think of agricultural products as something in between a tradeable good and a non-tradeable service.

Or maybe tariffs make more sense. On this otherwise objetionable site is an interesting analysis of how comparative advantage doesn't justify a lof of the free trade stuff that it is used to justify. In particular, exporting jobs to countries with nearly endless supplies of labor and unclear commitments to the market (i.e. China) doesn't seem to gain us much (although Paul Craig Roberts seems to ignore the fact that exporting manufacturing jobs overseas does net us cheaper goods). I am very scheptical what nativism and autarchy can net us as a country, but in some sectors, it does make sense to keep it local. I dont' care that much if consumer gadgets are being made in Shenzhen and phone help-lines are being run out of Bangalore. However, the loss of blue-collare jobs in America is a big, big problem.

So here is one suggestion. I don't care that much about industries that can be clearly grouped as consumer luxuries. But things like the automotive industry are a little different (and a bigger factor in job losses). Oil dependance is another major way in which our country is making itself much less secure. Again, through both domestica nd foreign policy, the government tends to do things that make it worse. If oil prices were not subsidised, if they were stabalized and taxed, this would provide and incentive for citizens to become less dependant on oil. This in turn would create a strong impetus to investigate alternative fuel sources. This strikes me as one way in which we could return some strength to the American economy, including both technical and manufacturing jobs. Consider, for instance, taking advantage of the existing military-industrial complex to fund research and development of wind and solar power and hydrogen fuel cells. Consider using public funds to build and subsidise more and better public transportation, ranging from alternative-fuel busses to better train service. Car travel is effectively subsidised by the tax-payer not only through oil subsidies, but also road construction and maintenance. And putting money into R&D and construciton of new power and transportation alternatives will provide jobs. The construction, at the very least, is nessisarily local, and if we consider alternative fuels to be a national defense objective, that will give us reason to keep it domestic, helping to provide more tech and blue collar jobs.

This has become kinda uncentered, so I wanted to conclude by demonstrating a central focus. Certain types of liberals: conservationists, pacifists, vegitarians and the like, have difficulty attracting wider followings because the foci of their creeds tend to be ascetic. It is hard to convince everyday people to give up conveniance, style, taste and the like with no provided alternative. What has been convincingly demonstrated to me is that these goals are not individual goals, but collective ones. Furthermore, they are not centered around vague notions of what is better for our children's children, but ones of what makes us safe now. Agricultural subsidies and factory farming makes us unsafe. Local farming makes us safer. Dependence on oil makes us unsafe. Alternative technologies make us safer. These can be centered as well around what provides jobs right now. Small farms keep money in the hands of local, middle-class people. Commercial agriculture puts money in the hands of big plutocrats and migrant laborers. Alternative fuel development can provide tech and blue-collar jobs in America. Oil puts money in the hands of Texas fat-cats and international despots. It is time that liberals get serious and claim that they are strong on security because of their environmentalism.