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The "buy local" concept for food is popular in the yuppie towns occupied by the "creative class." In Ohio and Michigan, the "buy American; save Michigan" concept arose to defeat Japanese auto manufacturers such as Toyota and Honda. "Buy local" in reference to food refers to food usually when the alternative is also from inside the united $tates.
The debate went forward in Ohio because a student in Oberlin, Ohio took up the imperialist side.(1) "A study showed that producing dairy products, lamb, apples, and onions and shipping them across the world to Britain actually used less energy than producing all those things in Britain, due to differences in farming efficiency."(1) This is the viewpoint of the multinational corporation.
"EarthWatch Ohio" may have been responsible for Andy Jordan's ire:
According to Worldwatch Institute, in the United $tates food now travels between 1,500 and 2,500 miles from farm to table, a 25 percent increase from 1980. . . . Food transportation is now among the biggest and fastest-growing sources of carbon dioxide emissions worldwise."Thus, the Earthwatch Ohio is connecting multinational corporate food to global warming.
The "buy local" movement has had the support of small and medium-sized farms--the petty-bourgeoisie and smaller capitalists. As the underdog, the "buy local" movement has used some proletarian arguments to bolster its cause. That is why the imperialists felt obliged to respond with the actual breakdown of energy use in Britain as an example.
The proletarian approach to economics is more physical than bourgeois economics. We do not see anything holy about prices or the market as it exists in the imperialist countries. Environmentalists make natural socialists, because they realize that market prices do not include a pollution tax for those burning fossil fuels. Also, even Andy Jordan admitted that local food has to be more fresh.
Earthwatch Ohio is correct to look past the market and see what is physically happening. This causes doubt about whether shipping lettuce across the country is necessary or just a result of brainwashing of some kind. The fuel used is environmentally harmful and the roads used are paid for from public subsidies.
The whole concept of "proletariat" is the social group of people who is most lined up with the interests of the species. Marxists have argued that the propertyless are the ones most inclined to an objective view of what is good for the species. The capitalists profit from pollution and the petty-bourgeoisie often would make problems worse than they are under imperialism.
MIM is not in favor of "buy local" in order to give the petty-bourgeoisie economic security. If "buy local" can cut fossil fuel use, then there are serious reasons to favor it. In addition, the multinational corporate food may be cheaper only because it employs sub-minimum wage migrant labor, and that may be what it is making it possible to spend more money on shipping the food. Such comparisons are more difficult to make, because different communities have different approaches. Colorado passed many anti-migrant laws and now undocumented workers do not farm in Colorado much anymore: "But last fall, farmers along U.S. 50 noticed a dropoff in their workforce. Dozens of acres went unmowed, and produce spoiled in the fields."(3) So this is a double-punch to local farming: some corporations will go on using Mexican labor, if necessary, in Mexico itself. Meanwhile, Colorado's agriculture produced less from a shortage of labor. That also makes the per unit cost in fossil fuels higher and more difficult to compare. Racism and white nationalism in Colorado are not going to stop Mexican workers from producing the food. It will just be shipped further.
To make up for the loss of Mexican workers, Colorado used its prisoners. It paid them 60 cents a day with a possibility of a $30 to $60 bonus per month.(3) During F.D.R.'s "New Deal," labor organizers and the public understood that using prison labor gives governors and jailers a political incentive to put more people in prison-- to make more cheap labor available to employers who in turn provide campaign contributions. MIM also favors work in prison, but under capitalism, the motivations are completely corrupt, and amount to slave labor.
The proletariat has an interest in considering all factors in production. The petty-bourgeoisie hyped about "buy local" and "buy organic" may end up driving farther to hippie grocery stores, and then the whole benefit could be lost. We favor large-scale agriculture for good land and climate conditions, unlike some intellectuals of the Old Confederacy who argued that family farming should be kept as a way of life (with slaves) for the benefit of the cultural development of the farmer. We favor neither the interests of medium-scale farms nor multinational farming corporations. The two sides employ some correct arguments against each other, but only the proletariat is the class with the objectivity to judge. The ordinary consumer does not think through all these points and that is another reason we need scientific socialist planning that takes into account the environment.
Notes:
1. "Fair Trade? Organic? Horse Shit!" Andy Jordan, The Oberlin Grape, 5Apr07.
2. EarthWatch Ohio: A Collaboration of People with Environmental Concerns, April-May 2007.
See also, http://www.buylocalfood.com/programs.html
3. http://www.csindy.com/csindy/2007-04-12/news3.html