Eat This Newsletter 212: Be Cool
Hello.
Of course it is just a coincidence that today’s issue number is equal to the boiling point of water in degrees Fahrenheit, but it’s a coincidence that has particular resonance as we fry in the jaws of Cerberus.
What Price Externalities?
It can be a bit confusing to be told that high food prices are not the problem they appear to be, because the root cause is poverty. I mean, it is self-evident that the less money you have to spend on food, the less likely you are to be eating a healthy diet (ignoring for now the ability to grow your own). In that sense, higher food prices will always be exacerbated by poverty. An article on the true cost of food in The Conversation, grounded in the experience of Canadians, brings externalities into the picture as it argues that food prices ought to be even higher than they are today.
The checkout price of food, the article points out, “does not include the cost to health care from diet-related diseases, current and future environmental impacts or social injustices, like underpaying farm workers or using forced child labour”.
In 2011, the external cost of agricultural production to the environment in Central and Western Canada alone was estimated to be about $8.9 billion. When externalities are taken into account, the true cost of food in the United States is three times the amount Americans pay.
Those are pretty scary numbers, but what if I were to wave a magic wand and suddenly internalise the cost of all those negative externalities? Food three times more expensive than it is now? Of course some people — farm and food production workers, possibly in far-off countries — would be not as poor. The vast majority of shoppers in Canada, the US, or almost any rich country would immediately be even less able to afford a healthy diet.
So while it admirably points out all the problems associated with cheap food, that article fails to offer any solutions. Even buying food certified as being fair trade is out of reach of people in poverty. My own solution would involve something like a Universal Basic Income combined with community-operated basic food stores, but I haven’t a clue how that would work in detail.
p.s. Long ago, Andi Sharma, a policy adviser in Manitoba, told me about her work to help the O-Pipin-Na-Piwin Cree Nation regain a measure of food sovereignty. I hope that work is still going on.
After the Heat, Small Fires
Rebecca May Johnson has a singular voice in food writing, or writing through food, or something like that, a voice that I have admired from afar for a while. Small Fires: An Epic in the Kitchen came out in the UK late last year and has just recently been published in the US. A review by Adam Federman in The New Republic tells you much about the book and something about Johnson, and persuaded me that I ought to take closer look.
To my regret, although she spends at least part of her time just outside Rome and, judging from her online presence is sometimes in the city, I have not tried to make contact and so, when this blessed hell dog has dropped us from its maw and she no longer has to arrange shade and water for her bees, nor I for myself, I will make that effort.
Helpful Hints for the Heat
Modernist Cuisine helpfully advises us How to Make Pizza on an Outdoor Grill this Summer. All the help you possibly need is there, but one question remains unanswered: why? I mean, sure if you have one of those new-fangled portable, outdoor pizza ovens designed for the task, go to it. But do you really want to go to all that effort to make a passable pizza on a BBQ grill? And I don’t just mean in this heat.
Take care
