Last updated on February 13, 2011
A few weeks ago, the New York Times‘ Mark Bittman wrote a column entitled “A Food Manifesto for the Future,” in which he offered his thoughts as to how to “make the growing, preparation and consumption of food healthier, saner, more productive, less damaging and more enduring.” Bittman’s suggestions are very much in line with the expectations and beliefs of the bien-pensant, as befits someone writing for the newspaper of record, but some of his suggestions were highly impractical.
I wanted to discuss his column earlier on but other more pressing events happened in terms of food policy which I chose to discuss first, and this has been a busy week, so my apologies for the lateness of these comments.
Among Bittman’s thoughts were:
1. “End government subsidies to processed food.”
I would go even further: end all government subsidies to agriculture, as I have discussed earlier. Farm subsidies mean that American consumers — which vastly outnumber agricultural producers — pay a fraction of their income tax to keep inefficient agricultural producers artificially alive on a market that would otherwise be too competitive for them.
We have been encouraging developing countries to open themselves up to international trade for decades so they can benefit from it, but we are pulling the wool over their eyes if we keep subsidizing our agricultural producers. Gains to international trade accrue to a country only when it can specialize in its comparative advantage which, for most developing countries, is agriculture.
Encouraging developing countries to open themselves up to international trade while at the same time subsidizing farmers constitutes, at best, a set of highly inconsistent policies and, at worst, a manifestation of our own hypocrisy when it comes to market liberalization.
It is really puzzling that so many are against corporate welfare but in favor of farm subsidies in this country. I also have a hard time understanding this fetish that many exhibit for anything small or rural or both.
2. “Encourage and subsidize home cooking.”
See above for my attitude toward subsidies. The reason why people cook less than they used to is the same as the reason why we don’t build our own toasters. It goes back to Adam Smith’s pin factory in the first chapter of The Wealth of Nations: because it is more efficient for people not to cook and to instead outsource that task to someone who can do it more cheaply.
One of the things that struck me when moving to the US in 2001 was how often people ate out. I have heard many people say that American culture is such that people eat out more, but as an economist, I am highly suspicious of explanations involving “culture,” which are often no more than the result of lazy thinking.
Rather, I believe in incentives, so my interpretation was that if people ate out more often here than in Canada or Italy (the two countries where I had lived in prior to moving to the US), it was the result of different incentives. And lo and behold, it is much cheaper to eat out in this country than it is in most industrialized countries. Cheap restaurant food is a consequence of living in one of the wealthiest countries in the world and of the aforementioned farm subsidies; only a Luddite would want to turn back the clock on economic development, and my opinion on farm subsidies should be well-known by now.
And how would subsidies to encourage home cooking work, in practice? There are fundamental incentive compatibility and enforcement problems with Bittman’s suggestion. In other words, how would we verify that the people who claim they are cooking more at home actually do so? Why would they not just take the subsidy and continue to eat out?
I think the solution lies instead in conducting rigorous research on whether there are health benefits — both physical and mental — to home cooking and in disseminating the findings of this research if it turns out that there are such benefits.
3. “Reinvest in research geared toward leading a global movement in sustainable agriculture, combining technology and tradition to create a new and meaningful Green Revolution.”
As an academic, I am very much in favor of investing in research, but what is that supposed to mean? What is a ‘meaningful’ Green Revolution? With all due respect to Bittman, this sounds like the slogan of a fictional Pomo Party candidate running for office (slogan: “Your vote is a social construct, might as well vote for me.”)
There has been a Green Revolution which has benefited Southeast Asia. When asked about a potential Green Revolution in Africa, Norman Borlaug once famously said that in Asia, ‘we just didn’t have to worry about the market (…). All we had to worry about was the science.’ This is not the case in Africa, where all the productivity enhancements will still not make up for the fact that people often have little to no access to food markets.
(HT: Gabe, for providing a good counterexample to a mistaken statement of mine.)
On Mark Bittman’s Future Food Manifesto (Updated)
Last updated on February 13, 2011
A few weeks ago, the New York Times‘ Mark Bittman wrote a column entitled “A Food Manifesto for the Future,” in which he offered his thoughts as to how to “make the growing, preparation and consumption of food healthier, saner, more productive, less damaging and more enduring.” Bittman’s suggestions are very much in line with the expectations and beliefs of the bien-pensant, as befits someone writing for the newspaper of record, but some of his suggestions were highly impractical.
I wanted to discuss his column earlier on but other more pressing events happened in terms of food policy which I chose to discuss first, and this has been a busy week, so my apologies for the lateness of these comments.
Among Bittman’s thoughts were:
1. “End government subsidies to processed food.”
I would go even further: end all government subsidies to agriculture, as I have discussed earlier. Farm subsidies mean that American consumers — which vastly outnumber agricultural producers — pay a fraction of their income tax to keep inefficient agricultural producers artificially alive on a market that would otherwise be too competitive for them.
We have been encouraging developing countries to open themselves up to international trade for decades so they can benefit from it, but we are pulling the wool over their eyes if we keep subsidizing our agricultural producers. Gains to international trade accrue to a country only when it can specialize in its comparative advantage which, for most developing countries, is agriculture.
Encouraging developing countries to open themselves up to international trade while at the same time subsidizing farmers constitutes, at best, a set of highly inconsistent policies and, at worst, a manifestation of our own hypocrisy when it comes to market liberalization.
It is really puzzling that so many are against corporate welfare but in favor of farm subsidies in this country. I also have a hard time understanding this fetish that many exhibit for anything small or rural or both.
2. “Encourage and subsidize home cooking.”
See above for my attitude toward subsidies. The reason why people cook less than they used to is the same as the reason why we don’t build our own toasters. It goes back to Adam Smith’s pin factory in the first chapter of The Wealth of Nations: because it is more efficient for people not to cook and to instead outsource that task to someone who can do it more cheaply.
One of the things that struck me when moving to the US in 2001 was how often people ate out. I have heard many people say that American culture is such that people eat out more, but as an economist, I am highly suspicious of explanations involving “culture,” which are often no more than the result of lazy thinking.
Rather, I believe in incentives, so my interpretation was that if people ate out more often here than in Canada or Italy (the two countries where I had lived in prior to moving to the US), it was the result of different incentives. And lo and behold, it is much cheaper to eat out in this country than it is in most industrialized countries. Cheap restaurant food is a consequence of living in one of the wealthiest countries in the world and of the aforementioned farm subsidies; only a Luddite would want to turn back the clock on economic development, and my opinion on farm subsidies should be well-known by now.
And how would subsidies to encourage home cooking work, in practice? There are fundamental incentive compatibility and enforcement problems with Bittman’s suggestion. In other words, how would we verify that the people who claim they are cooking more at home actually do so? Why would they not just take the subsidy and continue to eat out?
I think the solution lies instead in conducting rigorous research on whether there are health benefits — both physical and mental — to home cooking and in disseminating the findings of this research if it turns out that there are such benefits.
3. “Reinvest in research geared toward leading a global movement in sustainable agriculture, combining technology and tradition to create a new and meaningful Green Revolution.”
As an academic, I am very much in favor of investing in research, but what is that supposed to mean? What is a ‘meaningful’ Green Revolution? With all due respect to Bittman, this sounds like the slogan of a fictional Pomo Party candidate running for office (slogan: “Your vote is a social construct, might as well vote for me.”)
There has been a Green Revolution which has benefited Southeast Asia. When asked about a potential Green Revolution in Africa, Norman Borlaug once famously said that in Asia, ‘we just didn’t have to worry about the market (…). All we had to worry about was the science.’ This is not the case in Africa, where all the productivity enhancements will still not make up for the fact that people often have little to no access to food markets.
(HT: Gabe, for providing a good counterexample to a mistaken statement of mine.)
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Published in Agriculture, Commentary, Food and Policy