Last month, Russ Roberts interviewed organic farmer Lisa Turner for EconTalk. Mrs. Turner is a civil engineer, and she and her husband are the owners of Laughing Stock Farm in Maine. Laughing Stock Farm sells to restaurants as well as to individuals through a community-supported agriculture (CSA) scheme and at farmers markets.
The conversation covers everything from the socialist aspects of CSAs to capitalism, and from a typical day in the life of Mrs. Turner to the federal government’s grab of the organic label in the early 2000s.
I have learned a lot while listening to it, and a lot of this might eventually inform my lecture on local and organic agriculture in my food policy seminar.
You can download or stream the hour-long podcast by clicking here.
HT: Jayson Lusk.
Quinoa Nonsense, or Why the World Still Needs Agricultural Economists
First came this post by Joanna Blythman on The Guardian‘s Comment Is Free blog:
Quinoa was, in marketing speak, the “miracle grain of the Andes,” a healthy, right-on, ethical addition to the meat avoider’s larder (no dead animals, just a crop that doesn’t feel pain). Consequently, the price shot up – it has tripled since 2006 – with more rarefied black, red and “royal” types commanding particularly handsome premiums.
But there is an unpalatable truth to face for those of us with a bag of quinoa in the larder. The appetite of countries such as ours for this grain has pushed up prices to such an extent that poorer people in Peru and Bolivia, for whom it was once a nourishing staple food, can no longer afford to eat it. Imported junk food is cheaper. In Lima, quinoa now costs more than chicken. Outside the cities, and fueled by overseas demand, the pressure is on to turn land that once produced a portfolio of diverse crops into quinoa monoculture.