 Hi everyone and welcome to the latest episode I guess of Big Ideas Live. I'm Janet Nielsen. I'm your host and I'm actually on site today as if you if you normally watch you normally know that I'm in one screen and my guest is in another but I'm actually at University of Toronto, Mississauga with our guest today who's professor Pierre Derichet who's a associate professor of geography here. And he's also the co-author with his wife of this great book The Local Forest Dilemma and if you've been paying attention to my emails you'll know that by attending tonight. You are going to be entered into the draw to win one of five books and we're going to talk tonight about whether or not we can feed the world which I think is an important question. So I guess we can get right into it and I wanted to start off with the question that I learned from the book which was or not it's not really a question it was sort of a lesson that I learned and I really liked I appreciated it in the book was when we're unhappy people a lot of people are unhappy with how we grow our food now but we they kind of look at it as it is now and then say well we should go back to how it was but they don't ask why did we change things in the first place and I think that's a good question to ask So why don't we talk about why we grow our food the way we do now? Yeah, of course, no system is perfect and there's always room for improvement. I mean after all the most sensible definition of progress you can think of is creating lesser problems than those that existed before and that's exactly what happened through the development of our modern food supply chain and People tend to forget that, you know, you don't need to go back all that far in time but two centuries ago before the advent of the railroad and the steamship most of the food that people were eating was produced not even within a hundred miles of where they live but probably more something like 50 miles and that's because land transportation was so bad So yes, if you lived in a coastal city you could import cod from Newfoundland But moving cereal grain over a land was very difficult So even for a city like Paris all the way up to the early 19th century most of the grain supply was really within 50 miles the city but what happened then in the 19th century is that James Watt came along this team engine came along and Suddenly it became possible to move large quantities of food economically over long distances And so increasingly what happened is that people discovered that growing certain types of food in certain locations Just made more sense than trying to grow everything close to you So people stopped producing most of their foods for themselves They stopped producing a lot of different things rather inefficiently close to where they live and they began to import food from Locations that have better growing conditions for certain types of food. Yeah, which is great I those like as I said one of my favorite lessons from the book And we're gonna get a little bit into economics here because something that I've noticed when people talk about local food is For instance in Canada the push for local food often comes from somewhere like British Columbia where they can grow a lot of things and in economics there are two concepts called absolute advantage and comparative advantage so BC especially the more fertile part Yeah, not up in the mountains It's hard to grow things in the mountain, but the lower mainland in BC you can grow almost everything and in somewhere like say So sorry, we've gotten a little bit Canadian We are and let's see Berkeley the United States a lot of it came from Berkeley Which is more close to the Central Valley of California and the one region. Yeah For sure, whereas if you've got somewhere like Montana or somewhere like Moose, Joss, Saskatchewan, I Can almost guarantee that no one will ever get a box of strawberries that says grown in Moose, Joss, Saskatchewan, but I Mean maybe but what did that? Why did that happen and I'm sure that you know if you hadn't gone back in time maybe a hundred years ago Perhaps some people were growing strawberries in greenhouses in Moose, Joss I have pictures that I use in some of my presentations of people growing cucumber near Minneapolis, Minnesota and people used to have actually huge greenhouses Close to large cities a century ago because it was the only way to get fresh produce I mean you could ship things like, you know, dry cod, wine, cereal, grains over long distances But before the advent of modern preservation technologies refrigerations You actually had a lot of greenhouses around large cities, but eventually even those disappear and why was that? Well, think of it this way There are as Janet was saying both absolute and comparative advantages in growing food So yes, if we cross the border here, we're in Toronto There is a botanical garden in Buffalo that was built about a century ago and they have a banana tree in there Right. So you can grow a banana in Buffalo, but why don't they grow more than just one banana? Why don't they have more than one banana tree? Well, because it just doesn't make sense Economically you need to heat the greenhouse. Yeah, and this requires a lot of natural gas or electricity or I mean It's the same the building is a century old a lot of steam in that case So it just happens that you know a location like Guatemala or Honduras just has better conditions to grow bananas So this is basically what happened in North America people stopped Producing things that it's pensively in large greenhouses because they realize that you know Upstate New York for example might be good at growing apples, but for growing citrus fruit Well, Florida just has the better climate Yeah, and even if you look at orange production these days a lot of people not realize that Florida produces oranges mostly for juice and processed food Whereas the oranges that you find in your supermarket will come from California Why is that? Well, California has a drier climate. They have less of a fungus problem. They can produce our quality a product So even within areas that can grow oranges some are actually better than others Yeah for going certain things. So this is really absolute Advantage, but then you've got this know you've got under cases where you could grow where two regions Which will be at different levels of economic development could grow the same type of food But in those cases what happens is that well in some places? Labor costs or the jobs that people can get will either make it attractive to work in Producing the types of crops that require a lot of labor. Let's say produce But in other regions of the world people might have better opportunities They might be a bit better educated. They might be able to design software to produce other things So in the case of comparative advantage, some people have simply a Advantage in specializing in certain things rather than others even though they might On the surface of it have the same type of agricultural conditions or physical geography conditions Yeah, and some examples that we were talking a little bit about this beforehand We don't just dive into these things with you guys. We do talk about it beforehand And so some examples are well one that jumps to mind that we actually didn't talk about as coffee This is one of the reasons that people are very concerned about Trying to get a better a better deal for coffee farmers is because coffee is extremely labor-intensive as far as I know They that you just have to pick well actually not no there are two types Oh, there are two types. They're Roba's time our advocate Roba says the kind of a cheap one that is that comes from Brazil Which is grown in flat planes and you can actually make an eye to make a nice production Okay, but the higher quality stuff the shade grown on heels and stuff is actually very labor-intensive Okay, and so yes, okay Sorry, I used to work. I used to work at a Starbucks and so to them all coffee must be done by hand But they don't use robusta beans. So yeah, and another one that I I Had to study it in school was snow peas in Guatemala So you can probably grow snow peas just fine in California, but the the American workers in California are probably not you know It's hard work to bend over and and pick peas it in the quantities that you would need to supply an American At the same time in a place like Guatemala These might be the best-paying jobs that yeah And it makes more sense for them to grow these things and export them to people who have more money than them They make a better living that way than growing Mortons for themselves. Yeah, and and that's really what comparative advantage is about it's about the relative cost rather than the absolute cost So Unfortunately, hopefully one day this changes if you live on kind of the low the lowland mountains in Guatemala That's you're not giving up that much to become a snow pea farmer there You don't have that much improving your standard. Yeah, you don't have many other options Whereas if you were a snow pea farmer in California, you may be able to you might be more efficient at growing snow peas than people in Guatemala But you've got better. Yeah, you can you can go work in in San Francisco or you could start it start up like everyone else in California And so that's kind of that's kind of the point is By taking advantage of the relative costs, that's how we really make people better off and Why in my opinion at least we should be a little bit less concerned about When our when our food comes from poor farmers the best way to Improve things for them is to improve their their options Let them as long as they're free to do what they want if they specialize in export crops It's probably because it is the best option available to them And again, our ancestors used to be subsistence farmers They used to produce all their own food at one point they got out of farming or they specialize in one type of farming They improve their standards of living that way and that's how everybody is better off consumers But more food at a more affordable price and paradoxically by specializing in export crops Those poor farmers even though they might not be paid much by North American standards are still earning a better living than the options In the absence And even though they're not growing their own food they have pretty constant Access but then they now they have the money to buy food for people who are better than them at producing those other types of Yeah, and so I think it's a really important lesson to learn because it's a it's a little bit counterintuitive to think that You know really, California, they can grow a lot of food. So why did they only specialize it? Well, I mean they actually grow a lot of kinds of food But California for example used to produce a lot of grain in the 19th century Interesting, but at one point in time the Northern Plains were open with the amount of the railroad and so grain production shifted I'm talking about wheat and you know barley things like that shifted from California to places like northern South Dakota And what farmers did in California rather than going bankrupt is that they began to rule citrus fruits and other things For which their soil and their climate was better suited and everybody was better off in the end The farmers in the Dakotas were better producing wheat the farmers in California were better Producing citrus fruit and in the end both farmers could both get citrus fruit and wheat more cheaply Then if the people in North Dakota tried to grow citrus fruit in greenhouses and people in California to grow grain in an Environment that was not as suitable as the Dakotas. Yeah. Yeah, it's It's amazing actually Everyone just so you know we're I was talking about this with some friends yesterday every time we see PR speak We learn something so go out and make friends with your local economic geographers or or a far away economic geographer If they happen to be higher quality So actually I wanted to kind of cover that issue of comparative advantage and why we do the things we do I wanted to put those ideas in everybody's head and I want to stop for questions if anybody has any and While we're doing the questions I am going to ask a quick poll question which will pop up on your screen in front of us And I'll give you a few a few moments to To answer it and if you have any questions, let us know but if not do let us know what you think about the polls and we can always Address the questions that you've got in the polls. Oh, and we've got a question. So let me just Make it big enough to read Sorry guys Okay, so what we've got is what would it take to effectively distribute food to the developing world without further loss of natural habitat The developing economies of Africa India South America and throughout Asia Obviously need food, but how do we convince people in those areas to stop destroying the natural habitat for farmland? Okay, that's a great question. Yeah, well, you have to think that North America was not very different Two centuries ago again before the railroad and the steamships or think of the even of steam boats going up and down the Mississippi Most people in North America to produce most of their food for themselves because again if you're living in Appalachia Where you did not have access to a navigable river? You needed to grow as many things as you could close to home But eventually what happened? Well, these people got connected to the rest of the world with modern transportation infrastructure And what you see happening in the United States in the last 19th century is that suddenly some regions began to specialize in things that they were better at You know to use examples that people might know if you ever watch a football game with the Green Bay Packers You see those cheesehead in the audience So if you've ever been to Wisconsin the northern part of the state is kind of an area where corn doesn't grow all that well But you've got these impassional and you can keep cows and you're right out of what we call the corn belt Which is the part of the midway the American Midwest where people rotate corn and soybeans Okay, and so it makes sense if you look at the geography of these things to concentrate the best land to produce animal feed so that field corn and soybeans to keep the cows close by the dairy cows close by and produce Dairy products I mean to produce milk and other dairy products and but at one point in time If you go back in the early days of places like Wisconsin or upstate New York where a lot of dairy cows are kept today People used to do a lot more things But they realized as they were able to ship things over long distances That's what they were really good at was producing milk and dairy products And so naturally some parts of the United States became the dairy belt another part became the corn belt You've got for example eastern Washington state that has very good climate to grow apples So most of the apple in the United States are produced there strawberries in California, which is always contentious issue these days you go back a century the strawberry capital of the United States was actually Delaware most of the strawberries that that were delivered to Northeastern American cities came from Delaware or Virginia or that that part of the the Mid-Atlantic coast But over time you strawberry varieties were developed in California and turned out that climate California just had the best conditions to grow strawberries So strawberry production migrated from a few locations including Delaware to mostly today, California and then a little bit in Oregon and Florida But again even in California people used to produce most of their food for themselves so Transportation access to market access to capital and I don't want to go to historical on you But there was a lot of innovation in California when the today we think of California's having always produced You know foods and you know the salad you find at your supermarket But in the early days of the industry most of the markets were in the Midwest and East Coast So people in California had to innovate a lot to develop varieties that would withstand transportation And a lot of money also had to be invested to develop better preservation Technologies and there's actually a fascinating economic history there I won't go into the details But people in California to be very innovative to make this their state competitive because they were so far away from markets so comparative advantage do change over time and What's something that people tend to forget in the history of agricultural production is that You know California was not blessed from the beginning as this giant agricultural power on Senate is today people had to be creative and The same is true for other parts of the world But you know you let people be creative give them good transportation infrastructure You give them access to market and they naturally tend to specialize in a niche that what they will find profitable Okay, and so you think that in places like Africa and Asia were the same the same processes I mean the the problem in Africa now is that Even in most of sub-Saharan Africa most people live kind of far from a road that can be used here Now the transportation is really bad and so it's really costly to move things in Africa And that's why again most people subsist on what they can grow themselves because the transportation costs are just too high so if African cities are allowed to develop if you can provide good Infrastructural access from the countryside to cities in Africa Then I'm confident that just as happened in Japan just as I've been in Europe just as up in in Australia New Zealand and elsewhere People will spontaneously leave subsistence farming behind it costs of this is farming for a reason We'll remain poor if you don't specialize in what to do best so yeah open markets Infrastructure will come in time these people will be allowed to specialize and they'll and they'll produce more food on less land And just as we did in North America a lot of land a lot of bad agricultural land in North America was abandoned over time I don't know many of your readers or from Vermont New Hampshire or New England you drive through those states today You believe that you know there were always forests there No, it used to be essentially pasture land for sheep and horses Which because it was very unproductive was eventually abandoned nature took over So the same thing will happen in Africa if they go through if they're allowed to go through the same development process that we experience in Yeah, and I mean something else that's that's interesting is having access to roads also allows you to buy Yes from from markets like in North America and would allow us to buy from them because I'm a little bit of a foodie as Pierre knows and so one thing that I will ask when I meet someone from a new place as I say What's the food you miss the most and the best way we can have poor people in a place like Africa's to buy their products Yeah, and I whenever I ask someone from Africa I hear about a fruit that I've never had before or they tell me that our pineapples are terrible And what they miss is African pineapples, so I would really love access to these pineapples that are mine Probably do not what's that transportation? Yeah, that's just it. Well, you know, maybe if we were trading them I have a couple of other questions and sorry for everyone who I'm kind of looking down Normally I look right at my computer, but I'm dividing my attention today to try and keep us on time I have a few more questions So the first one is the fair trade movement arose to address concerns people have with the working conditions of labor is abroad What are the merits of fate fair trade and how can these goals be addressed by free trade and that's from Richard Thanks very much Richard. Well, there is this notion that you can improve the lot of agricultural workers by paying them more To produce essentially the same product that they were that they would be trying to serve at the moment Well, there are two things I believe that fair trade advocates do not understand The first is that the best way to help agricultural workers is paradoxically to get them out of agriculture Farmers in North America are wealthy because one percent of our population one or two percent of our population Produces most of our food so the best way to become to have an agricultural workers to make it more productive and And you know to give them more machinery and more things to produce what they do But the thing is once you do that you don't need a lot of workers So the best way paradoxically to help a lot of migrant workers unless advanced economies Is to provide them, you know full-time well-paid city jobs This is exactly what happened in a country like canada or the united states A century ago about 40 of the population was still involved in farming Most of them were very poor and in time though better city jobs were created The people who remained in the countryside became much more productive. This is why farmers today are relatively wealthy in north america and And this is why we have a huge middle class because people left the countryside to move to cities The other problem with fair trade is that I don't want to get into the technical details, but there is a huge ideological dimension behind it So for example, if you buy fair trade coffee, it must typically come from a producer's cooperative, which will not allow Let's say for example children to work But the problem is that in less advanced economy like used to be the case in canada The school year is often scheduled around the harvest period of the main crop So for example in canada, tante canada used to produce a lot of potatoes and the school year in atlantic canada was scheduled around the potato harvest Meaning that the kids would be off school when they were needed to harvest potatoes And this is an income that the family really needs. This is why it was scheduled around but Fair trade often prevents the employment of children which provide a supplemental income for the family that they often need But ultimately the problem with fair trade is that it's basically built on charity You're asked to Pay more For what is often a lesser quality product rather than let the best producers spontaneously emerge And it's sad to say but you don't build a thriving economy on charity So what this country needs is a real economic development better opportunities out of the countryside And let the people who will remain in the countryside become more productive And this is how we will really help people through free trade and specialization Then other lines of work Yeah, and we could easily talk for an hour about all of those questions But um, if anybody has more don't feel like you can't ask about fair trade just because I said that But I do have another question Um from phil so he says my friend says that the seller of an apple produced overseas and ships to america Externalizes the cost of carbon dioxide emitted by transporting the apple. Can you comment on this? Yes, uh, well, it's typically not true So prices are not perfect in the agricultural sector because if you have production subsidies, we've got barriers to trade But you've got to ask yourself. Well, we can produce decent apples in north america Why do we see apples from new zealand chili or south africa at certain times of the year? And as a geographer, I will tell you that the main reason is latitude So in the northern atmosphere in the northern hemisphere We harvest our apples typically in september or october You want to eat them in april or maybe what do you do? Well, you need to put them in cold storage and you know I see two concentrations. There's a cost associated with that You will have some losses due to spoilage And so if you want to eat a north american apple in march or april There's a huge footprint associated with the storage and losses associated with storage Now if you if you buy a new zealand apple in march or april, what happens? Well in the southern hemisphere seasons are inverted So of course in north america, we think of christmas as occurring in winter, right? But you go to new zealand, it's the middle of their summer. We do it all wrong Exactly And so what happens if you if you buy a new zealand apple in march or april? Well, it was probably on the tree like 10 days before and so you don't have this huge footprint associated with storage Now, of course, we began importing new zealand apple not because we thought of you know, the problems associated with storage But because they were cheaper for the same quality But they were cheaper because of the time of the year at which they were picked And the time of the year was a function of the latitude at which they were picked So now we we do import produce from the southern hemisphere Because they have a lot because they're cheaper and they are cheaper because they have a lower footprint You need less electricity. You need less natural gas To keep the system going, but of course the system works both ways I mean, if you think new zealand and food, you might think new zealand and kiwis But you go to new zealand at certain times of the year and the kiwis that you eat will be coming from italy Why because italy is in the northern hemisphere again They harvest their kiwis at different times of the year So at certain times of the year you will have new zealand kiwis in italy at other times of the year Italy italian kiwis in new zealand and that's because Transportation has much less of a footprint than storage over long periods of time. So your friend is wrong. I'm sorry I have another question that's similar and then I'm going to move us forward, but Sending questions at any time guys. I don't feel like you have to wait for me to say Do you have any questions? I will get to them when we stop. So this is kind of similar Danny asked I live in southern alberta recently I bought some puffed wheat cereal at the grocery store and was stunned to read on the label that the cereal was an imported product How is it possible that puffed wheat is an imported good in western canada? So people who don't know all about western canada. It's just Fields of grain So it is it does seem counterintuitive, which is why he's asking Well, there's a there's an old joke about western canada is that well It's not really a running joke, but for years in suscatchewan, which you know for american viewers think of nord dakota here It's basically the same. They're right. Yeah, they've been saying for years. Why don't we have a pasta plant in suscatchewan? And the short answer is that there's no money in making pasta You can make money in a place like southern alberta or suscatchewan producing prints and you get good money for that But they don't have a comparative advantage in producing pasta. They're too far from markets if you were to This is think of it this way historically most of petroleum refineries, for example, were close to city Why because it made a lot more sense to ship Raw petroleum over long distances and turn it into hundreds of products closer to markets So there are huge economies of scale in processing things closer to markets And then shipping some of the final product back to where the raw material was produced But those the cereals or whatever Only a small part even if the grain was from southern alberta Only a small portion of the grain was produced there was sent back because you don't have any people who live in southern alberta So it probably made more sense to produce those cereals closer to markets in the midwest or you know, the northeast of the united states And this is where most of let's say the alberta grain or the north alberta grain ended up So this is why it doesn't make there are such things as economies of scaling food processing And it's much easier to move raw materials over long distances Turn them into all sorts of things closer to markets and then ship back a tiny portion of the finished products back to where Some of the wrong material originated, but you've got to think of the whole picture here. This is why you need economic geography Okay, so we're going to move forward and the first thing we're going to talk about is the the results of the poll Which I did share, but I'll just share for another second So that everybody can remember So 65 of people say that they think that it makes sense to be Trading food over long distances. They may not be new to the topics that we're talking about But we do have some concerns, but I think are pretty common out there So what a six percent of people said yes It makes sense to environmental sense I'm sorry, not just sense to trade food over long distances, but only during certain times of year And so we've sort of talked about why that's the case Um, I'm I'm going to hide the results guys so that you can see us. Hopefully we're a little bit more interesting than a bar graph The the second group is uh, yes, but only for certain foods and we've talked a little bit about that for instance The kiwis coming Bananas not coming from canada or again, why do you why don't you find florida oranges in your supermarket? Well, because california even though you might think they're at the same latitude and the climate is well No, california is just a better climate to produce higher quality products And I know that that's that's actually if you follow this kind of debate People in florida and california are really upset that they trade oranges with each other Yes, but they're not trading the same oranges. Right, right. This is the irony of the thing Besides saying well, we import cars from germany. Well, yeah, but they're not exactly the same cars that we have Yeah, um, and some people say very rarely they're still skeptical But hopefully they're asking thinking of questions to ask so that we can address their concerns And nobody says that we should never environmentally From an environmental perspective. I'm sorry, uh shift along distances. I'm gonna sorry. I'm to interrupt I'm gonna very quickly. Uh, we have one question just asking for a clarification of comparative advantage So I'm gonna try and give a short, uh Answer that's a little bit less roundabout than what we did and basically what it is is that you have a relative advantage, so Um, well, let's say a country is better at producing everything all sorts of good It still makes sense to specialize in the good at which you're relatively better Right and producing it at the other country, which is not better than you are producing anything To specialize in the thing that they're relatively better at producing and this is what it means But to be honest in the aggregate, it just applies and you know in manufacturing and all sorts of other industry But I'll be honest as an economic geographer. I'll tell you that absolute advantage in agriculture is a pretty hard to overcome But again, the point that we were trying to make is that let's say a place like california might be better at producing everything than Guatemala So software Wow chickpeas or whatever producing stuff, but it still makes sense for most people in california Even though they're better at everything to specialize in producing computers or software and to import Produce that they might even be better than let's say Guatemala producing and to let people in Guatemala go Produce what they're relatively better at so I don't know if that is yeah, hopefully that's helpful if it's not helpful Um email me I'll put my email on the screen at the end and I'll try to send you some Resources that might make it a little bit more clear for you Because if you're interested, I want to I want to help So we're going to move forward pier when you are interviewed about your book You often talk about five myths of local tourism and I think that they'll be interested for interesting for the people Who are interested in this topic? So why don't we start off with since we were just talking about environmental sense? The argument that it's environmentally better. So there are a few reasons that people think this they think oh Well, there's one reason really Is a big one and 95 of our transportation system is powered by fossil fuels. Yes, so we see it's mostly obviously Well, you know diesel products bunker fuels and ships And so the idea is that well, you know, you burn fossil fuels you emit greenhouse gas emissions If you produce things closely, well, you don't need to move things over long distances And therefore it is better for the environment But the problem when you do that is that you you forget why Historically agricultural productions began to move to other regions and that's because transportation is only a tiny tiny fraction Of the overall environmental footprint of producing food So for example, when you produce food, well, you might need irrigation water If you use greenhouses, well, you might need natural gas to eat the greenhouse You might need grow lights Not just for marijuana, but For all sorts of other things if you have a short day Yes, if you have a short day, you need that And so what happened in europe, for example, is that again historically people used to grow a lot of tomatoes in places like england in green houses But what happened over time is that uh, the production naturally migrated along the Mediterranean coast because now more irrigation water is available there and they have non-eated greenhouses Which are the advantage of of course protecting the Tomatoes from the elements that win and other things, but also keeping more humidity Around the tomatoes So they get tremendous yields along the Mediterranean coast And they need a lot less energy to produce a tomato than having to build a heated greenhouse in a place like england And so even though you might need to truck the tomatoes from spain to england Um The amount of fuel that you burn doing that is much less than uh, the amount of Carbon fuels that you need to heat your greenhouse around well almost around england So this is only one aspect another advantage Another environmental advantage of long-distance food production is that again I don't know many of you have a garden But if you're trying to grow food in your garden, there might be a shadier area which is better to grow something else There might be more sunlight than another Perhaps you have a type of soil that is better suited for something than another and perhaps you know in your backyard I'm together a friend of mine is absolutely incapable of growing carrots. It doesn't know why the carrots just don't grow there So it's no matter how hard you try you wasn't able to grow carrots So it makes sense to concentrate food productions in the regions that are the best suited for them That way you get a lot more food on a lot less land than would otherwise be the case And in that context the more efficient you become let's say for example Again to get back to apple production in eastern washington. What's one of their main advantages? Well, you have a very dry climate So you need less pesticide you have less of a pest problem You have less of a farm design problems and so you can produce more apple using less Pesticides which are costly and we quarter fossil fuels and what have you so in that context again moving things efficiently over Long distances means that you can you have over overall you need less land To produce the same amount of food then if you were trying to produce everything inefficiently closer to your home So this is why for example today Uh, the surface area devoted to farmland in north america keeps shrinking And this is why our farms keep growing because people moved out of apple age to produce food people moved out Various that were not good for producing food and they concentrated their production in the best Locals and i've just changed the slide at the bottom of the screen now You should be able to see a picture of a very dire looking situation And this was slash and burn farming in in finland in finland in a context Which is not too different of the slash and burn farming in a place like appellate in the united states I don't know how many of you are from let's say western north carolina or even northeastern georgia or even upstate new york But as you know trying to grow things on rock That's a very easy thing to do So what were people doing like them? Well, they would get the best wood out of it. Then they would burn the landscape The ashes would allow you to get maybe one or two mediocre crop and then you wouldn't move on to another piece of land And you know, you would cut the wood again and burn the landscape and you just produce food very inefficiently moving around whatever area a piece of land you own And this created tremendous erosion problems historically But then what happened when in the united states, for example, when they made it was stupid with the railroad people said Well, I'm not making elevator in vain trying to grow cereal grains. I'm moving to hawaii And so a lot of land was amended And you I'm sure for example the forest grew back and in the end I think nature is better off humans are better off And so I get all distance straight actually lightens the load of agriculture on the land Which and I I um, I almost can't help myself I have to mention and I will just send a I will send a resource To everybody about the history of there's an old forest and that is owned by harvard university And it's kind of it's really interesting to understand the history of american farming and how it's affected these hardwood forests In new england and it's it's really cool. Uh, but sort of off topic So I will anybody who's interested I can let you know Um, so actually I'm a website now you can access. Oh great even better Um, and so the other argument um that a lot of people say is that it's better for the local economy If we if we produce our food here, so if I'm but I'm from southwestern ontario Which is basically like the american northeast in terms of well the american midwest Okay. Yeah. Well, definitely. We're uh, it depends. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Not the northeast because we don't have the The rocks that the american midwest so we grow a lot of things. So Um down there it people seem to say well, why don't we buy to me if we're in ontario Why don't we buy ontario tomatoes? This is a lot of tomatoes are grown in ontario Why don't we buy things here and then we have farmers in ontario and farmers have a good job And then they will spend money they will buy a restaurant and they want the baristas If you and they'll have more money for the barista will then get a haircut and they will then you know Exactly. Yes. So what's the problem with that? Well, the problem is that you should buy food based on price and quality Um, so if you always try to best to get the best deal that you can in terms of food That leaves more money in your pocket to spend on other things. So the problem Well, look at it this way. Okay. We still do not import food from outer space as far as I may be wrong on that So good quality food will need to be produced somewhere And obviously at certain times of the year the best quality food will be produced close to where some people Live so at certain times of the year it makes perfect sense to buy local food when it's in season I mean, that's the best quality price ratio you can get go for it I don't have a problem with that The problem I have is when local food activists tell you well, you should pay more For lesser quality in order to keep those inefficient farmers in business Because again, if you if you keep them in business and they will spend money locally and other people will benefit But if you do that if you pay more for less quality food, then you have less money to pay for other things So suddenly you don't have the money to go to the movie theater if you still do that You cannot maybe you have to give up on the haircut Maybe you won't be so generous when you tip the barista if you get on the telephone Starbucks So that's the thing. You need to go beyond what is immediately visible So if local farmers Give you the best, you know quality price ratio a certain number of the year, please then you're creating real wealth But if you're maintaining inefficient people in business Then no, it's a form of charity, which is not really charity because in the end you're making everyone else better worse off So what that what happened countless time historically is that at some points, you know farmers that have made a good living Again, let's say growing well people don't know that today but people used to produce wine in Los Angeles a century ago But the quality was really not good So at one point people said no, we're not buying wine from southern california anymore. It's really not good So what happened to the local farmers? Well, they began to produce citrus fruits and they were really good at that So they transitioned from one type of production to another And they became very successful So local people in Los Angeles were buying citrus fruits But people in the rest of the united states still were buying citrus fruits And farmers were better off because they not only had a local market, but they had a national market Right So farmers were actually the way to create wealth among local farmers is to let them find a nation that they can be Good at and so both locally but also beyond local border I mean, that's how you create a real standard of living and by having people Spend spend less money on their food by buying from the best producers Then they have more money to spend on other things and they create all sorts of other jobs Yeah, so in the end everybody's better off and dare I say Arguing that you ought to pay more for your food is a little bit of a privilege thing to say Well, yes, I was you have to be the type of person who can afford to spend more But you are talking about creating jobs locally, but yes now from a certainly moral point of view Yes, you know, there are plenty of foodies who can afford to pay, I don't know, $10 a pound for features or something Right Most people cannot and this is a moral dimension which is a bit different Yeah, um, so I actually I've got a little bit of a build-up of questions. So why don't we why don't we take a couple? Um, so I've got what is your opinion and I'm sorry What is your opinion on alternative methods of agriculture such as aquaponics hydroponics, etc Thank you for not. I would have continued reading them if you had listed them all Do you think that we can create a more sustainable world of people in urban cities begin to grow a little bit of their own food To supplement their groceries. What implications would this have on the food economy and carpet emissions? Okay, what people don't realize is that there used to be sophisticated agricultural production systems around cities until the turn of the 20th century. So I have pictures People don't realize that let's say as late as 1880s About one sixth of the greater Paris area was still devoted to food productions And so I could show you paintings or images of Parisian farmers back then and they were very sophisticated They would build walls around their gardens to create micro climates get one or two degrees more Um, they had plenty of access to horse manure because that's before the car came along Then they would have clush, you know today we use little plastic tents But in those days they are kind of big glass containers Translucid that they would put on let's say they're asparagus to create artificial meat To grow their things and then they would put straw mats on top of dark straw mats because you know you want to You want to repulse radiance over it you build You make your garden white, but you make something darker than it you will create artificially that way And again, there were huge announces around places like Minneapolis But the thing is that no matter how efficiently they could not compete with let's say florida or the Mediterranean coast In one context nature will give you a heat free of charge In another you've got to create other things and the other thing too is that Um We don't think of a think of producing food in cities Let's say you want to produce pigs. Well, what will happen? You will need to truck in a lot of animal feed to grow your pigs in the city And then where would you slaughter them? I mean slaughterhouses used to be prevalent in cities But we were happy to get rid of them ship them to the countryside because there was a huge problem Land in city indian is just too valuable to be used for food production. That's why it was pushed out Land is much more affordable in places like Iowa and the united states or you know, again The rural parts of florida or california so Don't think that people in the past were not creative when they were producing food in cities. They were extremely creative But again to get back to absolute and comparative advantage. You just cannot compete with cheap abundant open farmland Um, and the nature giving you heat free of charge or helping you fight bugs and fungus problems and so In the end the only thing that you can really grow in cities will I am products Let's say on rooftop gardening the only markets that I've ever seen That only seem to make sense are very expensive things for very fancy restaurants where you could probably get the same quality of Produce for a lot less money if it was shipped in from elsewhere But there's a premium associated to locals who some people make a go on that But don't think that fancy strategies were not tried in the past and again People don't realize how significant absolute advantages are in agriculture So I think land in city should be devoted to other types of uses Which is what markets tell you and this is why food production historically, which was Abundant in cities was eventually you shipped out. Okay. Uh, hopefully that answered your question If not feel free to follow up. Uh, so I've got another one. There's a debate on uh from rick Sorry, there's a debate in about climate change causing less food production and suggesting that gains won't be as large With higher temperatures and rick is concerned that he's misrepresenting the argument, but he's doing his best Um, intuitively the higher temperatures should give us more food. Can you clarify what the concern might be? Okay. Well The concern is that regions that are well suited to produce certain things at the moment will no longer be you that was Be well suited to produce them if suddenly, you know, you have droughts or you have warmer temperature or what have you But and so you have climate models tell you that but the problem is that typically those people don't know much about agricultural history I've given you a number of examples so far, but historically farmers about to adapt To change their productions a lot of our time for economic reasons Again, listen, there's something like one or two percent of our population in north america. It feeds the rest of us Those that stayed in that line of work were the best and smartest ones Farmers have to adapt to changing market conditions all the time I was telling you earlier now that italy is a big key producer That's a fairly recent development at one point farmers in italy were, you know, pulling their airs off saying we can produce anything And competitively, but then some farmers said well, why not kiwis? And they found an issue there and they adapted to producing kiwis and they became very good at it So farmers change to and adapt all the time for economic conditions So even assuming the worst-case scenario, let's say that the climate of Boston suddenly becomes the climate of the new york, which is what you would get with, you know, those climate changes Well, farmers in new england are not stupid, you know, they want to change productions in the past They will be able to adapt that belief Again, the one I grew up in the countryside. That's why I take it a little bit what I'm talking about The ones that stayed in that line of work were the smart ones and they will have to adapt for no other reason Economic conditions will change over time. So even if we have climate change, I believe that the farmers will find other ways to producing things I'm not worried about that. Okay um So I can get back to the myths that you normally address So there's there's we've talked a little bit about people Especially foodies being interested in local food and the argument is often that, you know, there's the more nutritious They're tastier because they're fresh. So what do you what do you say to that? Well, the issue of taste is not so much because of freshness because in this day and age preservation technologies are very good You know, if you back a bag of let's say that you grow things in Mexico Um And you back them and under the best conditions right away frozen food is just as nutritious as fresh food Then actually it might be more nutritious than fresh food That was big let's say on a Tuesday and delivered to the farmers market on a Saturday in that case the frozen food might actually be more nutritious Uh, so there's no argument really there and in some cases paradoxically I've read somewhere that canned tomatoes are actually more nutritious than fresh tomatoes because they're cooked and your body can digest more Oh, interesting. Okay, but but I'm not gonna go there. So the the next racist argument doesn't make sense. Now the food argument is something else Um, we're talking earlier about how let's say pineapples in North America don't taste as good as pineapples elsewhere And that's because obviously, uh, the type of peaches or pineapples that we find in our supermarkets Are the ones that can stand transportation best So it might be that you know in many countries where more food is local people will grow Tastier varieties that don't withstand transportation all that well, but two things here for in that case and local food Producers do not need a local food movement people will end season when the food is available People will buy, you know, the better tasting peaches or the better testing pineapples But then you've got to understand that if you want fresh produce in your supermarket in regions that are not suited To grow certain types of food Well, the choice is done between, you know, those tasty South Carolina peaches and Alberta peaches that were delivered over a long distance It's between the lesser quality peaches and no peaches at all So Yeah, if you happen to live in a region which is very good at growing peaches, then you can get tastier varieties But in season, what do you do the rest of the year? And again, if you want fresh Stuff, well the alternative then is between nothing and the varieties that would stand transportation better So if you really want the taste of those South Carolina peaches that don't travel well I'm afraid if you move to South Carolina at certain times of the year Well, and so I made a terrible error when I said that I used to live in southwestern Ontario and the american northeast because I now Live in Ottawa, Ontario, which is like the American and Even if we want to have The good peaches and the good tomatoes that we grew where I grew up In the summer you can get there's a white flesh peach that they can grow in southwestern Ontario. That's really delicious We can get them in the summer, but they're not local they come in from further away and even Now you may see heritage variety. Well, not here. They are heritage variety. They don't need quotes Tomatoes on the grocery store and they're always like seven dollars a pound or something ridiculous like that Well, I mean, that's what it costs because you have to do all of these extra things to get them there undamaged And they might not be so resistant to grass then things that might be more susceptible to failure and not only that But they're still damaged once once you just stacking them up the way that they stack them up in the grocery store I mean the ones on the bottom will be smushed And so I think that after learning that from you it's and from your book Um, I've I noticed these things and I think I think it's interesting Because we are still trying to get that taste, but in places like the american northeast where we're we're hopeless Um, we have to do it by still getting food from further away. So it's it's been interesting to watch um, another argument for local food is that it builds social capital, which is kind of a uh, Academic way of saying that you get to know your farm You build a community And by building a community, especially this is the argument for um, What is it? You can get a basket of food from your uh, from your farmer Yes, the community supported agriculture, right? And so so you're supporting even if they have trouble you're helping to support a local community So what what are the problems with arguments? It seems nice. It seems nice. Well, but there are two things First if you're doing it, so community supported agriculture is basically a scheme in what you pay in advance For the food that you will get and you don't really know what you're gonna get and you're you're not well There are two problems. You're not really know what you're gonna get And it might not be suitable to what you want. The problem is that it gives you no flexibility So let's say for example that uh, you order food in advance for a family of four And then suddenly you got the opportunity to send the kids away for the summer for a month visit, uh, You know a relative living somewhere you're still getting food for four people Right. So what are you gonna do with it? And the problem with community supported agriculture is that it's been fine that It's very good for growing your compost pile because you get a lot more food. You have no flexibility And at the same time, uh, what do you do if uh guests if your relatives show up and decide to start your place for a week? Well, you need to go to the supermarket because even though you've ordered things in advance You need to adjust it and what people don't realize is that things like supermarkets or Intermediaries between farmers and consumers emerge for a reason You know, we take these things for granted but getting buying the amount of food that you want At a time that is convenient at a location that is close to you Rather than let's say driving an hour and a half to the farm than getting back You know all the extra time and money that is involved in those schemes is time and money that you don't have To give to a local charity to coach little league soccer to do other things So for intermediaries actually deliver value You get a lot more convenience flexibility at lower prices by going to a place like a supermarket Then buying directly from a farmer, which is why supermarkets emerge in the first place And again, there are many ways to build social capital. Yes, you will get to know your farmer But then you won't again have as much money to do other things on the side that might help build social capital so, um It's nice to get to know but you know, it's nice to get to know if you want to produce your food But I have no idea how to produce that mug. I have no idea how to produce my watch my clothes If there is a price to pay in our modern system is that you lose track of the primary producer But at the same time I would argue because we're wealthier because we have more time for leisure Because we have more time to volunteer to do other things. I would argue that there's probably a lot more capital today And at any rate to your you have more time and resources to contribute to developing social capital If you want to because of our modern system Yeah, and I'm I always uh, I'm always kind of forced to point out to people that Um, it's cool. It is it is fun to go to farmers markets. Like I I go to them I like as I said, I'm kind of a foodie and sometimes there are things that you don't see And farmers do actually know a lot about the things that they're producing whereas they go But then you're paying for the experience. Right. Exactly. It's it's kind of You know, it's enjoyable. It's like a social outing. It's like going to I don't know a car An old car exhibit, you know, you get to know people who know a lot about old cars And if you have an interest in old car, well, you get to know people that size Farmers market are a bit like that. They're a bit of a luxury group I have nothing against luxury, but if you enjoy the experience fine But if you think that your community will be better off in the end or that the environment will benefit No, not really and you should not even assume that this is the best way to build social capital Sorry, I'm talking too much. I can I know it's okay. I was just going to say and the other thing is a farmer's market will Provide work for the farmers, but a grocery store actually provides work for farmers and clerks and people who are Really kind of at the like Not at all of them, but it certainly provides an opportunity for people with very little work experience to start get into the workforce and building Those are really important Um things that we do that build social capital in our communities Uh, so I let's talk about um what might be the biggest argument Uh, or at least the most uh, people get very excited about the argument of security Can you rely on those pesky canades? Yeah, exactly How can we trust other countries to provide us with our food supplied and people are worried about that? So what would you say to that? Okay, well, you have to understand that historically famine and malnutrition were the law of Human beings the world over. Why was that? Well, because it doesn't matter in which ecosystem you live. It doesn't matter what you produce You will have bad years from time to time, you know a drought the flood Epidemics that will kill your livestock People might remember even if you're young that two years ago the Midwest had a serious drought Did anyone starve in the Midwest? No, not as far as I know and people have to remember that The famine and malnutrition were defeated by one thing long-distance transportation And that is because I think of it as aging your beds or spreading the risks of food production The more you rely on people all over the place The more it is likely that people in some regions will have very good years You know bumper crops while other people elsewhere will have very terrible years But if you can move a lot of food cheaply between locations Then people who have good year can help people who have bad years But of course a few years on the road the people who have a terrible harvest might have a bumper crop on people that have good years might have a bad harvest so Food security historically was achieved by spreading the risk and delocalizing essentially food production Now the food security argument is valid in one context if you only have one supplier And things get rough between you, but let's say you want to buy wheat today or corn Well, you can buy wheat from canada, australia, france, the united states Even india at one point became so good following the great revolution that they were able to export wheat So let's say that you're the japanese the people in the world that depend the most on Foreign sources for their food supply Have japanese starves since the end of the second world? No, they have not because they have multiple suppliers And so again keep in mind that if you want to keep all your production local You will have bad years and you will starve and you will have famines because this is what happened historically The more suppliers you have including local suppliers The better off you are because again Some years your farmers might have bad years But other years your farmers might have access to people who are willing to pay a lot for what they produce because They they have bad years. So spreading the risk is the weight is the road to food security Putting all your eggs in one regional basket, which is what? Local food activists to you know raise the food security fly what you to do is a recipe for disaster It always was it always It's interesting that you mentioned it So part of the reason that your book was written is because your wife is from japan Uh, somebody somebody said oh, well japan they uh, they're the most parasitical people in the world I was going to try to be nicer, but no that is That is exactly yeah, it was a canadian academic Americans don't feel bad about it now. So this prominent academic said in front of my wife Well, if you under the people That's uh, japanese people are parasitical because they import food from places like new zealand brazil and the united states Well, if you've ever been to japan, you have a lot of people who live on tiny islands where you really don't have a lot of good agricultural land But when did the japanese do well? Most of them live in large cities and they created all sorts of things that we use in our daily life I don't know about that camera, but it might have been produced in japan But then they're not Parasitical in the sense that they create value and then they buy stuff From people who have good growing conditions a lot of land not too many people countries like canada What's wrong with that again? You have more technology more wealth being created Perhaps the laptop that we're using now is made in japan You know you can buy the book in paper form, but you can buy it online these days A lot of these technologies were probably developed by japanese people Who because they did not have to produce food in terrible conditions or die of starvation Were able to develop technologies that benefited everyone else It's really not parasitic. It's symbiotic. It's symbiotic because again they buy. That's what my wife always says they buy They know that's for charity. Yeah, exactly value and importance And the other interesting thing about japan is um, one of the reasons that they were so Aggressive in their foreign policy is because they were trying to not trade. So that well what happened Well, perhaps your audience is a bit young, but What happened in the late 19th century is that japan opened up to the rest of the world They began to exporting to export goods to north america. They were accused of being you know Providing cheap labor. So the american government began to put barriers to trade in terms of importing goods from japan And this paved the way for for the worst elements in japanese society You know fascist military types to take over and if I miss some of the rationale the rationale was that okay Well, if we won't be allowed to trade and if the food won't come to japan japan will go to the food So they invaded. I want to grow rice and when they did Korea and manchuria to grow soybeans and the rationale was that well, we cannot rely on trade to feed us And you know, there's an old saying that says something like, you know Deprive a man of his meal for one day. You will lie deprive is a man of his meal for two days He will steal and deprive a male A man of his meal for three days and he will kill And you know the old saying if goods don't cross borders armies eventually will I think we had vivid illustration of that In the early 20th century But you know these days nobody's afraid of the japanese why because they rely on the rest of the world to supply about 70 percent of their galleries and everybody benefits and the japanese don't worry about food No, because they have multiple suppliers and plenty of because they're productive because they have money plenty of people will want I don't want to sell them food. Um, so we have a couple of questions that I think will uh, also tie into food security Um, I have one question from india Uh, and I'm gonna ask the two together because I think that they go together Um, so they want to know how we will feed a world of eight billion people with uh, if we can feed a world of Eight billion people with the help of organic farming Uh, we won't be self harm, uh hunger and self Let me put it this way. The problem is that uh, Organ age as one major flaw and it is infertilizer In north america, you can get good yields with organic because they rely on the manure of conventional dairy productions So you have a dairy cows will eat genetically modified sardines Let's say and from that manure then you produce organic food but there's simply not enough manure in the world to uh, produce food that way and uh, because organic for reasons that are beyond me Organic rules prevent the use of synthetic fertilizers. You simply cannot there's just not enough fertilizer in the world um, it's okay, so that that was and then they were concerned about the ability to uh, stop planet change and solve hunger, uh with industrial farming on plantations and then a similar question The un is predicting a 50 increase in the world food demand by 2030 What kinds of technological advances are required to support the world's increasing population in its demand for food? Would it be a good idea to grow your own food at home using alternative farming methods that we talked about earlier? This is the same person who asked about the farming in cities um And with software and hardware to automate the growing process and make growing your own food cool Okay Well, let me put it this way A lot of urban farmers think that they're cool and they use sophisticated tools And that's rural farmers somehow or not Trust me farming in the countryside today relies a lot more on plastic software, you know drip irrigation agriculture Roundup ready soybeans and stuff. There has been a lot of innovation in the countryside And there's nothing really that you can do in the city that you cannot do more cheaply in the countryside even using the same general approaches so, uh You know Organic farming is essentially a humanity used to produce food all the way up to the late 19th century to the 19th century when You know material fertilizers came along then synthetic fertilizers and modern technologies These technologies were uh invented for a reason And it is because you know There's the same today that there's enough food in the world to feed everybody. The problem is one of distribution Are we still on? Oh, I just I've just accidentally put uh put this in the background. Sorry guys Okay, now well the point I was trying to make is that yes today there are roughly a little bit more than seven billion people There's enough food to feed seven billion people, but we still have a billion people who are hungry two things to say about that Uh, there's only enough food to feed seven billion people because of modern technologies organic could not do it And the only reason and and today though about one person in seven is malnourished In the 1950s when the world population was about 2.5 billion people You still had about a billion people who were not Were malnourished it was one in 2.5 by then by then So there are a lot more people today. We're actually eat a lot more We have a lot longer more taller and healthier than our ancestors But somehow with new technologies We've actually reduced the proportion of people who overall are malnourished. So yes, there are problems in our system today But things were a lot worse a few decades ago I mean, I will not go into the green revolution in India and I know that this is a touchy topic But the point is that people used to starve in India And now you have people who are malnourished in India and you know, things are certainly not perfect And I've seen it with my own eyes But things are a lot better than they used to be And so I believe that the lesson that you should draw from history is that we need to keep pushing forward with ever more inventive and creative ways of creating lesser problems than those that exist at the moment Not turn back the clock to some to the imaginary bliss of, you know, of an era where people used to starve really literally on a regular basis and some of the technology that I'm sad to say we won't get to talk about but I what I was trying to do when I accidentally showed you all my desktop was I was trying to bring up this picture of modern modern vegetables versus the vegetables that we were have had in the past So if you look at the corn picture, for example, what you have on the left side is TLC Which is the wild ancestor of corn and it took a while to establish It was the wild ancestor of corn because it looks so different But the point is that over thousands of years, you know, the ancestors of the Maya essentially where people were living in Central Mexico created something that looked like modern corns But it was a process that was long and fastidious On the left what you have there is a picture of the modern supermarket tomato normal size And to the right it's a wild ancestor and again Through a lot of trial and error, you know farmers in the past created those things But why do we have these things today rather than the wild ancestor? Well, because you get a lot more food a lot more calories and you know proteins or whatever from Yeah So again, we need to Realize what our ancestors lives were really like and again understand that things were developed for a reason And trust me we could you would not eat a lot of ketchup before only producing With those little little it's very cute. Yeah, there wouldn't be very and you can grow them in your backyard if you want to But honestly, you won't get a lot of ketchup Um, so we there are some more questions, but unfortunately we're out of time I'm gonna quickly I've got one more poll for you guys. So I'm gonna bring it up Um and give you a chance Um So the question is oh, I'm sorry. This is actually the wrong question. I don't know how that happened So I'm gonna close it. You don't get to answer the last question. Um Sorry about that guys. I don't know how that happened. Uh, so I will just go to our next To let you know what we've got coming up at big ideas live Our next event will be uh called what can you learn from a city neighborhood? And hopefully you find that agent pier knows what it's about because he does some work in the same The same topic but hope at kind of being able to look around the city and see what you can learn about human cooperation And the way that we build communities and what makes them work Um, I will be as I said giving away copies of pier's book I'll let you know either tonight or tomorrow. Uh, whether you uh won And if you're interested in these topics and you can't wait for me to send you something I've put a couple of uh freemen articles. The freemen is a publication of uh feed the foundation of economic education And it's uh, the first one is called droughts famines and markets And the second one is called debunking the shop small saturday rationale if you go to fee.org Which is our website You can uh, just look them up and you'll find them very easily If you have any questions about anything we talked a bit about today or future events Uh, you can contact me my email is on the screen there at janielson at fee.org And I want to thank pier uh for appearing with us today and talking about these important topics If you have any other questions don't hesitate to let us know but for now we're going to sign off Thanks guys