“But in Las Vegas, that would mean serving cactus and sand.”

I just loved this (ever so slightly grumpy) article about locavores by Pavia Rosati, a New York based food and travel writer:

But when your ideals cross the line from practice to pontification, you’ve gone too far. When does that happen? When you send an entrée back to the kitchen because the chef served it with a lemon wedge, and you’re in Chicago. When you spend less time at Sunday brunch hearing about your friends’ Saturday antics and more time raising a silent, judgmental eyebrow at their lack of dietary discipline. Mango juice? How very dare they.

No one can honestly argue that a can of agri-giant corn kernels bathed in goo tastes better than an ear of fresh local corn, but hearing locavores yammer on about it makes me want to wallow in a big vat of corn syrup. 

Entertaining, challenging and balanced - a great article. Do read it!

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Local food - yes please. Agricultural protection - No thanks

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P. J. O’Rourke in his attempt to explain the US Government, “Parliament of Whores”, took a look at agricultural policy. This was his conclusion:

“I spent two and a half years examining the American political process. All that time I was looking for a straightforward issue. But everything I investigated – election campaigns, the budget, lawmaking, the court system, bureaucracy, social policy – turned out to be more complicated than I had thought. There were always angles I hadn’t considered, aspects I hadn’t weighed, complexities I’d never dreamed of. Until I got to agriculture. Here at last is a simple problem with a simple solution. Drag the omnibus farm bill behind the barn, and kill it with an ax.”

We’re no better over here. In fact we’re worse. We’ve created a pseudo-moral stance to justify tariffs, import quotas, intervention prices and all the panoply of agricultural protection. A parallel “rural development” industry that talks of local food, area protection, origin protection, sustainable this, and low carbon the other. And this industry cuddles up to those of us who like good, fresh produce and pretend that the only way we (middle class foodies) can get this lovely local produce is to support anti-trade, anti-business measures that destroy value and jobs.

I’m no fan of supermarkets – that privileged bunch of businesses enjoying the largess of a lenient property tax system. And I think we should do more for town centres – like having free parking and lower business rates, for example. But I do not believe that extending the inefficient protectionist measures of the Common Agriculture Policy or having a further raft of protections for food processes will do anything to improve access to local food.

So no I don't want national "food security" strategies, bans on air freight, restrictions of lorry movements or all the various protectionist measures dreamed up by the "rural development" industry. I just want good fresh produce - and will have it because I'm prepared to pay more for it. Simples.

I’m with PJ on this – agricultural protection serves farmers poorly, provides no real security, is corrupt and leads to expensive food. Kill it. And while we’re about this we can kill the “rural development” industry too.

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