The food dilemma
One of the ironies of the food dilemma we now face is that after several decades where the price of highly processed and often imported food has fallen steadily healthy alternatives have become just that - alternatives for many people rather than integral to our diet. So when the price of food suddenly starts pushing up as it has been doing, we are left scrambling because access to locally grown, unprocessed food is no longer available in the same way it was a generation ago. And then we are left a food system that seems to be full of hidden costs.
For instance Celsias has a story on the links between fast food and climate change:
The Cheeseburger Footprint Calculator is pretty interesting. They clock the average cheeseburger as coming in at 3.6-6.1 kg of CO2 emissions per cheeseburger, calculating in the methane emissions from cattle production. …that is the equivalent of 6.5 to 19.6 million SUVs on the road in addition to the 16 million gas guzzlers we already have.
And Freakonomics has a challenging interview on the economics of obesity where health economist Eric Finkelstein (author of the book, The Fattening of America) debates, among other things, whether people with healthy diets cost the country more because they live for longer and thus expend more taxes over time. It also argues that technology allows us to:
…pop some pills or get out clogged arteries cleaned out with relative ease, thus lowering the health costs of obesity. In fact, research by the Center for Disease Control reveals that today’s obese population has better blood pressure and cholesterol values than normal-weight adults did 30 years ago. As any economist worth his weight will tell you, if the costs of being obese go down, and there are people who like to eat and don’t like to exercise, we are bound to see obesity rates go up.
All in all a strange, but prevalent, way of doing economics where the only way to address a problem is by adding a new pill into the mix. As Celsias notes cheap cost more often than not actually means hidden cost:
There is an animal welfare cost. A human health cost. An environmental cost. And last but not least, a high rate of suicide amongst farmers who cannot even negotiate a price which covers the cost of production from the food retailers.
Is it really worth it?
February 11th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Who can afford to buy butter in the shop?
What Country do they import it from ?
Why is this deluded Country run by nitwits without a clue !
February 11th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
d4j, the price of butter here is determined by what the monopoly producer, Fonterra, can sell it overseas for.
It doesn’t reflect the cost of production at all (although if the real cost of production - i.e. the greenhouse gas emmissions -were taken into account, the cost of production may be closer to what you actually pay).
But the reality is that we pay what Fonterra can get for it overseas (less the freight costs) rather than the real cost of producing it with a reasonable profit margin for the farmer and processor.
February 11th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
The alternative being that farmers could turn down income because they love us so much. Nice thought.
Actually, the stuff about obesity being cheaper for society than a healthy population is accurate. I blogged about a Dutch study that found exactly that. The mechanism can be summed up as:
It seems that although smoking and getting fat are extremely bad for you, you end up dying a lot sooner, of things that kill you quickly like heart attacks or lung cancer. Thin, healthy types end up dragging on for decades of slow, expensive deterioration.
February 11th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Problem is thin people are to be expected in the future with the expensive price of butter and all that psycho melt.
More of a concern is the million or so kiwi’s on anti -depressants.Anti Helengrad pills are a must.
Or, is it any wonder a million kiwi’s have fled this cot case madness, corrupt country run by communist cronies.
February 11th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
ha, what?
February 11th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
not just fast food … here is an interesting article about the slow sex movement
“It isn’t just fast food that reminds us fast is not always better. The frantic pace of everyday life seems to impede our ability to make changes that are increasingly necessary for a sustainable future. Many have begun to realize that a primary step toward positive social change is to slow down.”
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/09/6943/
February 11th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
hmm, d4j have you got any evidence to support your assertions that a million NZers are on anti-depressants or that a million NZers have left the country because of the Labour govt?
No, I thought not.
February 11th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
Stuey, I’d come up with an interesting reply but I need to make time for some slow sex.
More seriously, one reason to stay wealthy is so I can afford decent food and access to a garden. In Sydney there are quite a few community gardens, but it’s tricky to grow much more than supplements to supermarket shopping that way. One more reason to move back home (or would doing that just push house prices even further up and thus disadvantages the kiwis who stayed home?)
February 12th, 2008 at 12:34 am
The farmers and Fonterra are doing very nicely out of the rise of world prices for milk products, which is nice ‘n all, but for two annoying featurettes, the first being that dairy farming is a bit of an environmental nightmare, and secondly the benefit of high milk product prices isn’t being trickled down to the greater New Zealand; in fact the opposite is occuring: milk product is becoming a luxury item.
What everyday New Zealanders want is fair pricing of dairy product by NZ wage standards.
So… I propose a levy on milk production, based on some datum point when milk was a sensible price, minus inflation. The levy should subsidise dairy product. Of course, to not fall foul of the WTO, the subsidy has to be on all dairy product, not just NZ dairy product.
The resource demands of dairy farming, and in particular, electricity demand for irrigation pumps are so severe that prices are being skewed. As a wider issue, I also believe that electricity consumption should come under the auspices of the RMA.
February 12th, 2008 at 9:11 am
I would be totally opposed to subsidising dairy products in any way. Not that I am against subsidies per se, but it seems a basic maxim that we subsidise things we want to encourage and tax things we want to discourage. It makes no sense to subsidise an unhealthy product many people are intolerant to, that is ruining the environment. Far better to subsidise organic production, and use the levy on milk products for this purpose.
I also seriously doubt that the cost of thin healthy people is more than unhealthy fat ones. It firstly assumes that living humans are a liability more than an asset. The long lived humans will not just be consuming subsidised products, they would be working longer paying taxes and contributing towards productivity. Has the environmental costs of all the extra fatty food been factored in? And remember a British Medical Journal paper that found vegetarians (who would presumably be thinner and healthier on average) had a higher IQ than flesh eaters. These people would therefore tend to be the ones contributing to the economiy through more innovatinve ideas. Of course there is no suggestion that being healthy caused IQ shifts, rather that those with high IQs woudl tend to think for themselves and not simply buy into what the mainstream does for its own sake.
February 12th, 2008 at 9:20 am
It is my belief that NZ dairy product prices are set by Fonterra who, in turn, calculate it by what they can get overseas. Fonterra is NOT a govt department, ergo, the govt cann’t tell them how to price their products.
Fonterra could easily sell all their produce overseas. Then we would be buying imported dairy products. A conundrum.
Dairy farmers, sharemilkers, have nothing to do with setting the price of raw milk. Just Fonterra, or any other small, independant milk company.
If farmers in the future have to pay more for electricity, water, environmental clean factors, it will affect their income but not the price of the final product.
For sure, dairy farmers, (not sharemilkers) are able to vote at Fonterra meetings but not able to set prices.
February 12th, 2008 at 9:57 am
“Problem is thin people are to be expected in the future with the expensive price of butter… blah blah… corrupt country run by communist cronies.”
Yeah, what kind of corrupt government lets butter prices be set by the international market? Typical bloody communists!
February 12th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Sam B the same kind of communists that take control and install fear through nanny state legislation with their insidious big sister know best attitude.
The same twisted communists who employ more spin doctors than the kiwi media has at its disposable.
EDITED to remove unnecessary personal abuse. Frog.
February 12th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Yup, I hear Helen Clark takes time out from negotiating free trade deals to read Das Kapital under her bedclothes with a torch.
February 12th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
# Sam Buchanan Says:
February 12th, 2008 at 9:57 am
> Yeah, what kind of corrupt government lets butter prices be set by the international market? Typical bloody communists!
Indeed, it’s hard to think of any mechanism other than communist collectivism that would prevent butter prices being determined by the international market…
February 13th, 2008 at 4:56 am
It’s probably a good thing if high dairy prices mean people start buying olive oil margarine instead of butter.
February 13th, 2008 at 9:00 am
or..you can ‘come off’ butter..
by using avocado as your ‘methadone’..
c’mon now..!
staunch-up..!..
i gave up heroin/cocaine/tobacco/alcohol/coffee/meat/dairy..
all i’m asking is…
phil(whoar.co.nz)
February 13th, 2008 at 9:09 am
you have no idea how much your body will thank you..
..and the bucket-loads of energy you will gain..!
(that (ongoing) energy-burst is because the body isn’t fighting to process the (ahem!) cr*p most people pump into their bodies..)
butter-fat-sodden bread/toast..?
for breakfast..?..
(shudder..!..)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
February 13th, 2008 at 9:47 am
and those who mewl..’i couldn’t live without cheese..”..?
which benchmark of ‘pathetic’ are they clinging to..eh..?
it’s a ‘journey’..folks..!
becoma an obamaite..
and ‘embrace the change’..!
“yes we can..!)
btw that was a decent sort of ’serve’ jeanette gave the dairy industry/labour yesterday..
(not on ‘vegan’/humanitarian/personal health grounds..of course..
but on the loud environmental/polluting/degrading(ed) waterways imperatives..)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
February 13th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
well i agree with weedeater when he says go veggie (and legalise hempseed). and liberate the dairy herds!
‘think global, act local’ by becoming a vegetairan and one day we will have ‘critical mass and everyone will be riding bikes too. and cannabis cafes instead of prisons and ‘youth crime’ wont it be wonderful!!
June 3rd, 2008 at 3:34 pm
I have been reading that using kangaroos instead of cows would solve many problems… i think this is what greenpeace is advocating…
June 12th, 2008 at 12:36 am
“And remember a British Medical Journal paper that found vegetarians (who would presumably be thinner and healthier on average) had a higher IQ than flesh eaters.”
I would be interested in reading that. Is it on the web? I wonder if the vegetarians and “flesh eaters” (makes us sound like Hannibal Lecter) tested were all from the same area and had the same background.