Conservative support for the green food movement
John Schwenkler from The American Conservative has an interesting article on how green food movements like Locavorism and Slow Food exemplify conservative values.
The production, distribution and preparation of food is an emotive sustainability and health issue. So it’s not surprising that food distributed by small, independent farms fits tidily into Schwenkler’s conservative ethos.
The proposal, put slightly differently, is that our attitudes toward food-which nourishes and sustains us, which binds us most fundamentally to place, family, market, and community-provide a measure of our respect for what Russell Kirk called the “Permanent Things.” We are not just what we eat but how we eat. The cultivation and consumption of our meals are activities as distinctively human as walking, talking, loving, and praying.
Schwenkler argues that many of the goals of the small local food movement are closely linked to conservative economics:
Adopting an alternative view of food does not require rejecting the possibility of a free and prosperous market economy. Indeed, the rise of the New American Diet-meals eaten in a rush and very often alone, made from processed and prepackaged ingredients-was not solely or even primarily the product of Adam Smith’s invisible hand. Historian Harvey Levenstein has argued that the spate of government regulations in the wake of early 20th-century food-safety scares played a crucial role in the rise of industrialized agriculture and centralized food processors
…the centralization of processing and production into an ever shrinking number of multinational corporations, the incredible distances over which food travels before it reaches our tables (an average of 1,500 miles in the United States), the loss of idiosyncratic foods and food cultures, and so on-that should raise the greatest concerns for traditional conservatives. “Eating is an agricultural act,” writes Wendell Berry. But Slow Food International founder Carlo Petrini argues that it is also a political one-a deed no less significant than the ways we cast our votes.
I don’t agree with all the points Schwenkler makes in his article but it is interesting to see a conservative analysis of the political food movement and a recognition that it is founded on important moral and ethical positions. Where he argues:
Neighborhood gardens, cooking classes in schools and church basements, and the promotion of local and co-operative markets are the kinds of projects that will build community; revitalize regional economies; encourage stable, healthy families; and instill the kinds of civic attitudes that make centralized government appear burdensome
he could almost unwittingly be quoting Sue Kedgley.
Hat tip: worldchanging.com
August 15th, 2008 at 9:10 am
Great post.
There’s an ongoing (but fading) myth that environmentalism is in someway intrinsically leftwing. Of course as this post and article clearly points out, environmentalist values and politics have a lot more in common with the traditions and policies of the rightwing and conservative.
Historically the Green Party of NZ has had at least a leftwing tinge, but the trajectory of the party is clearly towards the middle of the political spectrum, and ultimately it will operate as a centrist party - and it will perform this role much better than other non-parties like NZ First and United Future.
Some excellent analysis of the conservativism of the environmentalist movement can be found on the “environmentalism” section of the libertarian leftwing website Spiked:
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/issues/C32/
Bryce
http://www.liberation.org.nz
August 15th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Bryce, all i’ve ever seen from those guys re: environmentalism is how it’s all about communism/the need for control/people hating/wealth hating. Could you point out a specific article on spiked about the ‘conservatism’ aspect?
I take it you regard NZ First and United Future as non-parties due to their reliance on a certain figurehead to get them into parliament?
August 15th, 2008 at 11:15 am
Further evidence that the Green party has conservative roots was provided by BluePeter in the previous post - quoting a Guardian article:
“Large sectors of the green movement actually have their origins in a quite different body of thinking. They are to be found in the writings of those hostile to modern industry, which was seen as destroying the integrity of nature - essentially a romantic, conservative reaction to industrialism.”
I personally disagree with the conclusions that article came to and BP’s suggestion that it is a valid description of Green politics in 2008 - but I think it’s an interesting debate anyway.
The Greens are, however, shockingly conservative in many ways: valuing people, communities and relationships, quality of life, quality of our environment, clean air, clean water, productive non-toxified soils, our fellow creatures - terribly romantic and conservative. Clearly they’re living in the past.
August 15th, 2008 at 11:51 am
The fact that many conservatives support such schemes is a reflection of the fact that the family (generally prized as the key unit of society) by conservatives reflects both left and right-wing values.
Within the family, people share resources, care for each other and set up shared enterprises, such as family farms and businesses - the family is inherently socialist.
However the family deals with the outside world in a capitalistic manner. Family enterprises exist in the economy and trade like any other enterprise. The family is also inherently capitalist.
The family represents the best of both ways of thinking, providing both a basis for successful enterprise and a welfare system to support those in need.
http://www.thefamilyparty.org.nz
August 15th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Fantastic thread, and thanks to all who contributed. Well done !
August 15th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
I wouldn’t say the Green Party is conservative so much as that it’s agnostic to conservatism and liberalism insofar as they’re silent on its policy pillars. That means we bring in a lot of good ideas and philosophies from both camps.
August 15th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
If you want to see one of the best illustrations of the shared values of Libertarians and certain Green values then I recommend Pollan’s “the Omnivore’s Dillemma” where he finds libertarian farmers fighting the massive industriallisation of abbatoirs and the government subsidies of corporate farming and how the combination of the big unions, the big bureacracies and the big corporates make family farming so difficult.
The farmers he talk to show great ingenuity in getting round the rules. eg If you go to a chicken farm and buy the chicken you can then kill it on the spot. But he cannot because he is then operating an abbatoir and has to comply with a host of rules designed to make sure you are a factory farmer rather than raising a few hundred free range chooks.
When Sir Roger Douglas removed the subsidies he stopped the corporatisation of farming in NZ more than most people realise and that is why we have so many small farmers growing such a wide range of produce from truffles to wasabi and olives and wine etc.
That is why Sir Roger is actually the greatest environmentalist NZ ever had.
When I watch the hills around the Kaipara gradually repair their eroded slopes I give thanks to Roger for getting rid of all those hill country subsidies and SMPs.
And so should every green.
August 15th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
During my work in Canada last year, one of the things that struck me about the Green Party of Ontario was how many former conservatives were active supporters. They have little sympathy with the religious elements and unwitting fascists who tend to dominate modern conservatism in Canada. The way they are described in the Canadian context is “Joe Clark conservatives”. The small-c conservatives who belive in democracy, freedom, property and integrity….and reject the extremism of the religious right that sprang out of the Reform party and gradually took over the conservative party in Canada.
August 15th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Owen: You’re absolutely right about Sir Roger.
August 15th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Um, Owen, I might have to concede you are right, but it was an inadvertent spin-off, rather than Sir Roger’s intention.
And it was temporary. Dairying is now big industry that largely involves big monied players- there is no place in that industry now for someone like my father who used to milk a herd of 60 cows (and run a few pigs on the side) on farmland just out of Waiuku. The “family farm” is no more, unless the “family” are very wealthy.
August 16th, 2008 at 9:32 am
Every Dairy farmer I know is a family - it they are wealthy it is because Dairy is now generating the revenues that makes them so.
I know Roger quite well and how do you know it was not his intention.
He say Muldoons Think Big/Subsidy approach as applying to farming as much to every other sector of the economy and doing as much damage.
He was a pig farmer you know so he was not a city slicker who new nothing about much.
August 16th, 2008 at 11:48 am
# Owen McShane Says:
August 16th, 2008 at 9:32 am
> I know Roger quite well … He was a pig farmer you know so he was not a city slicker who new nothing about much.
No he wasn’t. He was a city-slicker accountant who bought a pig farm as an investment, and hired pig farmers to run it. When his pig farm went bankrupt, he explained the failure by saying it went wrong because he wasn’t an active pig farmer and didn’t know what was going on in his pig farm.
It’s also worth noting that it wasn’t a free range pig farm. It was one of those horrible ones where the pigs are locked up in wire cages, unable to do anything but eat and get fat - not exactly consistent with a man who claimed his guiding philosophy was about freedom.