Response to Mr. Wolfe prt 2 / 19: Localism

This is part 2 in a 14 part series responding to a critique of the environmental movement by Ross Wolfe. His blog, with the original post is linked to in the title.
Covered in this post:

Localism (be it food or commerce) and urban agriculture are elitist

Points made to support your line of thought are:

1. Locavores act ‘holier than thou’
   
2. Affording land for urban agriculture is only for the wealthy
   
3. Affording organic or local produce is only for the wealthy
   

Firstly, it may well be true the SOME locavores are rude or snobby. It is true of any population, group, subset, or community. Every human being has an in-born drive to belong to a tribe. This drive manifests in a number of ways, some hurtful to others, and some not so hurtful. For example “my tribe does not drive SUVs”. That can be fine, if it stops there, but for some people they feel insecure about the definition of their tribe, or their own inclusion in it, so they feel the need to lash out at those who are not part of their tribe, supposedly showing their tribe “look I am REALLY not in favour of SUVs, I just keyed that guy’s Hummer”. This is nothing more than a sign of insecurity, and these people should be pitied, perhaps even embraced rather than denigrated or insulted.

Secondly, the urban agriculture movement as it is occurring here in Canada, in Australia, and parts of non-British Europe is very free and very community oriented. Most of the Community Gardens are on municipal or provincially owned land. In some cases a poor neighbourhood will all pool together to buy an abandoned or derelict property from the city and turn it into the community garden and park for the children. An example of this took place in Spence neighborhood in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Another example of the NON-elitist nature of urban agriculture is the program run by SIFE Brandon (Student In Free Enterprise). Their community gardens program called “Green Futures” has, in one year, built 45 raised beds with a total of 2,100sf of growing space. Each bed produces 15 lbs of produce (total retail value of this produce is an estimated $2,000)!

Lastly, affording local produce is only for the wealthy. This one in particular amused and concerned me. The reason it amused me is because I have heard this argument time and again, and it is often shown to be either purposeful propaganda by a competitor or sadly misinformed. The reason it concerned me is because, if you HAVE actually done your research and contact a CSA (community supported agriculture) and asked about pricing and you have still found them to be more expensive than market prices… well then I am concerned that the farmers in your area are ripping you off. I suggest at LEAST finding out historical farm gate prices for the product you want (use an inflation calculator to bring it to current dollars) and compare with what the farmer is asking. Usually about 10% over farm gate is considered ok, 15% is ripping you off.

Personal example: My family (2 adults, 1 toddler and now an infant) collectively eat 2 lbs of green pepper a week.

• Local super market price: $2.50
  
• historical farm gate price(adjusted for inflation): $1.81
  
• add 10%: $1.99
  
• savings: $0.51 per pound
  
• annual savings: $53.04
  

Now think of similar savings across every food item you eat in a week. For our family it would be 10 different fruits and vegetables. That is an annual savings of $500! That is a lot of money to a poor family. Elitist? I do not think so! I think it is elitist to be sitting in an urban dwelling, at a computer (which most people cannot afford), citing sources that most people cannot even understand never mind have time to read!

I think there are many ways to go about engaging in urban agriculture. You can garden in boxes, in raised beds, in the ground or hydroponically; three of the four methods can be done on rooftops, basements, apartments, houses, or garages. Gardening can be for as little as 1% of your annual food needs or as much as 75%, it all depends on your resources available and what you choose to eat. The resources need not all be on you either; communities can bond together, work together to a common good, or each household do one vegetable or one part of the process.
For example, say Bob has a large back yard, but a bad back. Tim loves gardening, but has no land. Neither Bob nor Tim can pickle a cucumber to save their souls, but John is a natural. What do you think these three should do? Each of them go to the store and buy $50 of pickles a year, or each one contribute in their own way to save everyone the $50 a year? Each has contributed something that a capitalist would say has a monetary value: land, time, skills. If those resources are equal in value TO THEM to the $50 a year, then it is valuable for them to grow and pickle their own cucumbers.

Localism is about empowerment, not elitism; freedom, not subjugation. It does not have to be about an “US vs THEM”, it can instead be about “US with US” all benefiting one another. Economic Game Theory (think of the movie “A Beautiful Mind” or the tv series “Numb3rs”) shows that even when acting in our own self-interest the co-operative strategies are the most lucrative. While it is difficult to co-operate with Mexican immigrant farmers in California (over 2,000 miles away), it is fairly easy for me to co-operate with my neighbour.
In summary:

1. Locavores act ‘holier than thou’: some do, but this should be the standard by which an entire group are judged for snobs exist in every social group
   
2. Affording land for urban agriculture (UrAg) is only for the wealthy: UrAg can be done in your back yard or apartment balcony, if you have one square foot of space, you can have UrAg.
   
3. Affording organic or local produce is only for the wealthy: CSAs actually save the consumer money, and can be more profitable for the farmers as well!
   

I hope that answers that point. Look forward to the next post:
The environmentalist movement (EM) has a false, fetishized view of the rural life.