BEWARE THE LOCO-VORES

The latest twist in the endless saga of Greenie nuttiness. These guys must have very little to do with themselves if they have time to worry about this stuff. I'll bet not many of them are raising families

Anti-globalists and environmentalists often decry the increasingly complex interactions between producers and consumers. They prefer that people buy products grown or made closer to home even when they cost substantially more than goods transported longer distances.

Take, for example, Locavores, a San Francisco-based "group of concerned culinary adventurers" who try to only eat foods that were grown within a hundred miles of that city. This summer the group suggested that people try to go the entire month of August without buying food produced more than that distance from home.

Locavores obviously has not heard of "roundabout methods of production" as described by Austrian economist Eugen von B”hm-Bawerk in the late 1800s. He concluded that productivity increases often result from more time-consuming methods of production. (See Economics for Real People by Gene Callahan, pp. 133-37, for a short explanation of the concept.)

The only reason a longer production process would be adopted is because it is more economically efficient than the alternatives. In a developed economy most of the direct approaches to increased productivity have already been tried and only the roundabout ones remain to be pursued.

The Locavores claim that our food travels an average of 1,500 miles en route to our homes. They do not cite a source, but that seems reasonable to me. Sound economic reasons have caused food-supply chains to lengthen over the past 50 years. Most of the population growth of the United States over that time has been in the coastal states, while much of the best farmland is in the heartland of the country. People have chosen to live in suburbs with more living space, which means that land which 50 years ago could have grown locally produced food now is unavailable for food production.

As family incomes have gone up over that time, we have sought out more varied diets. People in Boston have grown accustomed to Florida orange juice and California whole oranges. We also want oranges 365 days a year, not just as a Christmas treat, as was common a few generations ago. Chilean grapes are available in my suburban-Chicago grocery store in the middle of the winter. Consumers in Minneapolis would have a pretty bland diet in January if all their food came from within a hundred miles.

The supply chain has also lengthened because North Dakota is simply a better place to grow high-protein wheat for pasta than is Florida. Economies of scale in production and processing also create longer supply chains. Many places in the country could grow processing pumpkins, but about 60 percent of the harvested acreage is in central Illinois because that provides the greatest economic efficiencies.

What is true in the United States is even truer in the rest of the world. Our country is blessed with some of the best farmland in the world, a varied climate, and a large population. Try anything close to the locavore approach in Tokyo or Helsinki, and it would be a disaster.

The Locavores website makes obvious that their concerns are broader than just eating locally to get fresh food. The members believe that corporations are the principal beneficiaries of the global food system rather than family farms, local businesses, and consumers. In reality, corporations serve as a vital link between crop and livestock producers and consumers. A family hog farmer in central Nebraska needs some type of business, such as a corporation, to transform a hog into a pork crop and transport it to consumers on the West Coast. Local firms in central Nebraska would be out of business without an intermediary linking farmers to consumers in far off cities.

More here




Facts catch the loudmouths on the hop

The keen defence of kangaroos means real dangers to native animals are overlooked, writes a really sincere environmentalist -- Barry Cohen. Barry Cohen was an Australian federal legislator from 1969 until 1990. He recently sold his feral-animal-proof wildlife sanctuary on the Central Coast, which was created to show that the exclusion of cats and foxes would ensure native wildlife would not only survive, but thrive.

On my first trip to Britain as federal environment minister, having just announced the 1984 annual kangaroo cull quota of 2 million, I was unprepared for the reception at my London hotel. A seven-metre-high inflatable kangaroo and a sign, "MR COHEN THE KANGAROO KILLER IS IN TOWN", greeted me.

I asked the protester what concerned him. "This Cohen fellow is massacring Australia's national symbol. They'll soon be extinct," he bellowed. "Which species do you object to Australia culling?" He looked at me blankly. "Do you know how many species there are?" After a long silence he answered, "Three? Five?"

"Close. There are 51 species of kangaroos (macropods) of which seven are believed to be extinct with many others rare, endangered or vulnerable. Smaller species, under five kilograms, such as the parma, yellow foot, brushtail and bridle nail-tailed rock wallabies, are very rare and highly protected. The species culled are the eastern and western grey kangaroos, the red kangaroo, the wallaroo, whiptail, agile and Bennett's wallaby. Increased crops, pastures and dams and the lack of natural predators ensures these larger species are often in their tens of millions and in plague proportions. If we didn't control their numbers there wouldn't be any farmers left."

He looked at me with disbelief. "How do you know all this?" "I'm Barry Cohen."

Discussion elicited that he had been fed "information" by some Australian conservation organisations. The lies some told were legendary, their predictions grotesque. Foremost among the predictions was the imminent extinction of the "kangaroo". It never happened. A few years ago the cull quota rose to about 7 million. This year, it's just under 4 million.

When their dire predictions failed to eventuate the conservationists talked of the inhumane methods of killing. One fanatic produced a photograph of a kangaroo supposedly skinned alive to save the cost of a bullet. I suggested she try catching a kangaroo and skinning it alive. Not surprisingly, the tabloid press and TV had a field day.

I had thought this nonsense had finished but with the release of the book Kangaroos: Myths and Realities, by the Australian Wildlife Protection Council, the usual suspects surfaced mouthing the same old cliches. No one ever asks them the obvious question: "You were predicting the extinction of the kangaroo 40 years ago, yet despite an annual cull quota averaging about 3 to 4 million the population of the culled species is still in the tens of millions. How is that?"

I loathe this nonsense because of the damage it does to the cause of the preservation of species that are genuinely endangered - the small species - and the failure by governments to tackle the problem of the introduced predators - cats and foxes - that are also destroying a vast array of native wildlife including birds, reptiles and amphibians. More than 20 years ago the NSW government, under pressure from the anti-fox-fur lobby, abolished the bounty on fox skins. The fox population exploded. The effect on native wildlife was devastating. I take a different view from the animal liberationists. Every woman who wears a fox fur should get an Order of Australia medal.

And then there are cats. Beautiful creatures, but they have no place in the Australian bush. No matter how well fed, they are natural hunters. You can have cats or native wildlife; you can't have both. Fortunately, a more environmentally aware generation is opting not to have cats as pets. Don't, however, hold your breath waiting for politicians or conservationists to call for action against cats. One politician in Western Australia did and was pilloried. Foxes and cats do more damage to our native wildlife than all the farmers, loggers, miners and developers put together. The latter do their share of damage but don't come close to that wrought by the ferals.

The danger from the latest outburst against the scientifically determined kangaroo cull is that it will divert attention from the task of preserving genuinely endangered native wildlife.




One More Chance For Sound Energy Policy

As debate begins in the U.S. Senate on an energy bill, government needs to remove barriers outside of Hurricane Alley that restrict domestic energy production and refining that would benefit consumers, according to NCPA Senior Fellow H. Sterling Burnett, noting that private firms both prepared for and responded to the recent hurricanes better and with more effectiveness than governments.

"The moratorium on new oil and gas development and production along the Atlantic shelf and California must end, and we must move forward with production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)," Burnett said. "A disruption in the supply of energy, especially gasoline, as a result of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita has highlighted a problem that policy makers have ignored for too long." A bill has already passed the House of Representatives, but contains several potential pitfalls, Burnett explained:

* The House bill does not provide for expanding energy production outside the Gulf of Mexico.

* Political road blocks - federal, state and local - continue to inhibit expansion, even though market conditions were already encouraging companies to seek out new opportunities.

* Allowing new refineries to be built on public lands could preempt state and local restrictions, but the bill should make it clear that any leasing arrangements should be done at market rates with subsidies.

Burnett also pointed out that new energy legislation need not address price gouging, since government already has the power to investigate such behavior through the Federal Trade Commission and other agencies and, indeed, an investigation of pricing following the devastation from Katrina and Rita is already underway. Based on past experience, another study of the issue will be a waste of scarce federal resources at a time when money and manpower are scarce. "There is very little that can be done short-term to improve America's energy prospects in the short term," Burnett added, but allowing states to share the wealth from new energy development off their coasts is a good start to correcting these errors."

Source

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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