Ever head of Peter Singer? Salon did an interview with him. This Q&A provided the first in a series of surprises.
In your book you say that socially responsible folks in San Francisco would do better to buy their rice from Bangladesh than from local growers in California. Could you explain?
This is in reference to the local food movement, and the idea that you can save fossil fuels by not transporting food long distances. This is a widespread belief, and of course it has some basis. Other things being equal, if your food is grown locally, you will save on fossil fuels. But other things are often not equal. California rice is produced using artificial irrigation and fertilizer that involves energy use. Bangladeshi rice takes advantage of the natural flooding of the rivers and doesn’t require artificial irrigation. It also doesn’t involve as much synthetic fertilizer because the rivers wash down nutrients, so it’s significantly less energy intensive to produce. Now, it’s then shipped across the world, but shipping is an extremely fuel-efficient form of transport. You can ship something 10,000 miles for the same amount of fuel necessary to truck it 1,000 miles. So if you’re getting your rice shipped to San Francisco from Bangladesh, fewer fossil fuels were used to get it there than if you bought it in California.
Other surprises included the factoid more people are in prison in the US than derive their primary income from agriculture; laying hens have a “useful” life span of a year to 18 months after which they’re disposed of in the cheapest manner possible; and, 284 gallons of oil go into fattening a 1,250-pound cow for slaughter. All of this comes from Singer’s book The Way We Eat Why our Food Choices Matter.
This is highly thought provoking. I’m off to read more about Peter Singer. Starting with his homepage, then moving on to his wikipedia entry after which I’ll explore this page of links that provides access to interviews, articles and more. Time for thinking.
An introduction to Mr. Singer’s ethics is found in this New York Times (freely available, no registration required) The Singer Solution to World Poverty.
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