Everything is not peachy

THOMAS HOMER-DIXON AND SARAH WOLFE

From households to nations, we need to get serious about food self-sufficiency

…Self-sufficiency isn’t a sexy idea. At best, people who say they’re interested in being self-sufficient are stereotyped as dour, old-fashioned rural types. At worst, they’re seen as fanatical survivalists planning for an apocalypse. Economists also tell us that self-sufficiency is an anachronism. Instead, it is specialization that produces wealth, and economies – including the world economy – produce the most wealth when everyone, including countries, specializes in what they do best and then trades their products for the other things they need. The more specialization, the more connectivity among specialists, and the more trade along those connections, the better.

But there are problems with this model. As we specialize, we become more dependent on other people, industries and regions in the global economy. That may be fine for non-essential goods such as children’s toys and kitchen appliances, but should we depend on others for life’s essentials such as food? Also, specialization at the global level tends to reduce the diversity of producers and products – a small number of large, highly efficient producers often comes to dominate the market for specific goods. In complex systems from economies to ecologies, however, lower diversity usually means lower ability to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances. And, finally, all that connectivity among specialized producers around the world makes everyone more vulnerable to cascading system failures: a shock or failure in one part of the global system can propagate through the rest of the system in the blink of an eye, like a row of falling dominoes.



Taken to an extreme, the dominant economic model of specialization, connectivity and trade reduces the resilience of our communities and societies – our ability to take care of ourselves in volatile times.

In the case of the Niagara fruit-canning plant, the former owner, CanGro Foods, is a subsidiary of two giant multinational private equity firms specializing in leveraged buyouts. Such firms, by their very nature, have little interest in the well-being of specific regions or local communities, including their resilience. They’re interested in maximizing profit. Fruit processing is not an industry with rip-roaring returns, partly because consumers’ tastes are shifting to fresh fruit. So even though the Niagara plant was making money, CanGro wanted out. A last-minute attempt to save the plant, involving negotiations among CanGro, the province and two possible local buyers, fell through – with finger-pointing in every direction.

Now 2,000 acres of peach and pear orchards in the Niagara and adjoining regions are at risk of being torn out of the ground, while hundreds of people are out of work. And Ontario’s canned peaches will come from China.

Globe and Mail