Conscious Choice: The Loneliness of the Long Distance Rutabaga

September 1999 | Citizen at Large

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Rutabaga

by Jay Walljasper

Over the past decade or two, we have become savvy in gauging the environmental impact of the products we buy. We scrutinize potential purchases on the basis of their natural ingredients, their recycled content, their excess packaging, their toxicity, their use of non-renewable resources, their contribution to global warming, and whether animals have suffered in the their creation or testing. The total result of all this enlightened shopping has been profound; whole new categories of "green" merchandise have materialized on the food, cosmetic, and hardware shelves of our local stores, while certain environmentally-damaging products like CFC-laden aerosol cans (which damage the ozone layer) have virtually disappeared.

Yet many of us never think about the most ecologically-devastating aspect of the consumer items we buy: the environmental havoc spawned by goods that have traveled thousands of miles to our homes. A child’s toy, a bouquet of flowers, or a quart of milk produced across town will not cause pollution and squander energy on anywhere near the scale as one shipped from China, flown from Africa, or trucked from a distant dairy.

Shipping, air cargo, and trucking represent three of the most environmentally-damaging industries at work in the world today. I need to say nothing more than "Exxon Valdez" to point out the dangers inherent in fleets of boats moving products through coastal waters on their way to distant ports. But even the boats that don’t spring leaks leave a trail of pollution. Their giant turbines pump poisonous wastes into open waters while the marine life in harbors and waterways are wiped out by dredging operations to accommodate hulking tankers and barges. Human health is also threatened by the toxic heavy metals churned up from the bottoms of bays and rivers during dredging.

Long-distance transfer of goods by water also uses vast amounts of energy, but not nearly as much as shipping them by air. The recent boom in air cargo operations, including overnight mail and package services such as Federal Express, also adds to pollution problems, including the nightmares of people living near ever-noisier airports. Increasing demand for air shipments will eventually contribute to the need for new airports swallowing up open land and promoting sprawl, such as happened in Munich and Denver.

Truck traffic brings its own wasps’ nest of problems, including deadly accidents, congestion and noise on highways and city streets, a decline in the more environmentally-benign train networks, and massive (and expensive) wear and tear on roads. Trucks account for a surprisingly high proportion of the airborne emissions that taint our skies and stoke global warming trends. Trucking companies are also the most zealous lobbyists for new and wider roads, which has created an escalating cycle of environmental woes in North America (and now in Europe, as a result of the E.U.’s push for continent-wide trade).

Long-distance transportation is at the heart of the new, highly-touted global economy. How else could all this free trade — vegetables from Portugal, grain from Argentina, running shoes from Indonesia, electronics from Korea — occur? And this is precisely the reason why we hear little in the mainstream media about the ecological ramifications of buying goods produced halfway around the planet. There are military implications, too; bloody conflicts like the Gulf War were waged not to defend our borders but to maintain international channels of commerce.

It’s just accepted as natural that our grocery would stock butter from New Zealand rather than from the dairy farm down the road. Locally-produced goods — anything from fruits to furniture — are not looked upon as the obvious, efficient, and environmentally-enlightened consumer choice but as, at best, a quaint tradition and, more likely, a sign of backwardness. On a bike ride last summer through the rolling hills of rural Minnesota, I wheeled into the town of Cold Spring and right past one of the few remaining small-town breweries in America. They brew a rich German-style pale ale that is prized among beer lovers back in Minneapolis, the city where I live. But not one of the Main Street taverns that I stopped in featured it on tap. Most of what they served was shipped in from Wisconsin or Missouri, hundreds of miles away.

The United States engineered an economic model based on the long-distance national distribution of goods in the years before World War II, and it was hailed as another wonder of American progress, just like the proliferation of automobiles crowding our streets. No one worried much about the small stores and small companies that were shoved into bankruptcy so that we could all consume the same products from sea to shining sea. Thousands of small breweries like the one in Cold Spring, making unique ales and pilsners to suit regional tastes, went broke as giant beer companies in Milwaukee and St. Louis blanketed the nation with bland brands specially brewed to offend no one. Indeed, in a nation as ethnically and geographically diverse as the United States it became a symbol of unity that we all drank the same brands of beer, ate the same kinds of sweets, and wore the same cut of clothes. Common consumer goods came to be celebrated on as one of the important bonds — the social glue — that seemed to hold America together.

What this means now, several generations later, is that an American shopper strolling the aisles of an upscale grocery store near my home, can easily find potatoes from Idaho, apples from Washington State, vegetables from California, poultry from Arkansas, berries from Michigan, catfish from Alabama, ice cream from Vermont, and, as food imports continue to increase, soft cheese from Scandinavia, tomatoes from Mexico, and even drinking water from France. Yet it is typically difficult to find any products (except tap water) that have been produced in Minnesota, even at the height of harvest time, despite the fact that our rich agricultural lands and Midwestern climate makes us well-suited to produce a bountiful supply of all of them. Last night, in fact, in the garden of a swank local restaurant I was served a gourmet-style sandwich with a delicate cranberry mayonnaise and a pale pink slice of tomato from God Knows Where that could have served nicely as the puck for an ice hockey game — this at a time of the year when my own tiny backyard is bursting with red, ripe, plump, juicy specimens. The restaurant could have planted a few vines right in the garden rather than depend on the always disappointing output of their usual out-of-state provider.

Good-tasting food and environmental concerns are not the only issues at stake as the globalizing world economy dispatches more and more goods all over the planet at a dizzying pace. Basic questions of justice arise, as transnational corporations utilize the improving channels of long-distance transportation and communications to relocate their manufacturing plants to places with rock-bottom wages and non-existent environmental regulations.

Not only are people in Latin America, Asia, and Africa exploited economically by the long-distance links of the global economy, but their traditional social patterns and culture are stripped away. A Mexican peasant forced out of his farming village by cheap grain imports and into an American-owned factory may register an increase in income by the flawed measure of per capita GDP, but the quality of his or her life will drastically decline. He or she has traded a life on the land, with its natural rhythms and village kinship, for ten-hour shifts on a noisy, poorly-ventilated assembly line and the squalor, alienation, and crime of an urban shantytown.

Even peasants who stay on the land see their lives disrupted by the demands of export-oriented agriculture. Traditional small farm holdings make way for large-scale plantations, and dispossessed farmers go to work at paltry wages raising fruit or cotton or beef for households in North America and Europe. The land is inundated with pesticides and sucked dry of its nutrients, while local people no longer have a cheap and accessible source of food. At the other end of this lengthy international food chain, consumers are exposed to high levels of pesticide residues and other poisons in imported wares.

Locally-grown food is generally healthier because farmers don’t need to douse them with fungicides and other chemicals to ensure their survival over long journeys. Even baked goods, dairy products, and other processed foods made right in your community also offer a fresher taste, free of the preservatives injected into most grocery items.

There’s hope in the new emphasis on farmers’ markets, which have become the rage everywhere, including the heart of New York City. There’s even more hope in Community-Supported Agriculture, by which urban people buy a share of a nearby farm’s output, which is then delivered to town throughout the growing season.

Perhaps people are coming to appreciate the qualities and virtues of hometown products, and this trend will only increase as they grow more aware of the hefty price tag — in environmental damage, economic exploitation, and health effects — attached to goods that travel long distances to our homes and dinner tables.

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