Q is for Questions
Charles Steinmetz, American mathematician and electrical engineer, said, ‘No man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions.’ In many ways this entire book is based upon asking questions: why is organic food more expensive? Why is HIV/AIDS affecting millions of people, but not many from my country? Why does it matter what I do with my money? Do I have to fly there? Who is the loser here? Where have the sparrows gone? Why do more people binge drink? Is there another way of looking at this? Who made my jeans? How should I live? What does God require of me?
I hope this book will encourage all of us to keep asking questions because questions are what keep us moving for-ward; they keep changing us; they push boundaries and revolutionise situations. To be someone who asks questions is to be someone who is not content with the status quo. American economist Paul Samuelson said that ‘good ques-tions outrank easy answers’ and we must be prepared to fight against those who will try to satisfy us with easy answers, and keep asking questions, questions, questions . . .
In this chapter I want to look at a question that I am always asked when I am speaking on the sorts of issues that we’ve been looking at in this book: a question that has been hinted at elsewhere, but would benefit from being considered further. And, as we will see, this good question indeed has no easy answers.
It is what I call the ‘green beans from Kenya’ question: ie, should we buy green beans from Kenya (say) in order to help poor farmers, or should we not buy them, in order to reduce our food miles and help the environment? Let us look at the different sides of the debate.
On the one side are those who say that we should always shop as locally as possible, encouraging trade to operate pri-marily on a localised basis, rather than internationally. This is not to say that we should never buy from overseas as, clearly, there are some goods that we simply can’t grow here (coffee, bananas, oranges etc), but is more to say that when local is available, that is what we should go for. This has a number of advantages. Firstly, of course, is the benefit environmentally as food does not have to travel huge distances to reach our plates, hence reducing our ‘food miles’ and subsequently our contribution to climate change. Since about 20% of UK and European climate change emissions are related to food this can only be a good thing. On a more subtle level, localised food production can strengthen the links with our food and so help increase our awareness of ecological issues, hence making us more likely to act in positive ways towards the environment.
Beyond this, Duncan Clark, author of The Rough Guide to Ethical Living, makes the point that concentrating on the local helps with issues of food security and our long-term ability to feed ourselves. Again, this is positive environmentally as food transportation relies heavily on oil supplies, which may be dwindling. It would also have positive governance results as an emphasis on localised food production would encourage more local ownership and decision-making, hence fostering greater local responsibility.
From the perspective of the poor farmers in Kenya, it is argued that they are better off growing their own food for their own people, not relying on the vagaries of the global market. As with local communities in the economically devel-oped countries, so too a greater emphasis on local food production would encourage people in Kenya to have more responsibility for their communities, rather than being at the mercy of World Bank and IMF policies. People everywhere, including those from poorer countries, should be encouraged to engage in making a living from things that they, or people in their geographical area, need, not what people in the rich world want. There is a recognition here that we have made communities in poorer countries dependent on us and there-fore have to take most of the responsibility for working to see these countries implement transition schemes so they can change to working to fulfil their own basic needs. This needs to go hand in hand with diplomatic and other efforts to maintain and increase the co-operation and understanding between countries, ethnic groups etc.
However, on the other side are those who say that stopping buying beans from Kenya would deprive the Kenyan farmers of a livelihood that they desperately need. Currently, there are an estimated 1.5 million people in Africa who make their living from agricultural and horticultural exports to the UK. According to the Institute of Development Studies, house-hold surveys in Kenya have shown that working in the horticultural sector has made people better off than if theywere in subsistence farming. To put it bluntly, while we may dream of localised economies, the consequences of our unequal world mean that less developed countries simply have to export to the richer countries in order to make money to survive and develop.
What’s more, the statistics on food miles are not always as straightforward as they may seem and it is generally the case that a food product grown in a low-income country will use less energy than that same product grown out of season in a high-income country. For example, fairtrade roses grown in Kenya and flown to the UK use almost 6 times less CO2 than roses grown in greenhouses in Holland, demonstrating that food miles are as concerned with the methods of production as with the mode and distance of transportation.
People on this side of the debate also point out that food miles associated with the export of fresh fruit and vegetables from sub-Saharan Africa equate to only 0.1% of the UK’s entire carbon emissions and that, if we are concerned with reducing our emissions, there are other more significant steps we could take instead. For example, Duncan Green, Head of Research for Oxfam, calculates that if everyone in the UK switched one 100W light bulb for a low-energy one, UK emis-sions could be cut by almost five times as much as would be saved by not purchasing fresh fruit and vegetables from Africa.
It is obvious, therefore, that this issue is far from clear and the debates around it will continue for a long while yet. What makes it harder still is that statistics on methods of produc-tion, mode of transportation and overall CO2emissions from any given product are not easy to come by, nor are the facts as to how many pence per product the producer receives, and these details are certainly not printed on the product in the supermarket, when you are holding it in your hand trying to decide whether or not to buy it . . . !
For me, this is part of the reality of living in a fallen world: a ‘world of wounds’, in which often the choices we have to make are not perfect. So, if you started this chapter with the anticipation of me concluding by telling you exactly what you should do, I’m afraid you are going to be disappointed! This whole area is extremely complex and also one in which our choices will be determined by our own individual priorities. So, if it were shown that the summer beans sold at my local farmers’ market had produced fewer CO2 emissions than those grown in Kenya, then there might be a simple choice to be made between environmental and developmental con-cerns. However, the point could also be made that, in the long term, climate change will wipe out any development gained by exporting to wealthier countries. The debates will continue . . .
Action Point
• Don’t stop asking questions, especially the question, ‘Do I really need this?’
© Ruth Valerio 2008
With thanks to InterVarsity Press www.ivpbooks.com
EAUK.org
