Thanks to the North East Sustainable Agriculture Working Group for compiling their weekly news which included this piece - "The Locavore's Dilemma: Why Pineapples Shouldn't Be Grown in North Dakota."
NESAWG News reports "A major flaw in the case for buying local is that it is at odds with the principle of comparative advantage. This principle, which economists have understood for almost 200 years, is one of the main reasons that the vast majority of economists believe in free trade. Free trade, whether across city, state, or national boundaries, causes people to produce the goods or services for which they have a comparative advantage and, thus, makes virtually everyone wealthier. Princeton University economist Paul Krugman, who won the Nobel Prize in economics for his contributions to the economics of international trade, called comparative advantage "Ricardo's Difficult Idea" because so many non-economists deny it and are unwilling to understand it. But if people understood comparative advantage, much of the impetus for buying local foods would disappear.
Read more from Jayson L. Lusk and F. Bailey Norwood, at the Library of Economics and Liberty.
Economists, meet idealists. Shall we question the ideal of local food or the 'rule' of economics?
We might know a system works (like free trade), and maybe we should trust in that system working. But without idealism, we face the temptation to think that what we have is all we'll have with no room for innovation. It's a balance, or maybe a fight, between trusting what we know works and recognizing that it's still not perfect.
ReplyDeleteGood post.