[Rod Dreher 03/09 01:25 PM]Now that’s an interesting idea, Jonah. I’ve wondered if changing the regulatory laws to make it easier for small agriculture producers to compete with giant business concerns might actually make it possible to repopulate at least some of the plains towns that are vanishing. Part of this involves convincing American consumers to change their tastes, in the same way that you can now get great beer and great coffee most anywhere now because people demand a higher level of quality. As I’ve said a million times, I am not convinced of the health claims made for organic produce (as distinct from meat raised in a non-factory way), but I am certain of the aesthetic superiority of produce that is locally grown. The apples we bought when we lived in NYC are incomparably better than the apples we get here in Texas, because they were much fresher. This is how aesthetics can shift an economy.
If we find ourselves some years or decades from now in a peak-oil situation, in which it costs an arm and a leg to ship food across the country, the value of local agriculture will be all too apparent.
I don’t know what to make of the perennial problem of the French farmers and the EU. I instinctively sympathize with the protectionism there, and the determination to protect local traditions against the standardization of the Eurocrats in Brussels. People – well, French people, God bless them – feel differently about food than they do about other products. There is something of their national character in their food – and if you’ve ever eaten in France, you can see exactly why they feel this way.
