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I’ll venture a few thoughts this morning, admittedly even without having read the article in The American or-embarassingly-the Omnivore’s Dilemma. And I am not expert-being neither an agronomist or an economist-but I did spend several years working for a UN agency that deals in agricultural and rural development, so I am familiar with some of the general issues here, as they affect developing countries.
To begin with, as a foodie, the reason I try to buy local and/or organic whenever possible (I”m not dogmatic about it) is simply because local/organic produce tastes so much better. An ‘industrial’ tomato is just not worth eating.Neither is most fruit that is picked too green so it can be shipped across country or even continents. And without quality raw ingredients, good eating is simply not possible. The fact that I may also be helping my own health and the environment is, of course, an added plus, but not-for me at least-the only or even the most important reason for buying local.
Secondly, on the economic/political issues involved, yes, there are economic stresses on farmers, both in the US and all over the world. Governments have different ways of trying to help farmers cope with these stresses, usually through various forms of subsidiies and tariffs—which is one reason why agriculture is one of the areas where there is the strongest resistence to free trade. But the proposition that industrial farming is the only way to ‘feed the world’ is proposterous. First of all, Europe and Asia are able to feed themselves perfectly well without resort to US-style industrial farming. (The main reason why the produce is of such better quality there than in the US.) The same is true for Latin America, by and large.
In fact, there has been a dramatic reduction in hunger in the world in the past decades, although this progress has been reversed somewhat recently due to the spike in prices last year followed by the financial crisis.
Even so, food production is not the reason for the remaining hunger is the world. It is a matter of distribution and economic resources. In those cases where efforts have been made to introduce US-style highly technology-dependent agricultural methods in developing countries, the results have been disasterous, often leading to more hunger, not less. (The reasons for this are complex, the subject of another comment.) So plainly, the US model is not going to save the world from hunger. More equitable economic development, however, might.