Ecological Economics 34 (2000) 5 – 8
COM M EN TAR Y
Economic issues and the diet and the distribution of
environmental impact
Andrew Seidl *
Department of A gricultural and R esource Economics, Colorado S tate Uni6ersity, Ft. Collins, CO 80523-1172, US A R eceived 28 M arch 2000; accepted 30 M arch 2000
www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon
1. Introduction
White (2000) contends that less ecological im-pact (footprint) will result by reducing the amount of land implicitly dedicated to animal agriculture and greater grain production will benefit the world’s least advantaged humans and work to alleviate malnutrition and hunger. H is conclu-sions are due to two assumptions: consuming meat is an inefficient vehicle for obtaining calories relative to direct consumption of grains inputs to meat production; and land used in production of a crop is equally productive. While his argument is not based in economic theory, since the analysis addresses the human management (distribution and use) of scarce resources, a variety of eco-nomic concepts come into play in discussing the implications of his approach (see, van K ooten and Bulte, 2000). M y comments focus on the eco-nomic issues surrounding the two central implica-tions of this work: self-sufficiency of sub-global economic units generates greater social welfare from a R awlsian perspective than a system based upon global comparative advantage,
specializa-tion and trade; and hunger is rooted in produc-tion, not poverty or distribuproduc-tion, challenges.
2. Sustainable nations will result in a welfare maximizing sustainable world
F ollowing White (2000), ignoring all other nat-ural resource-based productive sectors and using the nation-state as the unit of analysis, human system sustainability coupled with the ecological footprint criterion (R ees and Wackernagel, 1994) imply that nations should be self-sufficient in agricultural production through time (Wacker-nagel and Silverstein, 2000). The aggregation of these sustainable nations will create a sustainable world under some rather strict assumptions: in-creases in population must be compensated by increases in technical efficiency (M offat, 2000); national boundaries must imply the most effica-cious scale at which to manage the world’s natural resources; no transnational positive or negative externalities (Opschoor, 2000; Templet, 2000), scale efficiencies, or extra-national stakeholders exist.
F or sustainable nations to result in a welfare maximizing world additional assumptions are re-* Tel.: +1-970-4917071; fax:+1-970-4912067.
E -mail address:aseidl@agsci.colostate.edu (A. Seidl)
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6
quired. All nations must have equivalent abilities to produce and no incentives to trade across national boundaries may exist. N o benefits of price or income stability, or ability for technology transfer through internationalization can exist. The equilibrium conditions for agricultural prod-ucts from each nation must independently obtain over time and at precisely the same price and output levels, theoretically assuring a Pareto opti-mal allocation of resources. U nder these pro-hibitive provisions, this allocation will generate a global welfare maximum in a R awlsian sense if the 2nd F undamental Theorem of Welfare Eco-nomics is imposed in such a way as to equally distribute economic opportunity, assuming
con-stant marginal utility of income across
stakeholders.
The stringency of these restrictions leaves little reason to believe that a collection of self-reliant, self-sufficient and sustainable nations will maxi-mize national social welfare or global social wel-fare from either a Benthamite or a R awlsian perspective. M oreover, if the availability of more calories increases the likelihood of R awlsian im-provements (White, 2000), then specialization and trade improves potential welfare improvements and the pursuit of sustainable national ecological footprints will be sub-optimal (van den Bergh and Verbruggen, 1999; Ayres, 2000). Protectionist or agriculture-supporting national economic policy can be justified on grounds of improved national security through food self-sufficiency. H owever, such a policy comes with efficiency, and therefore, social welfare costs under the assumptions posed above.
3. All kilograms of beef are created equally
The assumption of White (2000) of equivalent yields for all land in each crop results in inability to address potential gains to specialization and trade. Equivalent yields across land types coupled with energy conversions based upon intensive, grain-fed livestock results in distorted estimates of the ecological footprint of meat calories. N ot only might the conversion used be questioned (e.g. Pimentel and Pimentel, 1996), but the calculations
fail to recognize that more than 10% of beef cattle and 30% of sheep and goat meat raised in exten-sive management conditions (Steinfeld et al., 1997), with few purchased inputs (Ward et al., 1980; Pimentel and Pimentel, 1996), lower risk of environmental damage due to nutrient loading (e.g. Owens et al., 1983; Young et al., 1985; van der M olen et al., 1998), and green house gas emissions (Jarvis and Pain, 1994) relative to inten-sively managed livestock.
Lands grazed for livestock are largely economi-cally untenable for row crops (Wade et al., 1998). ‘F or an estimated 100 million people in arid areas grazing livestock is the only feasible source of livelihood’ (Steinfeld et al., 1997). Properly
managed rangelands may provide significant
public goods (e.g. wildlife habitat, biological di-versity, avalanche protection) (O’M eilia et al., 1982; Steinfeld et al., 1997; Loomis et al., 2000) that croplands cannot provide. In addition, envi-ronmentally, and often economically, poor irriga-tion practices, inadequate drainage and poorly designed canals have resulted in 0.25 – 0.5 of all irrigated cropland to suffer from salinization. G lobal soil loss due to intensive cultivation is highest in Asia followed by Latin America and Africa (R epetto, 1987; M eyers, 1989; N orton and Alwang, 1993) where the majority of hunger per-sists (F AO, 2000).
Approximately 36% of annual world grain, legume, and vegetable protein production are fed
to livestock (Pimentel and Pimentel, 1996).
Whether less fed livestock would result in more calorie availability depends upon the substitutabil-ity between lands and other inputs dedicated to livestock feed-grain production and lands to pro-duce plants for human consumption. Assuming economical land use decisions, land conversion to alternative uses is likely to be less efficient (new production will create a larger ecological footprint than existing production). Conversion of extensive pastures to crops also reduces the ability of re-maining livestock to move between grazing lands (Steinfeld et al., 1997), increasing the likelihood of overgrazing remaining pasturelands.
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shown a three-decade downward trend, in part due to international trade (N orton and Alwang, 1993). N oting inelastic demand for agricultural commodities, increases in sweet corn, dry beans and wheat acreages converted from feed corn and alfalfa acreages will result in still lower producer returns. Low producer returns often mean low prices for the consumer and a potential R awlsian welfare gain, depending upon market elasticities and the relative welfare of those consumers who are also producers.
As a result, for agriculturally exporting nations, the sustainable ecological footprint under vegetar-ianism would likely result in acres going out of agriculture rather than more acres in agriculture.
In agriculture importing nations, more land
would be dedicated to crop production, but yields would be lower and, potentially, prices would be higher due to the lack of trade. The greater the dependence of the overall economy on agriculture (F AO, 2000; Todaro, 2000), the less damaging self-reliance is likely to be for the economy as a whole, again depending upon elasticities and
as-suming the national self-sufficiency in food
production.
4. More available calories will reduce malnutrition and hunger
The trite neoclassical economic response is that plenty of food is produced, but it isn’t getting in the hands of the people who need it most; hunger is a distribution problem, not a production prob-lem. Clearly, hunger is not so simple as the
pro-duction of food or its distribution. The
malnutrition rate is highly correlated with na-tional per capita income (Todaro, 2000). Low agricultural productivity is highly coincident with poverty, but also poor cropping practices, over-grazing, high rates of return to capital, national and private debt, rapid population growth, and perverse policy incentives (N orton and Alwang, 1993).
H owever, hunger is not limited to developing nations (F AO, 2000). Since developed, food-ex-porting nations also face hunger, the availability and distribution of calories cannot be its root
cause. Potentially, a ‘transactions/transportation cost’ and/or ‘poverty/ability to pay’ problem may lie at the root of the malnutrition challenge. H unger disproportionately affects the landless, the disenfranchised, the un- and underemployed, the elderly, the handicapped, the uneducated, women, children, minorities, and temporary vic-tims of calamity (e.g. weather, politics, war) (N or-ton and Alwang, 1993; F AO, 2000), but so does poverty. Therefore, maintaining or improving land productivity by controlling or reversing envi-ronmental degradation in order to improve the long-term welfare of the poor requires both tech-nical (i.e. production) and institutional (i.e. politi-cal, sociologipoliti-cal, and economic) solutions.
5. Conclusions
The duel of the agricultural economic produc-tion problem is important; continuing to decrease the amount of resources used to produce goods and services is a useful objective. Economic effi-ciency is the more useful measure of resource flows than productive efficiency. Since equity and efficiency are not two ends of a continuum, but rather two interdependent components of an ob-jective function, it is more likely social welfare will be improved from a R awlsian perspective by im-proved economic efficiency than by productive efficiency. When the full environmental costs of agricultural production fail to be internalized into the production decision the ecological footprint from agricultural production expands.
The incredible variety of landscapes and cli-mate, individual tastes and preferences, cultures, social institutions, and economic opportunity combine to guide the formation of appropriate and social welfare maximizing resource alloca-tions. Sometimes using scarce resources toward grain production will maximize social welfare. Sometimes extensively managed cattle or lambs will be more appropriate. Increasing incomes and
economic productivity rather than activity,
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term solution to the global hunger problem (e.g. N orton and Alwang, 1993; Todaro, 2000). Im-provement of the human condition among the least fortunate may be less a matter of self-suffi-ciency in food production than a matter of engag-ing in sufficient economic activity based upon their comparative advantage to obtain sufficient food for the least cost.
In sum, in contrast to White (2000), the sustain-able ecological footprint criterion for nations may not yield a welfare maximizing sustainable world, the solution to malnutrition may not be the availability of calories, and discouragement of extensive or intensive livestock management may or may not result in a smaller ecological footprint, greater calorie availability or a sustainable world. M eat protein may be as likely to be part of the solution to hunger as it is to be part of the problem.
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