Annals of Creative Destruction: Defunct Agriculture Tour
/The economist Joseph Schumpeter coined the term "creative destruction" and authored the line "This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism." We see economic assets around us constantly being re-deployed into new uses, but rarely pause to look at them or consider the underlying processes.
In recent years I have probably read a hundred or so articles about the "locavore" movement -- a movement of people advocating for eating food grown and produced close to where it is consumed. The idea seems to have something to do with preventing global warming, such as by using less carbon-based energy in transporting food from distant farms to places of consumption. If there is any criticism of the locavore movement out there, I have never seen it. At Yale they have the Yale Sustainable Food Project, lobbying the dining hall system to seek food that is "local, seasonable, and sustainable," as part of the project to save the planet. Who can be against that?
Unfortunately, the forces of creative destruction seem to have other ideas.