There’s more to a tomato than the price
NPR’s Marketplace did a story this morning about the rise of the urban farmer, which is just a cute way of saying, vegetable gardening. High food prices have encouraged a lot of people to grow their own tomatoes, for example. Stacey Vanek-Smith added up some costs to get into a small garden, and suggested that home gardeners might very well find themselves eating tomatoes that cost $64 each to raise. Bah. Here’s a comment I just sent to the producers of the show.
Stacey Vanek-Smith’s piece about tomato gardening was wrong even within the overly narrow confines of a strictly economic analysis of gardening.
1. Tomatoes are not a commodity. Anyone with tastebuds can appreciate the fact that the round red tomato-like objects at the grocery store don’t taste anything like a vine-ripened tomato. Commercial tomatoes are bred for their ability to withstand rough handling, not for flavor. They are harvested green and treated with ethylene gas to make them appear ripe. So even if home-grown tomatoes are more expensive than store-bought, who cares? It’s like telling me that home grown tomatoes are more expensive than paper towels.
2. Gardening improves both the soil, and the gardener. If Stacey sticks to her tomato project she’ll get exercise, fresh air, and a reminder that with patience comes reward. If her garden is organic, she will enrich a little plot of soil, improving its ability to hold carbon and rain water, among other benefits. It’s more than a retail transaction.
3. Stacey considered only the effect of the garden on Stacey, ignoring the value of her garden to the rest of us. If she grows her own, that’s less pesticides sprayed into the environment. Less fuel is consumed by tractors and tomato trucks, so less carbon dioxide and less demand pushing up my fuel prices. If the benefits to you and me don’t appear on Stacey’s bottom line, then the math is just wrong.