On Mon, 20 Nov 2006 19:57:19 -0600, Philip <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Nov 2006 14:28:22 -0600, Robert Kesterson  
> wrote:

> ... Truffles are also difficult (if not impossible) to domesticate. 
> Naturally raised meats and vegetables are not in the same category.  

I wasn't trying to imply that truffles are in precisely the same category 
as meats and vegetables; rather I was responding to the argument that 
people will never steal Paleo foods when they are not starving. My point 
was that if a food, whether animal or plant, is valuable enough, some 
people will steal it. If the price of pasture-fed meats or organic 
vegetables were to rise high enough, people would steal livestock, 
poultry, food-bearing trees or especially rare and valuable produce even 
if they weren't hungry, in order to sell it and make a profit. Armed men 
steal and even kill for truffles today because of their economic value, 
not because they are hungry. Believe it or not, people already steal 
commercial livestock today, which is why Mississippi has an Agricultural 
Theft Bureau 
(http://www.mdac.state.ms.us/n_library/departments/ag_theft/index_agtheft.h
tml). If the prices of livestock increase dramatically over the coming 
decades, the level of theft is likely to go up.

If Cordain is correct about his assertion that the supply of Paleo foods 
is limited, even with increases in production, then a growing popularity 
in Paleo foods will one day result in substantial price increases in those 
foods, some more than others. The market prices of Paleo foods are already 
higher, on the whole, than the prices of modern foods (yes there are ways 
to economize on a Paleo diet, but there are also ways to economize even 
more on a modern diet). My guess is that they have always been higher on 
average--at least since the industrial revolution--and they always will 
be. As Cordain states, "for most of the world's people" his Paleo Diet 
already "lies beyond their financial reach." 

Anyone who believes in the validity of Paleolithic nutrition surely 
believes the truth will eventually gradually win out and the demand for 
Paleo foods will therefore increase. With only so much increases in 
production of Paleo foods being possible (much less so than the processed 
foods of industry), further price increases appear inevitable.

> Couple that  
> with the massive mind-shift that is necessary, and I just don't see it  
> happening.  Grains aren't going away.

Grains are not a Paleo food--I was speaking exclusively of Paleo foods and 
Cordain's estimate that about 600 million or fewer people could be 
supported by Paleo foods, which  is less than 10% of the world's current 
population. So he is saying there is a limit to how much of the Paleo 
foods can be produced and how many people can eat them, which means that 
as demand for this limited supply of foods increases there will be 
inevitable price increases at some point in the future. Sure, there can be 
some increases in production, but not enough to support more than the 600 
million figure, if we are to believe Cordain. As Cordain stated, "Grains, 
legumes, and tubers are the starchy foods that have allowed our planet's 
population to balloon to more than 6 billion. ... Without them, the world 
could probably support one-tenth or less of our present population [which 
at the time of the book's publishing in 2001 would have come to about 620 
million]; without agriculture's cheap starchy staples [such as grains], it 
is no exaggeration to say that billions of people worldwide would starve."

>> By saying that Paleo foods can only support up to 600 million people
>> (possibly fewer), Cordain is indicating that there are limits to how 
much
>> the supply of Paleo foods can be increased.

> I think it is easy to underestimate mankind's ingenuity.

Perhaps. As I stated before, if anyone has information about a better 
estimate than Cordain's I would love to see it.

>> The greenhouse and co-ops are good suggestions, folks. 

> There are several farmers market directories online, for example:

You gave more good reasons for using greenhouses and gardens, Robert, but 
local farmers' markets and food co-ops are a somewhat different story. 
Community-based farmers' markets and food co-ops are not immune to market 
pricing (even where their prices are much lower than at nearby 
supermarkets, they are still subject to price increases when market prices 
rise, so as to cover their rising costs), so they are not a complete 
shield from the future Paleo food price increases that Cordain's 
assertions suggest. The prices at farmers' markets and food co-ops have to 
rise with the market as their costs rise because if they sold below-cost 
they would go out of business (some are subsidized, but not to the point 
of preventing any price increases). The ability to work for food at some 
food co-ops is a partial shield against price increases, but as prices 
rise, one will tend to get less food for the same hour of labor.