The Research Polynomial

In line with the thoughts at the end of my last post, I’ve kept pursuing the topic of food (production, distribution, and consumption). The source of production seems like a logical place to start—and it makes sense to begin with the Netherlands’ official account, provided by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Apparently,

“The Netherlands is one of the world’s three largest exporters of agricultural produce.”

But what really surprises me is this:

“The agricultural sector’s productivity has grown enormously in the past few decades. This is largely due to high-quality training, first-class research and an effective system of disseminating practical advice to farmers. But growth is no longer a priority. The priorities now are the environment, animal welfare and the quality of produce.” [my italics]

Could they really be that sane? The site also says that “thirty per cent of Dutch consumers now regularly buy organic produce.” I wonder which thirty percent this is, and what is meant by “regularly.” There seems to be a conflict in me between a cynicism about all government and business, and an idealization of Western Europe. So while I can't believe that a sector of the market would responsibly self-regulate like that, I also want to believe that such a thing is possible, if only in Europe. It's challenging to balance these two prejudices and see things as they really are (or might be, depending on your perspective).

Anyway, I thought that this government site would be a good resource for primary information, but in a way it seems to be more like a subjective representation than a source of actual “data.” Although there is at least one page with Official Figures (bicycle ownership is 81.4 percent!). And here’s an even better source.

Looking at Amsterdam in particular, I found A Seed Europe, which isn't really primary material in and of itself (unless I'm studying how information about food is organized and disseminated), but does seem like a great resource for finding food in the city, and probably has some links to more direct sources of information.

Here's a list of supermarkets.

And, hooray, a paper about urban agriculture (again, not a primary source, but interesting reading).

I'm starting to realize that "food" is a big category. I'm not sure how to narrow it down, though--I seem to have a tendency to choose a desired outcome and then "reverse-engineer" a research question from that. If I keep looking for various information sources, I'm sure I'll eventually come up with something that works, but I think a better way to arrive at a non-leading question would be to get some influence from elsewhere. Several other people have mentioned topics that I also think are really interesting, so I wonder if I might adopt someone else's subject, and then maybe use "food" as a focus within that.