Eggs from happy Farmers.
I like to cook. I buy my food at Billa, an Austrian grocery, for no other reason than it's location. Across the street. If there was an Aldi, a cheaper grocery from Germany, I would go there.
But some people drive a great distance to find a farmers market where they pay not less but more for local, organic food.
I frequently get into fights with my sister, when we cook together, since she too insists on organic and local food.
But I don't want to pay more and support farmers in Austria over farmers in, say Chile.
"But those are more happy farms", she insists.
Of course those Austrian farm(er)s are more happy. They get vast amounts of subsidies and protection from the European Union as well as the Austrian government. The little competition left, is further reduced by strict import regulation. Additionally, even the Austrian population favors them for almost any price. Someone really did some great marketing (and lobbying) here.

The Economist offers some arguments why

• Organic Food doesn't help the environment (Without pesticides twice as much land is needed for farming).
  
• Local Food increases pollution (Small trucks from each farm pollute more than efficient international cargo).
  
• and Fair Trade hurts farmers in Africa (The price for coffee is low because of overproduction, subsidizing some farmers with "Fair Trade" will lead to even more production. Decreasing the price for others even further).
  

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Labels: eat+drink, Economics

From Princeton's University Channel:

• Beyond Freakonomics: New Musings on the Economics of Everyday Life
  Steven Levitt, co-author of "Freakonomics" and professor in economics at the University of Chicago, discusses his latest research
• The Sun Also Rises: How a Recovering Japan Could Change Asia
  Bill Emmott, former Editor-in-Chief of The Economist
• Working Across Cultures in a Global Company
  Dominique Thormann, senior vice president, Nissan North America Inc.
• Lessons from China in preparation for the 2008 Beijing Olympics
  Madame Li Guanzheng, Commissioner, Beijing Municipal Education Commission and President, Beijing Association of Education, and Mary Conneely, Regional Director of Regeneration, London Learning and Skills Council.
• Pakistan's Role in Regional Peace and Development
  Shaukat Aziz, Prime Minister of Pakistan

From Massachusetts Institute of Technology's MITWorld.

• Earth's Most Customer Centric Company: Differentiating with Technology
  Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon.com
  Robert Frederick, Manager of Amazon Net Services
• When to Seed, When to Harvest: The Four Quads of Innovation, Growth
  Michael L. Eskew, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, United Parcel Service
• The Akamai Story: From Theory to Practice
  F. Thomson Leighton, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist, Akamai
• The Power of the Network to Change the Way We Work, Live, Play, and Learn
  John Chambers, President and CEO, Cisco Systems

Find more great lectures in this collection.

Labels: Economics, movies