Bigness and disconnection.

• Author: Ayres, Ed
• Position: National standards on organic farming

Every morning I get to work by a method so remarkable that it seems like a trick. Among U.S. cities, the Washington, D.C. area ranks second only to Los Angeles in the average length of commute, and I have a long commute. Yet, I almost never have to endure heavy traffic. While thousands of solo drivers creep along congested Interstate 95 (many becoming extremely tense and frustrated), I sit back and sail past them in the wide-open "HOV" (high-occupancy vehicle) lanes reserved for buses or cars with three or more people. HOVs may not be as energy- or space-efficient as trains (or as designing more compact cities), but they're a move in the right direction. Not only do I avoid the congestion, but I avoid any out-of-pocket cost, because I don't drive.

The key to my commute is that I don't want to drive. There are people who do, however - and some of them will gladly take a couple of passengers (or "slugs") in their cars with them if it qualifies them to drive in the HOV lanes. So, a spontaneous system has sprung up: early each morning, at a fringe parking lot 20 miles from the city, people like me form a line. Cars come by, the drivers call out which part of the city they're going to ("Rosslyn?" "Eighteenth Street?") and the first two people in the line who are going to that destination climb in and off they go. It's a true win-win situation; the driver gets to work in 40 minutes instead of 1 1/2 hours, and we slugs get to work both fast and for free.

Remarkable as this system is, however, it has a drawback: I suspect it only works because relatively few people do it. At any given moment, there arc perhaps 10 people in line (though they're gone in minutes, replaced by others). If it were hundreds at a time, I'm afraid county officials would quickly appear on the scene to organize and regulate it, if not prohibit it altogether (I can imagine some official with a clipboard declaring that this is illegal "hitchhiking"). Riders might have to get registered (in case some of us turned out to be muggers or carjackers), and drivers might have to inform their insurance companies, which would doubtless raise their rates. For now, however, the "slug line" remains below the radar of the bureaucrats - because it is small.

For many years, a somewhat similar situation has prevailed in the market for organic farming, for which I have been a long-time customer. Organic foods - grown without pesticides, on composted soils, etc. - have been produced for the past...