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Please join us for a presentation by Marty Heller on how our food choices can
influence our environment, both globally and locally. And, not only does fresh,
locally-grown, organic food help the environment - it also tastes great!
For local food sources and other good information on locally-grown food, please visit LocalHarvest and/or the Food Routes Network. We hope to see you on the 18th! Cheap food? I'm not buying it
By Martin Heller
On February 6th, the average American passed an important annual milestone. No, it’s not the date we finally broke free of holiday over-spending woes, nor does it have anything to do with impending tax fears. February 6th, 2004 – a mere 36 days into the New Year – was celebrated as Food Check-Out day - the day that the average American has earned enough to pay for their groceries for the entire year. We spend only 10% of our disposable income on food, and that number has been steadily dropping over the years. Let’s face it, food in the U.S. is cheap, cheaper than in any other nation. Or is it? Our market-based economy does a good job of driving innovation and efficiencies that lower prices to consumers. But often, off-the-shelf buying prices don’t accurately reflect the full costs of producing, processing and consuming food. A closer look at the social, environmental, and indirect economic costs of our food system – from farm to table – makes the bargain seems less certain. Looking closer is one thing, but actually getting closer to our food and its source – that is, “buying local” on the food chain – can make many of the invisible external costs visible. Technological advancements in agricultural production have greatly reduced the amount of land and labor needed to produce food crops. In the early 1900s, nearly 40% of Americans lived and worked on farms. Now, at the dawn of the 21st century, less than 1% of Americans are farmers. And yet American farmers still manage to overfeed the country while exporting more than $50 billion annually in agricultural goods. Still, less than 20 cents of every dollar spent on groceries in the U.S. makes it back to the farmer (and that’s before paying for the farmer’s production costs). As recently as 1975, farmers were receiving 40 cents of every food dollar. So many farmers and farm families have to turn elsewhere to make a living: today, 84% of farm household income is earned off the farm. 
The number of farms in the U.S. has been in steady decline since 1935. Big farms
continue to get bigger and small farms are losing money. Ten percent of U.S. farms
produce three quarters of the market value of agricultural products, while 48% of
farms – mostly small to medium sized – reported net losses in 1997. Since our federal
farm support package is tied to production levels, large farms receive a much greater
portion of the $15 billion plus in direct government payments. All of these facts
point toward declining rural communities and devastated rural economies. The poorest
county per capita in the U.S. is not an inner-city slum but an agriculturally based
county in rural Nebraska. And as urban sprawl pushes deeper into rural America, an
invaluable resource is gobbled up at alarming rates. Between 1982 and 1992, prime
farmland was converted to urban or built-up land at a rate of 45.7 acres every hour.
Small family farms still manage the majority of farm assets, including soil, water,
and natural habitat associated with farmland use, but the commodity-based agricultural
market does not adequately compensate these farms for their natural resource
stewardship.
While the number of farmers has dwindled over the past century, there is still plenty of opportunity to “Buy local”. You can shop at farmers’ markets, visit roadside farm stands, make a weekend trip to the u-pick orchard outside of town, or even ask your favorite grocery store to stock locally grown and processed foods. The main idea is to pay attention to who and where your food comes from. In many regions of the country, the divide between urban and rural is blurring, creating greater opportunity to buy food directly from a farmer who is also a neighbor. Buying local benefits the local economy by keeping dollars within your community: This holds true whether we’re talking about locally owned farms or locally owned hardware stores. While dollars spent at Walmart are siphoned out of the community and spent in the global marketplace, buying locally grown food reinvests your purchase in the community. Purchasing directly from farmers also helps assure the viability of local farms and preserve farm land by sending the maximum amount of your food dollar back to the farmers. Where large labor forces are still needed to perform agricultural tasks, such as in the handling of delicate fruits and vegetables, the “cheap food” market externalizes yet another cost. The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that 52% of hired farmworkers lack legal authorization to work in the U.S. Guestworker programs allow aliens to enter the U.S. to perform seasonal agricultural labor, but rigid requirements and cumbersome paperwork make these programs largely ineffective. The illegal labor force is exploited through low wages, difficult working conditions, and often poor living arrangements. The environmental costs of production-driven agriculture also continue to mount. Fertilizers applied to fields in the grainbelt region of the upper Mississippi River leach into the river and end up in the Gulf of Mexico. The agricultural nutrients cause a frenzy of growth in some aquatic organisms, consuming all of the available oxygen and leaving a “dead zone” where most creatures cannot survive. The Gulf of Mexico is now home to the third largest hypoxic dead zone in the world, covering as much as 7000 square miles during peak season. Scientific evidence is beginning to reveal that agricultural fertilizers, combined with a laundry list of agricultural chemicals used to control insects and weeds, can pollute drinking water and even at low levels, may be contributing to developmental problems in children such as learning disabilities, attention deficit disorders, and aggressive behaviors. In the Great Plains, home of the legendary Dust Bowl, irrigation farming is essentially mining the vast Ogallala aquifer at rates that greatly exceed regeneration. Over half of the grains grown in these “breadbasket” regions of the U.S. are fed to livestock animals, which in turn inflict additional environmental costs under current production practices, such as water pollution from manure storage lagoons. A comprehensive study by the Union of Concerned Scientists concluded that, because of the environmental impacts of the livestock industry, the second most effective environmental choice that a consumer can make is to eat less mass-produced meat and poultry. 
A different level of trust and accountability develops when producer and consumer are
in direct contact. There is a comfort in “knowing your grower,” and I believe that
my own experience as a direct-market farmer reflects the norm: it is immensely
satisfying knowing the people who are quite literally embodying the products of your
labor. The closest thing to justification for my long hours in the field is that
Saturday morning smile of true gratification from a farmers’ market customer who has
found heaven in an heirloom tomato. What’s more, it’s much easier to notice and care
about the environmental impact of agriculture that is in your “back yard,” and
farmers are more likely to listen to concerns raised by neighbors who are also buyers.
The customer is always right, or at least more so than the loud-mouthed
environmentalist who just built her trophy home on the farm next door.
Concentrating on agricultural production misses a big part of the food system pie, however. After all, 80% of the money we spend on food pays for something else besides growing it. Similarly, agricultural production accounts for only 20% of the total energy consumed by the food system. The remainder of the 7-10 calories of fossil energy burned for every consumed calorie of food energy is spent on transportation, processing, packaging, retail and foodservice spaces, and household storage and preparation. Fresh produce eaten in the Midwest, most of which now comes from California and Mexico, travels an average of 1500 miles. Reducing this transportation by choosing local foods has obvious environmental benefits by decreasing our food system’s dependency on oil. In that sense, buying local food is one contribution we all can make toward “homeland security.” What and how we eat also contributes to the unseen cost of food. Despite decades of dietary recommendations by the federal government and others, cultural norms and intense advertising by food manufacturers seem to dictate America’s food choices. The food industry spends over $7 billion in advertising annually, amounting to nearly 10% of the total mass media advertising market. Nearly half of those advertising dollars go to promote prepared and convenience foods, candies, snacks, and soft drinks. It is difficult to imagine swallowing 52 teaspoons of sugar, yet the average American consumes that every day, much in the form of sweetened beverages. Obesity has become an American epidemic. Diet contributes significantly to the risk of coronary heart disease, certain types of cancer, and stroke – the three major causes of death in the U.S. Estimates of diet-related medical costs, loss of productivity, and value of premature deaths reach $70 billion annually. On top of all this, an estimated 26% of the edible food available in the U.S. is wasted at the consumer level through spoilage, plate throw-away, and excessive proportioning. 
Food choices can affect both our personal health as well as the health of our social
connections. Buying local and direct in most cases also means buying more whole,
fresh foods. In today’s busy lifestyle, finding the extra time to prepare meals
from scratch can be challenging. But cooking and eating with family and friends may
be the perfect answer for finding balance in the hectic pace of life. This is one of
the messages of Slow Food,
an international movement committed to preserving the
cultural heritage, diversity, environmental sustainability, and honest pleasures of
food. Eating fresh, whole foods
can also benefit your physical health. Many foods lose nutritional value after they
are harvested: buying local, fresh, and direct minimizes this loss. The varieties of
fruits and vegetables typically found in grocery stores are not necessarily the best
tasting or most nutritious, but the varieties capable of withstanding the rigors of
mechanical harvesting and long-distance transport. Farmers who sell their produce
locally can concentrate on the best tasting varieties harvested at the peak of
ripeness. You might also be able to buy local free-range eggs high in alpha omega 3
fatty acids, or local, grass-fed beef, which is a good source of conjugated linoleic
acid, a powerful anti-cancer agent.
Fortunately, buying local food doesn’t need to be a do-or-die proposition. We live in an age of over-analyzed, prescriptive diets that are almost as fickle as fashion. If local food becomes merely a sign of political correctness, it is likely to go the way of the fad diet. We have to remember that the current structure of agriculture and our food system isn’t an inevitable process, but the result of small choices and decisions made by individuals. Small choices can lead to major changes if enough people make them. Incremental changes – when you think of it, when you have time, when you’re in the mood – can lead to larger lifestyle changes without your even noticing. For instance, if everyone in Michigan were to commit 10% of their at-home food budget to consuming Michigan-grown products, it would amount to $734 million a year in local food sales; that’s 20% of the current farm-gate value of Michigan agriculture. 
The important thing is to experience the taste, the flavor, and the fun of local
foods. My favorite moments at the farmers’ market are hearing the enthusiastic
stories about the perfect salad made from lettuce mere hours from harvest or the
“Sun Gold” cherry tomatoes that never made it into the salad at all because the kids
ate them all on the way home. Paying attention to our food can be especially
challenging because, unlike selecting a house or a car, food choices are made nearly
every day. When budgets get tight, it is often these daily expenses that absorb the
slack. But when local food becomes so exciting that your kids are asking for
farm-fresh carrots instead of candy, it’s easier to stomach a few cents on the dollar
of market “inefficiencies” that support a local farmer or help protect the
environment. For help in finding local food in your area, you can consult the
Food Routes Network.
So before we turn Food Check-Out Day into another senseless Hallmark holiday, let’s give thought to the policies and actions that allow Americans to have the cheapest food in the world. At the least, we can take pause before each meal to consider where our food came from and how it got to our plate. If we’re lucky, we might also be able to associate a farmer’s face with the meal. If the old adage, “you are what you eat” still holds, then someone out there is growing you. I want to know who’s growing me, and I want it done right, not cheaply. Don’t you? |
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Last updated by Suzanne Brucker Heiney, April 2004. |
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Monthly Public Program for Tuesday May 18