Is Local Food a Fad or Part of a Larger Movement?
Decatur Metro | February 20, 2010America loves to specialize its movements.
Some people swear by local food. Others argue for durable local economies. Still others see worker’s rights as the most important call to action.
And there’s little wrong with this natural evolution of American thought…just as long as we recognize that at some point, in order to realize the full potential of ANY these individual movements, they really should be integrated. Otherwise, many of these movements could easily be phased into the very global, industrialized system they each once shunned.
Food writer Corby Kummer’s latest article in The Atlantic, is just another example of this kind of specialized focus. The piece documents his discovery of quality organic selections at a nearby Wal-Mart Supercenter, and the resulting internal struggle to contemplate Wal-Mart as a competitor of Whole Foods.
I started looking into how and why Walmart could be plausibly competing with Whole Foods, and found that its produce-buying had evolved beyond organics, to a virtually unknown program—one that could do more to encourage small and medium-size American farms than any number of well-meaning nonprofits, or the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with its new Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food campaign. Not even Fishman, who has been closely tracking Walmart’s sustainability efforts, had heard of it. “They do a lot of good things they don’t talk about,” he offered.
The article ends with a blind taste-test around the dinner table, where Wal-Mart winds up being a bit more palatable than first realized.
Wal-Mart’s move to the local is impressive, demonstrating once again in many ways the big-box’s business model is more flexible and less philosophical than our arguments against it. It’s about where money can be made.
However, wrestling over which big-box will “save the small farm and make America healthy” is a quite myopic, food-focused struggle.
Founders of the local food movement argued for slow and local food, not just out of a desire to bring small farmers back to the land, but with great love for the diversity of food, community sharing, and overall public health.
That’s what’s wrong about thinking that Wal-Mart could be the solution.
A world where Wal-Mart becomes the savior of the small farmer seems a nice and easy way to plug local food into the industrialized culture and watch sales soar. But in the end, what you quickly gain in farm sustainability, you will continue to lose in other areas of diverse economy and culture.
Diversity can exist not only in food, but in all aspects of life. Community strength comes not just from the communal dinner table, but also in the layout of our towns, in how we both move about and communicate. Health is not just about what you eat, but how you burn those calories afterward.
Local food is a key part of this so-far fractured “local” and “sustainable” movement. And unless it and all these other complementary components can successfully hook up into a larger more integrated philosophy, it could end up just another food fad.
I would think most people don’t have a philosophy — integrated or not — about what food to eat and where to buy it. Rather, they want as much quality as they can get at the lowest possible price.
People dislike Wal-mart in large part due to its scale, but there is little doubt that scale allows the company to deliver low prices. Low prices are, in fact, a key driver of the company’s success. And what this article shows is that Wal-mart can and does deliver scale and cost savings and still deliver high quality. This strikes me as good all the way around. Of course, Walmart does not do anything to prohibit people from burning as many calories as they’d like after a meal.
It also strikes me that local food — applied anything close to literally — is undoubtedly a fad. Anything that would so limit food choices is bound to fail, and miserably at that.
A few weeks ago you posted a link to the slow food movement website, and I flipped through it. Pictured on one of the pages was a large wheel of Parmiggiano-reggiano. I could not help thinking, would the slow food movement prefer to ban shipment of that cheese across the Atlantic Ocean? It certainly is not “local” food outside of Italy. (Or perhaps we’d be condemned to lif eating the pathetic American replacement in the green can?) And that’s just one of thousands of foods that can’t be grown/made here.
I think you’re right that we never will get all the food we eat locally. Forget chesse, think about coffee and wine!
Luckily promoting local food isn’t an all or nothing scenario. You can eat MORE local food quite easily if you’re willing to do a little research. And the more people do it, the easier it will be to find.
As for cost, and people wanting their food cheap, you are correct. However, your assumption takes two things for granted: food subsidies and cheap energy. Nixon implemented many current day food subsidies after the 1970s food shortage. The unintended result was that the foods that provided the most calories per acre got the lion share of these subsidies…creating a massive disparity in price to the consumer. Per calorie, corn costs nothing next to a head of broccoli.
It seems slightly odd that some of those of a conservative mindset balk at the idea of organic, local food, because it’s asking the consumer to pay more for an item. But the only reason that industrial food is so cheap is because of government subsidies.
The other thing that keeps the industrial food chain cheaper is cheap oil. If the price of oil goes up, we’re stuck with a food production and distribution system that no longer makes ANYONE money. That’s sorta dangerous, no?
Haha, how did I know you would bring up subsidies! I bet you when you rest your head at night, you have visions of little subsidies dancing around in your head!
I don’t dislike local organic food. I think it’s great. But honestly, I can afford it pretty easily. If I were a hell of a lot poorer, I might bypass it for cheaper food.
Undoudtedly, government subsidies make some foods cheaper than they should be. My guess is that you realize I’d love to end thosesubsidies tomorrow. But eating locally and ending government subsidies are 2 different things. Maybe an end to subsidies would make corn a lot more expensive. But growing and bringing to market totally organic broccoli might still be a lot more expensive that industrial farming with pesticides.
Sunsidies or not, I want access to pineapples, belgian beer, oranges, california wine, etc. My fear is that the slow and local food movements will lead inexorably to calls for banishment of those in every place but their immediate local areas. Maybe I’m wrong. But if you accept the essential logic that one should eat locally to reduce the impact of transport, etc., then why should anyone be permitted to enjoy the sheer luxury of shipping cabernet from Napa to Atlanta?
But the only reason that industrial food is so cheap is because of government subsidies. Hmm? Not sure exactly what “industrial food” is, but I don’t think this pronouncement lives up to scrutiny. Large scale producers are more efficient than small scale producers regardless of subsidies – just like Wal Mart. And aren’t local producers entitled to ag subsidies too?
The other thing that keeps the industrial food chain cheaper is cheap oil.
Not sure this is a supported assertion either. Is oil cost really the deciding variable that determines food costs (e.g. the cost of peaches from California verses south Georgia)? If so, the cheapest stuff in the produce section doesn’t bear that out.
I love beating up up big oil, big ag, and big gov’t (subsidies) as much as anyone, but saying that the game is rigged is a little too Palin-esque.
As to oil: it was anything but cheap in 2008. Did we see all food prices rise? I don’t think so. We did see corn rise, but many argued persuasively that was due to government subsidized ethanol, which is supposed to compete wth oil. I am not saying DM is 100% wrong here, but I am skeptical.
Oil only went up to $4. I’d be careful of making an argument that relied on it not going above that level ever again.
Corn is a bad way to judge the true cost of a food item (for reasons already described). But as I recall, back when oil was $4 a gallon, there was a segment on the news every day about a different item, be it milk, cheese, eggs, fruits, and their increased costs. Not just because you need oil to deliver food, but because you need oil to create the nitrogen in man-made fertilizers and pesticides.
Perhaps we should look at it this way…Organic was the first step to move away from the industrial food-chain, which relied too heavily on oil to produce fertilizers. Local was the natural next step because of oil consumption to deliver these items.
Quickest way to learn about industrial food is watching Food Inc. Yes, it grinds its ax a little loudly, but well worth the 90 minutes.
This AP article from 2005 provides a bit of context as to how food subsidies are divided up.
Here’s a piece…
“The government will spend $17 billion subsidizing farmers this year. Rather than focusing on the producers of good-for-you fruits and vegetables — half its subsidies go to grain farmers, whose crops feed animals for meat, milk and eggs and become cheap ingredients in processed food….
Here is what the food pyramid says should be eaten for a 2,000-calorie daily diet:
* 3 cups of fat-free or lowfat milk or cheese
* 2½ cups of vegetables
* 2 cups of fruit
* 6 ounces of grains
* 5½ ounces of meat or beans.
The plate would look quite different if it matched farm subsidies. The breakdown of the $17 billion that the Congressional Budge Office says they will cost this year includes:
* $7.3 billion for corn and other feed grains
* $3.5 billion for cotton
* $1.6 billion for soybeans
* $1.5 billion for wheat
* $1.5 billion for tobacco
* $686 million for dairy
* $626 million for rice
* $271 million for peanuts.
The Agriculture Department doesn’t just hand out subsidies to farmers and tell people what they should eat. It operates school lunch and food stamp programs and the special nutrition programs. It also runs the Forest Service and oversees land conservation.”
So lets recap. Tobacco gets $1.5 billion and fruits and vegetables get…?
And most of these subsidies go to the larger farms. The % of farms that receive some form of federal subsidy varies from state to state but it’s something around 20%. Fruit and vegetable farmers, not to mention local farmers, get squat.
Seems to me there are a few different things driving local food. Ideology, health, and taste, to name a few. And not all of these are faddish. As e coli outbreaks become more common and massive, as well as popping up in odd places like lettuce production, the wonders of large-scale food will keep getting bad press. Don’t expect such things to go away. Then there’s taste. Anyone who has only had grocery store tomatoes and has a home-grown tomato for the first time doesn’t need ideology or health concerns to recognize that grocery store tomatoes are “tomatoes” in shape and color only. The difference isn’t as dramatic in every food, but fresh locally grown, using small-scale technique, can make a big difference in flavor. If you haven’t made the egg discovery yet, go talk to Lynn Sawicki. The massive thing large-scale industrial food (yes, Brad, it’s real) has going for it is price, and that wont’ go away either.
You’ve nailed the heart of entrepreneurial thinking, Judd, instead of the usual “I know our current, highly manipulated industrial ag complex only masquerades as a free market system but I don’t care because it’s cheap and convenient to me” responses that typically pop up when we talk about this subject.
Instead, you’re sizing up the weaknesses in what’s available and looking for market opportunities to exploit them. That’s the crux of how a truly free market is supposed to deliver the best there is to offer in the most efficient way. Strange how it has to come from you instead of some of the usual free market folks around here. George, where are ya, buddy?
Sometimes I get the sense that more than a few people advocate two things: A truly free market; and the current status quo system they’ve grown used to. You can’t have it both ways. Anyone for a level playing field?