Can Local Food Survive The Global Downturn?
The number of farms in the USA has increased by 4% since 2002. Most of the new agriculture is small, part-time and family run, which means that instead of being self-sustaining, most new farms need at least one family member to be working off the farm to generate income – this is an increasing trend too: in the last decade the number of farms that require farmers to have off-farm jobs too has risen from 55% to 65%. And nearly half the farms who reported income in 2007 earned less than $3,000 in sales. That’s hardly a living wage.
The truth is, most food eaten in the USA is produced on mega-farms, whether inside America’s borders or imported from large farming operations overseas. Within the US, 5% of farms actually deliver 75% of America’s agricultural produce.
So who bridges the gap between the ‘hobby’ farmers and the industrial size concerns? Nobody much. The middle-sized farm has all but disappeared because it’s too big to sell its produce locally but too small to get into the supermarket and ‘super-size me’ catering outlet supply business where what are called ‘commodity crops’ are sold by the warehouseful rather than the truckload.
Mom and Pop farming is a dream
This leaves the ‘local food’ concept with a problem that’s difficult to solve. Obviously when people say ‘local’ they don’t mean food that was produced on a mega-agro-industrial-complex that runs round the clock on artificial lighting and intensive practices, even it if is only a couple of miles down the road. What they mean, what ‘local’ is shorthand for, is the idyllic mom-and-pop farm, with mixed agriculture, free-ranging chickens, and crops taken to market in an old truck, where Mom sells them while Pop sits with his friends and plays checkers. It’s a romantic image, but does it add up?
Food Stamps can’t help small farms, even if they are given to small farmers
America’s new Agriculture Secretary, Tom Vilsack, wants to find ‘income opportunities’ for small and medium sized farms. He wants these smaller units to have the chance to compete for contracts with government nutrition programmes, but how could that work? At what point can Mom and Pop get into supplying the food stamps market, which is now called SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and what is the cost in transport, infrastructure and loss of economies of scale? It doesn’t seem feasible that government staffers can even find, let alone contract with, thousands of small farmers, get them on the SNAP list and get their produce on the tables of low income families who lack transport to get to farms, or even to stores.
Britain leads the way - backwards
If Britain is anything to go by, the future isn’t bright. The Highlands and Islands Local Food Network (HILFN), based in Scotland, has said it will close its office, pay off its four staff and cease to assist local farmers in producing food to be sold locally because it has lost its funding from Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE).
In response, HIE says it is transferring its focus to businesses that wanted to trade beyond the region, including farmers and food producers. In a statement its said that while it ‘recognises the value of the food and drink industry to the area’, the emphasis would now be on helping local businesses trade further afield than just the Highlands and Islands.
Farmers’ Market courtesy of Natalie Maynor at Flickr under a creative commons licence
Most of us have at one time or other visited grandma’s house to partake in her newly harvested tomatoes, or even freshly picked onions in the quaint back yard garden patch. You knew they were fresh because the garden soil had to be washed off those that were dug up.
Grow a Garden, Harvest Truly Fresh Vegetables
Absolutely - and while we’ve lost some of that thrifty behaviour, perhaps it will come back with the’recession’. However, what are those to do who don’t have even a window box, let alone a yard?