Our Food System Is Broken. Buying Local Food Can Help.

For many of us, the fact that our food system is broken is not news.

The US government subsidizes crops we don't need more of (like "number 2 field corn"), which get processed into foods that are bad for us (high-fructose corn syrup), and are fed to animals who get sick from eating them (cows). Vegetable farmers receive no subsidies.

Government incentives and regulatory agencies encourage centralized, industrialized food production and processing, which lead to food-borne illness and recalls on a massive scale, not to mention the disappearance of local variation. Time was, you could drive across the country and get some local color by visiting family-run roadside eateries; today, most of your options are chain restaurants serving food from Sysco and other foodservice distributors.

We have become so dependent on food from other regions that any sort of crisis—whether it be transportation fuel shortage, water shortage, or natural or man-made disaster—will have its effects magnified, because it will have an impact on the food system nationwide.

How can buying local food help?

First, when we buy food directly from local, small farmers, we cut out the intermediary. The profits all go directly to the farmer, rather than going mostly to the distributor. The farmer is able to stay in business and continue growing food, rather than selling the farm to a real estate developer. Furthermore, we are able to talk to the farmer. What kinds of anti-pest measures were taken? Grass-fed, grain-fed, or a combination? Why? What's good right now? What's coming next week? How's the family? And so on.

Second, when we buy local food, we are creating a more robust, resilient food system. It is to our advantage to have more food produced locally, whatever sort of food is suited to our climate, because in the event of a discontinuity of some sort, it may become more difficult or expensive to transport food thousands of miles. Buying eggs from a national distributor is, in effect, "putting all our eggs in one basket".

Third, local food is likely to be fresher, tastier, and more nutritious.

This isn't the first time anyone has made these arguments, and I hope it won't be the last. And of course there are many more arguments to be made in favor of local food.

We need to keep making these arguments until things are working right.

(This post was submitted as part of Fight Back Friday over at Food Renegade!)

Local Food Matters: A Response to "Math Lessons For Locavores"

Many people have emailed me about a New York Times Op-Ed from August 19, 2010: Math Lessons for Locavores, by Stephen Budiansky. I've started to feel a little silly continually cutting-and-pasting my response, so I decided to blog it!

Briefly:

Budiansky's blog is called liberalcurmudgeon.com, a name which may reflect his wish to be seen as controversial or contrary—and what better liberal sacred cow to assail than local food? Budiansky's main point in his piece is that food miles don't matter, because food transportation is just a drop in the bucket when it comes to food-related energy usage. This is a similar argument to the one that James McWilliams made in his book Just Food; in fact I suspect that Budiansky has read McWilliams book recently.

Budiansky's argument is rich in facts and figures but devoid of footnotes and references. While this may be the nature of an Op-Ed, it does make it hard for a critical reader to explore the facts. Regardless, even if we take all of his facts and figures to be accurate and contextually appropriate, his piece is flawed in may of the same ways as McWilliams' book (ways which I explored here).

Both he and McWilliams neglect or discount the value of a strong local economy.

Buying local helps to build the local economy, and helps to support small businesses.

Why is that important?

Supporting small businesses rather than large corporations is likely to result in a more uniform distribution of wealth—money to the middle-class rather than to the kingpins.

Also, if we keep money in the hands of the middle-class in our local economy, then the place where we live will perhaps be a nicer place to live.

Also, more local food production leaves us better in the face of some sort of infrastructure breakdown that might make food transportation more difficult.

What do I mean by infrastructure breakdown? Fuel shortage…natural disaster…human-made disaster…war…political crisis…strike…

So while transportation fuel is interesting (or maybe not), it is only one piece of the puzzle. That, at least, we can all agree on.

Small Farms Are More Efficient Per Acre Than Big Farms

People make all sorts of arguments against "local food". A common one is that larger farming operations are "more efficient". Since larger operations are usually farther away from population centers, the implication is that local food is a less efficient use of resources than "distant food".

Next time someone makes that argument, I'll point them to this excerpt from Eat Here by Brian Halweil (bigger excerpt available here):

Perhaps most surprising to people who have only casually followed the debate about small-farm values versus factory-farm “efficiency” is the fact that a large body of evidence shows that small farms are actually more productive than large ones, producing as much as 1,000 per cent more output per unit of area.* How does this jibe with the often-mentioned productivity advantages of large-scale mechanized operations? The answer is simply that those big-farm advantages are always calculated on the basis of how much of one crop the land will yield per acre. The greater productivity of a smaller, more complex farm, however, is calculated on the basis of how much food overall is produced per acre. The smaller farm can grow several crops utilizing different root depths, plant heights, or nutrients on the same piece of land simultaneously. It is this “polyculture” that offers the small farm’s productivity advantage.

*Peter Rosset, “The Multiple Functions and Benefits of Small Farm Agriculture,” Policy Brief No. 4 (Oakland, California: Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy, September 1999), pp. 12, 13.

Local Food And The Sweetest Strawberries

A chef friend of mine just emailed me the following note (I've redacted the names of the farms):

i have been thinking lately that the world is on this local kick (from which i benefit of course). however, within the farming community there are great variations in quality. for instance, XXXXXXX and XXXXXXXX produce by far the best stuff. they never water and fertilize and the result is smaller vegetables with way more flavor. i try and use these guys all the time. the strawberries are small and nutty with twice as much sugar. the larger local farms produce stuff that is similar to stuff from texas. isn't it time we start to think about quality and not just "local". XXXXXXX farms already has heirloom cherry tomatoes. that's just wrong.

It got me thinking...

The qualities of our food can be measured in various ways, many of which apply differently to different food types.

We have heard all about "local" vs. "distant", although we don't agree on what they mean. For greens, "local" might be a 50-mile radius, while for meat and dairy and seafood it might be wider. When you are talking about processed foods, like bread, charcuterie, and canned goods, you may want to consider not only the points of origin of the ingredients, but also the point of processing. Local vs. distant has economic implications, as well as implications with respect to the energy used for transportation. And it also affects the next measure:

"Young" vs. "old" matters greatly for some things, and not at all for others. For some things, "young" is crucial; for others, "old" is better (some cheeses, wines, meats, etc.).

Consider the chef's comments above. What he's talking about is, roughly, the spectrum from "wild" to "farmed". The small tasty strawberries, receiving no additional fertilizer or water, are much closer to being wild strawberries. So "wild" might be better for strawberries. On the other hand, for some kinds of fish and shellfish (tilapia, catfish, oysters, mussels), "farmed" can be great. (Click here for more about seafood.)

For things that are farmed, we have the spectrum from "natural inputs" to "unnatural inputs". I'm not going to try to define "natural" right now. "Organic" and "conventional" lie on this continuum.

We have the spectrum from "primeval" to "domesticated". Wild and heritage animals, heirloom vegetables, and so on, move towards one end of the spectrum; hybrid, genetically-modified, and cloned species move towards the other.  Note that careful breeding is sometimes necessary to maintain lines of heritage animals, so it's not fair to say that they aren't selectively bred. And cloned is not necessarily bad; almost all apples and many oranges are cloned.

There are other attributes to consider, like "plentiful" vs. "endangered". And harder-to-measure measures, like "nutrient-dense" vs. "nutrient-deficient".

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Sometimes we're hungry, we simply want something to eat, and all of this can be overwhelming.

But for those times when we are thinking about food, for professional reasons, philosophical reasons, or whatever, it can be useful to have frames of reference like these.

And if you want to grow the sweetest strawberries, you now know how.