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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Good reasons to support local farmers
  • Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 07:59:17 -0600



Good reasons to support local farmers
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/359164_localvore16.html

JENNIFER WILKINS
GUEST COLUMNIST

When a fellow panelist recently characterized the growing interest in local
foods as hedonistic elitism, I was a bit taken aback. I'd rejected this
charge when I heard it before. But maybe there was something to it.

Perhaps, if one's view of local food is limited to what's offered at Chez
Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, Calif., or Blue Hill at Stone Barns in
Pocantico Hills, N.Y., and to the well-heeled patrons who can spend the $150
dinner for two may cost (without cocktails or wine).

To dismiss such establishments as simply pandering to the whims of highbrow
taste is to dismiss their vital role in increasing awareness of critical food
and agriculture issues among customers who have the resources to cast
much-needed votes for a healthier, more sustainable food system. Such
settings also provide an increasingly rare transparency about where the food
being served came from and how and by whom it was grown.

Blue Hill sets a high standard in this regard. In adjacent pastures, lively
chickens that provide eggs and meat on the menu can be seen industriously
pecking and scratching. You'd be hard-pressed to find tastier eggs with
deeper yellow yolks, or more tender meat.

Greenhouses near the parking lot yield fresh produce savored in the dining
room. Customers have unforgettable eating experiences that include learning
and tasting how ordinary foods can become something extraordinary.

But local food, and the "locavore" movement, such as the "100-mile Diet" , is
about much more than the heirloom tomatoes and tender just-plucked carrots
served in white tablecloth restaurants.

It's about transforming and democratizing the food system. It's about
increasing access to high-quality, nutrient-rich food and making it available
and affordable to all people.

It's about establishing whole food (not Whole Foods) markets in poor
inner-city neighborhoods plagued by "food deserts."

It's about keeping more farmers on the land by paying them the real cost of
production and about consumers having a stake in the stewardship of
productive land. It's about sustainability.

According to the Hartman Group's Pulse Report, "Consumer Understanding of
Buying Local," released in February, consumers believe that local products
are fresher, have fewer pesticide residues, are of higher quality, and are
more authentic. Buying local food is seen as supporting businesses that
reflect the values of their community, as "an antidote to commoditization and
industrialization" and a way to "protect the local economy and environment."

By providing participants in the WIC (Women, Infants and Children) program
and low-income seniors with vouchers, the Farmers' Market Nutrition Program
increases their access to locally produced fruits, vegetables and herbs.

When farmers sell their crops directly to consumers, schools and restaurants,
none of the cost is siphoned off by processors, distributors and marketers.
An increasing number of farmers markets are equipped with swipe machines for
food stamps, affording the poor better access to fresh local farm products.

In reality, elitist is a term more aptly applied to the conventional food
system that provides most of America's food and concentrates economic power
among an increasingly "select class" (a dictionary definition of elite) of
corporations. Just four companies, for example -- Tyson, Cargill, Swift and
National Beef Packing -- control more than 80 percent of the beef market.

To keep agriculture subsidies flowing to commodities upon which those and
other food system "elites" depend, they exert substantial influence on the
political process through hefty campaign contributions and securing key
advisory positions in government. That's not the kind of voice enjoyed by the
typical WIC mom.

Compared with the subsidies supporting growers of corn, soybeans and a
handful of other commodities, governmental support for crops such as fruits
and vegetables, for organic production methods and for pasture-based
livestock systems, is scant.

So, if you can, support your local farmer, and the chefs that serve her food.
And support policies that will make wholesome food available and affordable.
Jennifer Wilkins is in the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell
University: jlw15@cornell.edu.





  • [Livingontheland] Good reasons to support local farmers, Tradingpost, 04/17/2008

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