Quantity of Quality
The Modern Economics of Food
Several years ago, a speaker at the “Conference on the Chicken” at Yale University declared the best way to save endangered chicken species was to eat them. Increased demand would then cause increased supply. This applies to all food, not just chicken, and this is the crux of the problem for good food.
The supply of good food – food produced in a socially responsible manner – will increase only when consumers always have a choice between it and the mass-produced, chemical-laden, antibiotic-laced, non-natural food now served in most homes and restaurants. This will require a seamless marketing and distribution network for good food, as well as affordable prices.
The marketing system that gave people access to good food – from independent slaughterhouses to independent grocers – has been systematically destroyed over the last 40 years. Most attempts to use existing marketing systems to distribute good food by re-labeling – using the term “organic,” for example – have been hijacked by corporate interests. And using niche markets, while a good way to hold out until conditions improve, often leads to a two-tier food system only the wealthy can afford.
The price of good food is currently higher than the price of non-natural food for a number of reasons: producers of non-natural food lower their prices by shifting costs of their air and water pollution to their neighbors, by using antibiotics and genetic modifications in potentially harmful ways, by taking short-cuts on both animal and human health and safety issues and by exploiting a poor, under-represented and largely immigrant workforce. These practices, not efficiency of production, result in artificially low prices for non-natural food. The real cost of good food is actually less because socially responsible farmers don’t shift their costs to taxpayers and society.
Cost shifting should not be tolerated in any sector of our economy. It exists in agriculture because large corporations, fronted by the American Farm Bureau, have convinced our political leaders that theirs is the only valid vision for agriculture. Instead, their vision is anti-capitalist, anti-free market and at its most fundamental level, profoundly destructive of socially responsible farming.
Those who produce food in a socially responsible manner can reclaim the market when the economic advantages given to producers of non-natural food are removed. This requires the following actions:
(a) Cut subsidies to agricultural producers. Most subsidies are given to large producers and they quickly find their way into the coffers of industrial agriculture. Instead, we should establish price floors that allow socially responsible farmers to produce good food.
(b) Break up corporate agriculture. Most of the world’s agriculture is controlled by three huge, vertically integrated corporations. Their control extends all the way from the field to the retail outlet. These companies should be broken up, just as AT&T was.
(c) Stop the non-therapeutic and unnecessary use of antibiotics in animal production. Seventy percent of antibiotics are used to promote growth and more are given to compensate for health problems in concentrated animal facilities. Neither use is justified and both uses degrade our ability to use antibiotics to fight disease in people.
(d) Fully fund and staff all state and national inspection agencies through fees, levied by size, on agricultural operations. Insist all agricultural operations meet the same environmental standards now required in the manufacturing sector and shut down those that don’t. Allow local control of all agricultural zoning decisions so state agencies cannot force unwanted agricultural operations down the throats of rural communities.
If we exclude the methods producers of non-natural food use to lower their costs, we can make the price of non-natural food reflect the real costs of its production and consumption.
Producers of good food cannot compete in a market where the price of non-natural food is supported by subsidies. To rebuild a food supply in the U.S. focused on quality, not quantity, and to do it at an affordable price is still possible. All that is required is to stop subsidizing the unhealthy, destructive system we now support. It’s up to us.
Brookview Farm
Putting Values into Action
Our parents are owners, farmers and stewards of Brookview Farm, a beautiful, organic cattle farm just 30 minutes west of Richmond Virginia. The 600-acre farm has two creeks running through gently rolling hills of hardwood forests and open pastureland. These creeks flow south into the James River, which forms our southern border for several miles. The James flows east to Richmond and eventually drains out into the Chesapeake Bay near its mouth to the Atlantic Ocean. Our family has been deeply connected to this land and the water flowing through and from it, and we all believe that everyone has a right to clean air, water and food. Our practices at Brookview Farm put those beliefs into action.
Over a decade ago our parents decided that their lifelong sustainable practices may be marketable. We were approved as a USDA organic farm – a rigorous test proving the absence of any chemicals in the fields or food stream. The farm is also in a conservation easement, ensuring long-term protection from Richmond’s encroaching development. Our cattle are fenced out of the streams and we’ve planted native fruit and nut trees, especially persimmons and oaks.
Everything on the farm is connected to another product: the compost (made from Henrico county leaves) is spread on the fields; the chickens scratch through the fields and distribute fertilizer, while producing delicious, nutritious eggs; and the cows graze the grass that sprouts up behind the moveable chicken pens. This grass-fattened beef, “Virginia Lean” is lean, healthy, much tastier than feedlot beef and has become our specialty.
Once a week we open our farm to the public and encourage neighbors and customers to come and see firsthand what we do at Brookview. Children run around and collect the eggs from the nests, while asking all sorts of good questions. (“Why does the girl cow have horns? Are there baby chickens in each egg? Will the chicken claw me with her long fingernails?”) Seeing families really enjoy the experience reminds us that education – and connection to the natural world – is another reason we run the farm. There is real value in sharing the farm experience with others, having them learn firsthand where their food comes from.
Brookview owners Sandy and Rossie Fisher both have served on the Board of the James River Association, the host of the James Riverkeeper, and Murray Fisher is a former Waterkeeper Alliance staff member who now holds an honorary seat on the board.
Union Square Farmers Market, NYC