When did our country's food supply spin out of control, as it has? When did it all go to hell?
I don't want to suggest that everything is worse than it was back in the "good old days." I can't even pretend that I was around in the "good old days." I grew up in the 1980's.
I would bet we have more variety now. More ethnic foods, more exotic fruits and vegetables, that sort of thing. I doubt many Americans ate sushi 100 years ago.
But, on the whole, when did we become, essentially, factory products. That's what I feel like. Our food is made as cheaply as possible, as quickly as possible, with as little human involvement as possible from the earth to the table. It positively makes me feel like I am living in Brave New World.
Here is a diagram I made, so far as I can tell, about how our food gets to us (and where all the money goes):
Seems counterintuitive. My food gets to me like this:
I admit, it takes some oil to drive the tractor around and to bring the food from the farm to my home. And I do eat other foods besides fruits and veggies. I can get nuts, flour, maple syrup, and honey directly from farmers at the farmer's market, but I still need to buy basmati rice and black beans and other foods from the local co-op. And I still pay taxes, supporting the subsidies to produce cheap corn.
So, it can't always be as straightforward as the direct sale from the farmer to the consumer. But much of it can. For the purposes of this diary, let's do the economist thing and make assumptions that these two models are 100% correct. Otherwise, we'll never be able to move on without getting into the millions of little intricacies of either system. And, to help preserve some of my sanity while writing this, let's call the first diagram the Agribusiness Model and the second diagram the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Model.
One hundred years ago, our food was governed by a system resembling the CSA Model. Today, on a local CSA farm, the farmer planted alfalfa as a cover crop to add nitrogen to the soil, before planting his squashes and melons; one hundred years ago, farmers had no alternative but to organically manage the amount of nitrogen in the soil. Today, farmers can use synthetic fertilizers for their nitrogen.
Today, on the local CSA farm, the farmer rotates the crops to manage pests and soil. Most farmers choose to use synthetic pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides, in addition to their synethetic fertilizers, to do this.
The local organic farms produce less than the larger conventional farms. However, they use much less oil, they do not need to pay a premium for GM seeds, and they can charge a premium to their customers for supplying a superior product. The local organic farms can sell their produce to the consumer with fewer middlemen, each of whom would take a cut of the price the consumer pays for the goods. According to What to Eat by Marion Nestle "Organic farms are nearly as productive, leave the soils healtheir, and use energy more efficiently" (p. 45).
I don't mind paying a premium to the local organic farmers, whether I buy my vegetables from my CSA, the farmer's market, or a roadside stand. I'm lucky that I can afford to do this, and I figure it's better to pay now for my vegetables than to pay later for my healthcare. I don't represent most Americans, but I (and maybe you too) represent a growing market segment.
Taking a step back to look at this picture, farmers can choose to produce more on the cheap, or less (but higher quality) to reap a higher price. In the Agribusiness Model, farmers produce massive quantities of mostly corn and soybeans, sell it for less than it costs to produce it, and the money-makers are Big Oil and Big Agribusiness companies like Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM).
I can't speak for the farmers, but looking at the two alternatives, it looks to me like I'd prefer the CSA Model to the Agribusiness Model. In that case, how and why did we make the switch over the last century?
Guns Become Butter
Let's take a trip back to high school economics class. Remember this picture?
That is a PPF (Production Possibilities Frontier) Curve. Given our resources, we can only produce so much. We can choose what we want to produce, but in the case of guns vs. butter, if we choose to produce more guns, then we must produce less butter. Or vice versa.
During the Great Depression, our actual production was less than our ability to produce. On this chart, perhaps it would have been at 15 guns and 700 lbs of butter. Or something like that. I'm making those numbers up, but the point is, we weren't producing at maximum capacity.
During WWII, we not only produced our maximum amount; we expanded the entire PPF curve. In this picture, perhaps it would look like we pushed the curve out so that we could produce 300 guns and 200 lbs of butter.
Then we kicked some Nazi butt, went back to peace time, and ... well what happens when we have the ability to produce 300 guns and 200 lbs of butter but we don't really need all of the guns?
For one thing, you can have a cold war. Create a reason you need more guns. But you can also find a way to (literally) convert your weapons into food. And we did that in spades.
Is it a coincidence that the inventor of the Haber-Bosch process, the process by which synthetic fertilizer is made, is also known as The Father of Chemical Warfare? Fritz Haber, a German Jew, created the Haber-Bosch process to make synthetic ammonia (useful in fertilizers and explosives) in 1908. He went on to make Zyklon B, which was used to gas millions of concentration camp victims. He did not develop it for that purpose; it was used as a delousing agent in WWI and today it is used only to kill insects and rodents.
Industrial fertilizer and industrial pesticides both owe their existence to the conversion of the World War II munitions industry to civilian uses--nerve gases became pesticides, and ammonium nitrate explosives became nitrogen fertilizers. - Source
We've turned a rather direct system, one that evolved over millions of years, into a convoluted (but profitable!) Rube Goldberg. Indeed, much of our food factories are actually food factories in reverse; in the case of many foods, for each calorie eaten by the end consumer, many more calories were required to produce it. This applies to meats, processed foods, and fruits and vegetables that are trucked or flown across the country to reach their final destinations.
To sustain the Agribusiness Model, we produce massive quantities of corn and soybeans and oil as inputs. We output massive quantities of pollution. And do we care? Some of us do. Those making the big bucks do not mind the pollution (surprising because they live here, too - and many of them have children and grandchildren). And they've trained the rest of us to cry "anti-business!" when the environmentalists get out of line.
If we wholly returned to the CSA Model, would we have enough food to feed ourselves?
According to The Earth Institute at Columbia University:
Today, it is estimated that the Haber-Bosch process is used to produce more than 500 million tons of fertilizer that is responsible for sustaining 40% of the earth's population. On the flip-side, much of the nitrogen used in the process ends up back in the environment as a major source of pollution.
The Agribusiness Model allows our population to spin out of control, as it has done. I doubt any environmentalist advocates converting to an entirely organic system if it means people must starve. However, another byproduct of agribusiness is obesity. We eat inefficiently (in terms of the inputs exceeding the outputs of production, calorically) but we also eat too much. And we don't eat well. Our existence, as well as the corn's existence, the corn farmers' existence, and the cows', chickens', and pigs' existences, all serve to create profits for Big Oil and Agribusiness.
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Recipes
This week the farmer's market was full of berries (blue, rasp, straw), zucchini, beets, sugar snap and snow peas, green beans, tomatoes, eggplant, potatoes, kohlrabi, broccoli, various types of greens, and onions. I also saw the very first corn, although it wasn't organic so I did not get any.
I got some kohlrabi, which is a new food to me. It is related to broccoli and the larger ones look like light green bowling balls. I got three smaller ones, maybe the size of baseballs, to use in a soup. You can eat it raw (the texture is really, really nice) or in a salad or stir fry. To go with it in the soup, I got potatoes and an onion.
Kohlrabi Soup
Here is a rather neutrally flavored soup recipe. You can add spices and herbs to make it taste Italian (basil, parsley, oregano), Middle Eastern (cumin, parsley, lemon juice, and optional mint), Indian (curry), Asian (ginger, tamari, garlic), or Mexican (cilantro, lime, cumin, chili). I like eating it plain so I can fully taste the flavors of the vegetables.
Ingredients
- 3 small kohlrabi, diced
- 1 small onion, diced
- 1 c. diced potatoes
- 4 c. vegetable broth or water
- 1 bay leaf
- 1/4 tsp. paprika
- Salt and pepper, to taste
Dice the vegetables and begin sweating the onions in a covered large saucepan. After 5 minutes, add all remaining ingredients. Bring the soup to a boil, season to taste, and serve.
To reduce packaging waste, I've been using vegan no sodium bouillon cubes. I am wary about buying anything that uses palm or palm kernal oil after a melvin diary about it a while back (the one about how the backlash against trans-fats is leading to increased use of saturated fats such as palm oil, and the production of it is wrecking orang-utan habitat), but I trust the Rapunzel brand. Also, the flavor is much nicer than the store bought vegetable broth I used to buy. I used 4 c. water and 2 bouillon cubes for this soup.
Cherries and Wheat
This could make a good breakfast, snack, or side. You can eat it as is or with vanilla yogurt.
Ingredients
- 1 c. bulgur wheat or cracked wheat
- 2 c. water
- 1/2 c. milk or soy milk
- 3 tbsp. maple syrup or sugar
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- 1 c. cherries, pitted and halved
- Dash salt
Add all ingredients in a crock pot and cook on low for 4 hours.
If you do not have a crock pot, you can do this on top of the stove in a saucepan. You might also want to combine cherries, milk, maple syrup, and vanilla in a blender before adding them to the bulgur or cracked wheat.