Sustainable this locally made that.
Isn't organic just another term for "costs twice as much"?
What's all the fuss about, food is food isn't it? When we are hungry it doesn’t matter where it came from or who grew it. And, for some of us, if we’re really hungry it doesn’t even matter how much it costs.
We live in a country, even on a continent for that matter, that since its inception has been the breadbasket for the world. The land of milk and honey and the land of plenty are the phrases our forefathers were told to expect of North America.
This idea was built upon the stories told by the likes of John Cabot, whose prophetic words when he reported the Codfish stocks of the grand banks “will feed the world for eternity”. If only he could see them now.
This was however for an exceptional time in the immigration policies of European nations, not a fabrication to entice people to shift off. Although it was extremely rough moving to the new world, clearing land, and building infrastructure, our ancestors rose to the challenge. They sure didn't put that in the brochure!
It paid off though as we were left with a land ripe for growth, opportunity and economic wealth. The major benefit of our colonization of North America was surplus food, both to feed us as well as a growing and multiplying colonizing Europe.
Have you ever wondered if the famine in France and the resulting French Revolution had anything to do with the fact that France lost her holdings in North America to the British?
What about the Irish potato famine? It happened because the English exported all the valuable crops back to England, leaving only the cheap and “plentiful” potato for the Irish.
Unfortunately, the potato crop failed to materialize for a few years in a row leaving millions dead. Unbelievably it seems that to this day Ireland’s population has still not reached levels pre-1847. But in North America we had plenty of cheap, plentiful food and like our counterparts of yesteryear in Europe, we have been lulled into thinking it is inexhaustible.
So why am I going on about Local sustainable agriculture and the European immigration policies of yesteryear? Well, I had an argument with a German once. He was my school roommate and has since gone on to his earn a doctorate in biomechanics at the University of Uppsala in Sweden. This is after he completed his Bachelors degree in Neuroscience at Brown and a masters of computer engineering at Chicago.
We are complete opposites; he thinks food should be in pill form to save us from the hassle of having to prepare and eat food. He will most likely be the first person to build a human brain powered robot. A Frankenstien I will call it.
This guy is a smart cookie though, an intellectual heavy hitter, and I had to tell you this first because in this particular argument we had he was dead wrong about an all so important subject to human civilization.
I will attribute his position to the fact that he grew up in Europe and not North America, not to his bias against food. Europe imports a lot of its food and heavily subsidizes the domestic production of the rest. This being said, the Chinese haven’t even mastered cheese making yet. So for Marvin, he has always been used to imported food, expensive food at that, and not as plentiful.
So the argument at hand, and yes it is still ongoing, is that the basis for any nation's economic wealth is not a function of its monetary might, but its ability to feed it's people. We are talking about the basis, like the gold standard was for currency a short time ago. Rich countries can import food if they have an agricultural deficit, which many do, like in Europe. They have to!
So why do we care? Canada and all of our friendly western countries from which some of us came are all "have" countries. If we want something, we just go buy it. There is no problem with this statement but it only holds true as long as somewhere out there exist countries with agricultural surpluses from which we can buy.
The scary thing is that these are dropping like flies. In 2001 not only did the U.S. become the realized target of a long brewing domestic terrorist attack, but it also became agriculturally poor and a net importer of food. Two historical firsts in one year, not bad!
A breadbasket that supported the growth of the world for nearly two hundred years is now culturally and economically diversified into bigger and better things. Where are the new breadbaskets? Places like China, East Asia and South America.
These places are full of economic opportunity in the export arena. Regulations, labour laws and real-estate are all very favourable for return on investment in sectors where labour costs are high and margins low.
South America is also quite interesting because there's a big place called the rain forest that hasn't yet been fully exploited for the production of food. That's why many multinationals, investment funds, and more affluent individuals are quickly scooping up land in places like Brazil, but also Argentina and Chile. They are doing this in South America because it's easier to navigate politically than places like China. Not all of these investments are producing food yet, or providing a return, most of them are silently waiting.
These are huge land holdings where the investment is basically a hedge against the possibility that climate change will continue to reduce the ability of the world’s nations to feed themselves. These investments are a very real threat in that over the next few years places like China will join the U.S. as an agriculturally poor country.
This is on top of predictions by climate experts and environmentalists that the current practices of over-irrigation, application of chemical fertilizers, intensive cultivation of mono-crops and climate change will effectively render much of the Mid U.S. a desert in the next 40 years.
Should these “apocalyptic”, “fear mongering” predictions become reality, it will be a global disaster with food shortages striking everyone, including rich countries. I didn't say famine because it's just too shocking. It reminds me of events such as the French Revolution and the Irish famine which surely are just history.
The scariest thing about famines is that they can't be prevented; they just happen like a freak storm. The reason being is that crops and livestock are all planned at least a year in advance and take months to come to fruition, so by the time we realize that there won't be enough food we can't do much about it until the next year, or eight months as it turns out in this globally integrated economy.
This is one of the very reasons why we have an integrated global economy, and one of the reasons we always will, because a shortage somewhere is mitigated by an import or export here and there. But what will happen if there aren’t enough nations willing or able to export food? I’m willing to bet our global system might just slow down or halt altogether when former exporting countries start to hold back their agricultural produce to feed their own people.
The only argument against this is that rich nations will buy out access to food from underneath poorer nations as happened in Ireland in 1847. But unlike 1847, there are no new lands to send the displaced, bankrupt and starving people that this type of action causes. In 1847 it was easy, “ship em to Canada”. Where would the displaced and starving people of today have to go? It’s not straight out genocide, it’s economic genocide. It is the cruel work of the invisible hand.
The gravity of the situation sheds light on the rationale behind major multinationals like Monsanto who are developing products that are designed to increase agricultural yields. Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO's) that are resistant to pests, disease, and chemicals that essentially kill two problematic birds with one stone.
Monsanto’s never ending goal; larger yields, less labour, less costs per acre. These are three very important aspects in economic markets like North America where we are conditioned to plentiful and cheap food. Unfortunately this cheap food is untested, unreliable, and unsustainable.
We’ve all seen what Monsanto has done to India’s national food system as farmers there have the highest suicide rate in the world.
Additionally, some arguments indicate that GMO’s are hastening the potential for famine as many GMO seeds do not self germinate. So called terminator seeds and the chemicals that we use to produce them are argued to be responsible for super weeds and super bugs that could decimate crops, just like super viruses that have become immune to antibiotics kill perfectly healthy people.
To compliment Monsanto’s global mandate we've witnessed scaled up farms and scaled down stewardship of the land. The bottom line is to gain more for less.
This is forcing many farmers to get out of the business because they just can't compete with the bigger farms, let alone the imports and they aren't willing to destroy their land for short term gain as in the end it will leave them with nothing.
The result is North America is losing its agricultural intellect along with its small farms that make up a huge portion of the continent's overall productivity and provide tremendous economic benefit to communities, especially the smaller ones.
For a few seconds, just imagine Meaford with no working farms and count how many local businesses wouldn’t exist. Remember what it was like in town forty years ago? This direction needs to be reversed.
I think that we are slowly beginning to see the big picture. Is it possible to continue with the genetic modification or our food and the degradation of our soil just to keep prices where we want them? It looks like a massive corporate subsidy to ensure next year's GDP was better than last years.
After all, the less we pay attention to food production and purchase costs the more time and money we spend on other items like new flat screen TVs, travel, video games, and materialistic stuff. This is not sustainable and neither are the global agriculture practices that are supporting it.
This is why local food is so vitally important because it supports agricultural diversity and ensures that there is plenty of food to go around while buffering us from the potential for shortfalls and famine. Small farms preserve a diverse understanding of soil, plants, and animals, further enhancing environmental stewardship and financially supporting the communities they live in just like any other business.
Each and every one of us benefit from all of the assets local farms entail, but they are still under threat. Years of conglomeration, declining food prices, and a shift way from domestic production have decimated the local food infrastructure.
Remember beef rings? Remember the local abattoir in Meaford? These are just two of many examples where our capacity to grow and process food locally have been done away with, replaced by systems that flourish on unsustainable “I’ll take everything now” practices.
The market for local food is strong and growing, but it is the farmers and their infrastructure that are lagging. It is hard to operate a small farm and farmers find it even harder to sell their produce directly let alone find somewhere to process it themselves.
We need to realize that by investing in local food and supporting the farmers that grow it will create stability and infrastructure that will stiffen our domestic food system, create wealth, jobs and new businesses.
Farmers know better than anybody that they need to invest in creating local food infrastructure and reverse years of decline.
In this process of innovation, local food can begin to find its own operating efficiencies and farmers will be able to expand their marketing efforts beyond offering food to only those who can pay top dollar. Even if you agree that local food is more expensive, take a look at the prices of some local foods compared to imports, you will find very little differentiation these days. The only differentiation you’ll find is in the superior quality and health benefits of local food, often natural or organic, and much fresher.
The fact that global food prices are rising is a real sign of things to come, and represents just how the global system is under threat from production issues as is the local from lacking infrastructure. Then again, factor in the opportunity costs of the global system and you will see that it is wholly more expensive to buy from; it is a system built on deferred environmental, health, and social costs that we will pay for later.
I’m not making an argument against global commodity foodstuffs, because we will always need that system in place in some form or another, and it will always be there in some for or another. Rather, I am making an argument that our local food sector needs to be protected, diversified and grown upon. It is a mitigating, balancing and beneficial factor in all communities. It ensures local economic and community health.
After all if there were people starving in the world because of food shortages what good is money, what good is a flat-screen TV when you are starving?
We should all ask ourselves this question.
If you happen to want to learn more about how western civilization has grown and how we have put ourselves in this predicament pickup a copy of Guns, Germs, and Steel by biologist and anthropologist Jared Diamond, or view the documentary by the same name.
James McInstosh is an agri-business and foodstuffs consultant with international experience in the consumer packaged goods industry. He works with producers and retailers in Ontario to diversify farm gate sales an create value added farm products.
