One of my favorite times of the year is upon us – The Harvest Season.
This weekend, my family will trek out to the Wellspring Harvest Fest – A good ol’ hoe down and celebration of the season! Wellspring Farm is the community supported agriculture (CSA) program we have supported for the last four years, and the Fest is an incredible celebration of the season’s bounty, where the Wellspring CSA community gathers to eat incredible food, avoid rotten tomato on our faces in the infamous tomato toss (might need to renamed the “late blight” toss this year), tour the farm on a hay ride and add our own painted touches to the farm’s annual Harvest Fest sign.
In a couple more weeks, we will be joining many people throughout Vermont and I believe the country in an “Eat Local” challenge, where for one week my family will commit to eating as much locally grown or raised food as possible.
These celebrations, while wonderful opportunities to connect with our local/regional food community, also make me think about what we will do over the remaining 50 weeks of the year. Will conventional food thinking settle back in? It seems likely for most people, making the challenge of building up regional food economies all the more difficult.
Does it have to be that way? Are there things we can do to support regional food throughout the year, especially in regions where the growing season is short and/or the breadth of products grown and raised are narrow?
There is one thing that immediately jumps to mind. Raise the importance of “Buy Local” to the same level afforded “Eat Local,” since without a thriving farm-gate-to-your-plate regional food infrastructure, progress toward more sustainable food systems will be slow going. Seems easy enough…on the surface, but rebuilding and strengthen regional food economies will be the farthest thing from “easy.”
Over the last 50 years, America’s food landscape has changed considerably, especially in terms of how power and control over the food we eat has concentrated in the hands of large-scale, and often global corporate interests. Here’s a snap shot that I’m betting most people haven’t seen before:
- Seed Companies: What was once a highly diversified, regional industry is now controlled primarily by pharmaceutical and chemical companies, including Monsanto, Dupont and Syngenta. And while most of Monsanto’s press is about genetically modified organisms (GMOs), the company has quietly bought up a large number of seed companies to gain access to a rapidly expanding seed patent portfolio. Dupont is following suit.
- Farms: According to the USDA, “Small farms, while numerous, account for less than 2 percent of all U.S. farmland, while large farms account for 67 percent. Consequently, the growth in the number of large farms has increased the concentration of crop production.” What is especially problematic with this trend is that farms in the middle have all but disappeared, which are the types of farms that will be needed to support regional food systems.
- Meat Packers: According to Sustainable Table, four companies controlled processing of over 80% of the country’s beef and three of these same four companies (along with an additional fourth) process over 60% of the country’s pork. Four major companies in broiler chicken processing provide over half of the country’s chicken supply. Same for turkey meat. Large scale meat packing operations don’t do regional well (prefer CAFOs) or local at all.
- Food Processors: Euromonitor International reports that the packaged food industry is worth almost $1.6 trillion. While there’s some debate about how accurate that number is, consider that the Top 50 U.S. processors alone accounted for $326 billion or nearly 25 percent of the global market. Add in European giants like Unilever, Nestle, Cadbury Schwebbs (which Kraft is attempting to gain control of in a $16.7 billion takeover), Danone and others, and you fast approach a majority of the market. Leaves little room on food retailers’ shelves for local or regional processed foods.
- Food Retailers: Wal-Mart is at the top of the heap with nearly $100 billion in food sales. The next 49 companies all report income over $1.0 billion dollars. On a global scale, the USDA reports that “The top 15 global supermarket companies account for more than 30 percent of world supermarket sales.” Serious concentration that is buying up or crushing regional food chains and killing off mom-and-pop stores left and right.
With this in mind, take a couple minutes to consider your local food retail landscape.
How many locally or regionally-owned food stores or member-owned food cooperatives are there? If any, how much impact do you think they have on your region’s food economy? In other words, do they represent enough demand to support regional farmers, distribution, processing, etc.? Check out their shelves next time you shop there (or make a special trip if you haven’t shopped there before). Where do you think that food is coming from?
As each of gets a clearer picture, which may seem bleak at first, you should also see tremendous opportunities to change how consumers interface with the food they eat.
For example, imaging developing innovative, regional food retail formats open every day (v. once-a-week farmers markets and CSA programs) that provide consumers with real choices in the food they buy. Such choices, financed by our three votes per day (i.e., breakfast, lunch and dinner), will empower every one of us to buy more of the food we eat from local sources. This increasing demand for regionally grown, raised and processed food, as well as other sustainable foods, will justify increased investments in the infrastructure needed to provide more regional foods to consumers every day. Instead of spiraling down, as is the case with the industrialized food system, we will be spiraling up.
Ultimately, the choice of how we spend our food dollars is up to us. But until we have more convenient (e.g., open seven days a week), transparent (e.g., origin labeling) food retail options to choose from, do we really have a choice? Not as much choice as we deserve, so let’s get started in changing that.
Your first task – after finishing your successful “Eat Local” challenge this harvest season, assuming you participated – is to increase your financial support (i.e., spending our food dollars) of local and regional food retailers.
And if you can’t find one, then maybe you or someone you know should consider opening one yourself.
Happy Harvest!
Every Kitchen Table 
Rob – Great post. I am curious about the Eat Local Challenge – is there anywhere to read more about it? I would love to let our member markets know about it so they can promote it to their customers.
Hi Amy, here are two links you might be interested in: City Market/Onion River Co-op’s Eat Local Challenge in Burlington, VT (http://www.citymarket.coop/images/August_2009_OnionSkin_WEB.pdf) and the National Co-op Grocers Association Eat Local site (http://eatlocalamerica.coop/). Cheers, Rob
Thanks for your post, Rob – another good one! I feel so lucky to be surrounded by stores (New Seasons and Peoples Food Co-op) that support local farmers year round – which also means many are able to grow year round in the climate here in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. Offhand, I know of 2 Farmers Markets that sell all through the winter – where I discover lots of wonderful roots, winter squashes, and winter greens. Looking forward to your Eat Local Challenge too.
Excellent post. I will be in on the challenge and I will be sure to invite everyone I know to do the same. We are luck on the southcoast of MA to have an organization http://www.semaponline.org where we can look up all the food we need to buy local and never have to shop the “big bargin outlets” for what some would call food!! Keep the information flowing it’s great!
Hi Rob,
We’ve lived in VT since the early 1970’s and have always tried to buy and eat local. Not quite hippies at the time (we seem to always straddle the fence) we then and now have never been in any one foodie or political camp, but embrace what we think good ideas from both sides. Now we find ourselves straddling our business fence serving local products to a non-existent market. When not working we often eat at home, but when we do go out we always try to find places serving healthy and local food–something near impossible until recently. Perhaps then there has been some progress, so to keep the economy churning, I’d like to see you extend your bid in supporting local farmers and grocers to include restaurants 🙂
Great point Linda! Given that nearly 50% of every dollar spent on food in America is out of the home, finding sustainably-minded, locally-owned restaurants is a great addition. Consider me on board. And for those living in Vermont, the Vermont Fresh Network is a great resource to find just such restaurants. Cheers, Rob Smart
Sadly, there is no farmers market or CSA in my area and the local food available at the large and small supermarkets is terrible quality (e.g. peaches picked hard). But I’ll take another crack at finding a produce CSA that has a drop point within reasonable distance of my home, one day I will strike gold!
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