Why Cheap Food is Costing Society

Have you, the organically enlightened, ever casually entered a conversation with someone on the subject of organics and been faced with the inevitable question, “Why should I pay double the price for food?” As you can imagine I get asked this a lot and it's a fair question. Some of my favourite answers include, “Because it’s not poisonous”, “You get what you pay for” or my personal favourite, “You call that stuff food?” That said, you might also want to point out the following details:

Foods grown organically don’t cost society as do foods grown with the assistance of chemical pesticides and petro-chemical fertilizers. While ultimately the cost benefit ratio of our foods depends on a whole host of details, including how local we source our foods, how packaged they are and how small are our farmer’s ecological foot prints, in general it is fair to say that society is picking up a huge tab for societies consumption of ‘cheap food’. From water, soil and air contamination, to chemical toxicity in our bodies leading to chronic diseases such as cancer, our health care system, our environment and our food culture are suffering the cheaper our food gets. Don’t see a lot of healthy looking foodies shopping in the grocery isles at Walmart I expect? (And you’re all saying, “How would we know, we don’t buy groceries at Walmart….right?!”)

Not surprisingly, up until now there has been a resistance on the part of industry and I suspect many consumers to find out how toxic we have become because of our love for cheap, mass-produced food and the ‘efficient’, industrial production systems that deliver them. And to be honest, thorough & independent food system toxicology research is lacking and human health studies looking at the links between agriculture and our health are not substantial (although some of you might have read the Rodale Institute article that I referenced earlier in the summer pertaining to the human health impacts of pesticides http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/20080627/n1).

Well, if you’re like me and you would rather know the facts about our food system rather than go on pretending like all is well, here are three paths you could follow to get the straight goods:

1. Go to this site: www.foodmatters.tv and at least watch the trailer. If you want to see the film local Naturopathic Doctor Shelby Worts has it and would be happy to lend it to you. If someone else tells you they can’t afford organic food, they should also see the film.

2. The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (www.cape.ca) is looking out for the public good on the issue of chemical contamination, food and the environment and offers a number of useful links and resources on their website. This is the same body that played a role in helping Collingwood establish a ban on the cosmetic use of pesticides (which has since been over-ridden by the Province) and which recently lobbied hard to have the Federal Government initiate a two year study that will look at human toxicology loads of those aged 6-60. According to their executive director, this falls short of what they had hoped for which was a longer term study also looking at ages 0-6 where it is suspected some of the most serious health hazards exist for environmental toxicology.

3. The Canadian Cancer Society (www.cancer.ca) will be hosting a conference this fall entitled “Exploring the Connection: A State of the Science Conference on Pesticides and Cancer”. I’m interested in going and would be happy to coordinate a group if others are also interested.

In this farmer’s humble opinion raising awareness of the links between chemically grown food, our health and that of the environment will be one of the keys to seeing more people taking the responsibility for keeping themselves, their families and the environment free from harmful chemicals by shifting their diets to locally grown organic fruits and vegetables. So the next time someone tells you that they can’t afford organic food be the one to bring them up to speed on why it is important for us all to stop perpetuating the culture of ‘cheap food’ and let the ‘real food’ revolution begin!

How do we prevent organic food from becoming elitist?

I’m one of the lucky ones. I get to eat organic food all the time, almost exclusively. My children will eat organic, I know that for sure, but I know that there are a lot of families out there that would love to have more organic in their diet but have a hard time finding extra room in the family budget and don’t live on an organic farm. So what to do?

First, what not to do. I had the unfortunate pleasure this week of coming across a news piece online about a family in the States that took pride in being able to cut their food bill in half by being ‘thrifty’ shoppers. From coupons clipping to comparison shopping, this couple appeared not to care about what they were eating, but rather took pride in how little they could eat for. This, my friends, is not the solution as I could see this couples life expectancy dropping as they raced around the supermarket isles ‘beating’ the U.S. recession. However, aside from starting your own garden or becoming a CSA ‘worktrader’ here at NEO, both of which are great ideas and we’d be happy to work with you on, are their other options for getting a real deal on organic food?

First of all, much like the solution to lowering your Hydro bill is not to ask Hydro for a discount, but rather to look at your household consumption and deciding what you can do away with, the key to finding the funds to go organic is to cut out costs that don’t contribute to well-being to the same degree that healthy food could. This might be hard, but it could really pay dividend in term of energy level, mood and overall health.

Beyond that, here’s a couple other ideas (and no doubt more do exist, and I will find them!) that really hit home with me because both appeared to be real win-win solutions to getting more good food into good people’s fridges. Rather than driving (literally) more people towards their local big-box superstore for discounts, they bring people together around meaningful community-based institutions.

1. This first program is one that is taking root in the big city to the south, where some clever Torontonians have started an organization called www.Notfarfromthetree.org. If you go to their website you’ll discover that this is a group that brings together willing fruit pickers with under-utilized fruit trees to ensure that fruit grown in the city’s backyards doesn’t go to waste. What a great idea!

As recently as today, one of our local contacts asked us if we’d be interested in doing something with the bushel of fresh pears that they’d recently picked from a neighbour’s tree that otherwise would have fallen to the ground and gone to waste. Rather than sell them from our stand, where for consistency’s sake we concentrate on selling our own produce and certified organic produce that we acquire from other local farmers, I would love to see this individual share her pears with other locals, who in turn may share with her some cherries, grapes, apples, zucchini or who knows what else. Who knows, soon enough we might have a brigade of urban farmers collaboratively tending to the forgotten fruit trees here in Southern Georgian Bay and distributing the bounty around town (yikes, this might put us out of business – oh well!). You see the best solutions are often driven by necessity and/or opportunity and herein we have people that can’t afford organic fruit and ye! t in Collingwood we likely have tones of trees and gardens that are unsprayed and undoubtedly bearing fruit. Opportunity?!

If anyone is interested in this notion of community driven food security, community gardening or other local food issues, feel free to contact me and I will put you in touch with the two locals that I know that are currently sitting on an abundance of pears! In the meantime, ask around – your neighbour probably has an extra zucchini…

2. The second is an idea that comes out of Vermont where policy makers at the State level came up with the idea of linking food ration coupons for those on social assistance with local farmers’ markets. Each week, people can therefore head to the market and pick up delicious fresh produce rather than drift into the chain supermarkets and look for deals in the processed food isles. Not only does this help the farmers (who sometimes struggle at markets if their regular crowd is on holiday, if the weather fails to cooperate or if the baker that is usually set-up beside them is down at the CNE), but also it puts the most nutritious food in the hands of those who need the nutrition most and who may otherwise not be able to afford locally grown organic food.

Unfortunately in this province ‘farm funding’ continues to lack creativity and vision. Most of the support to farmers goes to commodity groups dominated by agri-business and farmer’s market funding is going towards branding, advertising and bureaucracy – not to the farmers or low-income consumers. Here is a case where without additional funding being required, farmer’s gain regular customers and consumers who find organic food expensive now have a means to access it. That, my friends, is a win-win-win solution!

$1.49/lb cold cuts anyone? Not for me thanks…not now, not ever.