HANK HERRERA - New York Sustainable Agriculture Working Group;
The Center for Popular Research, Education and Policy
A Simpler Time: Food Policy for the 21st Century

Considering the 2007 Farm Bill, I yearn for a simpler time. In my childhood we ate beans with tortillas that my father made by hand. My parents canned fruit from our own Garden of Eden, the Santa Clara Valley in California. We walked to the corner Safeway a few blocks down the street, and if my mother bought canned fruit and vegetables they likely came from the canneries across the street from our house. I remember her plucking, cleaning and cooking the chickens she brought home live– and the remarkable taste that I can experience today only when I eat pasture-raised poultry. It was a simpler time. Local farms provided most of the food that we ate. We did not have much if any "manufactured food." Somehow the farmers, the packers, the packagers, the truckers, the retailers and my parents got that good food to our table on a regular basis in spite of world war, regional war, cold war and a laborer’s income.

The industrial efficiency of the late 20th century disassembled and destroyed those simple but extraordinarily effective arrangements. I want new food systems policy that will rebuild the local food systems infrastructure, funded with public resources. This "global to local" conversion– much like the peacetime conversion after the end of the cold war– can create that simpler system anew for the 21st Century. As a matter of fact, I would like to see the 2007 Farm Bill renamed the 2007 Food Systems Bill.

What facts might support this immodest proposal? First of all American farmers continuously lose in the global food production and distribution system. We all know the numbers. Our farmers lose money growing feed but not food on industrial farms. Without massive federal subsidies for a few crops like corn and soybeans that serve as raw materials for animal feed and manufactured food, the bottom line for American farming would stay consistently red, giving a whole new meaning to the phrase, "red states." Second, American consumers– you and I– spent over $603 billion for food to eat in the year 2002, and much of that food came from offshore production sites and factories that manufacture edible substitute substances (MESSes) passing as food. Our farmers do not benefit from those expenditures. In every region that Ken Meter and I have studied, consumers spend far more for food than regional farmers earn from the sale of farm products. Those local farmers need local packing, packaging, processing, storage, distribution and retail infrastructure and support for sustainable production practices to get wholesome, real food to local consumers and capture the dollars those consumers will spend on food no matter what. Local entrepreneurs need access to capital to build that infrastructure– a worthy public investment.

Finally there are vast social and economic justice issues to address through public policy for the food system. In 2002 over 34.5 million people lived in poverty, including many farmers and most farmworkers who actually make sure that we eat the food crops our farmers grow. Poor people buy food: In 2002 the 20% of consumers with the lowest incomes still spent almost $60 billion for food. (The 20% of consumers with the highest incomes spent three times as much, over $168 billion). Poor people deserve access to fresh, affordable, wholesome food that small diversified family farms can produce and sell locally. America had over 1.4 million farms under 180 acres in 2002– 66% of all farms– that could produce this food. Nevertheless the painful irony is that over 71% of American farms earned less than $24,000 in 2002, putting most of those farms at or under the poverty line based on the value of sales before accounting for farm expenses. We need new federal policy to connect those local small farms to local consumers– of all incomes to be sure and especially to poor consumers– with new local food system infrastructure. That connection will both improve healthy eating and drive new economic growth with new jobs and new farm income from the food production sector of the local economy.

Do we have the political will in this country to make this shift in "farm" policy? Perhaps it does not currently exist. However our policy makers pay attention to large numbers of voters as much as to large campaign contributions. There are many more small family, limited resource farmers than large profitable farmers. In 2002 only 70,642 farms had sales over $500,000, in the same range as the number of farms over 2,000 acres (77,970) and the number of farms owned by corporations (73,752). Only 3.3% of farms accounted for over 61.9% of farm sales in that year.

There are many more people in the nation’s metropolitan areas– especially more poor people– who would benefit nutritionally and economically from effective local food systems than there are agribusinesses that benefit from current agriculture and commodity policy.

When it’s time to count up the winners and losers in the policy debate, let’s count the 14 million urban poor and the 1.4 million small family farmers as winners in new food systems policy that invests in local food systems infrastructure. There will be some losers. But we have to look at the relatively small number of agribusiness losers simply as the price of change.

Hank Herrera is Managing Director of the New York Sustainable Agriculture Working Group and President of The Center for Popular Research, Education and Policy in Rochester, New York. Visit www.nysawg.org or www.c-prep.org.


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