Job, Jobs, Jobs
Few would disagree with the statement that this country is in dire need of jobs. The forces behind globalization have gutted one sector of our economy after another as industry after industry relocates their operations to foreign countries where labor could be had for less money and fewer, if any, benefits. Even white-collar workers, who erroneously believed themselves immune from the off-shoring of jobs, are continuing to feel the effects of the controlled demolition of our economy. And, with no visible shame, the media sell citizens a "job-less recovery" (while in 2009 Fortune 500 companies tripled their profits to $391 billion).[2] But one sector of the economy promises real job creation: local food. However, if we don't wise up in time, US farmers will find agriculture off-shored, too, "for our own good."
The local food movement is about more than just healthy food. It offers a real way to rebuild, revitalize and stabilize our local and regional economies. Local food provides us an opportunity to heal individuals, their communities and their environment. As John Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics at the University of Missouri, Columbia, takes up the issue in a presentation entitled "Reweaving the Fabric of Rural America: Food as a Common Thread." Ikerd says that "If we are to succeed in this effort, we must recognize that we are not creating a new landscape but are mending a landscape that has been ravaged by forces that are quite capable of ravaging again. Thus, we must reweave the torn fabric or rural America with thread strong enough to withstand the inevitable ravages of time." [3]
Ikerd also says that "We need to understand the nature of the forces resisting our efforts to reweave the economic, ecological, and social fabric of rural places. We need to understand that increases in unemployment, poverty, and public dependency in rural areas are all symptoms of the continued extraction of economic wealth or capital from rural areas. Erosion of soil, degradation of landscapes, and pollution of air and water are all symptoms of the continued extraction of natural resources or ecological capital from rural areas."[4]
Faced with this jobless recovery that's perfectly acceptable to big business and government, people need to rely on themselves and each other to self organize in order to create a viable alternative. If you look around, you can see it happening: As John Tozzi writes in Business Week, "Entrepreneurs are flocking to local food, starting businesses devoted to producing and delivering food within their communities. Just as consumers focus new attention on what we eat and where it comes from, farmers, foodmakers, restaurants, retailers, distributors, and processors are rethinking the business models behind it. They want to create enterprises that will succeed in the long run for local food to be more than just a fad or a luxury for wealthy Western consumers."[5]
The number of farmers in this country has steadily, and at times dramatically, declined due to policies developed by the Committee for Economic Development. The group of business and financial leaders' plans were most clearly articulated in CED's 1962 report called "An Adaptive Program for Agriculture," which spelled out how to reduce by millions the number of farmers engaged in agriculture so that agriculture could be put in the service of big business.[6] But, for the first time in a over a century, we're seeing an increase in the number of farmers. Tozzi notes that "Between 2002 and 2007, the number of American farms increased by 76,000, according to the latest data from the US Agriculture Department's Census of Agriculture, compared to a decline of 87,000 in the five years before that."[7]
Harvesting Social Justice
These new farmers display a new sensibility: farming with a mission. Tozzi explains that "Local food ventures often have goals that are not strictly financial. Most of the companies examined in the report factored in some nonfinancial business decisions, such as their impact on the environment, workers, and communities. They're also not interested in growth at all costs."[8] On the contrary, the new breed of farmer is looking to create scale-appropriate stability within a thriving community, the opposite of policies advocated by industrial agriculture.
As discussed in a report produced by the Illinois Local and Organic Food and Farm Task Force for the Illinois General Assembly, "The business of creating and maintaining all the links in the local supply chain aggregating, processing, packaging, storing and transporting products translates into jobs that cannot be outsourced. Right now, such a system doesn't exist. There is not enough local food to meet the demand, nor enough farmers growing local food, nor companies in the business of processing local food. But there are too many food marketers disappointing their customers. This void is what's called opportunity."[9]
The local food movement is cultivating a system in which money circulates within a community, benefiting hundreds of people rather than allowing profits to be extracted by a few in the middle who have captured control of the inputs, outputs, distribution and sales of the global food system. The Illinois Task Force report states that "Studies show that money spent at local businesses creates a multiplier effect, internally circulating the same dollars up to eight times within the local economy. Using the conservative economic multiplier of two to three cycles, a 20 percent increase in local production, processing, and purchasing will generate $20 to $30 billion of new economic activity annually within the state's boarders. Thousands of new jobs will be created for farmers and farm-related businesses."[10]
The Illinois Task Force report notes how important is has become for people to know where their food comes from and how it's grown: "Most Illinois citizens are only a few generations removed from the farm. During that time a global food system emerged, and people stopped asking where food comes from. But it is precisely this question that has spurred nutrition-minded moms, public health professionals, rural advocates, educators, restaurant chefs, and many others to jumpstart the local food movement. Nevertheless, transforming this movement into a sustainable economy will require significantly greater scale than can be provided by a relative handful of farmers showing up at the outdoor market with pickup trucks." [11]
Consequences of Pending Legislation to Local Healthy Food
The Carolina Farm Stewardship Association recently issued a report entitled "Hurting NC's Local Food Harvest: The Unintended Consequences of Federal Food Safety Legislation on North Carolina's Small Agricultural Enterprises" that lays out what North Carolinians have to lose if this legislation passes. The report's author, Roland McReynolds, analyzed the effects of S 510, concluding that "Costs to comply for North Carolina small businesses could exceed 100 hours in labor and $9,500 in consulting and testing expenses per year. These and other costs for complying with one-size-fits-all food safety rules could force many small farms and food business to abandon value-added markets. The significant likelihood of unintended consequences from this FDA regulation means that many jobs and farms stand to be lost." [12]
McReynolds points out that "The existing law defines food manufacturing broadly, and captures the activities of tens of thousands of farms and small businesses. Although under certain circumstances food processing on a farm is exempt from the current law, those existing FDA regulations are arbitrary and make it very difficult for a farm to expand its markets or respond to changing economic conditions." [13]
The Carolina Farm Stewardship Association has been lobbying for "common sense" amendments to the bill, because the legislation "takes the unprecedented step of authorizing FDA to enforce rules on how to grow fruits and vegetables at every farm in the nation, no matter how small. Regulators and lobbyists in Washington, DC assert that it is vital for pubic safety that FDA have this control, but the vast majority of produce-related illness outbreaks are traced to processing facilities, not farms." [14]
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