Should you be a locavore? : Part III: politics, food shortages and globalization
Laura Silver
Special to the Valley News

Friday, June 27th, 2008.
Issue 26, Volume 12.

Last week we learned that the distance our food travels is less of an ecological issue than the type of food we eat and how it is produced. In First World countries every aspect of food production is political and the effects are anything but local.

Here in the US federal legislation, referred to as the Farm Bill, is enacted every five to seven years to set the direction of farm and food policy. It affects the cost and availability of food, methods of growing and producing it, the use/preservation of farmland and much more.


The latest version of the bill is currently in Congress. Its name – “The Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008” – appears to signal a change in the wind. There are some new players and the focus has shifted fractionally away from agribusiness toward many of the issues espoused by the local-food movement.

It sounds like good news, but so far these players are just pawns making the first move in what may or may not be a new game. The 2008 bill will replace a 2002 version enacted in a time of budget surplus. Even if the reforms survive debate and receive funding, they’ll be merely a carbuncle on the nose of agribusiness-weighted policy.

Take corn, for example. Corn is big business – almost exclusively agribusiness. When, where and why it is grown are as much a function of Farm Bill subsidies as market forces. And on the fate of corn rests the fate of many.

Besides being a food crop, corn is the primary ingredient in livestock feed and an additive (corn syrup, anyone?) in almost all junk/fast food. Corn is also the easiest plant to convert to biofuel with current technology.

With what I’m sure was good intent, the 2002 Farm Bill included subsidies for growing corn for the biofuel market. However, rather than putting more corn under cultivation, agribusiness diverted existing crops from food and livestock use to biofuel, creating an artificial shortage and increasing costs to the livestock and food markets.

If you think this was accidental or unavoidable – may I just say “California energy shortage, early 2000s”?

In addition, corporate farming methods use huge quantities of petrochemical fertilizer, the cost of which continues to skyrocket as oil prices rise and get passed on to a groaning consumer. Even Ugh the Caveman can follow the cascade of consequences:

Less food/feed corn + higher growing/transportation costs = higher prices for poultry, pork, beef, corn itself and thousands of foods that contain it, as well as less available for foreign markets. (Don’t even get Ugh started on oil prices, the cost of plastic packaging and its effect on food prices.)

Europe has also subsidized food crops for biofuel – perhaps more than we have – with much the same result.

Though this is by no means the only factor in recent global food shortages, most analysts agree it is part of the problem – a part that can be laid at the door of politics and public policy. Government sets the rules; big business just perverts the intent and takes advantage of them for profit.

(Reasons for the shortages also include, among other things, a perfect storm of natural disasters, droughts and flooding worldwide. I’ll leave it to you to decide how much the resultant crop failures fall under “acts of God” or are part of the public-policy debate on global warming.)

We are also the primary market for specialty foods and items produced (hopefully by Fair Trade policy) in Third World countries pulling themselves out of grinding poverty by those efforts. Do we throw these producers to the wolves in our attempts to eat locally?

No one is saying we must get all of our food locally. But we must bear in mind that we see this, and all issues, through a First World lens. The average world citizen can’t even imagine a day when their food problem is deciding whether to buy from a farmer’s market or a fully stocked grocery store.

I have to confess that a certain fraction of local-food literature gives me a tiny chill. Occasionally I perceive a faint, tinny echo of the merest possibility of zealotry and xenophobia. For some folks, does that 100-mile radius make anyone outside it “them” to our “us”?

The local food movement asks some very cogent questions about our dysfunctional food system. But that system has global effects, as will any changes we make to it. While some of the solutions may be local, their effects will not be, and we need to factor that into the equation.

Laura Silver works as a Web designer and freelance writer from her off-the-grid straw bale home in Jamul. She is a lifelong “practical” environmentalist with a particular interest in green building and healthy home issues.

She can by reached by e-mail at laura@strawbalediary.com.