King Corn & Dying Farms...

Our farms are no longer living. My trip through Texas and Oklahoma, in retrospect, took me through the heart of our cultural and social changes. I've sone several major cross-country roadtrips across the heartland over the past 10 years going from East Coast to New Mexico. What used to be our lifeways have radically altered, like the old farms crumpling and overtaken by monoculture and agribusiness and all human life absent from the picture. Funny thing, isn't it, how your expectations of things never include all the twists and paths.  Now I'm on the road of realizing and ranting that we are at a critical point, beyond the theoretical and into the actual.  Our tomorrow is suddenly, scarily, today.  We can no longer be passive if things are to change.  As a mom with a conscience, I must act.  I hope you find ways to do so, too.

Legislation has deliberately reduced the number of farms producing food and increased the size of those that remained in business; this farm in north Texas I passed in April says it all, doesn't it? Yesterday's ways are crumbling away under the crushing policies of modern agribusiness. Dow, Monsanto and other large corporations that feed off the current sick agricultural system need to be challenged. Can or will Congress back track and remove the kind of legislation that deliberately puts the small farmer out of business and subsidizes/supports the petroleum based agribusiness? Subsidies to farmers to not produce crops must be removed.  Social disruptions and chaos --like rice riots in Haiti and bread shortages in Egypt -- will not stop.  Starving people will immigrate to seek sustenance.  Our farm policies (like dumping cheap corn in Mexico) send farmers/people who can't compete to cross into our country.

Today figures are out showing food prices up 0.9%, the highest monthly increase in 18 years. Jill also has a post on food prices and how maybe stocking up on food is a better investment (via the WSJ).Food inflation is running at 4.5% a year, with food prices already rising much faster than the returns you are likely to get from keeping your money in a bank or money-market fund.  Prices will rise a lot faster now with oil topping $120/barrel.  "The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They're all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%,"  Jill notes.

NYTimes has a graph on consumer spending.  We spend 15% on food and beverages with the largest chunk being spent on fast food and full-service restaurant meals.   An article this week in the NYTimes writes: If financially pinched Americans opt for the cheapest (and the least healthful) foods rather than cook their own, the food industry will continue to reach for the lowest common denominator.

But it is possible to nudge the revolution along — for instance, by changing how we measure the value of food. If we stop calculating the cost per quantity and begin considering the cost per nutrient value, the demand for higher-quality food would rise.

 

King Corn is a 20-minute film produced by two recent college grads who are concerned about the drastic changes in the last 20 years in agriculture. They discover where America's food comes from when they plant a single acre of corn and follow it from the seed to the dinner plate.  With the help of government subsidies, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, America's most-subsidized crop becomes the staple of its cheapest - and most troubling - foods.  It is just out on YouTube and worth the watch.

I'm concerned. Are you?

Comments

[Janet]

Coal, corn, oil. Big corporations. Sometimes I wonder if capitalism hasn't done us more harm than good.

[joared]

I've been concerned about the state of farms for fifty years as they have been gradually becoming either big business operations or non-productive (receiving govt. subsidies to produce no product.)

I could elaborate on many more farming related issues, but you've done a pretty good job of delving into most of them in your series here. Now, the question is, how do these issues get discussed, change promoted, problems resolved?

[Laura Bush]

I saw the longer version of "King Corn" on PBS just the other day. Really scary. Basically all roads lead to high fructose corn syrup. No wonder obesity is rising.
You can see the full version movie via Netflix. It's well worth it.