It’s cheaper to buy local, organic foods than industrially produced ones — except the savings are invisible. Invisible, that is, to anyone who doesn’t buy, handle or grow them. Local and organic was all our ancestors ever knew — even up to our grandparents’ time. Then came farming’s “Green Revolution” of the 1950s, with “miracle” chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and “factory” farming. And with it, a host of hidden costs that you don’t pay with local, organic foods. This Tu B’Shevat, which falls this year on the eve of Feb. 7, let’s celebrate those savings:
• No costs for air, land and water pollution, or soil erosion
• No costs for food-borne illnesses, and health care system burdens
• No costs for feeding antibiotics to fish and animals, nor for antibiotic resistance in animals and humans
• No taxpayer subsidies to agribusiness, fossil fuel, drug and water industries, and
• No reduced nutrition levels in fruits and vegetables.
So, what make these cost savings “invisible”?
First, the agribusiness, water, drug and fossil fuel industries hide them on their balance sheets, which makes their operations look more profitable. They simply don’t account for the costs of soil erosion, pollution cleanup, accidents and illnesses, food recalls, nutrition losses or human antibiotic resistance — until an incident occurs that they must pay for. Likewise, they do not subtract government subsidies. Between taxpayer subsidized operations and costs they offload onto the public, they deliver lower-priced foods than the local organics you find at your farmer’s market. The industrial food system delivers more than enough food for America. But it also creates and hides vast costs that simply don’t occur in the local, organic food system.
The problem with hidden costs is when they’re out of sight, they’re out of mind. But we should pay attention. Even though business doesn’t pay these costs, you do. Your tax dollars subsidize agribusiness water consumption, fossil-fuel inputs — pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers and fuels — drug company antibiotics, and vast factory farms, but they rarely pay for enforcement actions to hold these industries accountable for the damage they do. Your healthcare costs increase to cover obesity, respiratory and heart diseases that result from pollution, and overeating cheap, heavily subsidized, heavily promoted processed and factory-farm–grown foods.
America’s food systems are largely opaque. What we need instead are transparent ones. In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, author Michael Pollan notes that, “Transparency is a more powerful disinfectant than any regulation or technology.” He cited an organic operation called Polyface Farm in Swoope, Va., which runs self-sufficiently by growing a variety of crops and meats. Most American farms today are not self-sufficient, because they only grow only one cash crop. More than 93 percent of America’s meat and poultry farmers produce chicken (39.6 percent), beef (28.6 percent) or pork (25.3 percent). More than 90 percent of America’s farms produce genetically modified corn (27 percent), soybeans (24 percent), hay (18.7 percent) or wheat (18.6 percent).
Polyface, on the other hand, grows all these products, none of them GMO, using smart labor techniques, natural fertilizers, and carefully conserved water. It’s one of a growing number of such farms across the U.S., and its operations are entirely transparent to its customers and the public. All Polyface slaughtering is done cleanly and humanely, and regular USDA inspections show it’s healthier meat than what comes factory farms.
But Polyface only distributes its products within 100 miles of the farm. Once we move beyond that range, to apples from New Zealand and Chile, or bell peppers from Mexico and Israel, “organic farming” becomes a commodity operation like conventional farming.
Studies by the United Nations and other agencies assert that small-scale, low-input, agro-ecological and organic farming is more effective against today’s climate and population challenges than energy- and chemical-intensive industrial agriculture. The best way to reject industrial agriculture is to simply not buy its products. Are we food consumers up to the challenge? Can we buy more local, seasonally produced and organic foods, shift our diets away from meats and buy direct from farmers markets?
The answers are up to each of us this New Year of the Trees. Participating in a local food economy requires “more effort than shopping at a Whole Foods,” writes Pollan. What better holiday than Tu B’Shevat to take the first step?