California's dependence on a global food economy has placed local consumers at great risk. A state’s long-term economic security is predicated on its ability to feed itself and to continue to do so without exhausting its natural resources. Such security cannot be realized under our current global food system.
Relying on foreign farmers to take up the slack of non-diversified industrial farmers, by leveraging with a currency on life support, is national masochism. With looming global economic crisis, every state in the Union would do well to evaluate their own productive capacities to feed themselves and then look to broader markets to balance surpluses and shortages.
The destruction of the agrarian class (the once substantial agricultural population in this country that consisted mostly of small, diverse family owned farms) has placed America's middle-class in a precarious position as our economy has turned to credit expansion to set an artificial standard of living. With rampant inflation on the horizon and the prospect of depleted oil reserves in the not-to-distant future, the economic outlook for “middle-America” is bleak. After all, what is a “free society” that gets fat off of other people’s labor and depends on increasing trade deficits to feed its people? How long can entire regions of our country dedicate themselves to producing just one or two crops for diminishing (technically for negative) returns?
Such a system is obviously counterintuitive to small farmers, but the interesting thing, and this is something we are now starting to realize as bread nearly doubles in price year over year, is that the economic viability of farmers of all sizes is put at risk with destructive international trade agreements such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and with the subsidy ridden legislation that is the Farm Bill.
The tariff reducing revisions of GATT drafted in the Uruguay Round of talks (effective during the administrations of both Reagan and Bush Sr. and continued to the present day) by representatives from the very supranational corporations that stood to be the sole benefactors of their localism-destroying policies are now eroding the competitive edge large US farmers once held.
The author, poet and farmer Wendell Berry, had these prophetic words to say about the then unfolding agricultural policies of GATT in the early ‘90s:
With restrictions lowered to international minimums and with farmers under increasing pressure to make up in volume for drastically reduced unit prices, this will become a competition in land exploitation…Land rape and the use of toxic chemicals will increase, as will the exploitation of people. American farmers, who must continue to buy their expensive labor-replacing machines, fuel, and chemicals on markets entirely controlled by the suppliers, will be forced to market their products in competition with the cheapest hand labor of the poor countries. And the poor countries, needing to feed their own people, will see the food vacuumed off their plates by lucrative export markets. The supranational corporations, meanwhile, will be able to slide about at will over the face of the globe to wherever products can be bought cheapest and sold highest.
Sadly, these words have rung true and paint a well-rounded picture of the fundamental flaws of our current food system.
As producers in
newly industrializing nations such as Brazil saturate the market with
cash crops, American farmers are finding it all but impossible to
reach
parity.
With little in the way of regional price supports (not to be confused
with direct subsidies) or production controls, large farmers now risk
even the illusion of financial solvency. Charles Walters, Executive
Editor of Acres USA summarized the matter succinctly:
Today the commodity farmers are just a conduit for government subsidies that go straight to the bank. Payments to farmers just keep the bankers happy, to keep the loans paid—they’re not saving the family farm. The only farmers making money today are those who are farming organically or have found a little niche market.
Starting here in California, these “niche markets” Mr.Walters speaks of can be turned into burgeoning economies so more farmers can get paid the price they deserve for food that is fit for a human to eat. Ultimately, we should look to invigorating these markets for future generations of Americans so they can enjoy a proper standard of living.
In my next installment, I will discuss the history of how America found itself in this precarious position.