June 23, 2011
Food politics have been interesting to me for a few years now. It all started when I asked a friend, Jackie, why she just bought local organic foodstuffs. Jackie has several children and grandchildren, and has been an organic gardener for 20+ years. She and her husband, Dale (a retired chemist) live on a 300 acre cattle and horse farm in Gainesville, GA.
I always thought that she just bought organic because they had lots of money to spend, or because she had some political problem with "big business." As I have spent the last decade processing her knowledge of all things local, free-range, and organic, I realize that what I thought of her purchase choices are partially true. But....there is so much more to it than that!
Some of us buy local because we want our monies to go directly to the hard working farmers, and cut out the "middle-man". That "middle-man" is often a large distributing company or multi-national corporation, like Cargill. I understand that the people in the corporations need to make a living too, but I've found through personal experience that nothing is better than giving your farmer the full share of money that he or she deserves.
There are two local farms here in Beaufort that I go to directly for a lot of my food, and a couple of local fishermen. I have blogged about them many times before, but here they are again with their websites:
Bradley Seafood--on St. Helena Island, so small they don't have a website. They have one boat!
The most rewarding experience I have had buying my food from local producers has been with the Rest Park CSA. They are a family farm of 20 acres near Ehrhardt, South Carolina. Since I live in the "Bible Belt", I will take the immortal words of Jesus--"love thy neighbor"--and very happily show that love to my farmer in the form of dollar bills. I promise I am not doing this to be all "self righteous" and snub those who aren't a member of a CSA. I'm just trying to give credit where credit is due.
Most of us want our dollars staying locally nowadays, right? Seeking out local farmers and CSAs is a great way to do this. Some of the most economically depressed areas in South Carolina are losing their productive farmland because they are too small to compete with the larger "factory farms" and because the locals just want to buy everything from Wal-Mart.
The problem behind why so many of America's small farms are disappearing is very complex, and I'm not going to get into it in this blog. The things you can do to help preserve the small family farmer is to:
1. Educate yourself! Stop at the road-side stands, talk to people in your town who have lived there a while. Check out your options online!
2. Buy local! You will not be disappointed, the freshness is unmatched, and it'll make you feel good about your actions as well.
3. Educate others. Invite your neighbors over for dinner and tell them about where you picked the figs that are in the dessert.
4. Promote the education of our children....especially in rural America. America's brightest youth need to realize that there can be important, interesting and fulfilling careers in rural agriculture.
I love the fact that the West family knows me by name, and I get to see their smiling faces every Wednesday afternoon. I know that they have been working their tails off all season long, and through their exhaustion, I see the satisfaction in their smiles. Despite the hard work, it is worth it to them. They care about their product, their customer, and each other. Almost every time I pick up my CSA box, I learn something new about vegetables. This week's CSA box was the most abundant yet: TWO 25-pound watermelons!, 2 cantaloupes, italian eggplant, grape tomatoes, new potatoes, spaghetti squash, sweet corn, cucumber, jalapenos, bell peppers, and fresh rosemary sprigs. I hope to stop by their farm over the 4th of July weekend on my way home to Gainesville, to see their labor of love in vivo.
Another farm that I support, White Oak Pastures, in Bluffton, GA, has an incredible family legacy. I'm inspired by the daughters of Georgia grass-fed beef farmer, Will Harris III, who all went to Valdosta State to major in business and advertising, and went home to grow their family enterprise. This is how we keep bright minds in rural areas, growing our food and making sure it's done right. I would love to be involved with producers like this as a veterinarian.
If you are interested in the politics of food, check out these links. These are great resources for educating yourself on both sides of the issues: organic, local, and fair-trade.
Which was made into a movie in 2008 called "Food, Inc."
It does not matter what side of the argument you're on...pro vs anti-organic, or fair-trade, one thing that The Economist fails to criticize from an economic standpoint is....buying local is an economically sound idea!
