Julie Guthman weighs in on obesity

I came across a book I'm pretty excited to read, via the Rams Horn. It's entitled "Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism" and it's by Julie Guthman, who gained fame in academic foodie circles with "Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California".

How can it be anything other than excellent, with a quote like this:

"Fast and convenient food has been a triply good fix for American capitalism. It entails the super-exploitation of the labour force in its production, it provides cheap food to support the low wages of the food and other industries by feeding their low-wage workers, and it absorbs the surpluses of the agriculture economy, soaking up, as it were, the excesses of overproduction to keep the farm sector marginally viable."

Triple whammy!

(And, for academic foodies, also quite reminiscent of Sidney Mintz.)

Monsanto wants you to vote with your dollar.

A lot of North American food movements ask you, the consumer to "vote with your dollar'. You can hit Walmart where it really hurts, in the pocket book! Buy local! Buy non-GMO! Buy at farmers markets!

With the lobbying power of agribusiness, and the revolving door between government agencies and agribusiness corporations, it can seem that voting with your vote is useless.

But guess what? Monsanto secretly loves the "vote with your dollar" campaign. So does Nestlé. And McDonalds. Here's why:

They know that an average Canadian spends only eleven percent of their income on food. Most of us expect our food to be cheap. We whine and wail when prices go up. We complain about adequately remunerating farmers if it means our cheese might be a few dollars more than across the border where dairy farmers commit suicide because of low prices. Very few of us will buy higher priced food if lower priced food is unavailable. This is a major reason why organics is still a niche market, making up less than one percent of total household food purchases in Canada.

It gets worse. There are many of us, despite that 10% average, who cannot spend more on food : 851,01 people used food banks in March of 2011, and this is not the highest recorded number in the past few years. So, this campaign effectively excludes these people. Now those who vote with their dollar can be framed as elitists and sneered at, and those who don't can be judged as morally inferior.

Putting our trust in niche markets allows the co-optation of food movement initiatives. They become another segment to either capture or hedge. We see this with Walmart introducing a line of organic food, but the most blatant example is that of Gerber the baby food producer, which vocally prohibited GMOs in its products at the same time as its owner, Novartis, continued to develop and sell genetically modified seeds. They got you coming and going, damned either way.

And that's not the worst part. I've been wanting to write about the worst part for a long time, but I also want to support these progressive people who encourage us to vote with our dollar and are doing good work in the food system. I don't want to seem overly critical. But when I watched "Fresh" - an excellent movie - I cringed at the end when the co-op manager told us voting with our dollars was the best way to make change. When an anti-GMO campaigner insisted that labelling and avoiding GM foods was the best way to make change, I almost bit my tongue through. Finally, I've been pushed past the point that I can keep silent by an excellent article by Robin Jane Roff, "Shopping for change? Neoliberalizing activism and the limits to eating non-GMO".*

Here's the essential problem with voting with our dollars. It posits the market as the answer, when the market is the problem. It's like that definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

When we turn to the market to fix what's wrong, we are putting the (super)market, rather than governments (and voting citizens) at the centre of the food system - as Roff puts it, the market becomes"the ultimate arbiter of socio-environmental quality". This is the same market that works on the principle of deregulation and privatization that has lead to disastrous environmental problems and social ills in the pursuit of shareholder profit – that indeed benefits from these ills, because it almost always does not have to account for them. This is the market that gives us cheap pork – and creates a giant dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. It gives multinational agribusinesses record profits during the food crisis in 2008 when millions became food insecure and faced starvation.

When we decide that the market is where we must turn our efforts, we change from being citizens with food rights and entitlements to consumers with food choices and responsibilities. Are the problems created by the food system, then, of our choosing – we didn't spend our dollars in the right place? Do we decide then, that it is our responsibility, through charitable donations, to feed the hungry, rather than the responsibility of governments (by the people, for the people) to respond to society's needs? Is it our fault, because we didn't choose the organic pastured pork, that Lake Winnipeg is choking to death? What's that you say, they didn't have the choice of organic pastured pork at Superstore? Did you want it enough?

Voting with our dollars encourages us (not that we need more encouragement) to think of ourselves as individuals, making individual decisions, rather than a community or a society. One thing this allows is the belittling of problems. For example, if you look into the pro- and anti-organic arguments, you'll soon find the claim that organic food has minimal health benefits over non-organic food, and the pesticide residue on produce is negligible for the consumer. This blatantly ignores the benefits of organic growing for pollinators, birds, the water table, and farm workers – to name a few non-consumers.

Framing eaters solely as individual consumers is also much more limiting than framing them as citizen-activists. As Roff says, “by replacing ‘‘consumer ’’ with ‘‘citizen’’ not only does the problem suddenly become political-economic not just economic, but a wealth of solutions and counter movements become imaginable. The space of opposition is no longer restricted to the domain of the market, but now encompasses the full breadth of structures and social relations. The idea of the market and consumption can themselves become targets of critique.” 

Fundamentally, consumption-based change is not transformative. Which is preferable - to label foods containing GM ingredients so that consumers can avoid them if they can afford to, until so much of the soy and corn and alfalfa are contaminated and so many new GM varieties are introduced that very few non-GM products exist - or, to ban GMOs? Which is preferable - that a few supermarkets that succumb to the pressure of privileged consumption choices decide to source tomatoes from growers that pay a living wage, or that a minimum wage is legislated for farmworkers (as it isnot, with few exceptions, in Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, andSaskatchewan). So, it's political. And yes, governments are corrupted and hard to influence; this tendency must be challenged.

But a bigger point is that the food system is not only about the food system. A truly healthy, sustainable food system would require, for consumers, living wages, a shorter work day, an end to gender inequality, and participatory democracy. Problems with the food system can not be dealt with solely by the existing power of a relatively wealthy middle class, but by empowering marginalized people and disempowering giant corporate entities.

When you buy food, please do buy ethically grown, low-impact, and healthy food. But I challenge you - if you think the system needs to change - to do a little more, and do it together.

I'll end with a final note from Roff: “If we truly want a socially and environmentally equitable food system then we can not continue to rely so heavily on the mechanisms that created the one we currently have.”

*Agriculture and Human Values (2007) 24:511–522.

Occupy Food Explosion!

I thought I was being rather clever, tailoring Tom Philpott's "Occupy Food" article for the Canadian situation. Turns out I was just on the leading edge of a meme. Lots of takes on Occupying Food here, with a lot of great points:

Marion Nestle promotes an Occupy Food rally in New York.

Eric Holt Gimenez argues for repoliticizing food, taking a page from the Occupy movement to create a broad-based movement.

Siena Chrisman talks about the ballooning influence of speculators on food prices since deregulation in 2000, consolidation of food corporations, and the need to unite to take back power.

It's catching on! Will you join in?

Occupy for the Love of Food!

Tom Philpott has written a great article on why food movement actors should support Occupy Wall Street. He makes the argument that the occupations (which have spread across the world, starting today!) challenge the concentration of power in the hands of the elite, and the agrifood industry is a prime example of this concentration, elite control, and marginalization of the consumer and small producer.

I thought I'd take three of Tom's key points, which use American examples, and make the case for his argument applying to Canada. (Of course, many of his examples of multinational corporations apply to us here as well.)

1. The food industry is a big fat monopoly

• The top five food retailers in Canada account for 60% of sales (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada)
• Nilsson Bros. Inc. is Canada’s largest beef packing corporation, owning nearly half of Canadian capacity. In addition to its packing plants, holdings of the Nilsson Bros. conglomerate also include (wholly-owned or in partnership) feedlots, most of western Canada’s large auction facilities. ('Losing Our Grip', 2010)
• Three companies -- Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge and Cargill -- control an estimated 90% of the world's grain trade (USA Today) and the prairies export 80% of the grain they grow.
• The largest 5% of food manufacturing establishments accounted for over 50% of sales in 2003 whereas the smallest 80% of establishments accounted for only 15% of sales. (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada)
• And, since transnational corporations sell the majority of Canadian farmers' inputs, some global stats are relevant: the top 10 seed companies account for 67% of the global proprietary seed market (Monsanto is 23% of that number); the top 10 pesticide firms (the six largest of which are also in the top 10 seed companies) control 89% of the global agrochemical market. (ETC)

2. Wall Street's greed leaves millions to starve—literally. 

• "In recent years, the financial markets have discovered the huge opportunities presented by agricultural commodities. The consequences are devastating, as speculators drive up food prices and plunge millions of people into poverty... Since last June alone, higher food prices have driven another 44 million people below the poverty line, reports the World Bank. These are people who must survive on less than $1.25 (€0.87) a day." (Der Spiegel, trans.)
• "Holdings in commodity index funds ballooned from US$ 13 billion in 2003 to US$ 317 billion by 2008...The promotion of biofuels and other supply shocks were relatively minor catalysts, but they set off a giant speculative bubble in a strained and desperate global financial environment. These factors were then blown out of all proportion by large institutional investors who, faced with the drying up of other financial markets, entered commodity futures markets on a massive scale." (De Schutter briefing note, 2010)
•  Some advice from a Canadian investment advisor: "the biggest and most worrisome near-term crisis of all, is a food crisis; and you will have the opportunity to make a ton of money from it. Speculators love crises as well, and only add fuel to the fire, which multiplies your gains. The writing is already all over the wall for a pending food crisis; the west just hasn’t seen it on a domestic level yet, but believe me, we will. It’s time to get ahead of this trade." 
•  The extension of food speculation, as you know from reading this blog, is speculation in land. "Bay Street investors like Sprott Resources and Lawrence Asset Management have been buying into farmland in Uruguay and the Democratic Republic of the Congo." (Canadian Dimension)

3. Our politicians are in bed with agribusiness.

• A homegrown prairies example: Assiniboia Capital Corp, "the largest farmland investment management company in Canada, with almost 100,000 acres under management" (from its website). Organization includes: Co-founder Brad Farquhar, who is the former Executive Director of the Saskatchewan Party and former Executive Assistant to Sask. Party leader Elwin Hermanson; Gord Nystuen—General Manager of Assiniboia’s farm input financing division, Input Capital—is former Saskatchewan Deputy Minister of Agriculture, former Chief of Staff to the Premier, and former Chair of Saskatchewan Crop Insurance Corporation; Advisory Board member Lorne Hepworth is President of Croplife Canada and former
  Saskatchewan Minister of Agriculture, Minister of Energy and Mines, Minister of Education,
  and Minister of Finance. (Assiniboia Capital website)
• Assiniboia Capital has tripled its land base over the past two years.  In light of this, it is interesting that Assiniboia’s primary capital source is taxpayer-owned and federal-government-controlled Farm Credit Canada (FCC).  ('Losing Our Grip', 2010)
• Five of the 100 lobbyists named in the Top 100 Lobbyists list compiled annually by the Parliament Hill insider newspaper The Hill Times have agriculture or food sector clients. (Western Producer)

To borrow a phrase from Dave Oswald Mitchell's excellent essay,

Occupy the market. Occupy the commons. Occupy the future.

Detective Work: Following the Money in the Consumer Food Dollar

In 1911, a bushel of wheat cost $1.
Today, that $1 is worth $23.82.
Today, a bushel of wheat costs $9.28.

Is there a problem? Yield has gone up, so farmers get more bushels per acre than in 1911. And farmers own more acres than in 1911 - average farm size grew from 297 acres to 1450 acres.

So how is it that Canadian farm net income from the market was near zero, and often negative over the past couple of decades?

Here's a clue: only 5 % of the consumer dollar goes back to the grain farmer. "Using his farm in East Selkirk, Man., as an example, [KAP president] Chorney said he would receive $90,000 if he grew 300 acres of wheat that yielded 50 bushels per acre. However, the bread, cereals and other products from his wheat would generate $1.8 million in sales for grocery stores."

Where does that 95% go? Transportation, packaging, advertising, retail and storage costs like rent and business taxes, fuels and electricity, and labour.

Oh, and profit for global agribusinesses. Remember the food crisis in 2008 that saw food riots in many countries? The Wall Street Journal reported that in the midst of the crisis, "grain-processing giant Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. said its fiscal third-quarter profits jumped 42%...Monsanto saw its profit in the latest quarter more than double...Cargill Inc.'s profits jumped 86% to $1 billion in the latest quarter...Bunge Ltd.'s earnings rose about 20-fold to $289 million."

Saving Someone's Bacon

Piglets are among the cutest of baby animals. No, really. Go find some and coo over them.

I can guess what prompted this campaign: increased public attention on the treatment of pigs in confined systems, with pictures like these readily available on the internet, and stories about the Manitoba barn fire that killed 7500 pigs hitting close to home.

According to the Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan, the swine industry in Saskatchewan produces about  two million market hogs a year and employs about 8,000 people. "To put pig production into perspective on a local level," the article's writer says, "a typical 1,200 sow barn farrow-to-finish uses 8,600 acres of feed grains annually, provides employment for ten full-time and five indirect personnel, has annual sales revenues of $5 million, and provides nutrients in the form of manure to 3,600 acres over a three-year nutrient management program."

I'm more familiar with other aspects of the hog industry in Saskatchewan.
 

Like the fact that in 1976 there were 12,246 farms raising pigs in Saskatchewan and by 2006 there were only 930. In 1976, 85% of the pigs were raised on farms with 2,600 or fewer animals. By 2006 over 90% were raised on farms with over 2,600 pigs.

Like the fact that Big Sky Farms, Saskatchewan's largest hog producer, applied for creditor protection in 2009, 90 million dollars in debt, and ended up repaying farmers whom it owed more than $4,000 (for purchases such as feed) 10 cents on the dollar. Oh, and if you were ruined by their bankruptcy? Maybe you can get a job - they're hiring. And don't worry - the more dangerous, low-paying jobs in the sector will probably go to immigrants.

Like the fact that intensive hog operations contribute disproportionately to water pollution, as Manitoba has found: this year's rapid algae blooms on Lake Winnipeg resulting in the Manitoba government tightening hog-industry regulation. Increased phosphorous levels are entering the lake from livestock farming, pollution from cities and through wetland loss. "Phosphorous levels in the lake are now worse than they were in Lake Erie when people were describing that lake as dead," said Dr. Peter Leavitt at the conclusion of his five-year study of the problem.

I think the hog industry has a ways to go to counter these perceptions. Perhaps by changing the facts. I'd like to see them go that distance!

Whose Side is Science On?

The kids and I went to the Saskatchewan Science Centre this morning. The soap bubbles were a big hit, as was the mirrored table where you could create kaleidoscopic images with coloured plastic shapes. Lest you think my kids are Luddites, I hasten to assure you that they were also enthralled by Richardson's Ag-Grow-Land, which "celebrates the science and cutting edge tools of modern day agriculture in Saskatchewan": the exhibits had buttons to push and levers to pull.

http://www.sasksciencecentre.com/here/exhibits/aggrowland.html

In one agricultural exhibit, you can climb inside a John Deere tractor cab and have the virtual experience of growing a crop - choosing tillage methods, when to apply chemicals and fertilizers and how much, that sort of skilled technical decision.

I have a friend who is a rural sociologist. Her father is an organic farmer. She decided to play the game and farm organically. Turns out she wasn't offered the chance to cover crop, use green or animal manure, intercrop, or any other organic or agroecological methods. She ended up with the worst score of anyone in the game.

Well, maybe that's scientifically valid. Surely the Science Centre would have vetted its sponsored exhibits for scientific veracity. Let's see, shall we?

Your farming performance, based primarily on yield, is rated against previous players at the end of the game. I have some problems with the equation of good farming with yield, but let's accept that assertion for now. How do the yields of organic agriculture compare with those of conventional agriculture?

The answer, of course, is "it varies", based on type of crop, region, how long the land has been in organic production, and specific weather events that might occur. But for many crops, organic yields are quite close to conventional yields. A twenty-one year European study found an average yield of 20% less for organic, but this ranged from 10% less for winter wheat, no difference for grassland yields, and 33% less for potato yields mainly due to a potassium deficiency. Another twenty-one year trial in Pennsylvania found similar yields for corn and soybeans in both methods. 

So if the entire world switched to organic agriculture, would that mean a reduction of 20% in food supply? Of course not. Much of the world's production, in developing countries, shows drastic yield increases with the adoption of agroecological methods. Drastic, like tripling yields of grain in Honduras just by cover cropping. Reviewing several studies, Altieri* found that "integrated farming systems in which the small-scale farmer produces grains, fruits, vegetables, fodder and animal products out-produce yield per unit of single crops such as corn (monocultures) on large-scale farms." Studies in Mexico found that it takes 1.73 ha of maize monoculture to produce as much food as 1 ha of mixed maize, squash and beans.

Another post will have to address all of the additional benefits of organic farming found in these studies and others, including 30% fewer fossil energy inputs, increase in biodiversity, more resilience to weather shocks, greater water retention and nitrogen and carbon levels in soil, and waste recycling.

The divide between conventional and organic methods isn't as clear-cut as Richardson et al might like you to think, of course. Conventional farmers increasingly use organic methods such as cover cropping, or planting a legume in rotation to increase nitrogen in the soil. What is clear is that agribusiness benefits from positing conventional, chem-dependent methods as not only normal, but examplars of scientific progress. Hey - you aren't anti-science, are you? Against progress?! 

Luckily, agroecology is cutting-edge science, both physical and social. And smart farmers, if they can find out about them, will adopt methods that work.

And, luckily, if you take your children to visit the Science Centre, you are armed with some data to help them critically think about what they're seeing.

*Altieri, Miguel A. and Victor Manuel Toledo. (2011). The agroecological revolution in Latin America: rescuing nature, ensuring food sovereignty, and empowering peasants. Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:3.