This is my spinach crop. We had our first homegrown spinach salad last night with sprouts and garden herbs. It was alot of work to coax this spinach out of the ground. I could have bought similar stuff for about $3. Almost too cheap to bother.
It leads me to a concept that I believe in deeply, but feel is heresy to speak aloud: We need to start paying more for food. What kind of moron wants to see prices for something as basic as food to rise, you may ask? Well, me. And the author of the article Why Is Organic Food So...Cheap?.
The fact of the matter is, in my mind at least, our current system of pricing is totally out of whack with reality. It ignores the "external costs"of things like obesity and diabetes, the potential costs we may face by exposing ourselves to pesticides, herbicides and GMOs (genetically modified organisms), and the environmental costs of reliance on fossil fuels to grow, package, process and transport food massive distances. Our current food economy asks farmers to work hard and take incredible financial risk for tiny slivers of our supermarket prices. We also maintain cheap prices by outsourcing our food production to the developing world, which once again keeps us feeling full by keeping people food insecure in the majority of the world. In the developing world, the best land is used for specialty export crops, leaving little land for people to grow foods they actually get to eat. Then they need to buy our cheap corn. And so it goes...
I like a bargain just as much as the next person...but cheap food is no bargain. Just a deal with the devil. I'm willing to pay more to make sure I get food that is not degrading the land for my kids, that is not putting farmers out of business, and that is not going to make me fat and sick. Last night we ate a whole chicken that cost about $6/kg. Not too cheap...but we bought it directly from the farmer and it was raised without a tiny cage or hormones and antibiotics. Good news all around.
Disclaimer: Yes, I have the luxury of not having to choose between rent or food. I have the good fortune of not being tied to a diet of white bread and $1.29 hot dogs. I did not forgot about the food insecure people of the rich world. Nooo, not at all. These are the people who are chained to the worst that the food industry has to offer. It is a complex issue that will require a variety of solutions, but at some point a first step must be taken. I say let it be a tax on highly processed foods of little nutritional value. Next, let's use the proceeds to subsidize fresh food for people who can't afford it. I am loathe to recommend much from Sun Media, but I have to agree with this article by Andrew Hanon.
That was really well said. I agree that commodity crops should not be subsidized. Who eats field corn anyway? Meanwhile, fruit and veggie farmers don't get subsidies. But fruit and veggie farmers don't have major corporations with vested interests... Commodity farmers do.
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