From Commodity to Culture

Bridging the grocery gap

The other day I read an article praising large concerns in the food and agriculture sector. This is the only way to make food affordable, wrote the author, just as large-scale manufacturing has brought down prices in other sectors of the economy.

What is scary about this point of view is that it is quite right where processed food is concerned. Stable, with a long shelf - or freezer -  life, processed food is just another commodity to be centrally manufactured in huge quantities and shipped everywhere. Add in the subsidies paid to farmers to grow the basic ingredients and you’ve got a winner in the cost contest.

Compare this with its opposite situation; local, seasonal, fresh food. There is a lot of waste. No one cares about the imperfections in an ear of corn that will be used to make corn chips, whereas the shopping housewife will reject an apple with a few black spots, and a bunch of radishes with wilted leaves is a goner. The process of getting the crop from the field to the sales point must be rapid and temperature controlled in hot weather. Fresh fruits and veggies are mostly water; their weight means high shipping costs and they take up a lot of space. They need to be packed very carefully. Small shops in the inner cities are unwilling to stock produce that may or may not sell within its short life span. The result is that good quality, environmentally sound, healthy food sells at high prices to those who can afford it, while the poor nourish themselves on fast and processed food. The cost per calorie of energy-dense junk foods is about one tenth that of nutritious foods. An ethical, health and social scandal.

If you see food as just another commodity, you don’t see this as a scandal, you see it as a marketing opportunity. There are more fast-food restaurants in poor areas and a higher percentage of corner stores stocking processed food. If they stock fresh food at all, it is often of poor quality. Low-income families, and particularly their children, are exposed to more advertising for soft drinks and fast food. Speaking of advertising, how often do you see an ad extolling the virtues of tomatoes or apples? These ads are virtually non-existent in all the media, no matter the social class for which the advertising is meant. Tomatoes and apples are not products in the advertising sense; they don’t bear brand names. Besides, your local tomato farm, no matter how large as these things go, can’t afford the advertising fees.

At the most basic level, the US government policy of subsidizing corn and soybeans percolates up through all levels of food production and marketing. Corn, particularly high-fructose corn syrup, finds its way into hundreds of inexpensive processed foods, while both corn and soybeans feed beef cattle, whose meat thus sells at an artificially low price. That this same government promotes a healthy diet with its ChooseMyPlate program while slipping subsidies to corn and soybeans with the other is the height of absurdity and hypocrisy.

What is one practical social result of seeing food as a commodity? There are a substantial number of “food desert” counties in the US where all residents live 10 miles or more from the nearest supermarket or supercenter. According to the Food Trust, over 70 percent of food stamp eligible families in Mississippi are more than 30 miles from a supermarket. As these families often lack a car, they are dependent on the convenience store and the fast-food restaurant around the corner. Small wonder that Mississippi has the highest obesity rate in the US. Only slightly less shocking statistics can be quoted for poor areas everywhere in the States.

 Fortunately, fast-food purveyors no longer have quite the stranglehold on government that they have enjoyed until recently. Alarm at the horrifying climbing obesity rates in the country, social conscience and imagination are tackling the problem with growing success.

Green Carts and Healthy Bodegas

It is inspiring that the federal government is tackling this situation with its Healthy Food Financing Initiative, which seeks to help finance grocery stores in low-income communities, both rural and urban. It has been found that supermarkets are the most effective solution to the food-desert problem, as they have a wide choice of fresh food at reasonable prices, have long opening times and generally accept electronic benefit transfer (the electronic version of food stamps). Several states and cities are getting in on the act as well, participating in public-private partnerships to finance grocery stores in poor areas.

Less expensive and easier to implement are programs at the community level, like farmers’ markets and community gardens. Valuable also are the social aspects and the empowerment felt by the residents who participate actively in setting up local programs. In New York city, for instance, Green Carts seeks to encourage small food vendors to set up in poorer neighborhoods, while Healthy Bodegas brings fresh food to corner markets. Such programs create jobs and can revitalize dying neighborhoods, encourage other businesses to locate in the area and raise property values.

Heartening as these programs are, they do not touch the basic causes of the dire food situation itself. How would it be if the federal government stopped subsidizing corn and soybeans and starting subsidizing farmers who grow tomatoes, carrots and leafy greens instead? Novel as this may sound, it is no stranger than the fact that in the US today one must be fairly well off financially in order to eat healthily. Steak, lobster and caviar are luxury foods; kale and squash should not be. From the social, economic, health and moral points of view, a major overhaul of the basic facts of food production life is a crying need.