Cheap food system has costly consequences

We Canadians live in a land of plenty. We freely roam through huge warehouses stockpiling food of every description from all corners of the earth. Yet our food budget represents about a dime out of every dollar we earn.

Burgers at the local fast food outlets sell two-for-one and we are encouraged to "super-size" our orders for an extra few cents--which increases our demand for super-size clothes. Our plates are so full and our day-to-day life so sedentary, that it is easier and less expensive to be fat than thin.

Many say we have a cheap food policy. But is our food system really so cheap? Or are the real and mounting costs merely hidden from sight?

Our food system is driving farmers out of business, even though there is tremendous wealth generated by what they do. Farm size, productivity and income have all risen over the past three decades--but so have operating expenses. As a result, farmers' incomes have followed a flat or declining line.

Farmers have coped with low prices by increasing their scale of production. The extra production lowers prices--and the downward spiral continues.

This is all a natural result of an industrialization process, but our food system is looking less natural and less sustainable all the time. An industrialized production model is expensive even though the raw commodities it produces don't sell for much. It is hard on the environment. There is mounting evidence that the resource base is being eroded. Industrialized livestock production systems are facing increased scrutiny by animal-welfare advocates. These are not concocted controversies. They are real issues that merit serious debate.

[Graph Not Transcribed]

This system is hard on people, too. Farming has become increasingly stressful at the same time as traditional community supports are being eroded. The competition for land erodes the spirit of cooperation and shared values that built rural communities. In order for one to succeed another must fail. You cannot love your neighbour if you are lusting after his land.

As farms become larger, rural communities decline. That reduces the rural economy, which could offer supplemental income to farm families and make them less reliant on volatile export markets.

We need more farmers, not fewer. Farmers are among the few groups in our society who connect us to the land. They live daily with the mystery of interrelationships in biological processes; they see the constant cycle of renewal. Farmers know that doing everything "right" is no assurance of a bountiful crop. It is truly a gift.

As our society increasingly becomes disconnected from the land, we become rootless and disconnected as a people. Does this mean we should all go back to farming? Is this a pitch for organic agriculture? No. But I think it's time we all got a little dirt beneath our fingernails.

We need to get involved. We need to learn about the many forces at work shaping our food production system, and we need to discuss as a society whether the current trends in agricultural industry will achieve the results we collectively desire.

It is only by understanding why things are the way they are that we can have a meaningful discussion over how we want them to be.

The writer, a farm columnist and editor in Winnipeg, is a specialist on agricultural issues and Canada's food system.