2010 Census, Food Safety and American Dependence
Yesterday the results of the 2010 US census were released telling us that there are about 309 million people living in the US. Indications are that people have moved from the North East and Midwest to the West and South. I don't find much of this surprising. In general people look for lower cost of living and more favorable climates, which other than the cost of living in Cali, can be associated with migratory trends. I expect in coming months and years we'll find out that there are "more people living in cities than ever before" commensurately that the rural population is shrinking and also that fewer Americans are involved in farming then every before. These are trends that have been observed before and I expect will continue to be reported in the 2010 census.
What this means is that fewer and fewer people are involved in the processes that put food on their own table or on the table of other Americans. I'm not talking about all the people involved in processing, distributing, delivering and selling food at you local grocery store, I'm talking about the producers, the farmers, the gardeners, the food preservers, seed savers and traders who not only feed themselves but also provide healthy, nutrient rich food for their family, neighbors and friends. For a long time, that's how we worked, you grew some of everything, enough to provide for yourself and any extra was sold or bartered locally. But with progress came specialization urbanization, and an aversion to the hard, dirty work of farming. Now it's easier for an average person to get a job selling junk on Ebay than it is to grow strawberries, make jam out of them, and sell the jam for a profit.
Farming is hard work. Hours in the blazing sun, breathing dusty air and suffering numerous mosquito bites isn't how a lot of people prefer to spend their days. It's certainly more pleasant to occupy a climate controlled cubicle and wither away hours at the water cooler, but at what cost?
From the Senate yesterday came what I interpret as even more bad news for those who wish to farm. S.510 FDA Food Safety Modernization Act seems to imply that anyone who wishes to produce food, be it lettuce, broccoli, beef, strawberry jam or pie filling for anything other than personal consumption needs to register with the FDA, pay a fee, and enact control measures to limit biological, chemical and physical hazards in their product. OK, doesn't sound that bad right? Well, when you're a small family farm, not a farm cooperation, operating on a near zero margin, more fees, QC procedures and record keeping cut into an already slim bottom line. These are not the facilities that are irrigating their crops with contaminated water, nor employing unsanitary conditions for their workers or keeping animals in toxic waste dumps. These are people trying to do the right thing for their family (which is unaffected by the new law) and their community (an act which is affected by the proposed law.) On the other hand, factory farms that specialize in monocropping and mass production won't see this regulation as burdensome, rather it will be "the cost of doing business." As we depend on these factory farms more and more, which is inevitable given the population migration, and the loss of the ability to self-sustain, I doubt that any of this legislation will substantially improve food safety.
What we need is not more accountants and lawyers, we need more farmers. Not factory farmers growing wheat, soybeans and corn, but people willing to forgo the comfortable cubicle life and take on the challenge of providing for themselves with their own two hands and sharing their hard work with their neighbors. Rather than centralized systems of production, a diffuse production scheme which encourages local, seasonal and sustainable ideas would better control the spread of food-borne illness than increasingly bureaucratic control of an unsustainable, untenable system. Americans need to end their dependence on the hard work of others, acknowledge that the food system starts at the ground level, with them, and tell the government to apply reason to food production not more regulation.
