Healthy Food Comes From Healthy Farms

Agriculture in America has become a major source of pollution, from industrial hog farms to the overuse of pesticides and fertilizers. How can these farms poison the environment and produce healthy food at the same time?

Here on the Kitchen Table Gazette, we've been re-defining the concept of "food safety" to include environmental protection as well as personal health. This begins with defining our terms. The word "health," for instance, is one of those terms that we think we understand, and care about, like "motherhood and apple pie." And yet, these common words Ñand what they represent Ñ mean different things to different people. Even apple pie means different things to different people. For some it can only mean cinnamon dusted apples simmering in a buttery crust hot from a home oven. For others it means reconstituted fruit floating in apple flavored gelatin in a pocket of massed produced dough, frozen, and then reheated in a microwave, and picked up at a drive-through window of a fast food outlet.

To some, health means just the current state of the physical body. But others define health more broadly, to include thoughts and feelings, family and home, and even the environment. Under those conditions, what you eat has to take into consideration where your food comes from and who produced it.

Today, more than half of the food consumed every day in this country is like that packaged apple pie Ñ it comes from commercial manufacturers that sell prepared foods to fast food restaurants and supermarkets. That food may look fresh, and food retailers insist that it is safe, so is there any reason to be concerned? Yes, because the industrialized food system has its own definition of health, and it is the lowest possible standard of compliance with what is legally required by a vast patchwork system of weak food safety regulations, and beyond that, any practices that they can get away with that will cut costs and improve profits. The appearance and even the taste of the resulting food has been carefully designed to appease the appetite of the mass consumer market. These products are packaged and promoted through marketing campaigns that are created to reassure consumers and the food industry lobbies hard to be sure that no labels on other foods ever imply that there is a more nutritious or healthy way to eat.

Food safety, more broadly defined, looks beyond the common pathogens and toxins that we should be concerned about, to include the new sources of food contamination - from pesticide residues, irradiation, the novel organisms created by genetic engineering, to industrial farming practices, and, even shoddy government regulation that results in weak rules and a lack of enforcement.

The key to ensuring a safe and healthy food supply for ourselves and our families is to know where our food comes from and who prepared it. Until fairly recently, most people grew and prepared food themselves. That is no longer true, but we can re-establish direct and trusting relationships with food producers by making just a few simple changes in our buying habits. Buying from local producers is getting easy now that farmers markets, community supported agriculture and local food circles are sprouting up all over. Even when we are at the supermarket we can ask that they provide information about their growers and processors. And we can ask government agencies for more information and for stricter labeling laws.

If you do only one thing to make a difference, it would be to buy either more local food or more certified organic food. Organic food, even if it is somewhat more expensive, reduces your exposure to pesticides and it supports small and family farmers that do the extra work it takes to grow food without toxic chemicals, thereby helping the environment. Even those who are not concerned about the safety and nutrition of conventional food may still want to help support organic farmers or they may want to protect them from GMO contamination by not buying genetically altered conventional food. Buying local food means getting fresh food, which is more nutritious, supporting farmers in your region and at the same time, avoiding the environmental costs of packaging and long distance shipping.

Rejecting irradiated foods is another good choice. Buying them, even if they are purported to be "safe," supports a military-based nuclear industry and allows the causes of contamination, industrial meat packing practices, to go unchallenged.

The media has done a real disservice to the public by repeating false accusations about organic growing practices, as ABC television news did last year and as Fox TV did when it fired two reporters trying to tell the truth about hormones used in dairy production. At the same time, commercial media, who receive the bulk of their advertising revenue from food companies, rarely, if ever, criticize industrial agriculture. There are, fortunately, many sources of consumer information that will help ensure healthy food choices.

One such study listed high risk foods and indicated those with the highest levels of pesticides, and other dangerous toxins such as dioxin, which are, in order of danger: 1. meat: chicken and beef; 2. dairy; 3. strawberries; 4. tomatoes; 5. potatoes; 6. lettuce; and 7. coffee. Information like this can help establish purchasing priorities. We may decide to pay a little extra for organic forms of these risky foods and perhaps save money by buying conventional, but non-GMO, bulk grains, for instance. These consumer choices will also send a signal to agribusiness that consumers care, and if given a choice, they will buy food raised without toxic chemicals and gmos.

The price of food is important, but the cost of food is even more critical. Cheap food is destroying farming in America at an alarming rate. Fast food retailers such as McDonalds are often the largest buyers of farm products and they demand uniform products and can command the lowest prices. So every fast food meal contributes to the industrial food system. We should ask if the long term detriment to our personal and environmental health from industrial food is really worth the convenience of cheap fast food? If we look beyond the "price" of food, to see the hidden costs involved, then we must include in the costs of expensive environmental cleanups and the soaring cost of health care.

Small and sustainable family farms are the backbone, no, the heart, of a healthy food system but we have been in a permanent farm crisis in this country since the 1980s and are continuing to lose farms at an accelerating rate. There are now more people in prison in the U.S. (2 million) than there are people who farm (1.9 million) - which should tell us something about our national priorities. Taxpayers now spend almost $30 billion each year supporting industrialized agriculture. At some point the public will wake up, and, hopefully, ask what we are getting for all this money besides environmental degradation and the loss of rural communities?

Apples, again, are instructive. China is now the world's largest apple producer and because of an artificially low price of imported apples and apple concentrate, U.S. growers are experiencing the collapse of their market. Processed apple prices have gone from $180 per ton three years ago to $20 a ton todayÑ and are even as low as $10 in some markets. Urban sprawl, land speculation and free trade have driven almost everyone from farming except the large agribusiness corporations.

Living consciously in today's world is a challenge. Fortunately, we have choices, and the solutions, when it comes to food, are really fairly simple and very effective. Changing these trends will take two things: a willingness to face the unpleasant realities of today's industrial food system; and a willingness to spend a little less on entertainment or consumer goods and a bit more on ensuring that our food comes from healthy nearby farms that care about our personal, social and environmental health.

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Claire Hope Cummings produces and hosts a weekly radio show on food and farming. She is a writer, a lawyer and is active in the growing new food movement that is working to reinvigorate local food systems and support sustainable, organic family farms. She has been a farmer, both in California and in Vietnam, and was an environmental litigator for 18 years, as well as formerly staff counsel at the USDA.

Claire enjoys growing food in her large organic garden and does native plant restoration on her land in Marin County, California. She is the author of two guides to agricultural genetic engineering, has published numerous articles on food, and is a popular public speaker. Her radio show is broadcast live at 7:30 AM every Tuesday morning on KPFA–FM in Berkeley, KFCF in Fresno, or on the web at that time at www.kpfa.org.