Food is a major, major part of our lives. We love it, we need it. Mike and I spend a large amount of our household budget on groceries {since it’s winter and our garden is under 3 feet of snow, our grocery bill is at its peak right now.} And we spend a large amount of our evening hours cooking together. We are still learning, so every new recipe/meal is kind of an adventure for us.

Mike and I are not alone…basically every human on earth eats food, usually at least three times a day. Through food- the production, harvest, transportation, preservation, consumption, and disposal of food- the human race greatly impacts the world. Take, for example, the banana fruit. In the 1880s Americans did not consume, or did not even know about the existence of bananas. By the 1890s this fruit was sold in the main American cities in individual packages as a luxury good. By 1910 they were considered a cheap fruit, part of the basic diet of the growing American working class. After the 1930s Americans could find bananas in any grocery store in the country at any time of the year.

Bananas stopped being considered an exotic fruit and became common. A national mass consumption of bananas was possible because of the production and distribution network made by Chiquita and Dole. In the early twentieth-century, these companies created a network that included plantations in Central America, railways, steamships, telegraph lines, harbors, and a distribution system in the US. Bananas are an extreme example, but it’s true that most of the food we eat, not just “exotic” types like bananas, travel over 1300 miles from farm to grocery store.

Have you ever heard Brian Regan’s joke about logging trucks passing each other on the highway? This is the same question I am asking about food. If we have it over here…why are we getting it from way over there?

Mike and I decided to sell our home, leave our jobs, and move out of the city in part {a large part} because we want to grow our own produce and raise our own poultry. We’re ecstatic that we moved to an area of the state where locally grown organic produce, meat and dairy is available in glorious abundance. If we thought cooking was fun before, it’s 100 times more fun now that we’re working with beautiful local ingredients!  As the snow melts we will start our own garden, but in the meantime we feel fantastic about the fact that we’re supporting our farming neighbors by buying their goods.

Recently some friends from the city came to visit and offered to buy the ingredients we needed for making dinner that night. They commented on the comparatively high prices at the grocery store- one big bag came to about $70. It’s true, prices are higher here than at a big chain grocery store. But I believe that the high prices are the true cost of food.

The discount prices at those big stores are part of a larger problem- commercial agriculture- supported by low fossil fuel prices- killing off small family farms. When you’re only paying $1.35 for a bunch of bananas that were grown in a completely different country and then transported thousands of miles, ask yourself, “If I’m not paying for the true cost of the production and transportation of these bananas, who is?” Believe me, someone is paying for it.

“The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything at retail, sells everything at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways.” – John F. Kennedy

And if you’ve ever had a garden yourself, you know how much work goes into raising a successful crop of anything. Would you want to {or be able to afford to} sell your goods for anything less than an amount that makes all that work worth it? No way. After considering that, Mike and I realized that the prices at our grocery store were more than fair, and we are happy to pay them even though it means we have to skim from other areas of our budget to make it happen. Our budget is all about priorities, and food is a major priority.

Even so, we realize we’re blessed to be able to afford the kind of food we want to eat. Not everyone is so lucky. Which is kind of crazy…since when is organic/local/whole food only for those affluent enough to be able to afford it? Back in the day, it was the opposite: poor folks grew their own food or traded with neighbors for what they needed, rich folks were able to buy packaged/processed food…the very foods that are the most affordable nowadays.

“Corn is an efficient way to get energy calories off the land and soybeans are an efficient way of getting protein off the land, so we’ve designed a food system that produces a lot of cheap corn and soybeans resulting in a lot of cheap fast food.”  – Michael Pollan

Dan Barber, the celebrated chef behind Blue Hill Farm, was interviewed by Krista Tippet on her NPR show {listen to it here} and he said that we’re in the beginning stages of a food revolution in which the tables will turn once again, and local agriculture will win out over large commercial agriculture. According to him, social change in many cases starts with the affluent and then trickles down to everyone else. He uses women suffrage as an example {affluent, well-educated women were the front-runners of that movement}.

Chef Barber is probably mostly right…but he’s forgetting about grassroots movements like urban farming programs, where entire inner-city communities are working together to convert abandoned lots into productive gardens {watch this short video}.

“Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on. The small landowners are the most precious part of a state.” – Thomas Jefferson

No matter where or how the revolution is starting, it’s important that we all do our part. Start small: cut out meat from your diet unless it comes from a local/free-range/organic source…Treat exotic produce as a luxury {anything that can’t be grown in your local environment and needs to be transported from far away qualifies as “exotic”. For us, this means bananas, mangos, avocados, etc}…Start a garden, even if it’s just in a few planters on your fire escape…Join a CSA if there is one in your area.

Recommended readings on this topic/resources: In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan / Slow Food / Local Harvest / Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver