ESSAY: The Rise of Food Democracy
By Brian Halweil
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The National Touring Association, one of the largest lobbying groups in Norway, representing walkers, hikers and campers, recently joined forces with the nation’s one and only celebrity chef to develop a line of foods made from indigenous ingredients to stock the country’s network of camping huts. For instance, someone staying in a mountain cottage in Jotunheimen National Park would dine on cured reindeer heart, sour cream porridge and small potatoes grown only in those mountain valleys. Sekem, Egypt’s largest organic food producer, has developed a line of breads, dried fruits, herbs, sauces and other items made entirely from ingredients grown in the country. The brand is recognized by 70 per cent of Egyptians, and sales have doubled each of the last five years. In Zimbabwe, six women realized that their husbands, who are peanut farmers, were literally getting paid peanuts for their crop while they bought pricey imported peanut butter. These women decided to invest in a grinder and are now producing a popular line of peanut butter from local nuts that sells for 15 per cent less than mainstream brands. In Nebraska, in the United States, a group of local farmers got together and opened a farmers grocery that stocks only foods raised in that State. They found suppliers of bacon and baked beans, sour cream and sauerkraut, and virtually all major grocery items, all from Nebraska.
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| FAO photos |
What ties together these disparate enterprises from around the world? At a time when our food often travels farther than ever before, they are all evidence of “food democracy” erupting from an imperialistic food landscape. At first blush, food democracy may seem a little grandiose—a strange combination of words. But if you doubt the existence of power relations in the realm of food, consider a point made by Frances and Anna Lappé in their book Hope’s Edge (see UN Chronicle, Issue 3, 2001). The typical supermarket contains no fewer than 30,000 items, about half of them produced by ten multinational food and beverage companies, with 117 men and 21 women forming the boards of directors of those companies. 1 In other words, although the plethora of products you see at a typical supermarket gives the appearance of abundant choice, much of the variety is more a matter of branding than of true agricultural variety and, rather than coming from thousands of farmers producing different local varieties, they have been globally standardized and selected for maximum profit by just a few powerful executives.
Food from far-flung places has become the norm in much of the United States and the rest of the world. The value of international trade in food has tripled since 1961, while the tonnage of food shipped between countries has grown fourfold during a time when populations only doubled. For example, apples in Des Moines supermarkets come from China, even though there are apple orchards in Iowa; potatoes in Lima’s supermarkets come from the United States, even though Peru boasts more varieties of potato than any other country.
The long-distance food system offers unprecedented and unparalleled choice to paying consumers—any food, any time, anywhere. At the same time, this astounding choice is laden with contradictions. Ecologist and writer Gary Nabhan wonders “what culinary melodies are being drowned out by the noise of that transnational vending machine”, which often runs roughshod over local cuisines, varieties and agriculture.2 The choice offered by the global vending machine is often illusory, defined by infinite flavouring, packaging and marketing reformulations of largely the same raw ingredients (consider the hundreds of available breakfast cereals). The taste of products that are always available but usually out of season often leaves something to be desired.
Long-distance travel requires more packaging, refrigeration and fuel, and generates huge amounts of waste and pollution. Instead of dealing directly with their neighbours, farmers sell into a remote and complex food chain of which they are a tiny part and are paid accordingly. A whole constellation of relationships within the food shed—between neighbours, between farmers and local processors, between farmers and consumers—is lost in the process. Farmers producing for export often find themselves hungry as they sacrifice the output of their land to feed foreign mouths, while poor urbanites in both the First and Third Worlds find themselves living in neighbourhoods unable to attract most supermarkets and other food shops, and thus without healthy food choices. Products enduring long-distance transport and long-term storage depend on preservatives and additives and encounter all sorts of opportunities for contamination on their journey from farm to plate. The supposed efficiencies of the long-distance chain leave many people malnourished and underserved at both ends of the chain.
The changing nature of our food in many ways signals what the changing global economic structure means for the environment, our health and the tenor of our lives. The quality, taste and vitality of foods are profoundly affected by how and where they are produced and how they arrive at our tables. Food touches us so deeply that threats to local food traditions have sometimes provoked strong, even violent, responses. José Bové, the French shepherd who smacked his tractor into a McDonald’s restaurant to fight what he called “culinary imperialism”, is one of the better-known symbols in a nascent global movement to protect and invigorate local food sheds. 3
It is a movement to restore rural areas, enrich poor nations, return wholesome foods to cities and reconnect suburbanites with their land by reclaiming lawns, abandoned lots and golf courses to use as local farms, orchards and gardens.
Local food is pushing through the cracks in the long-distance food system: rising fuel and transportation costs; the near extinction of family farms; loss of farmland to spreading suburbs; concerns about the quality and safety of food; and the craving for some closer connection to it. Eating local allows people to reclaim the pleasures of face-to-face interactions around food and the security that comes from knowing what one is eating. It might be the best defense against hazards intentionally or unintentionally introduced in the food supply, including E. coli bacteria, genetically modified foods, pesticide residues and bio-warfare agents. In an era of climate change and water shortages, having farmers nearby might be the best hedge against other unexpected shocks. On a more sensual level, locally grown and in-season food served fresh has a definite taste advantage—one of the reasons this movement has attracted the attention of chefs, food critics and discriminating consumers around the world.
The local alternative also offers huge economic opportunities. A study by the New Economics Foundation in London found that every £10 spent at a local food business is worth £25 for that area, compared with just £14 when the same amount is spent in a supermarket. That is, a pound (or dollar, peso or rupee) spent locally generates nearly twice as much income for the local economy. 4 The farmer buys a drink at the local pub; the pub owner gets a car tune-up at the local mechanic; the mechanic brings a shirt to the local tailor; the tailor buys some bread at the local bakery; the baker buys wheat for bread and fruit for muffins from the local farmer. When these businesses are not locally owned, money leaves the community at every transaction.
This sort of multiplier is perhaps most important in the developing world where the vast majority of people are still employed in agriculture. In West Africa, for example, each $1 of new income for a farmer yields an average increase to other workers in the local economy, ranging from $1.96 in Niger to $2.88 in Burkina Faso. No equivalent local increases occur when people spend money on imported foods. 5 While the idea of complete food self-sufficiency may be impractical for rich and poor nations alike, greater self-sufficiency can buffer them against the whims of international markets. To the extent that food production and distribution are relocated in the community under local ownership, more money will circulate in the local community to generate more jobs and income.
But here’s what makes these declarations of food independence, despite their small size, so threatening to the agricultural status quo. They are built around certain distinctions—geographic characteristics—that global trade agreements are trying so hard to eliminate. These agreements, whether the European Union Trade Zone or the North American Free Trade Agreement, depend on erasing borders and geographic distinctions. (Inspiring howls of opposition from German carmakers and Italian olive oil growers alike, the European Union (EU) in early 2004 proposed that goods produced anywhere within its borders, including food, should say “Made in EU”, rather than a specific country. 6) Multinational food companies that source the cheapest ingredients they can find also depend on erasing these distinctions. Centerville depends on restoring them, and if this concept ever really takes off, a rival supermarket chain might argue that the grocer is violating free trade laws. It may seem like a long shot, but some British bureaucrats have already opposed the move by some national schools to favour British produce in the cafeterias because it would violate EU laws. 7
Look around and you can glimpse the change worldwide. Farmers in Hawaii are uprooting their pineapple plantations to sow vegetables in hopes of replacing the imported salads at resorts and hotels. School districts throughout Italy have launched an impressive effort to make sure cafeterias are serving a Mediterranean diet by contracting with nearby farmers. At the rarefied levels of the World Trade Organization, officials are beginning to make room for nations to feed themselves, realizing that this might be the best hope for poor nations that cannot afford to import their sustenance. Even some of the world’s biggest food companies are starting to embrace these values, a reality that raises some unsettling questions and awesome opportunities for local food advocates. Recently, officials at both Sysco—the world’s largest food-service provider—and Kaiser Permanente—the largest health care provider in the United States—declared their dependence on small local farmers for certain products they cannot get anywhere else.
These changes will unfold in a million different ways, but the general path will look familiar. Farmers will plant a greater diversity of crops. Less will be shipped as bulk commodity and more will be packaged, canned and prepared to be sold nearby. Small food businesses will emerge to do this work, Governments will encourage new businesses, and shoppers seeking pleasure and reassurance will eat deliberately and inquire about the origins of their food. Communities worldwide all possess the capacity to regain this control and this makes the simple idea of eating local so powerful. These communities have a choice, and they are choosing instead to eat here. |
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| 1. | Frances Moore Lappé and Anna Lappé, Hope’s Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet (New York: Tarcher/ Putnam, 2002), p. 299. Original statistics from Thomas A. Lyson and Annalisa Lewis Raymer, “Stalking the Wily Multinational: Power and Control in the U.S. Food System”, Agriculture and Human Values, June 2000, pp. 199–209. |
| 2. | Gary Paul Nabhan, Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods (New York: W.W. Norton, 2002), p. 14. |
| 3. | José Bové, Millau, France, discussion with author, 19 April 2002; Suzanne Daley, “French Farmer Is Sentenced to Jail for Attack on McDonald’s”, The New York Times, 14 September 2000; and “French Farmer José Bové Rides Tractor to Jail”, Reuters, 19 June 2002. |
| 4. | New Economics Foundation, “Local Food Better for Rural Economy than Supermarket Shopping” (press release), London, United Kingdom, 7 August 2001. |
| 5. | West Africa from Christopher Delgado et al., “Agricultural Growth Linkages in Sub-Saharan Africa”, IFPRI Research Report 107 (Washington, D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute, December 1998), p. xii. |
| 6. | Mark Landler, “Germans Have a Breakdown Over Quality”, The New York Times, 9 May 2004. |
| 7. | James Petts, Sustain: The Alliance for Better Food and Farming, London, United Kingdom, e-mail to author, 30 September 2003. |
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Brian Halweil is a senior researcher with the Worldwatch Institute, writing on the social and ecological impacts of how to grow food, focusing on organic farming, biotechnology, hunger and rural communities. He is the author of Eat Here: Reclaiming Homegrown Pleasures in a Global Supermarket (W.W. Norton, 2004). |
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