Today Nigel and I attended a workshop on mentorship put on by California Farmlink. Nigel was one of the guest speakers. Since farming is not my background I enjoy tagging along to these events because I always learn a lot.
During the break I had a thought provoking conversation with Mark Pasternak from Devils Gulch Ranch. They grow wine grapes and asparagus, and raise rabbits, pigs, sheep, and quail. A very interesting man, he and his wife have been working in Haiti for the past several years on a rabbit project that will provide a source of easy and inexpensive protein. By the way, they happened to be in Haiti at the time of the earthquake. You can find out more about Devils Gulch Ranch and their experience in Haiti at their website.
Getting back to the subject of this blog though, Mark and I were discussing how much cheap food actually costs us. Do we really have any concept, at all? I would say, no we don’t.
Michael Pollan writes in his book In Defense of Food “In 1960 Americans spent 17.5 percent of their income on food and 5.2 percent of national income on health care. Since then, those numbers have flipped: Spending on food has fallen to 9.9 percent, while spending on health care has climbed to 16 percent of national income.” Our food costs have dropped significantly but since many of the most expensive illnesses and some of the fastest growing have a strong relationship to diet it is clear that we aren’t saving anything here.
The relationship between health care versus food is just one of the hidden costs most of us never factor in. Farm subsidies are another food expense we foot the bill for that most of us don’t take into consideration as a personal expense. Between 1995 and 2006 corn received $56,170,875,257.00, wheat $22,051,566200.00, soybeans $14,239,702,740, the total amount of money handed out in subsidies was $177.6 billion. These were not organic family farms that were cashing in on government money; as a matter of fact among subsidy recipients 10% collected 74% of all subsidies. (Figures come from EWG website Farm Subsidy Database )
Mark brought up yet another interesting point, one I had not even considered. What does it cost us to clean up the huge toxic mess that massive agribusiness creates. It pollutes our water systems, streams, rivers and ground water. And they pollute the air and destroy the soil. The corporations don’t take responsibility for the disasters they create rather they are masters of avoiding responsibility. The consequence is that we, the taxpayers, end up footing the bill. As a matter of fact we are footing the bill for all of this. Our tax dollars are the farm subsidies and the rates we pay for an out of control health system is just another form of taxation. So you see our cheap food really isn’t so cheap after all. It is time to make a change.