Why Local Food Systems Matter

Piercing the Veil of Industrial Agriculture

Before industrialized agriculture, local food systems were just food systems.

There were plenty of ancient trade networks like the Silk Road and the spice trade, but foods were generally cultivated and consumed locally. And the economy was predominantly, if not entirely, food-based. Foodstuffs were commonly used as currency such as cacao seeds, coca leaves, or salt.¹

For most of history, food systems were hyper-local. We hunted and gathered edible animals and plants within reach of our hands and paleolithic tools. 12,000 years ago humans began the process of cultivation, domestication, breeding, and selection called agriculture.² Wild grasses became wheat, maize, and rice, the staples of modern global cuisine. Wild boar, aurochs, and guinea fowl became pigs, cows, and chickens.

In developing agriculture, we effectively increased the carrying capacity of the earth. Hunter-gatherers required 5,000 acres to feed each person whereas the same parcel could feed 5,000 people with agriculture. With our minds and energy liberated from the perpetual search for food, the first large cities and civilizations emerged. Culture and technology flourished. Great civilizations emerged. Full-time hunter-gatherers could now specialize as craftsmen, astronomers, mathematicians, or religious leaders.

Only with industrialization did economies diversify out of food and agriculture. Pre-industrialization, 90% of populations were dedicated to agriculture. In 1900, 41% of Americans farmed. Today, only 2% of Americans farm. In 1900, farms produced a variety of crops, mixed crops and animals, and pasture-raised livestock. Today, most farmland is a homogenous sea of monocultured cropland. Crops and animals rarely co-exist. 97% of beef is grain-finished in a feedlot. Fruits, vegetables, and meats now travel thousands of miles on average to reach the consumer.

Industrialized agriculture does exactly what it’s designed to do: produce maximum volume of calories for minimum production cost. Mechanize cultivation and harvest. Segment and specialize the supply chain. Commoditize and homogenize the produce. Free labor to focus their energy and attention elsewhere.

However, the minimized production cost does not reflect the destructive social, ecological, and cultural consequences of industrial production methods. Like most areas of the industrial capitalist economy, massive profits are extracted by a few corporations with local communities left to bear the social and ecological costs.

Despite unparalleled agricultural production and land productivity, rural communities are poorer than ever and farmers commit suicide at 3.5x the national rate due to the stress of razor-thin margins and fluctuating prices. Farmers only earn 14.5 cents of every food dollar and routinely face financial ruin. This is the reward for feeding the world.

Agricultural production is the 2nd largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, comprising 13% of global emissions (20-30% if you include emissions from land deforested for agriculture and supply chain emissions). Nitrous oxide byproduct from synthetic fertilizers and enteric methane from feedlot cattle represent the lion’s share of the emissions. Heavy tillage and use of agrichemicals are destroying topsoil, the foundation of 95% of food production, at terrifying rates.³ Agriculture uses 70% of the world’s freshwater reserves each year. Agriculture drives nearly all global deforestation, with conversion to pastureland by far the leading cause. Somehow, we need to produce 60% more food by 2050 to meet the demands of a growing population.

The industrialization of food resulted in a very small number of massive corporations that control food supply and farm inputs. The big 4 processors and packers control 80% of the beef industry. That number is 70% in pork and 50% in poultry. The top 4 grain traders control 80% of that market. Half of all food items you see in the supermarket are produced by just 10 multinational food and beverage companies. The 3 biggest distributors move 32% of food. Food is primarily sourced from factory farms that can meet the production minimums of industrial economies of scale.

Industrialized food projects commodification on agricultural production to fit into the homogenous high-volume-at-lowest-cost modus operandi. The problem is that agriculture, even when we rationalize it with synthetic fertilizers, chemical pesticides, and industrial machinery, is not a homogenous commodity. It’s a natural process with inherent variability and diversity.

Consumers suffer too. Industrialized agriculture severs our connection with the source of our food. The average consumer has no idea where their food came from or how it was produced, and if they did, would be repulsed.

So, the food system is highly intermediated by enormously powerful corporations with devastating social, ecological, and cultural consequences. The system erodes the very foundation of agriculture and food security. The system degrades farmers. The system deceives consumers. Both producers and consumers have been quietly disenfranchised by a shrouded veil of complex, elongated supply chains.

Local food systems pierce the veil.

As Wendell Berry remarks, “eating is an agricultural act.” Every day we can influence the food system with our purchases.

Local food systems show us the impact our purchases have on ecosystems and re-vitalize communities. Local food systems give us the transparency to vote with our dollars and create the world we want to live in. Local food systems re-connect us with the ecosystems and people without which civilization would crumble. Local food systems keep wealth in producing communities and preserve culture.

And, it’s our heritage.

Footnotes

¹ Did you know that sal, the Spanish word for salt, is the root of salary?

² There seems to be something innately human about agriculture. Like language, agriculture emerged independently in populations around the world. First, in the Fertile Cresent of the Levant. Then, the Yangtze and Yellow River basins of China; the highlands of Papua New Guinea; central Mexico; the Andean cone; and the plains of North America.

³ Generating 3cm of topsoil takes 1,000 years. At current rates, all topsoil could be gone in 60 years.