Attendance improves

Twenty-one questing minds showed up for the second presentation in the "Ground to Globe: Conversations About Food" series we are sponsoring in conjunction with Oregon Coast Community Action. Zoe Bradbury of Abby's Greens in Langlois gave a brilliant and very informative presentation on "Building a Strong Regional Food System". I (Jessica) took 22 pages of notes including some pithy quotes. Of course, at the end of the night while shutting down my computer I hit the wrong button and erased everything. Sigh. I do intend to email her for a copy of her powerpoint, and interview her for an article, but until then, here's a sampling based on my memory.

Food travels an average of 1500 miles before it gets to our table. Where communities and regions have a local food system, food only travels an average of 45 miles to the table.
....only 8.5 percent of the US population are farmers and the number is shrinking every year. Current farmers have an average age in the early 50s. The few younger folks who want to be farmers find it difficult to get into due to financing, lack of access to land and knowledge. "You can't learn farming from books, you have to experience it," said Zoe.

Zoe said the Farm Policy is "like an elephant in stilletto heels" big and bloated at the top with all the pressure on the family farmers at the bottom. The 'bigger is better' push came from Earl Butz, Secretary of Agriculture under President Reagan who believed that farmers should plant from fence to fence creating a surplus that could be sent overseas. "Get big or get out." Subsidies became the norm during this time.

Now, at the same time small family owned farms are going out of business, we have numerous millionaires living in Manhattan (and other places such as wherever Ted Turner lives) with no connection to the land or to farming, yet they are raking in the bucks from subsidies. The land they own is merely a route to government handouts.

Leaving fairness aside, this system does nothing to ease issues of hunger and, in fact, is directly linked to some of the food issues we hear about on a regular basis. For instance, the increase in growing corn (or forcing other countries to grow corn that we can export for fuel) has resulted in people in Mexico not being able to get tortillas - a staple of the Mexican diet.

This system of large farms and rampant subsidies is contrary to what the government knows to be best for farms and the surrounding communities based on their own information. Sometime in the 70's (if I recollect correctly) A sociologist was commissioned by the government to do a study between two farming communities in California...one was a community surrounded by small family owned farms and the other was an agribiz town. While it might be easy to assume that, of course, the larger, more professional ag town would be a better place to live, in fact by all measurements, the opposite was true. The corporate town had (by far) fewer schools, fewer playgrounds, far fewer independent retail establishments and I forget what the others were, but it was very compelling. When the results were presented to the Government, they were buried and the sociologist was let go.

Zoe also talked about the pressure put on farmers by Monsanto, godfather of Genetically Modified foods. "It's very like the mafioso," she said. One of the problems with GMO crops is 'blow over' meaning the pollen etc, crosses fence lines and travels where it will, sometimes landing in an organic field or a non-GMO field. Monsanto reps then gather soil samples from the corrupted field and take legal action against the farmer for 'stealing', when he or she couldn't have stopped the contamination in any way, shape, or form. These same reps also put a great deal of pressure on farmers to use GMO seeds.

The post presentation discussion centered around issues of connection, education, consumer demand and community collaboration. Folks mentioned the need for directories, both for the consumer to locate the food and for the farmer to locate the supplies needed to produce. There was interest in bringing back the idea of small gardens in available space, community gardens, and other growing spaces. Conversation was lively and continued long after the program.

The next conversation in the series will cover Community Supported Agriculture and is scheduled for Thursday June 5th at 6pm.

Jerry and Jessica"
"tycoonistas