[SustainableTompkins] Food Injustice: Govt. opposes local foods

[Elan Shapiro]

Op-Ed Contributor
My Forbidden Fruits (and Vegetables)

By JACK HEDIN
NY Times
March 1, 2008
Rushford, Minn.

IF you've stood in line at a farmers' market recently, you know that 
the local food movement is thriving, to the point that small farmers 
are having a tough time keeping up with the demand.

But consumers who would like to be able to buy local fruits and 
vegetables not just at farmers' markets, but also in the produce 
aisle of their supermarket, will be dismayed to learn that the 
federal government works deliberately and forcefully to prevent the 
local food movement from expanding. And the barriers that the United 
States Department of Agriculture has put in place will be extended 
when the farm bill that House and Senate negotiators are working on 
now goes into effect.

As a small organic vegetable producer in southern Minnesota, I know 
this because my efforts to expand production to meet regional demand 
have been severely hampered by the Agriculture Department's commodity 
farm program. As I've looked into the politics behind those 
restrictions, I've come to understand that this is precisely the 
outcome that the program's backers in California and Florida have in 
mind: they want to snuff out the local competition before it even 
gets started.

Last year, knowing that my own 100 acres wouldn't be enough to meet 
demand, I rented 25 acres on two nearby corn farms. I plowed under 
the alfalfa hay that was established there, and planted watermelons, 
tomatoes and vegetables for natural-food stores and a 
community-supported agriculture program.

All went well until early July. That's when the two landowners 
discovered that there was a problem with the local office of the Farm 
Service Administration, the Agriculture Department branch that runs 
the commodity farm program, and it was going to be expensive to fix.

The commodity farm program effectively forbids farmers who usually 
grow corn or the other four federally subsidized commodity crops 
(soybeans, rice, wheat and cotton) from trying fruit and vegetables. 
Because my watermelons and tomatoes had been planted on "corn base" 
acres, the Farm Service said, my landlords were out of compliance 
with the commodity program.

I've discovered that typically, a farmer who grows the forbidden 
fruits and vegetables on corn acreage not only has to give up his 
subsidy for the year on that acreage, he is also penalized the market 
value of the illicit crop, and runs the risk that those acres will be 
permanently ineligible for any subsidies in the future. (The 
penalties apply only to fruits and vegetables - if the farmer decides 
to grow another commodity crop, or even nothing at all, there's no 
problem.)

In my case, that meant I paid my landlords $8,771 - for one season 
alone! And this was in a year when the high price of grain meant that 
only one of the government's three crop-support programs was in 
effect; the total bill might be much worse in the future.

In addition, the bureaucratic entanglements that these two farmers 
faced at the Farm Service office were substantial. The federal farm 
program is making it next to impossible for farmers to rent land to 
me to grow fresh organic vegetables.

Why? Because national fruit and vegetable growers based in 
California, Florida and Texas fear competition from regional 
producers like myself. Through their control of Congressional 
delegations from those states, they have been able to virtually 
monopolize the country's fresh produce markets.

That's unfortunate, because small producers will have to expand on a 
significant scale across the nation if local foods are to continue to 
enter the mainstream as the public demands. My problems are just the 
tip of the iceberg.

Last year, Midwestern lawmakers proposed an amendment to the farm 
bill that would provide some farmers, though only those who supply 
processors, with some relief from the penalties that I've faced - for 
example, a soybean farmer who wanted to grow tomatoes would give up 
his usual subsidy on those acres but suffer none of the other 
penalties. However, the Congressional delegations from the big 
produce states made the death of what is known as Farm Flex their 
highest farm bill priority, and so it appears to be going nowhere, 
except perhaps as a tiny pilot program.

Who pays the price for this senselessness? Certainly I do, as a 
Midwestern vegetable farmer. But anyone trying to do what I do on, 
say, wheat acreage in the Dakotas, or rice acreage in Arkansas would 
face the same penalties. Local and regional fruit and vegetable 
production will languish anywhere that the commodity program has 
influence.

Ultimately of course, it is the consumer who will pay the greatest 
price for this - whether it is in the form of higher prices I will 
have to charge to absorb the government's fines, or in the form of 
less access to the kind of fresh, local produce that the country is 
crying out for.

Farmers need the choice of what to plant on their farms, and 
consumers need more farms like mine producing high-quality fresh 
fruits and vegetables to meet increasing demand from local markets - 
without the federal government actively discouraging them.

Jack Hedin is a farmer.


-- 
Elan Shapiro
Sustainable Tompkins Community Partnership Coordinator
Sustainable Living Associates, Principal
Frog's Way B&B
211 Rachel Carson Way
Ithaca, NY 14850
607-275-0249    607-592-8402 Cell

"We must be the change we want to see in the world"
	          Mohandas Gandhi