Missoula News

What’s So Bad About Local Food?

By Courtney Lowery, 12-04-08

The grain harvest near Dutton, Mont. Photo by Steve Lowery.

If ever there was an explanation of what keeps many American farmers exclusively focused on the global commodity game - even if they and their communities are losing because of it - it’s thinking like this:

From a story in the Great Falls Tribune covering the Montana Grain Growers conference:

[Conference speaker Tom] Morgan, the one-time vice president of the large Florida vegetable and fruit grower A. Duda & Sons, criticized a National Geographic issue last summer that called for “eating green” through steps such as buying locally from farmers within 30 miles, riding a bike and planting a garden, all of which he called unrealistic and “a bunch of romantic dribble” for most large-city dwellers.

He said modern agriculture requires the safe use of fertilizers, chemicals and genetically engineered crops to feed a growing population with only 7 percent arable land nationwide. Americans pay just 10 percent of their income for food — much less than most of the world — and are allowed to be freed to do other things because farmers and ranchers provide them with food, he added.

Later in the story, several growers are quoted bemoaning rising input costs (read: fuel, fertilizer and chemicals) and the stresses of fluctuating grain prices. Coincidence?

As someone who grew up on 3,000 acres of grain that was surrounded by hundreds of thousands of acres of grain, I know what hard, valuable and critical work growing grain is. But, as someone who also has watched surrounding towns dwindle and small farms like ours crumble under the weight of modern agriculture, I know how important it is —nationally, locally and on each individual farm—to be able to look at “agriculture” as the multi-dimensional sector it is.

Local food and food grown without chemicals is not only where the money is in agriculture right now, it’s where the future is. That’s not to say conventionally grown commodity crops should not be part of the equation. They very much should. But, they shouldn’t be the only part. In order for farmers to stay farmers and rural communities to stay vibrant, agriculture has to be about more than one set of crops all working in one global system. That’s how we make sure the world, and our neighbors too, have food.

So passing local or organic agriculture—or any kind of agriculture that might work for the land, the farmer and the consumer, for that matter—off as fads for urban-dwelling hippies is not only damaging to the nation’s view of agriculture (which is what Morgan was apparently attempting to address in his speech), it’s a dangerous notion for farmers and the communities they sustain. 

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