Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat

Notes from the Montana Governor’s Food & Agriculture Summit

By Kisha Lewellyn Schlegel, 3-27-07

A few minutes before the Montana Governor’s Food & Agriculture Summit began, the folks at my table were already talking about the problems of the global food system. The family farmer, local restaurant owner and horticulture specialist sliced open each problem. They discussed the difficulty of buying local food and processing it in the state, of public policy and recent cuts in public funding.  But their conversation was not somber. They spoke with assurance that the ailing system could be changed for the better.

A similar, frenetic energy filled the room when over 250 passionate food experts and interested citizens gave Governor Schweitzer a standing ovation as he walked to the podium with a model windmill in his hand and sheep dog at his side. 

The Governor held the Summit to, “explore opportunities for increasing Montana’s food production, processing and distribution infrastructure; identify economic and social barriers faced by low-income people in accessing proper food and nutrition; and address policy and system changes needed to increase food security and ensure a sustainable, healthy food system.”

The outcome of the participatory process was intended to create definitive recommendations that the governor should focus on in order to localize and regionalize Montana’s food system.

During the first half of the 20th century, the state’s food system was fairly local. Seventy percent of the food Montanans ate was grown in the state. From 1910 to about 1950, farmers were also getting about sixty cents for every dollar spent on food. But as food became processed out of state, requiring more shipping and the involvement of many other intermediaries, the amount of food grown and eaten in state dropped substantially. This year, most producers will only get seven cents for every food dollar we spend. And these days, only ten percent of Montanans’ food comes from Montana.

As a Havre farmer noted, the low income causes farmers and ranchers to take risks that no normal business would take. And they do it just to stay in the game.

Farmers have lost so much of the food dollar, in part, because food travels through more hands as it travels more miles. According to Molly Anderson, research coordinator for the Community Food Security Coalition, the value of food is extracted by processing, distribution and packaging sectors at each step along the way from field to fork. And with so many steps, farmers and ranchers receive less of the profit. In turn, the system has led to an increased concentration in the control of food supply decisions and distribution. So, a few owners can effectively put the squeeze on producers who are caught in the system and must react to what is being required of them. Meanwhile, Anderson notes, the five heirs of Sam Walton (of Wal-Mart, now the world’s largest private employer and grocer) rank number 17-21 in a list of the world’s wealthiest people.

For Anderson, such a system is clearly out of balance. Food travels increasing distances, not just from field to fork, but from seed to sewer. Hunger rises while grain feeds livestock; obesity is an epidemic most prevalent among those who are impoverished.

Ironically obesity and malnutrition exist in the same population because those without money tend to buy cheap, fattening foods that will keep them feeling full. And when people living in poverty must make decisions between paying for food or their bills, the issue of a global food system becomes what Paul Miller calls a moral dilemma. Miller, an Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Montana, compassionately spoke of hunger in Montana, which began to increase in the 1970s. In essence, the closures of mental hospitals led to an increase in homelessness (and subsequent hunger) while the 1973 oil embargo deleteriously shifted Montana’s economy. With a loss of markets and increasing price of fuel, workers suffered most.

According to Miller, before the embargo, Montana’s median income was third in the nation. One decade later, the state’s ranking had dropped to forty-fifth.  By the mid-1980s, many residents of rural areas didn’t have access to adequate food and nutrition, indicating that agricultural communities are often hungry communities.

Today, in a state with less than one million residents, 290,000 Montanans are at risk of food insecurity. (It is now considered politically correct to call hungry people, food insecure, meaning that they do not always have enough to eat. Many at the Summit balked at this term, admonishing that we should call it what it is – hunger.) Most often the hungry are also the working poor with full time jobs (or two or three) who cannot afford the rising cost of living: rent, heat and health insurance.

The Summit speakers and attendees agreed that in this global food system, eaters and growers are suffering. Instead of a healthy system that works to provide people with the food they need to live, people are working to keep an ailing food system alive. As one a farmer said, our food system is killing our communities and the food is killing us. And it’s in need of more than palliative care. The food system is in need of some urgent, reconstructive surgery. And a wellness plan.

This is part one of a two part series highlighting the Food & Agriculture Summit. Next week, Spade & Spoon will discuss the experts’ prescription for healing.

Look for the Spade & Spoon column every Tuesday at www.newwest.net/spadeandspoon. If you have article ideas for Spade & Spoon, email kisha@newwest.net.

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