Food and Ag Roundup

Will the Corporate Behemoth Save or Ruin Agriculture? Depends Who You Ask.

By Courtney Lowery Cowgill, 1-27-11

	Photo by Flickr user bdunnette and used here under Creative Commons license.

If you believe two big PR pushes in the news this week, two companies that have played major roles in breaking agriculture and our food system are leading the charge to reform it.

First came the announcement from Wal-Mart on its pledge to make healthy food affordable by reducing prices on produce, bringing more Wal-Mart stores to so-called “food deserts” and reducing sodium and sugar in its store brands while leveraging its buying power to encourage other food producers to follow suit.

Then, ag giant Monsanto – which has been under fire for years for, among other things, intimidating and exploiting farmers – launched an ad campaign that attempts to get back in the good graces of American food producers, or at least look like it.

In the company’s words: “For decades, America’s farmers have provided for us. We’re helping to tell their story. And it’s a great story to tell.”

The campaign is pretty exhaustive, including print, TV and on the Web, it even includes “Farm Mom” of the year contests.

Kerry Trueman, the co-founder of www.eatingliberally.org, asked Marion Nestle to weigh in on the campaign this week, and Nestle, who was also in the news this week criticizing the Wal-Mart move, responded with this gem:

“Face it. We have two agricultural systems in this country, both claiming to be good for farmers and both claiming to be sustainable. One focuses on local, seasonal, organic, and sustainable in the sense of replenishing what gets taken out of the soil. The other is Monsanto, for which sustainable means selling seeds (and not letting farmers save them), patented traits developed through biotechnology, and crop protection chemicals.

This is about who gets to control the food supply and who gets to choose. Too bad the Monsanto ads don’t explain that.”

Meanwhile, the Wal-Mart announcement—attended and hailed by First Lady Michelle Obama—was first met in food and nutrition circles with a wave of optimism.

Michael Hicks, an expert on Wal-Mart and its economic impact, told the Associated Press that the move is a “game changer,” saying, “If Wal-Mart could reduce the prices on healthy food and provide access to them in more places, you could have a measurable effect on incidences of diabetes and heart-related ailments.”

And, in some cases, ag interests welcomed the announcement as well.

Dan Murphy writes for the Ag Netwwork, commenting on Hicks’ quote:

“That last assertion might be overly optimistic, but Walmart’s stance is certainly a positive one for agriculture, for two reasons. The obvious one is that a full-fledged initiative by the mega-retailer to increase the availability of fresh foods, and even staples such as pasta and canned fruits, mean expansion of the market for homegrown produce and other foods. Walmart’s not going to start sourcing U.S.-made big-screen TVs anytime soon, but there’s real traction to be had in promoting the sale of Made in USA food products.

And that’s good for American agriculture, at least indirectly.”

Indirectly or not, though, sustainable ag interests aren’t quite buying it.

Corby Kummer of The Atlantic, (who wrote a somewhat lacking piece about greenwashing and the battle between Wal-Mart and Whole Foods for the magazine last year) put it this way:

“As for local produce, if you think it has any intention of supporting small farmers, ask all the small businesses it has driven into bankruptcy—if there are any left to ask.”

So, if Wal-Mart is slammed for doing bad and slammed for doing good, what’s the retail giant to do?

Fooducate.com, a great blog about food and nutrition has a few good suggestions including that Wal-Mart, “use its might to help change the upcoming farm bill. Subsidies for Corn and Soy should be shifted to fresh produce. That way, there is a true economic incentive to move to fresh produce, for all parties involved.”

It’s a commendable idea but if recent moves on Capitol Hill are any indication, that battle might already be a losing one.

According a report from Phillip Brasher of the Des Moines Register Republican leadership is aiming budget cuts not at the farm subsidies for commodity crops but at the spending that encourages organics and fresh food.

Ferd Hoefner, the policy director for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition told Brasher: “It is remarkable they would try to cut a program with less than $5 million remaining while proposing to let a $5 billion a year program like direct payments go unscathed, especially at a time of high prices” for commodities.

Back to the Wal-Mart announcement for a moment, what many chiming in on failed to mention is that while it’s great that the grocery giant is making its processed food healthier, it’s still processed food and processed food is what is breaking our food system as well as our budgets.

Walk around a Wal-Mart one of these days and you’ll see what’s in most carts is cans, boxes and bags – mostly food-like and convenience items that cost us more and take us even farther away from our actual food supply.

So, while it’s commendable that Wal-Mart wants to make those items healthier and it’s good to continue to fight on things like food labels (also a big bit of food news this week), the bottom line is the closer our food is to its whole form, the cheaper and more nutritious it is.

Two bits of news from this week that are good reminders of that:

The blueberries in your cereal? Not really blueberries.

The “meat” in your Taco Bell taco? Maybe not really meat.

But, let’s not get too serious here. Following up on last week’s highlight of “Colin the chicken” in the new IFC comedy Portlandia, this piece from Morgan Clendaniel in Good magazine is worth a read.

By Clendaniel’s description, Colin the chicken would be considered “White People Food.”

In case you forgot about or just want to see Colin again, here’s the sketch. It gets funnier every time.

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Courtney Lowery Cowgill is a writer and editor (formerly of these pages) who also runs Prairie Heritage Farm, a small farm near Conrad, Montana. She and her husband grow vegetables, turkeys and ancient and heritage grains. As a farmer and writer, she works on and follows food and agriculture issues closely and each week, rounds up the top news stories in this arena for New West. Have an ag story you think should be included in next week’s roundup? You can reach Courtney at courtney@newwest.net.

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