TRUE BARGAINS
Shepherds and flocks passing through Madrid, Spain. Photograph: Isabel Bermejo
Marian Van Eyk McCain praises the work of ISEC,
a movement against the globalization of food.Bringing the Food Economy Home:
The social, ecological and economic benefits of local food
Helena Norberg-Hodge, Todd Merrifield and Steven Gorelick
ISEC, Foxhole, Dartington, Devon TQ9 6EB. 2000, £5.50 + 55p postage
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In 1961, E. F. Schumacher wrote that the inefficiency of modern industry
so surpassed the imagination that it remained unnoticed. As we move into
2001, this truth remains.
To those folks who think they have "bargains" in their supermarket trolleys, or say, "Organic vegetables are so expensive," we should perhaps suggest that they whip out their calculators and figure out the true cost of those supermarket tomatoes or bananas or biscuits. Instruct them to factor in the cost in fossil fuels for farm machinery, transportation, refrigeration etc.
Remind them to include the environmental and health costs related to
pollution, global warming, soil quality and waste disposal, charged back
to them as taxpayers. Let them work out what those imported products (not
just avocados, but milk and potatoes!) have cost in terms of the loss
of local sector employment in our own countries or exploited labour in
someone else's. Have them figure out the true cost, to them, of government
subsidies to agribusiness or the loss of fertile land to highways and
parking lots.
When the arithmetic is done, those locally grown, organic tomatoes, goat's
milk cheese and slightly muddy carrots they didn't buy will suddenly reveal
themselves as being the true bargains. Not to mention being healthier,
tastier, fresher and altogether nicer. Moreover, the money paid for them
would remain somewhere nearby, rather than swelling the profits of some
transnational corporation with rich shareholders.
So how can we have fiddled, for so long, while our local economies were
burning and Big Business took over control of our food chain? Probably
in the same way that the proverbial frog in the saucepan lets itself be
boiled to death because it doesn't notice the danger until too late.
ISEC (The International Society for Ecology and Culture) has spent the
last twenty years trying to warn all of us frogs that the temperature
in our saucepan is rising increasingly fast.
Their latest report, Bringing the Food Economy Home, is the most information-rich
publication to cross my desk for a long time. Thirty-nine pages of text
and no less than 224 references. It starts by explaining, in easy, accessible
language, the globalization of the world's food supply, and goes on to
describe the devastating effects of this on the health and well-being
of our entire planet.
It is not all bad news though. Under the heading "Ideas that Work" the authors describe many of the initiatives with which Resurgence readers are already familiar. Community-supported agriculture and local consumer co-ops (very big in Japan, and growing elsewhere), vegetable box schemes (which are increasing in popularity everywhere), farmers' markets (270 new ones in the uk in the last five years) and a fifty per cent growth in American ones in just four years) and so on. While it is true that ten cents in every us dollar spent on food still goes to Philip Morris, there are signs of a groundswell of activity, worldwide, to reverse the trend. A lot of frogs are waking up - and climbing out of the pan.
Marian Van Eyk McCain writes on matters relating to ecology, health, spirituality and living lightly on the Earth.