Voting From The Plate
People use every reason imaginable to choose a presidential candidate and then vote for them. Anything from abortion to stem cell research to their stance on the Iraq War and to the environment – it all plays into the decision-making that comes into play as our votes are cast. One thing bothers me, though: not too many people take into consideration what they consume for food and the subsequent impact of this consumption.
Personally, food sourcing and anti-corporate farming are my issues of interest during this race for the presidency. The way I see it, I cast a vote every time I open my mouth to eat something. Food affects almost everything in America. By being conscious of where I get my food, how the food is produced, and who produces it, I am saying to the rest of America, “I am making a choice to support family farms. I am making a choice to help in the restoration of our environment. I am making a choice to support American produced goods. I am making a choice to decrease the use of fossil fuels. I am making a choice to be an American patriot!” Or not.
A Google search of both Hillary Clinton‘s and Barack Obama‘s stance on food-related issues doesn’t reveal much. The most I can find on a specific level are the voting results for the 2007 Farm Bill. However, I have found that Senator Obama has sketched a more cohesive plan for family farmers in reference to his stance on the environment. He also released a statement concerning the recall of 143 million pounds of beef that ended up in many of our nation’s schools for their lunches.
This, though, is not enough.
The impact of food in America reaches far beyond our refrigerators and our local markets. It affects almost everything else we do. It affects everything that happens around us, yet no one really talks about it. Or, they don’t want to talk about it because it is the lynchpin topic and is, by nature, so incendiary that it could take down our entire economic system in a single blow. Fighting for our food and revolting against industrialized production has the power to heave a blow akin to the one hurled by the Boston Tea Party in 1773.
It is that important to me and it should be that important to you.
All of the above reasons are reasons I’ve been vegan/vegetarian for so long. The impact of the meat industry on the environment are only second to the car industry. Kusinich (sp?) was the only candidate that seemed to be aware of food related issues, but sadly the United States is not ready for a more progressive mindset.
Yeah, I can totally understand making the statement you have by being vegan. Luckily, politics have arrived for some conscientious carnivores out there like me.
It was actually funny because last night, after I blogged this, I watched my recorded episode of Gourmet’s Diary of a Foodie. The last piece it featured was Fleisher’s Meat Market, whom I’ve blogged about before. Seeing them in action in a television piece was way better than reading about them. What blew me away is that they only go through four cows a week at their shop – a shop which, mind you, seems pretty damned busy. They believe in using the entire cow (which, of course, is grass fed, free-range, and organic) so those certain cuts of steak that are very rare (there is one in particular that is a very small cut per cow) remains exactly that: rare. They’ve got it when they’ve got it and if you miss it, then too bad. They don’t slaughter more cows just so a restaurant can have 50 cuts of a very small cut of meat. It just amazed me that a butcher can thrive on just four cows a week.
Politically, food is a very difficult and often misunderstood subject. Unless you live in a rural area, you will hardly ever hear a politician mention food policies. It is an explosive issue and they would rather not touch it if they can help it.
First, NAFTA and other trade agreements have created the following situation: the more that we subsidize U.S. farms the more hardship we put on the poor of developing countries. For example, the selling price of U.S. grown corn is less than what it actually costs to grow corn in Mexico, forcing Mexican farmers to abandon their farms (to the delight of rich land grabbers) and seek low wage jobs in the factories dotting the US/Mexico border.
Second, far too often farming bills are sold to the public as helping “farmers” when in fact they only grow the farm-industrial complex, which is in the business of putting traditional family farms out of business. The way that the farming industry/government subsidies system works is to support Cargill, Monsanto, and lending institutions in squeezing every penny out of the farmer. The only way the farmer can live is through constant growth (through loans) until the farm reaches a mega proportions and is essentially owned by the bank. The subsidies act as a carrot that the farmer chases until it is too late.
No American politician can openly put the welfare of Mexican farmers above American farmers and expect to be elected. However, far too many politicians are not actually interested in helping the American farmer either. If there is any industry that the corporations have truly taken complete control over in Washington, it is the farming industry.
I believe that you will be hard pressed to find any major politician with a satisfactory answer to these problems, let alone a presidential candidate. However, if you ever hear a politician say “corn is the answer” (ala Bush) you can be sure that they are in the corporations’ pockets.
My take is that the answers will never come out of Washington. The answer is in educating the people of all countries to the virtues of supporting small neighborhood farms which grow a diversity of organic crops (good for the farmers, the environment, personal health, preservation of culture, and worldwide sustainability).
Buying a farm share will do more good than any presidential policy.
Thanks so much, Jeff, for parsing that out. I knew that actually figuring out what an actual “Farm Bill” might mean would most likely make no sense to your average person like me. Considering that in the ten nine months that I lived in Iowa I saw nearly no diversified farms that grew anything other than corn, I knew that corn had a very major and strange role to play in our country’s agriculture. Of course, I saw all kinds of ADM plants throughout the hilly countrysides there, too.
I was just thinking about that the other day when I was shopping. All of the environmentally-friendly or sustainable foods cost so damn much. It makes me wonder, did we grow too fast in the 20th century? How can we ever make the switch to organic and sustainable food if it is so much more than what we’re used to paying? For a lot of people they have enough trouble affording to buy food period, regardless the way it was farmed. The media reported today that a projected 28 million Americans will be on food stamps next year. I doubt organic food will get you far on food stamps.
It’s a sad story. If the whole-foods and/or farmers market lifestyle is the wave of the future and is what we should be doing, when can the common man afford to make the switch? Maybe the answer is food is really more expensive than what we think it is. And we’ve been doing something wrong for a very long time.
What you said, Jeff S, is exactly the problem. It is definitely more expensive even on the corporate organic level. Even they are trying to pay the farmers more according to their worth. If you’re more about localization of food sources as I am, then the price could go down or go up depending on the produce and the costs required to cover the maintenance of the farm. No matter what, the prices for food that we’ve all come to be used to are far from what the actual value is. The deep discounts come from the huge corporations and their subsidies. And I’m sure it, in some manner, is meant to keep the market that way – in their favor. It sucks, but, yeah, that’s why the wave of organic and more locally sourced food appeals to those that can stretch their pocket books even more than they do now and do not target the people who need it the most: the members of the lower income brackets.