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.

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.

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.