Super Walmart or Famers' Market - Part II

This is the second part of an essay/business idea that I wrote while traveling. In this section I get more at why it is so difficult for local foods to get into the hands of consumers. Having lived in two progressive outposts of the American West - Missoula, Montana and Austin, Texas - I have witnessed some innovative solutions to this problem, but nothing that aims at fundamentally altering the existing food distribution system so that local foods can compete with industrially grown foods on a large scale. If anyone does know of such a model, please let me know!

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Limited Access to Local Foods

Currently, access to local food is severely restricted. Most consumers purchase all their food at major grocery stores, which are beginning to offer industrial organic products alongside conventionally produced products, or, as in the case of Whole Foods, offering only organic products, a vast majority of which are produced industrially for national distribution. Due to the fundamentals of how large grocery outlets operate, they only offer food from large producers which are able to guarantee product availability and price. In most locations, there are three alternatives which enable the consumer to bypass the major grocery stores to obtain local food; purchasing a share in a community share agriculture (CSA) scheme, visiting the farmers' market on Saturday mornings, or traveling to individual farms.

All of these alternatives are inconvenient and inefficient for both the consumer and producer. Farmers’ markets are successful in many communities and they are an excellent way to facilitate the producer-consumer connection, but the distribution potential is limited by the short time frame; not all consumers can their weekly shopping on Saturday mornings. Farmers’ markets also require the producer to travel and transport the product each week, which is a burden on some producers who are occupied with the cultivation of the product. Community share agriculture schemes also provide only a limited means of distribution since it requires a sizeable up-front commitment from the consumer and the products provided do not necessarily reflect the consumers’ needs. Traveling to individual farms is obviously time-consuming and inefficient for the consumer, not to mention environmentally hazardous due to the amount of fossil fuels used to travel to each farm on a regular basis.

Since most consumers in the US are continuously busy and over-scheduled, it is unrealistic to hope that they will spend a significant amount of time to acquire local foods, regardless of their personal convictions. It is also unlikely that major grocery outlets will change their business models to accommodate many small, local producers. An innovative business model must fill this new niche in food distribution.

A New Option for Local Food Distribution

Local, organic, sustainable food must be made available to the consumer in a familiar, comfortable, and convenient environment. The retail outlet must resemble a modern grocery store; clean, bright, convenient location, standard opening hours, all payment methods accepted (including EBT), effective marketing, and professional staff. As with all retail outlets, location is critical. In order to obtain a significant share of the grocery market the retail outlet must be centrally located and highly visible.

The outlet must exclusively sell food which meets all three of the previously defined criteria – local, sustainable, and organic – with reasonable exceptions for specific items. The key aspect of the retail outlet is that it acts as a facilitator between the consumer and the producer. All products should be extensively labeled, and information should be available about the farming methods, including the use natural chemical inputs, mechanization and labor; the location of the farm; a message from the farmer regarding their personal history and views on agriculture; and contact information in case additional information is sought by the consumer.

Branding of local producers will occur and should be encouraged, but in a way which differs fundamentally from branding in the corporate marketing sense. Rather than relying on a manufactured image, branding should rely on a reputation that reflects the actual values, standards, and methods that were involved in the production process. Farmers who consistently produce a quality product in an open, innovative, and sustainable manner will build a reputation which functions like a brand in a local market place, but it will not involve spending money on advertising.

The primary focus of the retail space should be produce, but many other products can also be sold. Honey, jams, milk, meats, cheese, fish, wine, bread, and flowers are just some possible products with a wide appeal that can be obtained locally. The retail space is more convenient if it offers a wider variety of goods. Another key to making the store convenient to consumers is through advertising. Due to the seasonal and unpredictable nature of local food production, consumers should be made aware of what is currently available through regular weekly advertisements in newspapers and radio, an optional email/text message subscription, and a continually updated website.

Raising Up Dead Horses - Joe Bageant

I just finished an amazing book which has convinced me that I am not going crazy. "Deer Hunting with Jesus" is the book that I should have written; it discusses the taboo topic of the permanent rural, predominently white, underclass in America. A class of people that is economically exploited and simultaneously politically manipulated by business interests to support their own exploitation. Yes, these are the poor people that have been convinced that taxing super-rich corporations and the people that run them is anti-American. The poor people without healthcare who have been scared into believing that a public option is a bad idea because "it is a government takeover". The uneducated people who overwhelmingly support a party that consistently reduces funding for public education. The unemployed people who vote for candidates who slash social programs intended to help re-train and support those who have been laid off.

My bloodpressure has risen on many occasions trying to understand why rural working-class whites consistently vote against their own interest - but this book goes a long way in explaining the why. Basically, some very smart businessmen have realized that merging of business-centered fiscal conservatism (a not-so-distant cousin of facism) with religious fundamentalism and the NRA would result in a political machine that can get the most votes, thanks to the millions of religious fundamentalists and gun owners, and raise the most money, thanks to the wealthy and their businesses who will save billions in taxes. A very powerful elephant was born.

What's the Matter with Kansas? is another book which tackles this topic, but Deer Hunting with Jesus is much more fun to read and, in my opinion, more insightful. So here is an article by Joe Bageant that describes my feelings almost perfectly. The rest of this articles are on his blog at http://www.joebageant.com/

Raising up dead horses

By Joe Bageant

When Barack Obama took office it seemed to some of us that his first job was to get the national silverware out of the pawn shop. Or at least maintain the world's confidence that it was possible for us to get out of debt. America is dead broke, the easy credit, phantom "growth" economy has been exposed for what it was. A credit scam. Even Hillary Clinton and Obama's best efforts have not coaxed much more dough out of foreign friends. But at least we again have a few friends abroad.

So now we must jackleg ourselves back into something resembling a productive activity. No matter how you cut it, things will not be as much fun as shopping and speculative "investing" were.

The fiesta is over, the economy as we knew it is dead.

The national money shamans have danced around the carcass of our dead horse economy, chanted the recovery chant and burned fiat currency like Indian sage, enshrouding the carcass in the sacred smoke of burning cash. And indeed, they have managed to prop up the carcass to appear life-like from a distance, if you squint through the smoke just right. But it still stinks here from the inside. Clearly at some point we must find a new horse to ride, and sure as god made little green apples one is broaching the horizon. And it looks exactly like the old horse.

Then too, what else did we expect? His economic team of free market billionaires and financial hotwires includes most of those who helped Bill Clinton sell the theory that Americans didn't need jobs. Actual labor, if you will remember, was for Asian sweatshops and Latin maquiladoras. We, as a nation one third of whose population is functionally illiterate, were going to transmute ourselves into an information and transactional economy. Ain't gonna sweat no mo' no mo' -- just drink wine and sing about Jesus all day.

Along with these economic hotwires came literally hundreds of K Street and Democratic lobbyists. Supposedly, every president is forced to hire these guys because no one else seems to have the connections or knows how to get a bill through Congress. Consequently, the current regime's definition of a recovery is more of the same as ever. A return of the mortgage market and credit to its former level -- the level that blew us out of the water in the first place. Ah, but we're gonna manage it better this time. There is no one-trick pony on earth equal to capitalism.

Somewhere in the smoking wreckage lie the solutions. The solutions we aren't allowed to discuss: adoption of a Wall Street securities speculation tax; repeal of the Taft-Hartley anti-union laws; ending corporate personhood; cutting the bloated vampire bleeding the economy, the military budget; full single payer health care insurance, not some "public option" that is neither fish nor fowl; taxation instead of credits for carbon pollution; reversal of inflammatory U.S. policy in the Middle East (as in, get the hell out, begin kicking the oil addiction and quit backing the spoiled murderous brat that is Israel.

Meanwhile we may all feel free to row ourselves to hell in the same hand basket. Except of course the elites, the top five percent or so among us. But 95 percent is close enough to be called democratic, so what the hell. The trivialized media, having internalized the system's values, will continue to act as rowing captain calling out the strokes. News gathering in America is its own special hell, and reduces its practitioners to banality and elite sycophancy. But Big Money calls the shots.

With luck we will see at least some reverse of the Bush regime's assault on habeas corpus, due process, privacy. Changing such laws doesn't much affect that one percent whose income is equal to the combined bottom 50 percent of Americans.

Beyond that, the big money is constitutionally protected. Our Constitution is first and foremost a property document protecting their money. In actual practice, our constitutional civil liberties, inspiring as they are in concept to people around the world, are mainly side action to make the institutionalization of the owning class more palatable. You can argue that may not have been the intent of the slave owning, rent collecting, upper class founding fathers. But you would be full of shit. We can keep on pretending to be independent, free to keep on living in those houses on which we still owe $300,000. But they own and control the money that comes through our hands. And they plan to keep on owning it and charging us to use it.

On the positive side, there has probably been no more fertile opportunity to improve U.S. international relations since post World War II. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bolton were about as endearing as pederasts at a baby shower. And now that we have shot up half the planet, certainly there is no more globally attractive person to patch up the bullet holes than Barack Obama (yes, I know Bill Clinton's feelings are hurt by that). Awarding him the Nobel Peace Prize (again Bill Clinton's feeling are sorely wounded) was an invitation to rejoin the human race.

Of course, there are a significant number of Americans still who could not give a rat's ass about world opinion of the good ole USA. Nearly every damned one of my neighbors back in Virginia, in fact.

The sharks are still running the only game in town and they have never had it better. To be sure, with the economic collapse some of the financial lords won't pile quite up as many millions this year. Others will however have a record year. All are still squatting in the tall cotton.

Their grandfathers who so hated FDR's reforms must be chugging cognac in hell celebrating today's America. America's unions have been neutered and taught to beg. At long last we have established a permanent underclass and deindustrialized the country in favor of low wage service industries here and dirt cheap labor from abroad. We've managed to harden the education and income gap into something an American oligarch can take pride in. Hell, my bank card is issued by Prescott Bush's Union Bank and my most recent mortgage was held by J. P. Morgan's creation. My electricity is generated by Rockefeller's coal and energy holdings and my Exxon gasoline credit card is issued by a successor to Standard oil. The breakfast I eat comes from Archer Daniels Midland. So did my dog's breakfast. We are the very products and property of these people and their institutions.

With peak oil, population pressure, vanishing world resources and global warming, we can never again be what we once were -- a civilization occupying a relative material paradise through a danse macabre of planetarily unsustainable growth. But no presidential candidate is going to run on the promise that "If we do everything just right, pull in our belts and sacrifice, we can at best be a second world nation in fifty years, providing we don't mind the lack of oxygen and a few cancers here and there." Better to hawk the myth of profitable pollution through carbon credits. Which Obama is doing.

We burn the grain supplies of starving nations in our vehicles. Skilled American construction workers now unemployed drive their big trucks into town and knock at my door asking to rake my leaves for ten bucks. There is nothing ironic in this to their minds. "Middle class" people making $150,000 a year will get a new tax break (as if we were all earning 150K). Energy prices are predicted to stabilize because we intend to burn the state of West Virginia in our power plants. The corpses of our young people are still being unloaded from cargo planes at Dover Delaware, but from two fronts now. Mortgage foreclosures are expected to double before they slacken. I cannot imagine debtors not getting at least temporary relief, if not decent jobs or affordable health care. Surely we will see more "change."

But never under any conditions will we be allowed to touch the real money, or get anywhere near it, much less redistribute it. Because, as a bookie friend once told me, "You got your common man living on hope, lottery tickets, or the dogs or the ponies, and you got operators. People who can see the whole game in play. They set the rules. Because they hold the money. That ain't never gonna change."

On the other hand national opinion changes almost hourly. But if the starting gate bell rang right now for the next presidential race, I'd have to put ten bucks on Obama to place. We cannot assume the Republican party will remain stupid. Assumptions don't work at all.

Remember what happened when we assumed the Democrats were capable of courage and leadership?

Super Wal-Mart or Farmers' Market? Part 1

I want my first postings to be an essay/paper/business plan that I wrote while I was in India. This first installment is basically just a glimpse at what is wrong with our current food system. I gleamed most of these thoughts and the basic terminology from The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan - a powerful and timely book which, in my humble opinion, should be read by nearly everyone. I don't believe the following essay should be read by everyone, there are definitely worse ways to spend ten minutes of your time.

Why a New Retail Option is Needed to Make Sustainable, Organic, Local Food
Available and Convenient for the Consumer

Background

There are three overlapping terms which are commonly used to describe food production; organic, sustainable, and local. These three terms are often strung together, but they describe different aspects of food production and relate to separate and distinct public concerns about the possible harmful effects of food production methods. Since these terms are central to the following concepts, it is necessary to examine their individual meanings.

Organic

Of these three terms, organic is the most common and well-defined due to government regulations and the emergence of a large market for organic foods. Although the term is often associated with sustainable and local production, the label of “organic” only signifies that certain synthetic inputs were not used during cultivation; many foods which are certified as organic are neither local nor sustainably grown. The demand for organic food is fueled mainly by the threat that herbicides, pesticides, and synthetic fertilizers pose to public and personal health.

Local

Local food appeals to consumers not because of health concerns, but for political, economic, environmental, and even spiritual reasons. The industrial food chain, which is exclusively controlled by a small number of large corporations, robs the consumer of the age-old connection to their food. The emergence of the industrial food chain has resulted in a plethora of negative consequences; rural economies are struggling due to volatile commodity prices, local farmers are being driven out of business by huge trans-national corporations, local flavors and traditional foods are being replaced by national brand-name foods, and fossil fuels are burned by trucks hauling food across the country. In many ways the demand for local food is a critique of modern consumerism and an attempt to regain control from increasingly powerful corporations. While there are no precise geographic criteria for deeming a food “local”, it should be possible to travel to the source of the food to meet the producer in less than a day. Central to the idea of local food is not an exact geographic distance, rather a connection to the local culture, environment and community in which the food is produced and consumed.

Sustainable

Sustainable may be the vaguest of these three terms because there is no scientific or public consensus about how it is defined. At the most basic level, sustainable food production does no harm to the natural environment. A sustainable food production system should be a closed system; it should not rely on outside energy sources such as synthetic fertilizers or fossil fuels and should not produce waste material. Sustainably produced food is essentially both organic and local because it does not rely on synthetic inputs and fossil fuels for long-distance distribution. Conventional food production systems are highly unsustainable for many reasons. High inputs of petroleum based fertilizers, loss of top-soil due to soil run-off, over-use of antibiotics in livestock resulting in drug-resistant bacteria, and irrigating crops from dwindling water sources are just a few examples of why industrial food production is not environmentally sustainable. Unfortunately, even locally produced and organically certified food are often not produced in a sustainable manner, but the small scale of local farmers and restriction of inputs on organic farmers act to limit their harmful effects on the environment.

Rejection of the Industrial Food Chain

There is a movement underway which aims to re-examine the industrial food chain and to return to a more sustainable and local based food production system. At this movement's core is the belief that food is not just another consumer product which can be mass produced, branded, and sold as a generic commodity. People are becoming interested in where their food comes due to a diverse range of environmental, political, ethical, and health concerns, not to mention taste preferences. A growing body of research is revealing the dark side of industrial food production and the public is beginning to take note. The growing demand for organic food is one result of this trend, but the term “organic” has been co-opted by trans-national corporations and has lost much of its original meaning; it is now possible to buy organic TV dinners and high-fructose corn syrup.

The idea that consumers should be knowledgeable about all aspects of their food's production is gaining momentum, but the industrial food chain is intentionally opaque. Large corporations’ response to the “know your farmer” mentality is to brand their products with an image of the agricultural idyll – a family farm which produces food with care and attention to detail. Grocery chains deal exclusively with large producers that are able to guarantee a stable and cheap supply of their product, so the ubiquitous images of small family produces are entirely fictitious and designed to disarm those who are suspicious of industrial food production. The organic food in major grocery stores is produced on massive factory farms that rely on cheap unskilled labor and mechanization to lower production costs. This industrial organic food production makes it exceedingly difficult for family farms to operate because of price and distribution issues.

Thankfully, the assumption that food produced by corporations on an industrial scale is equivalent to food grown by local farmers is being challenged. Consumers are beginning to place a monetary value on the connection to their food; people are willing to pay more for food produced locally, sustainably, and organically. Knowledge about where the food was grown, the methods and practices of the farmer, and how the food is distributed are beginning to influence the price consumers are willing to pay, thereby making it possible for small, local farms to compete with industrial producers. While food should be affordable to everyone, it should not be reduced to a lowest-possible price commodity. Understanding and pursuing this new market for local food may make a grass-roots revival of American agricultural possible in the coming years.

We MUST Do Better

The premise of this blog is that modern Western culture is not humane or sustainable. Corporate fascism is doing irreparable damage to our planet on a scale unprecedented in human history. Governments across the globe act based on the interests of trans-national corporations. Humans are molded into consuming machines by corporate-owned mass media outlets that train us to want more and more stuff -- cars, clothes, homes, electronics.

We are in a new and distinct phase of human evolution. Due to the exponential technological development over the past century in the areas of manufacturing and communications, an exceedingly small proportion of the population controls the entire globe. Cultural diversity is being destroyed and replaced by images of the idealized Western lifestyle.

Hope for the best; prepare for the worst.

Now that I have expressed an oversimplified version of my extremely negative view on the state of the planet, I feel comfortable expressing my optimism. As this blog's title suggests, I believe we can change our ways. I believe we will fundamentally change our lifestyle, political system, and economic infrastructure in the coming years. We can overcome the dire circumstances by transforming how we interact with our environment and with each other. We can do better. We must do better.

I want this blog to be a place where I can share my serious concerns about the negative effects the current global power structure. Some postings will be original, but mostly I will be sharing other people's work that I have stumbled across on the net. I have absolutely no plans, specific goals, or target audience for this blog. It will be a semi-public journal, mainly in the areas of education, cultural preservation, food systems, energy, and the political-economic system that underlies it all. Just a place to share my thoughts with a few people, and I hope the sharing goes both ways.

I am keeping my dormant "Lost in Place" blog, which I will eventually revive, to share more general stuff about where I am and what I am doing.