American Eye

Middle class America is in love with local food. It’s the ‘new organic’, says Polly Ghazi – and it’s worth billions to those best placed to meet demand. So who’ll fund the investment in local farms?

Fancy yourself a bit of a ‘localvore’? Enjoy going out for some “haute barnyard cuisine”? Local food fever has struck the United States, and aficionados have invented a whole new lexicon to describe their newfound passion.

In the wake of a spate of food poisoning scandals featuring deaths from contaminated lettuce and spinach produced by giant agribusinesses, the health-conscious middle classes are seeking out local produce for safety and freshness. Add growing public concern over climate change and food miles into the mix and you have the recipe for a new consumer trend that is here to stay.

The number of farmers’ markets in the US has more than doubled in the last dozen years, to about 4,300 (300 in New York state alone) with consumer demand sweeping the country. Regional supermarket chains are promoting in-state produce and New England dairies are selling “100% local” milk to retailers at premium prices. Hard core localvores have bought shares in 1,581 community-supported farms in return for weeklydeliveries of fresh seasonal produce.

"Upscale urban restaurants are competing to provide the freshest ingredients sourced from within the smallest radius… Even Walmart plans to stock more regionally based produce"

School authorities and high-profile chefs are also getting in on the act. In 2004, the New York City school district, America’s largest, reinvented its top cafeteria recipes to include more ingredients grown in the northeast. Meanwhile, upscale urban restaurants are competing to provide the freshest ingredients sourced from within the smallest radius. A flurry of best selling books is also underlining the local food movement’s status as the “new organic.” Two in particular havestruck a chord with the public – Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver (in which she and her family eat local food only for a year) and The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan.

Ever sensitive to consumer trends, the big supermarkets are responding in kind. The organic chain Whole Foods has predictably led the way, prominently labelling local produce and recently committing $10 million in loans to small-scale farmers. But mass-market stores such as Safeway are also sourcing and promoting local products. Even Wal-Mart has announced efforts to stock more regionally based produce to reduce its carbon footprint.

Reading the runes, industry analysts expect local food to become a $7 billion business in the next few years, chasing the organic food industry which is now worth $15 billion.

But before we get carried away, a reality check. US food imports are rising inexorably, from 7.8% of total consumption in 1980 to at least 14% today. As a result, the average food item in America travels at least 2,400km from farm to plate, racking up carbon emissions along the way. By comparison, farmers’ markets account for less than 2% of the $70 billion a year Americans spend on produce.

As demand for local food rises, local producers could be expected to increase their production, sales and profits exponentially. But the economics aren’t that simple.

Tom Philpott, a small-scale farmer in North Carolina, pointed out pithily in a recent article for the online green magazine Grist that “small farms lose money”. (Those with annual revenues between $10,000 and $99,000 have an average profit margin of –24.5%, according to the US Department of Agriculture.) They are therefore unable to invest in the infrastructure they’d need – equipment, refrigeration facilities, delivery trucks – to boost production on the scale required by their local Whole Foods or Wal-Mart.

Only if and when the big supermarkets invest massive amounts of capital in local supply chains will the local food movement really loosen the stranglehold of industrial farming on America’s dinner plate. And so far no one else has followed Whole Foods’ lead.

Instead, it may be the big Midwestern farms that reap the benefit by supplying more produce to supermarket chains in their own or neighbouring states, rather than trucking it cross-country. Or by campaigning against food imports and attracting capital investment and boosting their own production as a result.

Still, this prospect won’t deter the hundreds of Vermonters preparing to take part in a statewide ‘Localvore Challenge’. The goal: to spend a week eating only food grown or raised within 100 miles of their homes.

Polly Ghazi is US correspondent for Green Futures.

9 October 2007

Polly Ghazi