Local Food Makes Strange Dining Companions
June 1st, 2011Via: The Freeman:
The litany of abuses by centralized power against the individual is long and predictable. But centralization in agriculture, that hazy realm from which our food spontaneously appears, poses its own set of dangers to individual aspirations. Now that fewer than 2 percent of the population is directly engaged in food production (down from 25 percent at the beginning of Franklin Roosevelt’s failed drive to “save the farmer”), the fact that agriculture has been massively consolidated is inescapable. While this is not entirely a bad thing (obesity now trumps hunger in our collective top-ten list of concerns), it does present a troubling side. When the vast majority of meat processing (87 percent) is done by just four companies, the system is top-heavy and fragile. Coupled with the crony-capitalism of a powerful lobby, centralized agriculture makes youthful entry into agriculture difficult and financially reckless. The local-foods movement offers an alternative to this agricultural-industrial complex, presenting producers with healthier profit potentials and reviving a more diffuse and independent agrarian production base.
Research Credit: Pookie
