When you
think of farmers in the U.S. what comes to mind? Perhaps you see endless fields
of corn and soy that one associates with the Mid-West. Maybe you attach the
face of a vendor at your local farmers market. It could be a twenty-something
urban farmer on the rooftops
of Chicago, or the couple that own a dairy out in the Central Valley of
California. And while each of us has some notion of the types of food produced
in the States, the export market might be a little more of a black box.
A recent article
written by Dan Charles on NPR’s
food blog, The Salt, addressed
the very interesting question of whether and to what extent American farmers
feed the world. Apparently the answer is not that straightforward. Where do the
major U.S. commodity crops go? Well, 40% of corn feeds cars and nearly all of
our soy feeds livestock. So much for hungry people, eh? If we think about
developing countries and food insecure populations, much of the issue is not
even about enough food but rather the
accessibility of what already exists. What U.S. grain exports do is lower the
price of food for these people, making more food accessible.
However,
cheap grains could mean substitutions for more nutritious fruits and
vegetables, or moves away from traditional diets. Cheap grain also facilitates
increased meat production and consumption, which at industrial scale is not so
great for the planet nor the people living around these operations. And direct
gifts of American surplus grain, the traditional model of food aid dating to
the post-World War, may have further negative impacts by undermining the
ability of local producers to sell their crops and support themselves (see
World Food {Programme’s local sourcing projects).
So, all in
all, industrial farmers in the U.S. may have reasons choosing the methods and
technologies they use. But to continue rationalizing these choices by claiming
to feed the world would be straying a bit from reality. Times are changing ... as
is American public opinion of industrial ag.
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