It's the Grocery Bill, Stupid

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/01/opinion/01hedin.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

I don't normally get very political on this blog but I can't let this slide, because this is politics that is having a negative affect on our food choices.

Above is the link to an article I was made aware of today by some colleagues. It is a short piece by a farmer who sells fruits and vegetables locally that he grows on 100 acres, who rented some more land from neighboring farmers in order to try to meet the growing demand for his crops. The rented land was "corn base" land - and anyone who has dealt with their local farm service agency know what this means - so, in short, the farmers who rented out the land were severely financially penalized by the USDA, as was the farmer who rented the land. Penalized, in essence, for farming FOOD.

It is not news to me - I've known about these problems for a long time, as has anyone who knows or loves a local farmer. But I wanted to share this because it is a remarkably calm and direct description of the backwards agricultural policies that plague us - policies that could so easily be fixed if someone in power would just use some common sense. It's not hard to make the connection between how land is used and what we have to eat and how much we have to pay for it - but so often anything agricultural or farm-related is dismissed as boring or somehow old-fashioned, as though what's on our plates could be either of those things.

As grain costs go up due to rising petroleum costs and the demand for bio-fuels, and everyone's food bills continue to rise as a result, is it right that non-industrial farmers who try to meet consumer demand for fresh, local, affordable food should be punished for their efforts or sneered at as idealistic elitists, while the federal government turns a blind eye, ignoring the need for sweeping farm policy change, even outright discouraging these entrepreneurial efforts? What kind of twisted form of capitalism is this?

Maybe it's time one of the presidential candidates figured this out and started talking about it.