I have a link below to an excellent article in the Economist discussing a possibly new era, ‘The End of Cheap Food‘. Many Americans have a complicated relationship with the stuff that is our daily sustenance, and, why not? We have so much of it, so much variety and most of us can afford to buy more than we need. So, going to the store can be like going on a little adventure, wondering what new and tasty thing we might try for dinner tonight. The other side of our complex relationship with food is darker. Have we had too much? Do we need to lose weight? What the hell are we eating, anyway? Some of the ingredients require serious googling to understand why company X even put them in our snacks, let alone the implications for eating them on a regular basis. One ingredient, corn syrup, goes to the heart of our modern food world. It’s in EVERYTHING! Why, you ask? Well, it’s, as I said, complicated. Practical-minded folks remember that there is no civilization without food, not without adequate food anyway. So, it’s important to make sure that your country always has a reliable food supply, either by growing it in-country, or importing it from a very reliable source. So, many countries indulge in subsidies to their farmers. It keeps the land prepared and ready for agriculture, keeps you in the game so to speak. The United States does this, of course. This has not resulted in assuring Americans food diversity. Nope. We grow a lot of corn and wheat and soybeans. This has not saved the small farmer, which means jobs for a local economy. Nope. Instead, large industrial operations are steadily the only farms that can afford to do business these days. So, for us, we get lots of corn and corn by-products (corn syrup) in our food, reduced variety, and lots of questions about the quality of our diets. We also get industrial farming, which is very bad for the environment.

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I’m not necessarily against contracts, or people being bound by contracts that they sign. The supreme court has decided to allow End User License Agreements (EULAs) for seeds.  I am not a big fan of the current Supreme Court, and I think this decision will prove to be short-sighted, but, as I said, I am not against legal contracts.  I am very concerned about industrial seed companies, like Monsanto, dominating the seed market. They are not interested in promoting seed diversity, which may be all that has saved natural crops in the past from decimation. Today, however, if just the right pathogen comes along it may wipe out their simple, genetically-engineered plants. If all farmers only buy their seeds from the big companies, who will save and preserve the huge diversity of natural plants that currently exist because they were able to survive all of the ills that nature threw at them? These farmers are locked into buying seed every year now, because they signed the End User License Agreement (EULA) that forbids them from growing a new crop the following season from seed they reserved from the current season. These are issues that all of us need to be aware of, issues that are near and dear to our food supply. Add to the genetically-engineered simplicity of staple food crops the damage caused by massive herbicide and pesticide use, and we might just have the perfect storm…

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