Change: Are We There Yet?

Today's been an interesting day in the world of sustainable food. I began my day contemplating yesterday's news of factory chicken farmers losing their farms. Before you begin to rejoice, realize that the actual factory chicken farmers are victims of the same system as us. Tyson, Perdue, and Pilgrim's Pride (known as "integrators") are the ones making the money and screwing us all over - including the farmers who raise their chickens. They get people to make enormous investments (into the millions of dollars) to enter into the chicken business, and then they decide the terms of the contracts. Just under half the farmers have contracts that only span the length of time each flock spends at the farm - about 5-10 weeks. The integrators decide if and when to demand expensive upgrades or retrofits to the chicken houses or to yank the chicken farmers' contracts altogether.

The market for chicken's down now, so about 800-900 farmers are finding themselves suddenly stuck with hundreds of thousands in debt and no more chicken contracts. And even WITH contracts, about 25% of chicken farmers lose more money than they make in a year. (I've written up details of the industry in more depth here.) It makes me wonder why we aren't all rebelling against such a system - chicken farmers, eaters, environmentalists, etc. We are all getting screwed by the same handful of companies and we all have a right to be mad.

So that's how my morning started. And then it took a turn for the better. I came across some gorgeous pictures of DC's two new organic gardens - one at the USDA and one at the White House. And they might just be symbolic, but they are symbols that are REALLY upsetting to the pesticide/biotech industries. And that makes them MORE than symbolic. Because it means that those in power are willing to make some logical moves in the right direction even when it upsets powerful industry interests. Believe it or not, until now the government has always been VERY careful not to say that organic is any better than conventional. They are still careful not to say that. They say that organic is a marketing program, and it's a nice way for farmers to reap premium prices, but it exists side by side and on the same level as "production" (i.e. toxic chemical) agriculture. But when it came time to pick organic or not for their own gardens, they went with organic. That says something. It's a big deal.

But just as my day was looking up and I was reflecting on the fantastic news of the USDA garden (they are getting it ready for an Earth Day celebration!!) another email came in with a subject line of "Second Green Revolution, anyone?" Uh-oh. That's bad. Turns out two new appointees to the USDA were announced today and one of them is a doozie. Dr. Rajiv Shah will be the Under Secretary of Research, Education and Economics and Chief Scientist at USDA. It's an unconventional choice for the position, if only because Shah's expertise is not American agriculture. But it's also not a good choice. Shah leads up the agricultural development program at the Gates Foundation. And the Gates Foundation is behind an effort to spread unsustainable agricultural techniques around the world in the name of "feeding the hungry."

Now, we can debate the ability of irrigation, hybrid and GMO seeds, fertilizer, and pesticides at increasing yields from today until tomorrow. I think the relevant argument is not whether or not that stuff increases yields but what are the overall effects on the food system. These techniques privatize the means of food production. Instead of saving seeds, you buy them from a corporation. Instead of fertilizing via cover crops or manure, you buy petroleum based fertilizer. Instead of relying on beneficial insects, birds, and biodiversity, you buy pesticides. And instead of relying on the soil's moisture and rainfall, you require electricity to irrigate. Even the Amish farmers I visited used electricity to irrigate (they have generators to do this so they don't have to plug into the grid). In India, the net result of these unsustainable agricultural techniques was a decade-long epidemic of farmer suicides. And Shah's been the guy in charge of this very well funded effort to take the problems the farmers in India are suffering from and to expand them throughout the rest of S. Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Except now he's got a top post at the USDA.

My point in all of this is to say that we aren't there yet. But we're on our way. Change didn't happen overnight, even if Obama made us hopeful that change would rise up with the sun on January 20. Those who had power still have power. But - as the gardens show - they have less power. And the power they have is less secure. So Obama might have not given me all of the change I wanted, but he did deliver when he promised hope. And we're gonna need all the hope we can get because I fear it's going to be a long fight before we can say that we've won.

(Photo credit: samdogs on Flickr)