Oct 16, 2009 by Erika
where they grow our junk food – the toronto star on “dorito economics”
The Toronto Star sent Margaret Webb to find farms that produce the raw materials for junk food. The result of her search is a compelling and unsettling piece about the journey of food from field to factory to snack.
Ultimately, however, Webb articulates what many of us already know and are working toward in the way we eat, produce and distribute food:
Food is powerful. Change is possible with every purchase we make, in every link we forge between good food and good farming, and in every bite we take.
From Where they grow our junk food:
Follow the flow of food. That’s what any farmer will tell you. Because apples don’t grow in supermarkets.…to get to the root of the exploding obesity epidemic, I went in search of a junk food farm.
Such farms are not so easy to spot. No fields of Dorito bags waving in the breeze, no orchards blooming with soda pop, no soil bursting with 99-cent burgers.
What you do see are vast operations growing the raw materials for junk food: soybeans and corn. The two crops go into the production of many things: pharmaceuticals, industrial products, animal feed – and inexpensive calories.
It has provided an abundance of cheap calories for a food system that operates by Doritos economics. A bushel of corn produces some 440 two-ounce bags of 99-cent chips. Farmer grosses $3.70 for the bushel of corn, Doritos more than $440.
Dave Ferguson grows ingredients for junk food on his 364-hectare farm about an hour west of London, Ont. With no market for local food in his area, he has few other options than to grow soybeans and corn, along with wheat and a little alfalfa.
….Ferguson, a fit 50-year-old, says the demand for cheap food, combined with competition from ever cheaper global imports, has placed relentless pressure on farmers not only to grow these crops, but to expand…He says the demand for cheap food also puts pressure on farmers “to work every corner, every square inch” – eliminating woodlots, wetlands and buffer strips near vulnerable waterways. He knows that current farming techniques – growing too few crops in limited rotation, with chemical fertilizer, and returning too little organic matter to the soil – is mining his land of fertility, and that the current methods will not feed increasing populations.
…Walk upstream of the Sydenham, or any waterway in Ontario’s agricultural belt, and you can find a junk food farm. Turns out environmental degradation and junk food farming go together like fries and a Coke. Or a Coke and insulin.
In the 1950s, before farming started to industrialize in Ontario, we spent about 20 per cent of our income on food. Most of us spend less than half that now, less than any other nation in the world.
But we’re paying in other ways – environmental degradation, health-care costs and transportation.
“We’re paying too little for our food. We’re losing farmers like soil erosion. They’re being lost to factory farms. What we’re doing is screwing the land and screwing the farmers. It’s almost a crime. We’ve got cheaper food and we’ve become fatter. We’ve got pollution closing beaches. We have built ourselves a mini hell and food is part of that problem.”
via @farmon
