Part 1 of interview with local-food economist Ken Meter [PODCAST]
by Tom Philpott.
Ken Meter, director of Minneapolis-based Crossroads
Resource Center, is probably the country’s foremost thinker on the role of food in
creating robust local and regional economies.
I first encountered him at
a Community Food Security Coalition conference in Atlanta in 2005,
where he gave a presentation that forever changed the way I look at
agricultural economics. Ken showed that over and over again, in
agriculturally intensive regions across the country, large-scale commodity farming
is a net economic loss for farmers and their surrounding communities.
He demonstrated that in areas such as the Corn Belt, farmers typically
spend more money buying inputs and servicing debt than they bring in
selling their crops—and no, federal commodity subsidies don’t make up the
difference. Moreover, right in the middle of some of the world’s most
fertile land, almost all the food consumed by Corn Belt residents is
trucked in from outside the region, and almost all the region’s food
dollars flow out. Add it all up, Ken shows, and industrial agriculture
extracts wealth from farming communities and delivers it to input
suppliers (think GMO seed giant Monsanto) and grain buyers (think grain
traders like Archer Daniels Midland and industrial-meat companies like
Tyson that use the cheap grain for animal feed).
His pioneering study of the farm and food economy
of Southeast Minnesota, Finding Food in Farm Country, can be downloaded as a PDF; and the rest of his publications can be found here.
In part one of my podcast with Ken, we talked about how we got our
current farm system, drawing on Ken’s experience as a agriculture
journalist in Minnesota during the farm crisis of the 1980s. Next week,
we look at the alternative systems sprouting up all over the country—and
how food can be used a tool for building wealth in communities, not
just extracting it.
Related Links:
‘CAFO Reader’ editor Daniel Imhoff on the ills of factory ‘farms’
Raids are increasing on farms and private food-supply clubs—here are 5 tips for surviving one
View full post on Grist – the latest from Grist