Of all the reasons we buy local food—from freshness to reduced greenhouse gas emission to preferring taste over shelf life—the most important may be this: the further our food travels, the less say we have in how it’s grown.
In our democracy, voters and those we elect decide what values to uphold in the production of goods, banning the contamination of rivers or requiring workplace safety. These standards reflect the will of the people. But our influence — our will — shrinks as we move beyond our own county’s borders, diminished further as we leave California.
And by the time melons have arrived from halfway around the world, only a trace of our values remain; you’ll not taste in that fruit the will of the people but rather the compromise of the global consumer.
When the values we express with our vote don’t match those we express with our dollar, the will of the people becomes untethered and our values hazy.
That was the argument last week, when a law to give California farmworkers the overtime pay provided to all other occupations was rejected by the state Assembly, opposed even by local democrats Marc Levine, Bill Dodd and Jim Wood. Led by the California Farm Bureau and other industry groups, the opposition argued that the law would hinder our state’s competitiveness in the global market of cheap food. The financial pinch, they said, would force large farmers to rely on part-time employees and small farmers to lay off workers or refrain from hiring altogether.
“We’re not price setters,” said Assemblyman James Gallagher (R-Nicolaus), who comes from a farm family in Sutter County and voted against the bill. It’s an old saying among farmers, a resignation that food prices — like the weather — are simply beyond their control. We’re a nation of bargain hunters and there’s always someone willing to cut more corners, to pay less.
In our democracy, voters and those we elect decide what values to uphold in the production of goods, banning the contamination of rivers or requiring workplace safety. These standards reflect the will of the people. But our influence — our will — shrinks as we move beyond our own county’s borders, diminished further as we leave California.
And by the time melons have arrived from halfway around the world, only a trace of our values remain; you’ll not taste in that fruit the will of the people but rather the compromise of the global consumer.
When the values we express with our vote don’t match those we express with our dollar, the will of the people becomes untethered and our values hazy.
That was the argument last week, when a law to give California farmworkers the overtime pay provided to all other occupations was rejected by the state Assembly, opposed even by local democrats Marc Levine, Bill Dodd and Jim Wood. Led by the California Farm Bureau and other industry groups, the opposition argued that the law would hinder our state’s competitiveness in the global market of cheap food. The financial pinch, they said, would force large farmers to rely on part-time employees and small farmers to lay off workers or refrain from hiring altogether.
“We’re not price setters,” said Assemblyman James Gallagher (R-Nicolaus), who comes from a farm family in Sutter County and voted against the bill. It’s an old saying among farmers, a resignation that food prices — like the weather — are simply beyond their control. We’re a nation of bargain hunters and there’s always someone willing to cut more corners, to pay less.
In last week’s impassioned Sacramento hearing, both opponents and proponents of the overtime bill recited bible verses aloud, each side recounting tragic stories of sympathetic characters: the farmworker sweating for 10 hours in 100-degree heat or the fifth generation family farmer who fears having to sell his land because he can’t compete with imports picked by workers who make in one day what he pays workers for one hour. In today’s free market economy, both stories are not only true but they are the very fuel of our current system: endless growth and a race to the bottom.
The will of the people exists to keep that system in check. Or at least it should. But when our melons come from Mexico and our shoes from Indonesia, what occurs is a bifurcation of ourselves as consumers on one side and citizens on the other. We in might feel virtuous by enacting local laws improving the livelihoods of textile workers, but that industry left long ago. Escaping the will of citizens, textile mills sought out third world countries with fewer wage requirements, environmental protections and other such burdens. But they did so not out of malice, but simply to appease the will of consumers.
So if we can feel righteous in a voting booth sporting foreign sweatshop fashion, can we also pat ourselves on the back for supporting farmworker rights while savoring a melon that we bought out of season for half the price at the convenience of a grocery store that’s open 24 hours a day?
The will of the people exists to keep that system in check. Or at least it should. But when our melons come from Mexico and our shoes from Indonesia, what occurs is a bifurcation of ourselves as consumers on one side and citizens on the other. We in might feel virtuous by enacting local laws improving the livelihoods of textile workers, but that industry left long ago. Escaping the will of citizens, textile mills sought out third world countries with fewer wage requirements, environmental protections and other such burdens. But they did so not out of malice, but simply to appease the will of consumers.
So if we can feel righteous in a voting booth sporting foreign sweatshop fashion, can we also pat ourselves on the back for supporting farmworker rights while savoring a melon that we bought out of season for half the price at the convenience of a grocery store that’s open 24 hours a day?
Given our current system, questions like this make policymakers like Levine, Wood and Dodd feel as if they must choose between farmworker rights and the agricultural industry at large, all while pitting unions against California farm owners.
Buying local disables this vicious cycle of hypocrisy to a certain degree by letting us purchase within the values determined by the will of citizens. Buying from farms you know allows you to purchase within your own personal values. But for everything else, from shoes to bananas to your cellphone, we need wholesale system reform so that the false choice between the businesses we rely on and the workers on which they rely no longer exists. From international trade agreements to the deregulation of the past several decades, politics as usual will only continue to produce more and more false choices.
But while we fight for that wider reform, we should also set for it an example: a local economy willing to pay for its own virtues. Put your money where your vote is. Support the standards you set for your farmer. Eat local.
Evan Wiig is the Executive Director of the Farmers Guild.
This column originally appeared in Sonoma West Times & News
Buying local disables this vicious cycle of hypocrisy to a certain degree by letting us purchase within the values determined by the will of citizens. Buying from farms you know allows you to purchase within your own personal values. But for everything else, from shoes to bananas to your cellphone, we need wholesale system reform so that the false choice between the businesses we rely on and the workers on which they rely no longer exists. From international trade agreements to the deregulation of the past several decades, politics as usual will only continue to produce more and more false choices.
But while we fight for that wider reform, we should also set for it an example: a local economy willing to pay for its own virtues. Put your money where your vote is. Support the standards you set for your farmer. Eat local.
Evan Wiig is the Executive Director of the Farmers Guild.
This column originally appeared in Sonoma West Times & News
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