Ken Meter: Levers for Food System Change
From Ken Meter's new report: "Mapping the Minnesota Food Industry" (pdf), Levers for system change:
1. Plan for food over the long term
Agriculture in the U.S. was founded on the premise of creating wealth through commodity exports. Attendant policies have focused on the needs of exporters and commodity markets. Public incentives work to make these markets as efficient as possible, yet overlook the needs of the communities where food is produced and consumed.
This new type of long-term planning will be the first time in our nation’s history that such a challenge has been tackled. Although we may have to re-learn skills and techniques that were once common knowledge in the pre-fossil-fuel area, we will combine these in new ways, and use them to build lasting social and economic structures which foster long-term food security for all Americans. We can expect false starts and mistakes as we work toward this goal.
The American Planning Association has just released a food planning guide that, for the first time, recognizes that planning for safe, secure food supplies is every bit as important as planning sewage treatment or highway systems. Professional recognition of this fact is deeply welcome. Yet many of the most cogent local food plans will actually be made by citizens, with professional planners serving the role of assistants to public process, rather than by experts working in isolation.
Local, regional, and state food policy councils or their equivalent will require sustained, long-term planning with adequate data and reporting capacity to make significant impact. If they succeed in building a popular constituency, they are more likely to have sufficient clout to exercise their will.
2. Plan for resiliency and redundancy
Unpredictable change is the only given as we plan for an uncertain future. A well-planned food system for Minnesota will recognize that climate change, potential outbreaks of food borne disease, potential collapses of distribution chains, uncertain water supplies, and other situations will affect the options we will have in the future. We must plan flexibly. And we must plan systems that incorporate considerable redundancy so that a failure in one key area does not place the entire system into gridlock. We must plan as if some kind of collapse were a likelihood, not something to be ignored.
For example, if 1,000 acres is enough to feed a given community, we might plan for, say, 3,000 acres of farmland in different climactic regions to hedge our bets against hail, drought, or other potential events. If we set aside land for food, we may also set aside land for renewable energy production, forests sufficient for recreation, energy production, and carbon uptake on a community-by-community basis. We must also look for ways to extend the growing season with renewably fueled greenhouses, hoop houses, and other technologies.
3. Foster economic transactions that improve soil, water, and air quality and reduce greenhouse gas impacts
The conventional wisdom has been that humans must accept some deterioration of natural resources in order to have progress. Yet the losses induced by this worldview threaten our very existence, as is witnessed in global temperature change. Moreover, alternate production regimes such as grass-feeding cattle have shown the potential to reduce soil erosion, restore water quality, promote animal health, and build wealth all at once. Renewable energy sources may promote environmental improvement, rather than degradation. Technical innovation, investment, and imaginative application that allows us to realize these potentials is essential.
4. Protect farmland in urban, suburban, and rural areas
The current crisis in home mortgage credit holds chilling echoes with the farm debt crisis of the 1980s, in which the needs of lenders and distant customers took precedence over the needs of borrowers or community resiliency. Yet on a positive note, the crisis has also produced a significant opportunity to protect land on the urban fringe so that consumers can obtain food from nearby farms. Adequate farmland must be protected now.
One insight from the Great Depression of 1929: many heads of household, unable to find work, would walk to a nearby farm, working the entire day in return for a chicken, or produce items to feed their families. To have this kind of support system at a time of potential economic collapse, there must be farms that are close enough for walking or bicycling.
5. Grow new farmers
Commodities will continue to be needed, although hopefully traded on more fair terms. Moreover, large-scale growers farming for a subsidized commodity system have few incentives to change to new forms of production, such as raising food for an emergent local foods movement. Many farmers are relatively old, and would have difficulty with the manual labor and discomforts of working the soils to grow new products. The most effective growth is likely to come by fostering creation of new farms. Many of these will make intensive use of small acreage. One commercial farm in Georgia currently sells $320,000 of produce from 4.5 acres, supporting four full-time staff who work for livable wages; the Bushel Boy greenhouse in Owatonna hosts 80 full-time jobs with 20 acres under glass.
Young Minnesotans are showing significant interest in becoming food producers, and lack land. Many recent immigrants are skilled farmers who would need assistance to learn how to market in the American context. Many farms may become intergenerational, with older landowners supporting younger farmers, or hiring younger farmworkers, and turning over ownership over time.
6. Plan and build storage and distribution networks that create local efficiencies
The infrastructure under which commodities and local foods are traded was designed to increase the efficiency of distant trading of food markets, under the assumption that fossil-fuel energy would be inexpensive and readily available.
Local efficiencies — systems that draw their strength from local transactions, proximity of farmers to consumers, first-hand knowledge of each other’s needs, local resiliency in the face of potential breakdowns, fostering knowledge of local place, building capacities among residents, promoting healthier eating and exercise, and connecting residents into a more harmonious social fabric — have never been the primary purpose of food planning; they soon will be.
7. Create “value networks” that allow large and small firms to flourish
The conventional economic concept of a “value chain” is highly useful for calculating value-added at each stage of the food chain, yet has the unintended consequence of separating producer from consumer. This separation draws wealth to the processing and distribution sectors, and away from farmers or eaters. A preferable focus would be to build localized “value networks” that foster local transactions of great efficiency — building skills and knowledge for people across the system, encouraging connections of loyalty among local residents, fostering healthier lifestyles, and recycling dollars within the community.
In such a value network, large firms may assume the responsibility for ensuring that any economies of scale they hold will be used to promote the strength of smaller firms that can be better stewards or who can assure greater flexibility.
8. Invest in those who are most vulnerable
Steady, long-term investment in low-income communities must be the priority for public and foundation dollars — (for example, to help food banks become centers of food production that offer livelihoods to formerly poor people); recent immigrants (incentives for farmworkers to build equity in farms where they work, or buying farms that will provide a steady livelihood); ethnic communities (promoting, for example, ethnically identified farms and distribution channels that resonate with cultural foods and celebrations and also build wealth within the community); women (who own considerable farmland already through inheritance); youth (who are building sustained interest in food production); and intergenerational farms (in which a landowner may rent land to a new farmer or look to retirement on a working farm rather than in an institution).
9. Create public and private incentives for quality
We have the commodity system we have largely because public incentives have created apparent efficiencies for firms that standardize and get big. If we were to shoulder the difficult task of inventing new incentives that stimulate fair trade; supply management agreements; differentiated foods, and so forth, we can shape the workings of the market so that it coincides with our goals of future resiliency and security.
10. Emphasize equity investment for emerging local firms
Beginning farmers, small food processors, and nascent distribution networks will require patient capital. Investors must be willing to recognize that emerging firms will not become profitable immediately, and must invest for the long term. Debt instruments will be of limited value, because they place additional pressure on a business in its early years.
