In 1900, the share of the American labor force involved in agriculture was nearly 50 percent. Today, it is less than 2 percent. This is due to industrialization, economies of scale and trade, said Joel Salatin, author and co-owner of Polyface Farms. However, Salatin warns that increased efficiency has come at a cost and has made our food supply more fragile.
“Part of the efficiency equation has been centralization,” he explained. “[But] with COVID, and now partly with the war in Ukraine, what has happened is that large-scale centralized efficiency has shown cracks in the system.”
He noted that food processing plants have thousands of employees, making them more susceptible to pandemic shocks than small-scale plants with fewer workers.
Salatin added that, “on our farm… where we have a small processing plant with 20 to 25 employees… I don’t wake up in the morning wondering [whether we] they have violated some new government rule or COVID procedure, or something like that.”
Salatin spoke with David Lin, host and producer for Kitco News.
The high cost of low prices
Although Salatin claimed the efficiency had lowered food prices, he said it came with “externalized costs that weren’t captured at the register.”
“It took a couple of decades for the brittleness to start showing up,” he explained. “We started to see it with Campylobacter listeria, E. Coli, food allergies… superbugs are a new phenomenon in the last thirty years caused by the unprecedented consolidation of antibiotic and hormone use within the factory farming system.”
He noted that in the early 1970s, household spending on food was 17 percent of income, while spending on health care was 9 percent. Just before 2020, the numbers changed: Households spent 9 percent of their income on food and 17 percent on health care.
“There is probably a relationship between cheap food and health costs versus high-quality food and not being sick,” Salatin added.
He also said that the quality of the soil has deteriorated due to industrial farming and that “you would have to eat seven pounds of broccoli today to get the same nutrition as one pound of broccoli in 1930.”
Finally, he pointed out that “obesity is very high, which is indicative of cheap food.”
“Sugar is cheap, protein is expensive,” Salatin said. “The obesity epidemic follows the politics of cheap food, because chocolate bars are cheaper than pork chops.”
black swan events
“Black swan” events, such as COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine, have damaged agricultural supply chains, showing the “fragility” of the food system, Salatin said.
“One in five mouthfuls of food is produced outside of the US,” he explained. “That’s the highest it’s been in history… There’s [now] a renewed interest in localization rather than globalization… [In other words]having smaller teams that are less susceptible to the kind of changes that may be related to energy, health, regulation, or relationships.”
He added that the “global system is highly interconnected” and that since Ukraine supplies “30 percent of the world’s wheat” and Russia supplies “20 to 25 percent of the world’s chemical fertilizers,” this affects food prices for everybody.
What is the solution?
Salatin’s solution to the problems of the food system was to increase the role of small producers using traditional farming methods. To do this, he said he would “abolish the USDA” and allow a free market in agriculture.
“If people are afraid of unsafe food, there would be private sets, like AAA in cars,” he said.
“It is time to leave the food bureaucracy of industrial, Neanderthal and barbarian government interventionists,” said Salatin. “Uberize it, so that you and I can exercise our food choices in voluntary and consensual relationships with our producers, and have voluntary and democratic access to food.”
For Salatin’s thoughts on food shortages and lab-grown meat, watch the video above.
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