Every week during the growing season my husband and I cart our family’s grassfed meats to market, priced at $11/lb for pork chops, $7.50/lb for ground beef. Every week we meet someone who tells us the prices are too high.
And yet, at those prices, the average net income for our family members has maxed out at $10 per hour.
But part of our job is to hold our chins up and accept weekly admonishment for our inability to produce food as cheaply as it can be found in the grocery store.
The food in the grocery store is not cheap. It has been paid for in advance through tax dollars for farm subsidies that go to support an ecologically problematic industrialized food system. The prices only look cheap because we are paying for them someplace else: through our taxes, and via the destruction of our soil, water and natural resources through irresponsible farming practices.
The viability of a small farm is contingent not just on garnering a living wage, but on our ability to steward our land in a way that enables future generations to live off it. The ability for industrial food production to stay in business is contingent upon these farm subsidies, and a license to deplete the soils and pollute the water for immediate profit with no regard for what happens tomorrow. This is our nation’s cheap food policy: Make the food in the grocery store as inexpensive as possible, so that we can justify lower working wages for Americans.
With policies like this, we are losing our farmers, and we are poisoning our public with toxic food. Between 1999 and 2006 alone, the CDC estimated that 45% of American adults were suffering from chronic illness. You can’t tell me that has no connection to the food supply.
Even with chronic illness rampant in our culture, our current government oversight policies for food safety favor the production practices of corporate food. My family farm shoulders a disproportionate burden of expense to meet regulations that prove the safety of our products, which are easily traced, more cleanly produced, and which have been proven to be far safer for consumption. This adds to our prices and makes it difficult for many of our fellow farmers to stay in business.
My family wants to nourish our local community. We want to sell pork chops from real pigs, ground beef from real cattle. I’ve been criticized by some for coming down here, because there are media reports suggesting that “Occupy Wall Street” is about a bunch of losers who want to sit around and collect hand-outs for doing nothing. I am in no need of a hand-out. I want to conduct my family’s business honestly, and I want to see my fellow Americans compensated fairly for their contributions, so that we can all earn a decent living. I want to see the handouts from our government policies that support an ecologically rapacious, gastronomically toxic food system brought to an end. I want to go to my weekly market with my head held high, carrying wholesome food that my neighbors can afford.
Shannon Hayes works with her family on Sap Bush Hollow Farm raising grassfed meat in Upstate New York. She is the author of The Grassfed Gourmet, The Farmer and the Grill, and Radical Homemakers. Her newest book, Long Way on a Little: An Earth Lovers’ Companion for Enjoying Meat, Pinching Pennies and Living Deliciously, is due out in September 2012. To be notified of the book’s release, or to receive her Grassfed Cooking articles, sign up for the Grassfed Cooking Newsletter, a free service for grassfed farmers and meat lovers. Copies of her books can be purchased through grassfedcooking.com at both retail and wholesale prices.
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Why A Farmer Would Occupy Wall Street
Every week during the growing season my husband and I cart our family’s grassfed meats to market, priced at $11/lb for pork chops, $7.50/lb for ground beef. Every week we meet someone who tells us the prices are too high.
And yet, at those prices, the average net income for our family members has maxed out at $10 per hour.
But part of our job is to hold our chins up and accept weekly admonishment for our inability to produce food as cheaply as it can be found in the grocery store.
The food in the grocery store is not cheap. It has been paid for in advance through tax dollars for farm subsidies that go to support an ecologically problematic industrialized food system. The prices only look cheap because we are paying for them someplace else: through our taxes, and via the destruction of our soil, water and natural resources through irresponsible farming practices.
The viability of a small farm is contingent not just on garnering a living wage, but on our ability to steward our land in a way that enables future generations to live off it. The ability for industrial food production to stay in business is contingent upon these farm subsidies, and a license to deplete the soils and pollute the water for immediate profit with no regard for what happens tomorrow. This is our nation’s cheap food policy: Make the food in the grocery store as inexpensive as possible, so that we can justify lower working wages for Americans.
With policies like this, we are losing our farmers, and we are poisoning our public with toxic food. Between 1999 and 2006 alone, the CDC estimated that 45% of American adults were suffering from chronic illness. You can’t tell me that has no connection to the food supply.
Even with chronic illness rampant in our culture, our current government oversight policies for food safety favor the production practices of corporate food. My family farm shoulders a disproportionate burden of expense to meet regulations that prove the safety of our products, which are easily traced, more cleanly produced, and which have been proven to be far safer for consumption. This adds to our prices and makes it difficult for many of our fellow farmers to stay in business.
My family wants to nourish our local community. We want to sell pork chops from real pigs, ground beef from real cattle. I’ve been criticized by some for coming down here, because there are media reports suggesting that “Occupy Wall Street” is about a bunch of losers who want to sit around and collect hand-outs for doing nothing. I am in no need of a hand-out. I want to conduct my family’s business honestly, and I want to see my fellow Americans compensated fairly for their contributions, so that we can all earn a decent living. I want to see the handouts from our government policies that support an ecologically rapacious, gastronomically toxic food system brought to an end. I want to go to my weekly market with my head held high, carrying wholesome food that my neighbors can afford.
Shannon Hayes works with her family on Sap Bush Hollow Farm raising grassfed meat in Upstate New York. She is the author of The Grassfed Gourmet, The Farmer and the Grill, and Radical Homemakers. Her newest book, Long Way on a Little: An Earth Lovers’ Companion for Enjoying Meat, Pinching Pennies and Living Deliciously, is due out in September 2012. To be notified of the book’s release, or to receive her Grassfed Cooking articles, sign up for the Grassfed Cooking Newsletter, a free service for grassfed farmers and meat lovers. Copies of her books can be purchased through grassfedcooking.com at both retail and wholesale prices.