Not your father’s Corn Belt. This development in Illinois managed to pass somewhat under the radar, probably because it took place during the dog days of summer. But it’s still a big deal—Illinois has a new law that starts building the infrastructure for a real regional food system:
The legislation establishes a council to develop a fresh farm and food system in the state, and it creates a system that allows buyers for state agencies to pay up to 10 percent above the lowest bid when purchasing locally grown foods. It also sets a goal for state-owned agencies to increase their purchase of locally grown foods each year so that 20 percent of their food purchase is spent on Illinois-grown foods by 2020.
Currently, an estimated 4 percent of the money Illinois residents spend on food each year is for products grown in the state, and just several hundred of the state’s 76,000 farmers are producing for the local market, according to a task force report.
That last statistic is astonishing. Illinois has tens of thousands of farmers and only one half of one percent of them sell their products in their home state. The new law is all the more impressive when you realize that Illinois is second only to Iowa in corn production—we’re talking the heart of the Corn Belt here. It’s quite a statement when a top agricultural commodity state has decided it’s time to diversify its food production. And make no mistake, institutional buyers are exactly what growers need to have the confidence to give up their reliance on commodity crops, which they can always sell to the local grain elevator. Asking a farmer to grow something that he or she can’t hope to sell isn’t exactly a recipe for success. But what happens if they know the state will not only buy their produce, but pay a premium for it? I’m smelling a win-win here.
Indeed, the potential dollar figures are tremendous, even for just a single state. According to the Illinois Local Food, Farm, and Jobs Task Force, the state spends $48 billion on food—with almost all of that money flowing out of state. And make no mistake, much of the energy for this law comes from a growing understanding of the positive economics of local spending. Yes! Magazine has a nice graphic explaining what some refer to as the “Local Multiplier Effect” of your purchasing decisions. This concept is built around the estimate that, while 15 cents of your dollar spent at a corporate chain is reinvested in the community, 45 cents of your dollar is reinvested when you shop at an independent local business. So keeping more of your money in your community “multiplies” the effect of that spending. In an era when many question where future economic growth, not to mention jobs, will come from, allowing local spending to power a local industry like food production starts to make real economic sense.
Grist contributor and author Ken Meter—a strong advocate for the economic benefits of moving farmers off of commodity crops—has looked closely at the issue. He has spend the last few years studying net cash flows from regional food production and consumption, including in his calculations agricultural inputs costs like seed and fertilizer, farm income, farm subsidies and total food purchases. You can find all the details in his paper [PDF], but his basic conclusion back in 2001 was that if consumers in much of the Midwest “were to buy 15% of their food from local sources, it would generate as much income for the region as two-thirds of farm subsidies.” The ethanol boom has changed the equation somewhat, but as commodity prices have fallen back to earth, the money flow out of the Midwest has again accelerated.
Also keep in mind that Illinois’ law was passed weeks before the USDA announced its new Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative, which reserves hundreds of millions of dollars in existing USDA grants, loans and loan guarantees for improving local food infrastructure. When you start to marry federal dollars with state regulations—and get the USDA presumably involved with spreading the word on programs such as Illinois’, suddenly real change starts to look eminently feasible. And none of this, it’s worth pointing out, required anyone to renegotiate agricultural subsidies or demand changes in farmers’ production styles. The Illinois effort, like much of Michelle Obama’s and USDA Chief Tom Vilsack’s initiatives on food reform to date, is focused on the demand side of the food equation, allowing institutional buyers like government agencies and, yes, schools, to lead the way to healthier food choices. This will prove to be strategically brilliant and, I think, surprisingly effective. If all 50 states adopted policies like this, policies that are almost totally uncontroversial, we will have a come a long way towards effective food reform. So who’s next?
More NYC farmers markets accept food stamps and sales soar
Comments
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Alzor Posted 2:36 pm
25 Sep 2009
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Alzor Posted 2:39 pm
25 Sep 2009
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AliCuse Posted 5:55 pm
27 Sep 2009
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DrPam Posted 10:29 am
28 Sep 2009
*See 'Farming to create Heave on Earth' by Lisa Hamilton
DrPam
http://www.ChemicalFreeSkinny.com
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aamuck Posted 11:46 am
28 Sep 2009
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Conserver Posted 7:51 am
30 Sep 2009
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amazingdrx Posted 8:58 am
01 Oct 2009
Right now a farmer will not get a crop loan, crop insurance, or ag subsidies if he does not farm chemically. That has to change to switch to local organic food and carbon sequestering soil.
The whole financial underpinning of farming needs to be redesigned to halt and reverse the climate effects of GHG intensive chemical ag and make farms key energy providers for this new renewable energy economy. Wind, solar, and biogas power from farms, along with wind and wave power off our coasts, and solar power from suitable roof locations and over parking areas, conducted over a national electron superhighway, a national high voltage direct current power grid, powering electric trains, cars, and trucks, could stop the eternal flow of cash offshore to oil rich, problematic areas of the planet.
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DrPam Posted 9:19 am
01 Oct 2009
Thank you for posting this publicly. This seems an outrageous scenario, forcing the farmers and the consumers to be tied to chemicals in the food supply.
>AmazingDRX wrote: The whole financial underpinning of farming needs to be redesigned to halt and reverse the climate effects...
Not to mention how sick some people are getting from the effects of food chemicals.
pc-CRS Institute
http://www.ChemicalFreeSkinny.com
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amazingdrx Posted 10:35 pm
01 Oct 2009
I think robotic organic agriculture can cure the climate and chemical ag related human health problems without cutting food production or raising prices. Renewable energy, electric trains, buses, trucks, and cars and ground source heated and cooled buildings can stop GHG. But to reverse the worst effects of current GHG levels, that are already seemingly inevitable, the soil will need to store carbon again.
That 20 foot deep prairie soil that was first plowed a century and a half ago and is now nothing more than a thin layer of toxic chemical dust blowing away on the drought scorched wind, thanks to chemical ag, is where the excess CO2 and methane and nitrous oxide in our atmosphere can be stored. All returned to biomass and the biomass returned to the living soil ecosystem.
Solar powered robots providing just the right amount of water and organic fertilizer and soil ammendment directly to the soil around each plant can make this happen without turning humanity back into manual gardeners desperately laboring for sustenance.
There is a hopeful aspect to the high over head of chemical ag, it means that organic ag employing mass produced robots can beat it on cost. Withdraw the chem subsidies and divert them to organics and it would happen quickly, but I fear we will have to labor on against the big ag lobbyists to get it going, on a small local scale.
Naturally once it's proven to reduce cost and boost productivity big ag will pretend they invented it and go mega-huge with it. So it goes. Even that's hopeful for the climate. Big business can cover the earth with organic ag in a few years if there is mega profit to be had.
Meanwhile we brave pioneers can trek on to try and capture 10% of the market with organic local ag. It's an adventure!
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