Tom,

It seems that if land prices are higher in the Hudson Valley, so are the potential profits from farming.  In Iowa, land is cheap, but you might not be able to sell your brandywine tomatoes for $5 each.  Doesn't this mitigate, at least to some extent, the higher prices that Hudson Valley farmers  pay for their land?

I think you are underestimating the role of education and culture in teaching people what food they eat.  Friends of mine eat entirely off of food stamps - and buy almost exclusively fresh, local, organic food.  They save money by staying away from processed foods, making things from scratch, and buying the less expensive fruits and vegetables (even in Manhattan farmers markets where individual tomatoes cost $5, you can get alot of collards or kale for $1.  And those greens have more nutrients in them than the tomato anyway.)  This might be more difficult in some neighborhoods (I live in rural Oregon, where access to fresh, local, organic foods is widespread).

I'm not saying I have the answer.  But I don't think land prices are the source of the problem - maybe just another factor.

Forrest,
Agreed that there's a lot more money to be made selling into the NYC market than the rural Iowa market. (Although people tend to underestimate the latent buying power in depressed rural areas, just as they do in impoverished urban areas. If Iowa's farmers stopped growing for global commodity markets, and started growing for their own region, they'd be much better off. But that's a topic for another day.)

However, you can't grow enough $5 tomatoes on a small farm in the Hudson Valley to economically justify farming. Selling your land to an i-banker to plunk down his country home is a much smarter move--economically. The flipside is that no bank would ever loan someone the several million bucks it would take to buy a few acres in the Hudson Valley to start a new farm. The bank would never get paid back, no matter how much NYC chefs or Greenmarket shoppers paid for tomatoes, etc..

The farms currently operating in the Hudson Valley are old family farms that have been passed down; they were bought when land was cheap. Those farmers are heroes not to have taken the money and run; despite their $5 tomatoes, they're not getting rich. They're scraping by.

I agree that "land prices are the source of the problem - maybe just another factor." Another factor, as you point out, is culture. And with several billion per year in marketing cash to burn, the industrial food system has done a pretty good job of lining up that factor on its side.

Damn it, why can't you ever edit comments?
in the last paragraph of the above comment, i mean to say that I agree that land are not the source of the problem.

I think I know one of the obvious answers to this problem. It's no silver bullet but it's the first step in combating the constant inflation of the price of farmland around the cities.

Sustainable Growth.

I live in Portland, OR, where as you drive from the center of the city and head west the progression of development goes a little something like this, inner city, suburbs, and then WHAM! farmland. It's almost as if some artificial boundary has been imposed that limits growth to a certain point about 20-25 linear miles from Portland city center, thus preserving farm communities and the infrastructure they need to survive.

Well guess what, there is such a line, and we call it the Urban Growth Boundary, or UGB for short. We are so emphatically in love with our UGB that we even have a fourth layer of government called Metro that sets the UGB and acts as a central planning body to whom all local governments in the Portland area are beholden when setting their development and zoning strategies. The size of home lots has shrunk dramatically inside this boundary within my short (24 years) lifespan and I must say, it's quite a trip when you live 20 minutes from downtown and 5 minutes from farmland, all in a metropolitan area of 2 million people.

Imagine the effect this must have on the price of fresh produce. We have more farmer's markets per capita than any other city in the nation, so HA!

The problem of accessiblity to nutritious and affordable food will not be solved until the other cities in this country commit themselves to a growth strategy similar to Portland's, where the emphasis is sustainable growth.

"Culture" is one of those words that means so many things that it's dangerously meaningless unless precisely defined. I'm not sure what Forrest means by it. In this context, I mean the socially constructed, generalized desire for bad, homogenized food.

You make a lot of great points, and obviously my situation (living in Tokyo) is different than that of the major US cities.  I just want to relate my own experience of how making the decision to eat "sustainable" food actually reduced my monthly expenses.

Certainly each single item I buy from the local farmers' coop is more expensive, but that added cost is more than made up for by the money I save through my concious decision to eat out less, not buy food I don't need that is imported from places far away, and/or excessivly packaged.

Look at it this way.

1 local bunch of carrots = 300 yen
1 bunch of carrots from China = 100 yen

200 yen loss right?  Yes, on that bunch of carrots, but eating sustainably also means that I don't buy the pineapple or bannanas that I would otherwise. This now saves me the same 200 yen.  I also see a package of cookies that is wrapped up in a huge plastic bag... my decision to eat sustainably causes me to bypass it.  I loose weight AND I save 200 yen.  My current food bill is now 200 yen less than what it would have been -and I am eating more sustainably. In fact, since I have made the decisison to eat local and sustainable, I eat healthier, tastier, and my food bills have been almost cut in half.

I do, however, admit to some sacrifice (which seems to be a dirty word.) For example, I don't indulge my urge for raisons near as often as I would like because I can only get those imported from California.

Just a quick note: lots of colleges and universities are working in this area and are helping to support local, sustainable agriculture through education and their own purchases.  

If you're looking for more information about what's happening in your area, you might want to see what the local college is up to.

Just a thought.

rh

I gotta say, i find this hard to believe:

"The U.S. spends less per capita on food than any nation in the world, probably than any nation since the rise of the nation-state. "

The US may spend a smaller percentage of it's income than any other nation, but actually spending less in absolute terms?  Than countries where the average person makes a couple of dollars a day?  If that's for real, i'd love to see a source...

Yes, that should read "as a percentage of GDP." Excuse me while I go edit the text. Much obliged.

Forgetting to add my locale of Western MA.
Northampton, Hadley, Amherst, and Hatfield specifically.

In today's local paper (sub. req'd) in Northampton, MA. they report:

"Boosting Valley produce - In new deal, UMass commits to buying 15 percent locally
BY DAVID FONSECA
Joe Czajkowski pulls into the dusty drive of his Hadley farm and wastes little time unpacking leeks. He's a busy man with mouths to feed.

The farm stands within sight of towers at the University of Massachusetts, home to some of his newest customers.

Under a contract drafted by Communities Involved in Sustaining Agriculture, the university's dining services pledges to use 15 percent of its $1 million yearly produce budget to buy from local farms."

This is an important developement in this arena. Namely, demanding that powerful public institutions reflect the wants and desires of the local community. This is a start. But yet still not enough. We must demand more.

Yes, I am aware that there are many grassroots revolts underway against the hegemony of industrial food. Many of these, including Will Allen's wonderful program in Milwaukee, directly challenge the assumption that carefully produced local food can only be afforded by the rich. In fact, the pentultimate paragraph of my piece states flatly that "there are challenges to the brutal class politics of food being mounted all over the nation, in urban and rural areas alike."

All of that said, and even though U Mass is admirably dedicating 15 percent of its food budget to local farmers, I still hold that, well, the sustainable food movement has a class problem.

Take New York City, home of Just Food, a wonderful community-garden base, a vigorous Slow Food branch, and superb farming projects in such unlikely places as Red Hook and East New York, both in Brooklyn. Walk into a public school in a poor neighborhood in NYC and see what the kids are eating. Walk around the neighborhood and note what food-shopping opportunities people have.

You may have a friend on food stamps who lives on organic local collard greens. Produce at your local farmers market may be cheaper than the dreck at the nearest Wal-Mart (though I find this scenario difficult to believe). The flagship state school in your town may have just rolled out a "buy local" program. I applaud all of these things. But most people in this country still lack access to delicious, nutritious, and fresh local food.

And that won't change with concerted grassroots effort and straight talk.

I would like to add that I found your original column VERY insightful, perceptive, and informative. So much so, that I've sinced read many articles here at this site. And enjoyed them as much.

I want only to speak for myself here, without being overly emotional, though this is a topic that does illicit strong emotions from me. And I want not to try and discount what you wrote, for what you write might be true.

But for me, when you say...

"most people in this country still lack access to delicious, nutritious, and fresh local food...And that won't change with concerted grassroots effort and straight talk."

It is exactly what changed it for me.

And I am poor.
But I also have no children, which is an economic burden I am not familar with.

In the world I grew up in, anybody who has been identified as a member of this class struggle is recognized as such. And the farmers would sooner sell their farms for developement than charge a member of this struggle a fair market price. As in the land of affluence we live in that is the Northeast US, a fair market price has no limits.

I guess you could say I live with market protection. Which is how it should be, as anybody of affluence is readily familar with.

This is only my experience. I believe it is one that can be duplicated, but I understand that you find that debatable. I agree to disagree.

I have lived in both rural areas in high school, Denton, NC. and urban currently, Chicago, IL. I am also broke. I will say, even though I know, I KNOW, that locally grown food is better for my health and in some respects my wallet, I can't afford to eat it. Yes, the economic benefits are there, if you have the money to go shopping for food, and the time to actually prepare a meal, Plus, I'm not a vegetarian, and I'm not quite ready to buy a pound of ground beef from the farmers market...

To the point here, processed, industrialized food is cheaper to an extent. If all the money I have is 10 dollars, I can go to McDonalds and purchase 2 double cheeseburgers, and fries, for under $3.25 with tax included.

Granted it's just one meal, but I, being broke and cheap, will buy it just the same, simly because I cannot afford to purchase each of the individual ingredients at one time.

I know this is bad for me, I know that it doesn't help my community, I know what should be done, I just cannot afford to do it. I have to work through most farmers markets anyway, so I wouldn't even be able to get there without losing money by taking time off work.

I have long been of the opinion that healthy, fresh, "clean" food is primarily harvested for the upper echelons. You don't even have to be rich, you just have to not be poor. With an average person such as myself is lucky to find a job making more than $8 an hour, ($16,640 each year). Without an income over $23,000 a year (before taxes), living in Chicago where the cost of rent alone can be $12,000-15,000 that only leaves about $5,000-6,000 for all the other bills. In the end, The food budget drops to only being $1,500 each year, that's less than $5 each day, for 3 meals.

I would have to say, and this is just observation, but everyone who argued it was not about being rich enough to buy the food, can probably afford to do such, without having to worry about living in the street because you spent that $5 on A tomato instead of rent.

Speaking from experience as an aggie and someone who's worked with social justice in urban settings:
It's not enough for fresh, local, sustainably grown fruits and veggies to be available in urban settings. It's not even enough for them to be affordable. People need to actually know what to DO with these ingredients.

Poverty and cheap processed foods have been widespread for long enough in the US that in many places at least two generations have lived without the knowledge of what to do with fresh foods. Furthermore, in the past there was often at least one individual (generally  mother and/or grandmother)who stayed home and would have time to take raw ingredients through the process of becoming food. Now, Americans are notoriously overworked and many live in single-parent homes. Who has time to cook beans--one of the cheapest and most nutritions fresh bulky foods--from scratch? Who has the knowledge anymore to can for the winter?

I'd also like to add that I was raised vegetarian in a family that cooked nearly everything from scratch, and when I was a CSA (community supported agriculture) member, I STILL didn't know what the heck to do with 3lbs of kohlrabi every week!

There is also an important aesthetic and cultural barrier to introducing fresh foods to those not used to them. Take this anecdote as an example: I used to work at a summer camp for urban youth, many who had never left the city. We began introducing a gardening component to the camp to acquaint campers with where their food comes from. Every week campers helped digging, planting, weeding, and harvesting the garden. We though their pride in the hard work they did would excite them about the food they produced. However, when we served lettuce from the garden at a hamburger lunch...no one would eat it! They thought it was "gross", though doubtless it contained far less pesticides and artifacts of handling than had we bought it at the local Megalomart or from Sysco. They simply weren't prepared to eat something not bought wrapped in plastic under fluorescent lights. And don't even get me started on the difficulty of introducing novel foodstuffs into the scheduled meals. It was a scandal when I snuck tofu into the lasagna.

I've been studying agriculture and food systems and advocating change for most of my adult life. It is overwhelming how many things must change before sustainability can become a reality. I enjoyed this article because here in academia, nearly every conversation comes back to the fact that we are the elite...though none of us could afford that $95 local meal, we still are able to make choices that favor local and what we hope are sustainably produced foodstuffs. Economics are still a huge limiting factor--if I can't get a seasonal tomato from a friend's garden plot, I simply can't afford to spend $5 on it at the farmer's market and I have no tomato that week. No matter how ethical I would like to be in my food choices, I do not believe that consumers should bear all the cost of this type of purchasing and nor can I. This need for change is what fuels me.

The only way we will ever have enough nutricious, readily avaiable food for most people is to correct the profit system of land use. When land is better used economically for housing (or Walmarts or parking lots) we will continue to be forced to pay high prices for quality, locally grown food (wherever we live). Local land use ordinances must be put into place to protect farm land from being sold for increased economic development, and also protect farmers from high taxes. There are MANY people who want to farm, but because they live in an area of high property use costs, they are forced to leave the farming industry or never enter it at all.

Food growers who grow for local consumption generally grow in places where their farms are protected from development either through ordinance or because of the rural location and lack of demand for land, simply becasue that's where they can grow and still make a living. I live in the Hudson Valley, and I know there are a number of towns in the Hudson Valley have these protections) . The reason quality food is grown and available in this area is because there are protections in place for farmers. It's no different anywhere else. Of course, you will have pockets of wealthy areas where expensive quality food is grown for the elite, but for the masses, local government must be the gatekeeper to prevent the abuse of economically motivated land use.

The cost of locally produced foods decreases when you take in the length of time it stays fresh; I cannot tell you how many times my mother bought industrial food and 2 days later pulled a blackened item out of the fridge and threw it away. In contrast, locally produced foods may last 1-3 weeks longer, since they have not been sitting on a large truck for 5 days getting to your grocery store and then sitting in a crate in a back room of a large shipping area. Yes, my dollar goes further when I buy it locally since I have it to eat for twice as along.

As the writer from Japan wrote above, people make the decision to eat out rather than get fresh foods (meaning its not usually a choice between industrially produced fresh foods and locally grown fresh foods.) The cost of take out is prohibitive and lasts 1 or 2 meals only.
Farmers markets and other avenues of locally produced foods are the first wave of this movement. The money and work that is has taken to get them running is now very often being used to start community gardens in urban areas, working with states to get food stamp acceptance at markets, creating access to fresh local foods at corner grocery stores, helping  schools to get access to wholesale prices for local foods and much much more. The point is that the local food movement is 20 years old and already doing very well to think of ways to expanding their reach into other areas not presently reached.

The costs of bad health are too well documented to recapture here. The need for all Americans to eat more healthy foods is not only a chance to get local farmers a livelihood, but also a chance to keep Americans alive and well.

It bothers me that Slow Food may be getting a bum rap.  Slow Food is doing much to raise awareness of local foods and yes, Slow Food USA groups DO have programs to work with lower-income groups.  As Tom mentioned, Slow Food New York sponsors community gardens, and the Slow Food DC listserv reports many initiatives that work with lower-income groups.  If Slow Food makes local heritage food trendy, so what?  It makes the issue of the importance of locally, sustainably raised foods attractive to a group of people who would never have given it a second thought before.  It works at the consumer level as well as the farm level.

As for those who say they can't afford food other than McDonald's, I'm sorry, but I've been in your shoes, and I just don't buy that argument.  I can eat much more cheaply by preparing my own food than eating fast food.  Education and prioritizing your time and money is the key.  I began by substituting one organic item at a time at the grocery store, and learned how to shop efficiently.  It does take planning and thought, but it can actually be fun if you take on a positive attitude about it.  Slow Food doesn't have to be expensive or take long and laborious preparation.  It is more of a way of thinking about life than a way of eating.

Everything is too expensive in New York, and not just New York City. As a resident of upstate trying to live a sustainable life, it is difficult to do much of anything here without added cost and added regulation. Selling a handful of tomatoes from the garden at a small roadside stand in front of the house means interaction with the government. It should come as no surprise then that Slow Food MAY be more expensive here. Still, it thrives and there is a growing movement by small-scale upstate farmers (not those underwritten by trust funds and certainly not federal subsidies) to provide New York City restaurants with high quality, organically-grown products at competitive prices. As important is the growing number of restaurants HERE, in modest Upstate New York, adding dishes with locally-grown ingredients to their menus ... at very competitive prices. Families, and not businees persons on expense accounts can eat in-season, organic products and not go broke. Ghandi said that we must become the change we seek. That is good advice for those who want reasonably priced Slow Food.