The Real Cost of Globe-Trotting Food

This winter, hoping to inject a little sunshine into a cold northern day, I helped myself to a sample of pineapple offered at my supermarket. The fruit was tough and bitter, as far removed from the ripe, fresh version as I was from the Costa Rican plantation it came from. The market displays overflowed with out-of-season abundance: New Zealand strawberries, Chilean grapes, Mexican tomatoes.

Chances are good that what we eat these days is far better traveled than we are. My pineapple, for example, had trekked 3,000 miles. Given that airplanes contribute about 4% of the greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide) that wind up warming the planet, the shipment was hardly worth the expense. On the average, our food is flown, shipped and/or trucked 1,400 miles from production through processing to our plates, according to the Rodale Institute. "So-called 'food miles' is a useful indicator of energy use," writes Tim Lang, a professor at the Center for Food Policy, Thames Valley University, England. For every calorie that comes to table, at least ten calories have been expended. For instance, it costs 435 calories to fly one five-calorie strawberry from California to New York.

My pineapple's chemical dependence also contributed to environmental harm. Imported fruit, in addition to having been grown with petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides, gets an extra dose of fungicides to withstand the rigors of travel. Chilean grapes, for example, rank in the top ten fruits and vegetables most contaminated with toxic pesticide residues, according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG). Ninety percent of the winter grapes consumed in the U.S. come from Chile.

The globalization of the food trade has perverted the priorities of the food system. Corporate agribusinesses manufacture and market over 95% of the food in the U.S. and hold sway over 80% of the land around the world that is cultivated for export crops. As A.V. Krebs, author of The Corporate Reapers, points out, "The principal objective in the corporations stocking our supermarkets is not to protect the environment, create jobs, or even to feed people. It's to increase their cash flow, satisfy their stockholders, and reduce their transactional costs."

Without Barriers

Hear that great munching noise? It arises from our importation of $41 billion in food and betokens environmental deterioration, economic destabilization, and erosion of food safety standards for consumers the world over. Of course, international trade in foodstuffs has been with us a long time. Columbus set out to find a quicker route for spices from India, and sugar from the American tropics sweetened the tea in England, which in turn came from India. Now, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) have ratcheted up the stakes. These treaties ensure that what crops are grown, and where, is increasingly decided by conglomerates rather than local farmers. Major players include ConAgra (with about one-half of refrigerated foods sales and one-fifth of all grocery products sales), and grain traders like soon-to-be-merging Cargill and Continental (the largest and fifth-largest private companies in the U.S., respectively).

"Poor countries don't have free trade; they have mandatory trade," says Fred Kirschenmann, Ph.D, a North Dakota organic farmer and president of Farm Verified Organic. While millions were starving in Ethiopia, the nation's cropland went on producing coffee for export. Although corn covered half its cultivated land, Mexico signed away the right to protect the livelihood of 2.5 million small farmers by eliminating protective tariffs to ensure NAFTA's passage. As cheap U.S. corn flooded the market, hundreds of thousands of undersold farmers were forced off their land and into the cities. With the recent end of a government corn-tortilla subsidy, part of an economic plan designed to woo foreign investors, this food staple is beginning to move out of the reach of many Mexican citizens, some 60 million of whom earn less than $5 a day. Former Vice President Hubert Humphrey had it right: "If you are looking for a way to get people to lean on you and to be dependent on you, in terms of their cooperation with you ... food-dependence would be terrific."

Ecological Ruin

Food corporations are free to roam the earth in search of freedom from the costs of waste management, water protection, conservation, and doling out living wages. Costa Rica has razed forested land for citrus farms. Thailand, Indonesia, Ecuador and other shrimp-exporting nations have destroyed millions of acres of coastal mangrove forests to make way for high-yield shrimp ponds. Meanwhile, the World Trade Organization (WTO), created in 1995 by GATT as a free trade enforcer, seems set on grinding down environmental policies to ineffective nubs. For instance, WTO recently overruled a U.S. law under which we'd only buy shrimp from countries that protect sea turtles.

Poorer nations are drenched in agricultural chemicals that are banned or severely restricted in the U.S. and Europe. In Mexico's Culiacan valley, winter tomato plants may be doused with chemicals as many as 25 times before they get to your store. And Mexican cantaloupes made EWG's most contaminated list. Latin American farmers find themselves monocropping broccoli, strawberries, raspberries, asparagus and other temperate produce that require intensive chemical inputs to grow in tropical climates. Over a fifth of the total production costs of non-traditional agricultural exports (NTAEs) in Latin America stems from pesticide use, according to a 1988 report from the Consortium for International Crop Protection. Between 1984 and 1994, U.S. Department of Agriculture detainments of pesticide-tainted produce cost ten Latin American nations approximately $95 million in lost sales.

Mismanagement of agrochemicals endangers Latin American field hands, who are 13 times more likely to suffer pesticide poisoning than their American counterparts. Exposures to methyl bromide -- a suspected neurotoxin and carcinogen and known ozone depleter --are routine. According to a 1995 study by the Foundation for Advancement in Science and Education, the U.S. exported at least 344 million pounds of pesticides, of which at least 25 million pounds cannot legally be applied on U.S. crops (except methyl bromide, used on strawberries in California). True to the old saying, what goes around, comes around. On the whole, imported food is three times more likely to contain residues of illegal pesticides than domestic food, according to Public Citizen's 1997 report "Fast Track to Unsafe Food."

Local Woes

Deregulating food trade has bleak results in domestic agriculture, too. Farmers must settle for the prices paid by commodities companies. Now, crop diversity seems more a liability than insurance. "Moreover, the progressive distancing of food is causing, among other effects, a dangerous decline in farming," write nutritionists Jennifer L. Wilkins, Ph.D., and Joan Gussow, Ed.D., in Journal of Nutrition Sciences. Half a century ago, the U.S. farm population stood at around 23 million. By 1991, it was 4.6 million, less than two percent of the U.S. population.

Since 1950, the average farmer's income has decreased by 32%. For every dollar a consumer spends on food, farmers, who used to get up to 70¢, now receive 10¢ or less, according to Amy Salzman of World Wildlife Fund, which is studying the environmental impacts attached to wheat, corn, beef and soy. The rest of the dollar goes to middlemen for chemical inputs, processing, packaging, advertising and distribution -- and to U.S. consumers in the relatively low food prices we enjoy.

"In New York City, half the price of a head of iceberg lettuce pays for its shipping from Salinas, California," says Krebs. This means fat middlemen. And large, monocrop industrial farms can absorb low food prices that small farmers can't. Farmers used to diversify in order to protect themselves from lower prices for a specific commodity. Today, if lucky, farmers see an investment return of 2% to 5%, according to Krebs. In comparison, transnational corporations get between 15% and 20% return on their investment dollar.

But, production booms can spell busts. In 1998, mega hog farms in the U.S. -- operations that foul surrounding areas with manure and stench -- delivered a record 19 billion pounds of pork. And with demand from Asia rapidly drying up, a 250-pound hog now sells for $45, down from $118 last year. "Hog farming," says Mark Ritchie, president of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, "is the most dramatic representation of the drive by governments and banks to industrialize farming. It's also the most damning example of the economic impossibility of this approach."

Rejecting Corporatization

As consumers, we don't have to be force-fed. Rather, we can erode corporate hegemony by patronizing local producers. Jim Wedeberg, a dairyman for 10 years at CROPP organic milk co-op in LaFarge, Wisconsin, says of the pesticides, antibiotics, and hormones used on conventional farms, "You can manage operations without them. You're not working with nature with them." Crop diversification and rotation are key to agricultural sustainability, Wedeberg says. The savings from not buying chemicals, combined with a strong and growing consumer base, have contributed to the dairy's 30% to 40% annual growth.

Elizabeth Henderson, who's farmed organically for 18 years in New York, belongs to a community supported agriculture (CSA) network that pairs farmers with people who want fresh-picked organic food. A resolute proponent of eating locally, she only sells her produce within a 60-mile radius. "Staple foods like potatoes, grains, and vegetables should come from within your region, 100 miles or so," she says. "I'm not against having oranges a few times a year, but people should get vitamin C from local sources." A half cup of butternut squash or one potato (both are winter vegetables) provides 33% of the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for vitamin C, says Dr. Wilkins, a Cornell University nutritionist.

By shopping for local organic food, consumers reward farmers for rejecting agrochemicals and factory farming, and help rejuvenate local economies. Adopting a green diet also gives consumers a measure of sorely needed quality control. Over one-third of all fresh fruit and 12% of vegetables on our tables come from overseas. Yet there are fewer than 700 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspectors to test the incoming 30 billion tons of food (excluding meat, dairy and eggs). In 1996, FDA sampled less than 1% of these shipments for food-borne pathogens that have sickened American diners in recent years (see The Green Guide #51). This figure is down from 3% in 1992, when we had half the shipments of imported food than we do now.

The latest trade tyranny of corporations, in league with the U.S. government, is the aggressive pushing of unlabeled biotechnology foods on the global market. This includes pressuring a reluctant European Union not to require labeling. A new "terminator gene" would prevent plants from reproducing and force farmers to buy new seeds after each harvest. Even if this weren't so unethical, notes Ritchie, it would be suicidal. "Unleashed upon the world, these genes could sterilize other plants. After one generation of plants, we'd starve."

At a time when trade accords can be used to outlaw regional labels such as "Minnesota Grown" or "New Jersey Fresh," calling local sustainable agriculture initiatives barriers to trade, it's clear that the edible has become political. "The world actually needs a shift away from cheap exported food policies to more local production for local use everywhere," writes Tim Lang. We can exercise our kitchen politics on behalf of our health, the environment, and family farmers, by choosing local food. "Even in winter, you can obtain enough variety for a healthy diet," says Wilkins. "Squash and root vegetables such as potatoes and onions can be stored for months, and other locally harvested fruits and vegetables can be frozen, canned or dried for consumption throughout the winter." It's up to consumers now. No less than the fate of the planet rests on our plates.

--Tracy Baxter, a former associate editor at Sierra, is a San Francisco-based writer.