Rationale/Context for Local Food Systems in a Globalizing Environment
Agriculture and the food system in the United States have changed dramatically
in the last fifty years. After World War II, new technology and advances in
agriculture—including internal combustion engines, electrical machinery,
hybrid seeds, and improved livestock breeds—were widely adopted by farmers
across the country. Yields and labor productivity improved dramatically, allowing
farmers to specialize in one crop on a much larger scale or to diversify the
variety of crops they planted. Agriculture was revolutionized across the country,
but these changes imposed other consequences as well. Since the 1950s, the number
of small- and medium-scale farms in the US has fallen significantly. In addition,
as commodities have become increasingly processed, packaged, and marketed, farmers
have received a smaller and smaller fraction of the consumer’s food dollar.
Strained by these two trends—the decline in the number of smaller farms
and the falling return to farmers for their products—agricultural communities
throughout the country face an uncertain future.
Today’s global food system began taking shape in the 1950s as well. Advances
in technology allowed food to be stored longer and shipped farther at less expense.
Major food manufacturers expanded dramatically and grew from local or regional
businesses into sizeable corporations with a national reach. In the 1980s, a
wave of mergers consolidated a tremendous amount of power in the food processing
sector.1 Today’s typical supermarket, for example, carries more than 30,000
products, but about half of these items are produced by only ten multinational
food and beverage companies. In addition, food is traveling farther than ever
from farm to table. The average food item in the United States travels between
1,500 and 2,500 miles from producer to consumer, about 25 percent further than
even in 1980.2 Such large food processors and retailers also purchase enormous
quantities of standardized, uniform products and have a significant amount of
power in determining how and where agricultural production takes place.3
1W.D. Heffernan. “Consolidation in the Food
and Agricultural System.” Report prepared for the National Farmers Union,
1999.
2B. Halweil. “The Argument for Local Food.” World Watch
Institute Magazine, May/June 2003, pg. 22-23.
3P. Hart. “Marketing Agricultural Produce” in The Geography
of Agriculture in Developed Market Economies. New York: John Wiley and Sons,
1992. 162-206.