Eating Local and Fair Trade

An article in Sunday’s Chronicle (Farmers in Developing World Hurt by ‘Eat Local’ Philosophy in U.S. by William G. Moseley) pits Eat Local advocates against poor farmers in Africa. According to Mr. Moseley, it’s our fault that farmers in third world countries can’t get a fair break even when they turn to Fair Trade practices.

You know, I just can’t see it. In the first place, very few Eat Local advocates insist one must never buy anything from someplace else. How many of us live next to salt flats? How many can grow cinnamon or cumin or other spices? Have all of us given up coffee or tea? Chocolate?

The very people who want to eat local, are the same ones most likely to buy Fair Trade organic food when they need or want something they can’t get locally. We’re the ones who insist on food grown with fair labor practices and living wages for workers. But that doesn’t mean I have to buy all my food already processed and packaged at the grocery store, in order to support a farmer somewhere.

If I choose to buy my potatoes from a local farmer, I’m not putting a farmer in Africa out of business. If I decide to make my own spaghetti sauce from tomatoes grown by the farmer selling them at the farmer’s market, instead of the Fair Trade Organic brand found at Trader Joe’s, am I really responsible for starving children in China?

I think it’s a stretch.

In the second place, and this is the biggie, these third world farmers are put out of business because America subsidizes our own corporate farms at a horrendous rate and we flood the world market with our subsidized mono crops. Solve that problem!

Africa’s problems are a lot bigger than the elite of America shopping at the farmer’s market on Saturday. I’m not about to get into it on this blog, either. But the farmers there need more choices and freedom and markets, there, where they live. Their whole answer is not selling to a niche market in Europe or America.

Look, it’s hard enough to get people to think about where their food comes from and what’s in it. Let’s not let all the air out the movement before it even gets off the ground. Our own farmers are going out of business. Charity is fine. But I want to keep the farmer down the street in business before I’m going to worry about the farmer in Africa or Mexico.