You probably didn't think, as you pushed the dirt in around your new tomato plants or browsed a local farmers market, that you might be engaging in a political act.
More likely you were just thinking about a good, juicy tomato.
But that Better Boy you stuck in the ground — or the one bought at a street-corner stand — isn't necessarily politics-free.
In its own tiny way it could be part of a growing debate between food producers large and small over what the American food system should look like and how government might reshape it.
Consider:
-- As work begins on the federal government's next big piece of agricultural policy — the 2012 farm bill — traditional, large-scale farmers fret that they will be slighted in favor of the “locavore” growers who are the mainstay of upscale grocers and urban farmers markets.
One focus of big-farmer fears is Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food, a new grant program aimed at “better connecting consumers with local producers,” according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
-- On another front, the USDA and the Justice Department continue to investigate whether too few food companies wield too much power over the prices people pay for food. The broad antitrust inquiry includes investigations of the industries that bring you eggs, meat, dairy, candy, citrus, tomatoes and seeds.
As a result of the probe, a former tomato executive in California — home to five companies that process 95 percent of U.S. tomatoes — recently pleaded not guilty to federal price-fixing and racketeering charges.
The former tomato magnate, Frederick Scott Salyer, 54, co-founder of the now-defunct SK Foods, has become something of a poster boy for concerns about how consolidation in various food industries affects competition — and, ultimately, the tab consumers pay at the grocery store.
As part of the probe, federal officials are holding public hearings across the country. A March session in Iowa sought comment about seed companies. The final hearing, set for December in Washington, D.C., is to focus on the gap between what consumers pay and what farmers actually receive.
Meanwhile, the writing of the next farm bill is set to begin soon, and the battle continues between supporters of large-scale agriculture and those who want to send more federal aid to smaller producers.
In a recent skirmish, three Republican senators — John McCain of Arizona, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and Pat Roberts of Kansas — challenged Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack over the Know Your Farmer program.
While praising its stated goal of teaching consumers about where their food comes from, the three complained that the program was stinting conventional farmers, who grow the most food, in order to aid “small, hobbyist and organic producers whose customers generally consist of affluent patrons at urban farmers markets.”
“These senators,” Vilsack replied, “have not taken the time to understand and appreciate our Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food program.” He defended it as vital to helping rural America cultivate new kinds of markets.
“There's backlash from traditional agriculture” to such talk, said Brad Lubben, an assistant professor of agricultural economics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Arguments over what kind of food production to encourage will be the farm bill's biggest shouting match, he predicted.
The American Farm Bureau, which describes itself as the national voice of agriculture since 1919, won't take a formal stand on the farm bill until next January but will urge policies that “support all kinds of producers,” said Keith Olsen, president of the organization's Nebraska bureau. “We don't want to get in an either-or situation.”
The Know Your Farmer program's emphasis on making direct connections between producer and consumer is great for some, such as farmers near cities, he said, but it shouldn't become the USDA's sole approach.
As for the program's educational aim, it's similar to the Farm Bureau's own Agriculture in the Classroom project, which shows schoolchildren the “real people” of farming, Olsen said.
When he participates, for instance, he hands out to Lincoln kindergartners small bags of wheat from his western Nebraska farm near Grant, along with bags of Teddy Grahams or similar snacks.
“I tell them ‘I raise it on my farm, and you eat it,'” he said.
People's desire for local food is growing, but that term, “local,” is as squishy as an overripe tomato, said Lubben, whose class discussions at UNL often cover how the word is evolving in the public mind.
It can mean food grown or processed within, say, 50 miles of the consumer. Or it can mean food raised in a certain way — without pesticides, for instance — or by a certain kind of grower, such as a family farmer, he said.
Or it can mean food sold a certain way, such as by subscription, a form dubbed “community-supported agriculture,” or CSA.
For some consumers, local means following the label on their bag of Lay's potato chips that lets them go online and see where the ingredients were grown.
For others, Lubben said, it just means “I'd rather buy my tomatoes from the nice guy.”
Even allowing for squishy definitions, the USDA offers some yardsticks: For instance, sales of direct-to-consumer food — including methods such as farmers markets and consumer-supported agriculture — grew by 105 percent from 1997 to 2007.
LocalHarvest.org, an Internet directory of CSA farms, has seen its nationwide list grow from 374 a decade ago to 3,565 now, said its director, Erin Barnett.
The food-by-subscription phenomenon — driven by interest in healthful eating, food-safety fears and “pleasure-based reasons” such as desire for better flavor — began on the country's coasts and is spreading, she said.
A lot of researchers are studying the economic potential of trying to satisfy those desires.
A new Iowa State University study examined what would happen if farmers in six Midwestern states — Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin — raised 28 produce crops in quantities large enough to meet demand in those states.
The conclusion: That much regionally grown produce — such as apricots, asparagus, bell peppers, broccoli, cabbage, cantaloupe, carrots, onions, peaches and tomatoes— would spur $882 million in sales, yield 9,300 jobs and add about $395 million in labor income.
On the other hand, growing that much produce in the Midwest would mean big changes for the U.S. food system, given that — aside from smaller producers — the region long ago ceded production of fruits and vegetables to other parts of the country, the ISU researcher, David Swenson, told the Associated Press.
Commodity supports, along with refrigerated trucks and Interstate highways, encouraged farmers to grow crops where it was easiest. Switching now wouldn't be easy, Swenson said.
Ultimately, said UNL's Lubben, who specializes in policy questions, the agricultural economy will consist of some mixture of producers — big and small, near and far ... even you and your Better Boy, lovingly planted in the perfect pot by the back door.
Contact the writer:
444-1140, roger.buddenberg@owh.com
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