Several months ago, a friend visited me from out of town. My friend, who works in finance, followed me around, to the hemp store, to the locally-owned coffee house, and to the farmer's market. After flipping through a copy of
Mother Earth News I had on my floor, he finally had to satisfy his curiosity: If Wal-Mart could find the most efficient way to sell food for the lowest price, why wouldn't I
celebrate that and buy my food there?
I'm not trying to paint my friend as some kind of Ebeneezer Scrooge; he visibly had fun at the farmer's market. I went to business school, just like he did, so I understand where he is coming from. To phrase the rest of his question similarly to how he did, if the farmers at the market or the coffeeshop I go to need to charge a higher price than Wal-Mart to stay in business, am I not coddling them and encouraging inefficiency?
Good question. Am I not?
Going back to Capitalism 101, think about a commodity. An example of a commodity is a pin from a pin factory. You cannot differentiate one pin from another pin, because they are all identical. For any given supply and any given demand, the market will - voila! - determine a price.
I am not sure what percentage of Americans understand Adam Smith's invisible hand, but given the percent that cannot name a current supreme court justice (57%) or cannot name all our first amendment rights (99.9%), I think we have cause for concern.
If a food is truly a commodity, then it should obey Adam Smith's rules perfectly. A store like Wal-Mart can buy from any supplier, no matter whom, no matter where, and there will be no difference in quality. Because suppliers can compete only on price, they will lower the price until it exactly matches demand. The supplier who can afford to give Wal-Mart the lowest price, even by a fraction of a penny, is the most efficient. Other, less-efficient suppliers should learn to take the heat or get out of the kitchen, and ultimately the whole industry will be leaner and meaner for it.
For such a system to work, fruits, vegetables, and other foods must be commodities. An apple is an apple and a carrot is a carrot, throughout the whole system, or else it doesn't work. And it does work. It works especially well for Wal-Mart. The Forbes list of wealthiest Americans includes five Waltons among its top 10.
Working under the assumption that all veggies are created equal, how can someone looking for sustainable food find it in a store? Look for labels: organic, Fair Trade, shade grown, bird friendly, no rBGH, country of origin labeling, or whatever it is you are looking for. Of course, you have to know what it is you want in order to look for it. Otherwise you'll probably just buy the cheapest thing you can find.
But is that it? Is that all there is to it? An organic carrot is the same as any other organic carrot, and it doesn't matter where it was grown and where it was shipped?
I buy my carrots from a guy named Paul. My friend Jonny and I jokingly call them "good dirt carrots" because of a unique exchange we had over them a while back. The carrots do not look like anything you will ever find in the grocery store: they come in purple, yellow, and orange. Their variation in sizes and shapes are equally disconcerting to someone who grew up eating carrots from the grocery store. When we asked Paul about them, he saw the chef of a local gourmet restaurant passing by, and flagged him down. Since the chef was also a fan of the carrots, Paul asked him to answer us, which he did: "They taste like good dirt."
As for apples and pears, Jonny and I buy them from a woman named Ellen. Ellen is serious about her fruit. Every pear or apple I've had of hers has been the best one I've ever eaten. The pears are small and irregular looking compared to the ones you get in the grocery store, but they are far, far better tasting. Every other week we get a box of eight pounds, sorted by variety and ripeness, with a newsletter explaining about each variety and describing how we should care for the fruit.
Today our town had a sustainable food festival and my parents came up so I introduced them to Ellen. She patiently explained to my mom which varieties of pears she had available, what they tasted like (I think I heard her say one tasted like honey and almonds), and how many days they would take to ripen. Ellen is easy to love for her personality, even before you factor in her spectacular pear cider.
Can you compare Ellen's pears with any other pears, or Paul's good dirt carrots with other carrots? Sure. Our market is probably pretty efficient by Adam Smith's standards. Back in the spring, morel mushrooms were $24/lb their first week and only one guy was selling them. The next week they were $20/lb, and the week after that, they were $16/lb and there were mountains of them all over the market.
Even though Ellen sells rare varieties of pears, she still needs to price them in line with the other pears in the market if she wants business. Paul has some competition in the purple and yellow carrot business, and he can't count on consumers to know if he grows his in better dirt.
In fact, the only area of differentiation I see at our market are signs saying "no sprays" or "organic." Occasionally, when I ask why someone prices their veggies high, they remind me that they weeded the cherry tomatoes by hand or they dug the sweet potatoes up themself.
To me, a push for Wal-mart style efficiency will always create pressure for poor labor practices, wasteful energy use, and environmental irresponsibility because of the financial pressure it places on the farmers and the lack of importance it places on local foods. Simultaneously, the Walmartization of food ruins food quality because it requires that all food looks the same so that consumers can understand it, and food's number one job is to travel long distances... showing up with any flavor left in it is optional.
With a lack of required country of origin labeling and organic standards that are under attack, a consumer's best defense is to meet the person who grew their food. No matter how bad labeling standards or certification standards become, you can have a face to face conversation with the person who knows the most about your food's origin, and you won't need to worry whether there is E. coli O157:H7 in your spinach or rBGH in your milk.
Going back to the idea of the average American's literacy of economics, when a conventional point of view ("sustainable eating coddles inefficient businesses") gets kicked around the airwaves by pundits, few will understand even what the pundits are talking about when they call those in favor of local, sustainable food a bunch of communists - let alone the counterpoints to that argument.