I recently started running again. After a nearly five-year hiatus, I’ve finally realized that it’s time to do the thing I’ve always known was important.
Why hadn’t I been running? Because it’s hard, and because I didn’t have to. I could get by, for a time, at least, without putting in the effort.
Some Americans have recently started eating healthy again. After a nearly 75-year hiatus, since the advent of chemical agriculture, the large upswing in chronic diseases has finally convinced some that it’s time to do the thing they’ve always known was important.
Why hadn’t they been eating healthy? Because it’s hard, and because they didn’t have to. They could get by, for a time, at least, without putting in the effort.
We’re all susceptible to taking the path of least resistance, even when we know it’s not good for us in the long term. It makes me wonder whether it’s naïve to think that people, en masse, would ever pay more- something that’s hard to do – for healthy food to improve their long-term health. Do we set our hopes too much on this?
A hundred years ago, Americans spent about a quarter of their income on food. Today they spend less than 7 percent. This is less than European countries (about 12 percent) and Mexico and China (about 18 percent), yet trying to convince Americans to spend a bit more for higher quality is almost impossible. As we’re probably about to experience at our midterm elections, politicians rise and fall on shared, felt price points: the cost of groceries, gas, housing, etc. No politician wanting to save his or her own neck (i.e., every one of them) is going to support policies that end up raising the price of food. This is not just an American phenomenon, the term “food riot” has its own Wikipedia page. The women’s march on Versailles in October 1789, a food riot, was one of the precipitating events of the French Revolution.
This obviously clashes with what many of us in the ecological/organic/regenerative agriculture movement desire: for people to be willing to pay a bit more for the higher-quality food we produce. The good news is that for now, at least, eco-farmers don’t need the masses to desire better food; we just need some of them. That group seems to be growing as awareness of the dangers of ultra-processed food becomes more mainstream. And access to local food is becoming easier to achieve thanks to food hubs and aggregators.
Just because the majority of Americans will always worship convenience doesn’t mean that there won’t be a remnant who will continue to do the difficult thing, to buy and support better food.
And that’s the view from the country.
