The question we really need to answer is why is conventionally produced food so CHEAP?
Quoting again:
"A common complaint about organic and local foods is that they're more expensive than "conventional" (industrially grown) foods. Most consumers don't realize how much we're already paying for the conventional foods, before we even get to the supermarket. Our tax dollars subsidize the petroleum used in growing, processing, and shipping these products. We also pay direct subsidies to the large-scale, chemical-dependent brand of farming. And we're being forced to pay more each year for the environmental and health costs of that method of food production.
Here's an exercise: add up the portion of agricultural fuel use that is paid for with our taxes ($22 Billion), direct Farm Bill subsidies for corn and wheat ($3 billion), treatment of food-related illnesses ($10 billion), agricultural chemical cleanup costs ($17 billion), collateral costs of pesticide use ($8 billion), and costs of nutrients lost to erosion ($20 billion). At minimum, that's a national subsidy of at least $80 billion, about $725 per household each year..."
I suppose someone might begin to read my blog and wonder what all this has to do with dancing. Maybe they would understand after reading the entirety of the blog, but maybe not. My path right now has led me to fine tune my bodily intake. As I said earlier, I want to drive a Ferrari, not a Honda, so I need some high octane fuel. It's simple to reduce this down to nutrients, but I don't think that will ever cover the whole story. I think that even if science were able to reduce every particle of nutrients in fresh broccoli and put it into a supplement, we would still not receive the same sustenance from the pills that we would shopping locally and cooking for ourselves. This is because there is energy in food. The care with which we grow, buy, and cook our food reverberates throughout us. In the book Midnight's Children, there is an ongoing theme about cooking emotion into food - love, hate, etc. The author describes it as though it were as real as a spice. I actually believe in this. I can feel the difference in my dancing after a carefully prepared meal that I sat down to eat with friends. This is why food is important. There is something more to it than nutrients. I am out to figure out what it is.
And by the way, I'm looking for books to explain the global agricultural economy in terms of subsidies, WTO and World Bank loans, etc. I want to know what a free market would look like. Any suggestions?
