COUNTRY CORNER

Food trends offer opportunity but highlight difference in agriculture ideologies.
By Steve Fairchild

As I sat down to write this, I got a bit of validation. I’d just finished looking at the three stories about food scheduled for this issue. You’ll see they are a departure from the typical Today’s Farmer story and, indeed, different from what you find in most farm magazines. In reading them, I wondered if you might think we had taken to maniacal raving or that we secretly wish we could write for food magazines. The validation came the same day. It was in the form of several news stories about changes in consumer demand for food.

We focus on consumer-level food in this issue because trends in the grocery store precede trends on the farm, not vice versa. And, as a rule, the food chain communicates one segment at a time. That means that as producers of commodities (the far end of the food chain), we tend to see the power of a trend only after it has spent most of its energy.

Organic production is a good example. A long-time fringe movement, organics hit critical mass during the last decade. When producers and retailers saw the profit margins available, they moved en masse to collect some of that cash. The result is the commoditization of the organic industry. Retailers like Dean Foods and Wal-Mart, who know how to push efficiencies through a system, have moved in. That’s not to say we should celebrate the success of organic production—it’s largely built on flawed claims. I merely make the case that trends bring opportunity.

The stories that cross my desk (and I’ve seen dozens in the past months) point to a trend less controversial than organic farming—the popularity of local-grown food. And while this kind of production will be dismissed as something that won’t fit most corn and soybean farmers’ operations, it’s a trend worth knowing about.

To learn more about it, I called on Mary Hendrickson, a rural sociologist at the University of Missouri. Hendrickson is  known for her study of concentration in agriculture, which she isn’t shy about condemning. During the interview, Hendrickson (who happens to be involved in trying to develop networks for locally grown food) said something that is profound even as a colloquialism. She said, “Sometimes we have to just hold our noses and do business.”

Now that may sound like a loaded statement given the political atmosphere in several Missouri counties, but within it is some truth. Hendrickson was responding to a question I asked about how conventional farmers can interact with people who have wildly different perspectives. Her point is that business is a transaction and with the right disposition, it can become apolitical.

“But what about the fact that some people have used food politics in an effort to destroy traditional agriculture and build their own version to replace it?” I asked.

Hendrickson said that everyone involved is better off if claims about agriculture are based on truth and science. She said again that commerce can trump politics in some cases.

So that’s the conundrum we face. There is opportunity in emerging food trends, but there are divisive challenges in the road to being apolitical about taking up these opportunities.

One step, as Blake Hurst writes on page 12, is that “conventional producers must think about what we do and forthrightly explain why we do things the way we do.”

He’s right. One way to be safely apolitical is to be confident and forthright in your convictions—to be authentic. And, as it turns out, that’s one of the drivers behind the push for local food.