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Raindance Farm - Why is the food in the stores so much cheaper?
Sun cheese is not a cheap cheese. Yes, we make it in small batches and the organic milk that goes into it is expensive to produce. Sun cheese is an artisan cheese which we age at least four months. Each day of aging ads to the cost but that is only part of the story.
You and I and our American contemporaries forked out $56,170,875,257 between 1995 and 2006 in taxes to pay for corn subsidies. During that time food remained relatively cheap compared to other things and the taste gradually got worse. In effect we prepaid for our food. Much of the food in the store, especially meat seems very cheap, especially compared to other things but that is because you have already paid for part of it by subsidizing corn and sugar while enriching corporations at the same time. Why?
The way I see it, it is in the interest of the huge agribusiness corporations to have access to cheap raw materials (corn) for producing their products. Agribusiness giants have a big voice in government policy; in fact they own many voices in Washington. They are called lobbyists.
Growing corn is very expensive. Farmers would not even grow it at commodity prices unless the subsidy money made up the difference between the cost to grow it and what the commodity market offers which is a price that does not even cover the cost of production in 9 out of 10 years. I do not know of farmers getting rich off this scheme; some may, but the agribusiness giants have certainly enriched themselves as evidenced by their earnings. They buy corn priced artificially low to make all sorts of high fructose corn syrup, a myriad of artificial food additives and cheap animal feed, HFC's and animal feed. Large factory farms then buy this below cost feed by the train car load at gargantuan economy of scale and produce American beef, pork, chicken, and eggs, and milk. When I saw the city-sized feedlot featured in the film "Food Inc.", I nearly choked on my GMO pop corn. When I fly to Florida and pass over the Carolinas I can clearly see the giant manure lagoons of pig poo from 30,000 feet up!
Don't you see it? If you and I the consumers had known how gigantic the factory farms had grown we would not have voted for this cheap food with our consumer dollar. Even farmers like me have no clue how most of the food products in the store are produced. It is even shocking to us. There is no way small family farms can compete with factory farm prices. The economy of scale is too great.
What can we do? You can vote for food that tastes delicious and is raised compassionately. You can buy meat, cheese, chicken and eggs from pasture based farms that let their livestock see the light of day. By the way free-range does not mean pastured; it means nothing. Just as "natural" does not mean organic.
What can I do as a farmer? I can be honest and transparent. Come visit us by appointment and you will get a free tour and an earful about why we raise our animals on pasture. There are few subsidies for small grass based dairy farms in the Northeast. In their infinite wisdom the USDA sends me money for not growing corn but all our total corn and dairy subsidies over the period from 1995 to 2006 averaged .03% of my total income, or as my Dad would say - chicken poop. I cannot afford a herd of lobbyists though apparently they are more lucrative than a herd of organic dairy cows. So vote for family farms instead of factory farms with your consumer dollar. After all, that is how we got into this mess. You the consumer have the power to change how food happens and maybe how other things happen too.
Bon appetite!