Collegiate Times

I’m not necessarily opposed to local, or even organic, food.

Nor do I disparage anyone who eats or produces local food. I grew up on a farm, and I would never think of putting down another farmer. Furthermore, I love eating fresh, local foods and I look forward every summer to fresh vegetables out of my grand-dad’s garden or juicy strawberries my family often buys from a neighbor down the road.

However, the local, “sustainable” movement is showing risks of turning into a hollow elitist ideal that allows some folks to look down at the rest of us poor souls. Just because we either can’t afford to eat everything from a farmers’ market or don’t buy into the claims of our more educated, conscientious friends, doesn’t mean we don’t care about the source of our food.

First of all, let’s take a look at that word “sustainable.” To me, the word means something along the lines of being able to carry on into the future for our posterity.

Of course we want our food system to be sustainable. We need to eat. Our children will need to eat. Their children will need — I think you get the point. Everyone agrees that the world needs a system of producing food that can sustain our generation and the future, but the disagreement comes from what type of food production fits that description.

Is it large-scale commercial agriculture that makes use of modern technologies to increase yields? Is it small-scale local farming that concentrates on organic production and direct relationships with local consumers? Is it, in this world where everyone claims to be a “moderate,” a little of both?

Some folks would have you believe that any food not grown by a local, organic farmer is a non-human, unnatural creation formed in the depths of a “factory farm” by a corporate machine with no regard for the environmental, economic destruction left in its wake. However, this picture that has been very well painted by activists, like Michael Pollan, is untrue and misleading.

Sure, farms are bigger now than they were in 1950, when a sizable chunk of Americans still lived on a farm, but that doesn’t mean the two percent of Americans that live on a farm today don’t care about the plants and animals they raise and the food they produce.

From personal experience, I can tell you that farmers care a great deal about their jobs and the quality of food they produce. And from scientific, academic research, I can assure you that conventional agricultural production is in fact sustainable.

A recent study from Washington State University’s Jude Kapper and some of her colleagues attempts to determine the efficiency and sustainability of conventional production practices compared to “sustainable” practices. What they found is that there are many misconceptions when it comes to comparing the two.

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A version of this article appeared in the Oct 6 issue of the Collegiate Times.