Local Foods for Rural Food Security
This op-ed was contributed by Dr. John Ikerd, retired Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics, University of Missouri. Dr. Ikerd gave a keynote presentation at KRC’s Local Food Connections conference in May.
Access to good food is a challenge in rural America. Many rural communities have lost their local grocery stores and restaurants. Transportation is often a problem in rural areas, and some rural residents are forced to rely on the more expensive and less nutritious foods available at local gas stations and convenience stores. Others face a long drive to a town with a supermarket or grocery store that stocks fresh produce, milk, eggs, and other staples. Many rural communities are considered “food deserts”—a term previously reserved for inner cities. Ironically, many of these food deserts are farming communities.
Rural areas also have disproportionate numbers of residents who are elderly, chronically ill, or disabled who live in poverty. All of these conditions contribute to a lack of food security, which is defined as access at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life. Hunger among children is a critical concern, and malnutrition during childhood can result in a lifetime of ill health. According to the USDA, nearly one-in-six children in non-metropolitan areas lived in households that suffered from food insecurity during 2019—before the COVID pandemic. The only other areas with this level of food insecurity were the inner cities of major metropolitan areas.
Hunger is what economists call a “market failure.” Markets do not respond to necessity but to scarcity—which is determined by willingness and ability to pay. We may all be of “equal inherent worth,” but we are “inherently unequal” in our abilities to earn enough money to meet our basic needs. Markets work fine for those of us who can afford to buy enough good food. However, there have always been, and always will be, significant numbers of people in any society who simply cannot earn enough to buy enough good food. Hunger is a market failure.
Government food assistance programs and charities have been public responses to this failure, alleviating hunger for millions during times of need and likely saving many from starvation. However, government food assistance and charities have not solved the centuries-old problem of the persistent, systemic hunger caused by chronic poverty. More people are food insecure in the U.S. today than before the Great Society programs of the 1960s. In addition, many who receive food assistance today are getting too many calories and too little nutrition—resulting in an epidemic of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and other diet related illnesses.
The tragedy of hunger can never be resolved by simply giving people money or even giving them food. In the words of Doria Robinson, who works on food issues in the inner city of Richmond CA, “People are hungry because we don’t care enough to change how we do things.” As our society has increased in complexity, personal relationships have been replaced by impersonal economic transactions. As relationships have become less personal, they have become less caring. There seems little sense of understanding that our individual well-being is ultimately dependent on the overall well-being of the communities and societies to which we belong. Moral concerns about hungry kids are alleviated by blaming their parents or by relying on government food assistance programs or giving money to food charities. The poor will always be among us, but if we care enough, the poor need not be hungry.
Those who have driven the local food movement seem to understand that the problems that permeate today’s agri-food system are a consequence of dysfunctional relationships. They seem to have an intuitive understanding that there is something fundamentally wrong with relying on impersonal markets for food, even for foods that are certified as “organic” or produced without pesticides, GMOs, growth hormones, or antibiotics. “Locavores” seem to understand that their access to enough wholesome, nutritious food to sustain healthy active lives depends on the confidence and trust that arises from personal relationships within caring local communities.
I firmly believe that the problems of hunger in rural America and elsewhere can be solved. This same basic understanding of the importance of personal relationships found in the local food movement needs to be extended to meeting the nutritional needs of everyone in local communities—not simply those who can afford it. From a national or global perspective, food security may seem an insurmountable challenge. Within local communities, however, ensuring food security is not only possible but realistically achievable. The challenge of national and global food security can be met, and I believe must be met, one community at a time.
The large and growing global “food sovereignty movement” is a testament to the promise of the local food systems to alleviate hunger. Food sovereignty proclaims the right of people in local communities to define their own food and agriculture systems in order to ensure the right of everyone in the community to enough healthful and culturally appropriate food to meet their basic nutritional needs. Food sovereignty also requires that local foods are produced through ecologically sound and sustainable means to provide food security across as well as within generations. The ecological and social principles embedded in food sovereignty can spread from community to community, region to region, nation to nation, and eventually globally. Local food sovereignty is a logical path to national and global food security.
In today’s disconnected society, communities committed to food security need a formal organizational structure to insulate or protect personal relationships within caring communities from impersonal national and global economies. I have suggested organizing local food systems as “public utilities”—Community Food Utilities or CFUs. Local public utilities would allow acquisition and distribution of food to be determined by the utility, internally, rather than by impersonal markets or government programs. A primary reason hunger is pervasive in rural America, and elsewhere, is current interstate commerce laws that prevent communities from interfering with the commercial agri-food system which maximizes corporate profits by promoting junk foods and limiting food access in low-income communities. Food deserts in rural and urban America will persist as long as communities are unable to insulate their local food systems from national and global markets.
Public utilities are commonly used to provide electrical, water, and sewer services. These are sometimes referred to as “natural monopolies,” since it is not economically feasible to support more than one provider of these services. However, public utilities are also used to provide essential services for those who simply can’t afford existing alternatives, as in the case of public transportation. Public utilities are appropriate in any case of “market failure”—including hunger.
The Rural Electrification Administration (REA) provides a prime example of what can be accomplished by local public utilities. In the 1930s, it made no economic sense for private, for-profit corporations to build miles of power lines to carry electricity to the homes in sparsely populated rural communities. The REA was established to empower communities to create their own Rural Electrical Cooperatives, which were locally owned and operated as public utilities. Low-cost government loans and federal labor exemptions allowed RECs to hire local people to dig the holes, set the poles, and string the “light lines” along the dirt roads to rural farmsteads. Local people were trained to wire existing houses for electricity. The RECs accomplished their tasks at a fraction of the costs of corporate or government construction projects. Over time, the surviving RECs evolved into organizations that function much like for-profit energy companies. However, local owned and operated public utilities were critical in bringing electricity to rural communities and to establishing access to affordable electricity as an essential public service.
Current government food assistance programs represent public affirmation that food insecurity is a market failure and thus can legitimately be addressed through a public utility. CFUs would allow current government food assistance programs to be “internalized” and “personalized” to meet food needs that are currently unmet. Those currently eligible for government food assistance payments could be given an opportunity to assign their government payments to local CFUs and in return be assured that their nutritional needs would be met, regardless of costs to the CFU. Local food procurement prioritizing locally grown products could provide assurance that foods provided meet locally-determined standards of wholesomeness, nutrition, and socially responsible method of production. By organizing as “vertical cooperatives,” CFUs could ensure equitable benefits for everyone in the organization, from food recipients to food producers.
No blueprint or recipe for development of a CFU exists or is possible, although there are some logical guiding principles. Government must authorize CFUs and ensure that they serve public interests, but the functioning of local food utilities must be determined and carried out by people in the local community. Membership in CFUs would need to be voluntary and ensure local cooperation, but with success, voluntary membership would grow. Government payments could provide a stable economic foundation, but anyone in the local community should be allowed to join. Those not eligible for government food assistance would simply pay the full cost of CFU membership. By focusing on raw and minimally processed, procurement costs could be minimized, since farmers receive less than 15% of retail food expenditures. Communities could be empowered to enact local taxes to make up any shortfall.
Each community would need to develop its CFU to fit its particular need, capacities, and preferences. Local CFU cooperatives could operate local grocery stores and restaurants that ensure access to fresh locally-grown produce, meat, milk, eggs and provide other basic food items at affordable costs. Local farmers could be paid their cost of production plus a reasonable profit for providing foods that meet local standards of ecological and social integrity. Over time, rural food deserts would become a distant memory and the rural caring communities of the past would become the new rural reality. With local successes, the CFU concept could spread from community to community and region to region to form national networks of producers, processors, distributors and consumers, within which there would be no hunger or malnutrition. The local food movement could grow into this new and better food reality.
***
End Notes:
[1] RHIhub, Rural Health Information, n.d., https://www.ruralhealthinfo.org/topics/food-and-hunger
[2] Coleman-Jensen, Alisha, Matthew P. Rabbitt, Christian A. Gregory, and Anita Singh. (2020). Household Food Security in the United States in 2019, ERR-275, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/99282/err-275.pdf?v=9813.1 .
[3] An estimated 10% of Americans were considered hungry in 1968, according to a national survey referenced in the classic CBS documentary, “Hunger in America,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h94bq4JfMAA.
[4] Doria Robinson, 2018 Eco-Farm Conference Keynote, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKuXfC3OemQ .
[5] John Ikerd, (2021). THE ECONOMIC PAMPHLETEER: Local foods: Seeds for social change. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 10(3), 1–4. https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2021.103.002
[6]Nyéléni. (2007). Declaration of the Forum for Food Sovereignty, Nyéléni 2007.
Retrieved from http://nyeleni.org/spip.php?article290 .
[7] John Ikerd, (2016). THE ECONOMIC PAMPHLETEER: Enough Good Food for All: A Proposal. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 7(1), 3-6. https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2016.071.001 .
[8] The Living New Deal, Rural Electrification Administration, https://livingnewdeal.org/glossary/rural-electrification-administration-rea-1935/ .
[9] John Ikerd, Public Utilities for Community Food Security, https://sites.google.com/site/communityfoodutility/ .
***
Dr. John Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics, retired from the University of Missouri in 2000. He was raised on a small dairy farm, worked in private industry, and held several other academic positions, prior to returning to the University of Missouri. In the 80’s, John had a “conversion” of sorts after seeing the failures of the policies he had been advocating to farmers. He then reoriented his work toward agricultural and economic sustainability a means of supporting small family farms and rural communities. Since retiring, John has maintained an active speaking schedule and has authored numerous books and papers, many of which can be found at his university website: http://faculty.missouri.edu/ikerdj/ or http://johnikerd.com. John is recognized as a longtime leading voice in the sustainable agriculture movement.