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Cheap Food, and It's Going To Cost Us
by James Glaser April 24, 2008 Yes, we have cheap food right here in America, and if you compare our income with the world's income, our food might be the cheapest. We can have fresh fruit 365 days a year, and there isn't a food product in the world that you can't buy someplace in the United States. If you look at what the rest of the industrial world pays, we also still have cheap fuel for our cars. That is going to cost us, too. Cheap food, right here at home has forced the end of the small family farm. It wasn't that long ago, maybe 60 years, that a family could scratch out a living on a hundred and sixty acres of good farm land. Today, you need a thousand acres or even more. All that fruit that is coming here from around the world 365 days a year is, in part, making up for all the small farms we have lost. You could even say that we are eating other people's food. Before the world economy came about, America fed herself. Today, some of us would starve if we depended on our own farms. Heck, we don't even harvest what we grow. We bring in cheap farm labor from south of the border, because keeping food cheap is the name of the game. That food that comes here from other countries used to feed their populations, but international corporations have taken over food production and it is sold to the highest bidder. Americans like a lot of food and a real variety, so we will pay their price. Because food is not the only thing we want to keep cheap, we have started using food crops to create a new fuel (Ethanol) for our cars in hopes of keeping fuel costs down, but there is a price to pay for doing that. Just this week we have started to ration food in America. Yes, it is starting with rice, but remember rationing is just starting. The last time we rationed food was during World War II, and there was a reason. We couldn't get foreign food here because of the war effort. Today we can't get the food here because there isn't enough to go around. Yes, the cost of some foods like rice and wheat has gone higher, but it is still a small portion of what an American family spends to live. The question is, will we be able to keep food costs low? And if we can, for how long? Farmers all over the world are leaving the land to find work that pays a better wage, and corporations are taking over food production. What happens when corporations control the food of the world? Probably the same thing that happened when corporations finally got almost total control of the world's petrol fuels. Oil companies are now having record profits. Fuel is so tight, that one ship running aground or one oil refinery shutting down can raise the cost of a gallon of gas by a quarter. That translates into billions in windfall profits. When corporations get a hold of the world's food supply, today's low prices will be a thing of the past. We have done this to ourselves, because we didn't think that the farmer had a right to a living wage. Well, that farmer is gone now, and finally food prices are going to climb, but it will be international corporations who reap the rewards. |
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