Spending more on food (Part II)

I previously discussed that we can afford to spend more on food then we may think. Indeed, the diminished percentage of our income spent on food is unprecendented certainly throughout history and even throughout the world today. Small family farms often cannot compete with large commercial ones and therefore you may find that you can justify paying a premium to support a family farm. The good news is that family farms are more likely to treat their animals better, care for their crops more, and produce healthier food. Family farms are also more likely to sell locally, meaning that your supporting your community, and you're eating food that was probably harvested more recently (= healthier and tastier). Family farms are also more likely to pay their workers a better wage.

Wages are important as there is no point in supporting an unsustainable system. And each time you use your dollars for industrialized food you do that. Farming is a dying industry for all but the biggest. According to Samuel Fromartz in Organic, Inc., 90% of farms earn less than $50,000 a year. Many of the people who actually harvest the crops, slaughter the animals, and so forth, are migrant workers (often "illegal"), live in absurdly terrible conditions and earn incredibly low wages. You can take this for what it's worth, but my sense from all that I have read and seen is that family farms prefer not to exploit their workers. Indeed, if they could afford to, they would pay liveable wages, provide decent living accomodations (and even transportation as necessary). But they also want to survive, and when you're earning less than $50K for a family of 4, it's pretty hard not to pay the minimim you can get away with.

So to me, paying more for my food makes most sense when I'm paying it to a family farm. The money usually stays local, it supports hard working farm owners who deserve a decent income for raising the food we rely on, and it is more likely to be passed on as a liveable wage to laborers who are otherwise shamelessly expoited (most notably in California). And again, you can afford to spend more on your food -- trust me.