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.

Office surprise

Many people who read this know me and know where I work, but regardless, I'm going to keep this vague. Nonetheless it is important that I begin by saying I work at a major international law firm -- one of the largest in the world. We are moving offices in Chicago over the weekend and our new office will have a "cafe" -- basically a subsidized restaurant/cafeteria for employees only. They could have taken a lot of different approaches to this and frankly I was expecting it to be convenient but a place I'd only go in an emergency. Well low and behold today they send around a brochure and I was VERY pleasantly surprised. The space will be managed by Flik. Everything is made there -- and made without trans fats, using only dairy that is growth hormone free, using only cage free eggs, using only sustainable seafood (according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium's guidelines), focusing on local ingredients grown within a 150-mile radius, with numerous vegetarian options and using approx. 95% certified organic ingredients! Wow. Who could have expected that? All of a sudden our "cafe" just became the most appealing place to eat in all of Chicago for lunch. Let's just hope the food tastes good :)

POST SCRIPT:

I've been thinking about this post since it went live. What we have here is a company that has chosen policies and standards well above the industry standard and a law firm that has chosen to pick such a company to manage its employee restaurant (and implicit in that is that attorneys, support staff, etc. appreciate those heightened standards to such an extent that they are more likely to spend their dollars there). These are the facts that I wanted to point out and to praise.

Are things perfect? They are not. As I wrote to the President of Flik, while I commend the choices that they have made, one thought they should consider is incorporating grass-fed meat and pastured poultry (and/or eggs from pastured hens which goes a large step beyond cage free). Nonetheless what you have here is a massive improvement over the alternatives. Further, and even more simply, you have a company that CARES. Do they care because of the bottom line (these policies will bring more dollars) or because they really care? It doesn't matter. What matters is that a company has decided, for profit or otherwise, that healthier food from more responsibly treated animals (here just the egg-laying hens) is the right move. And through those choices the "fan base" is perpetuated. Anyone who reads that brochure and hasn't truly considered local produce may start to think about the benefits. Or may see that they only use hormone free milk and consider the benefits of that next time they hit the dairy aisle in the grocery store. People respond to the messages around them (just look at the response to "cage free" eggs today or the response to veal before that). Thank you Flik. Keep it up and keep trying to be better.