The Perils Of Global Farming

by Christine Hall

Those of us who grew up in the 1950s and 60s remember that the produce departments at supermarkets used to be much different than they are now. Yellow squash, zucchinis and fresh greens like spinach could only be obtained during the summer months. Fresh strawberries were available only in the spring. In the winter months, the produce bins were filled with carrots, turnips, beets and other root vegetables. Tomatoes were available year round, but “winter” tomatoes, shipped from Florida, were green and tasteless.

There was nothing strange or deprived about that state of affairs. In fact, the world of agricultural was working much like it’d always worked, going all the way back to the invention of farming. Like our mothers, and our mother’s mothers, we ate foods that were in season. During the cold drabness of winter, we eagerly anticipated the coming of strawberry season and summer’s bounty of fresh fruits and vegetables. The rest of the year, we ate a lot of starchy vegetables, or foods that had been preserved by canning or freezing.

Beginning in the 1970s, this all began to change. Suddenly, fresh vegetables that used to be available only during the growing season were available year round. Consumers could now bring home fresh strawberries and raspberries no matter what the season. As food procurers began importing fresh produce from Mexico, Chili and Australia, freshly picked broccoli, asparagus and zucchini became just as available during February's freeze as during the summer’s sweltering heat.

From the beginning of this phenomenon, the natural foods folks tried to tell us that this wasn’t necessarily a good thing. To begin with, there was an intelligence behind nature’s bounty that was being ignored. Green and yellow summer foods tend to cool the body and the root vegetables of winter tend to be warming. Fresh strawberries in winter, while delicious, were just what we didn’t need, just when we didn’t need it.

There would be other problems as well, the environmentalists told us. The small local farmer would be forced to close-up shop due to the increasing competition from abroad. They also warned that this globalization of agribusiness would lead to an increasing use of pesticides and herbicides here at home, as diseases and pests that had been unknown in this country were imported on fruits and vegetables from abroad.

By the early 1980s, these warnings were proven to have merit, as a large portion of California, including the heavily populated San Jose area, were subjected to aerial spraying of pesticides in an effort to end an infestation of the Mediterranean fruit fly, a rather nasty little pest that lays eggs under the skin or peel of over 250 varieties of fruits, vegetables and nuts. This infestation, which had been brought to the region inside imported fruit, ended up costing California farmers millions of dollars in lost revenues. Before 1975, the Medfly had never been found in California.

Since then, the Medfly has been a continuing problem, both in California and Florida. California alone has had to battle a total of thirteen major infestations, at a taxpayer cost of over 300 million dollars. But these infestations have proven to be only the tip of the iceberg. Since the U.S. began importing foreign grown fruits and vegetables en masse, American farmers have had to fight a growing number of crop attacking fungi and diseases that used to be unknown on these shores. In addition, we’ve had to pay health consequences as well, with several outbreaks of hepatitis being traced to imported strawberries.

The recent outbreak of hoof and mouth disease which is spreading through livestock herds in Europe and Argentina seems to be caused by some of the same factors. Increasingly, livestock is being transported beyond national boundaries for slaughter, trade and other purposes, and it’s been this unrestricted flow across national borders that’s been largely responsible for the spread of this disease.

In England, where the toll taken by hoof and mouth is the greatest, the spread may be due to measures taken in the 1990s to combat mad cow disease. In an attempt to rid British cattle of a malady that can spread to humans, the Brits closed many of their small local and regional slaughterhouses, which resulted in livestock being transported over greater distances for slaughter, which has helped to spread hoof and mouth to areas that otherwise might have remained disease free.

We would do well to listen to the Greens and other environmentalists who plead with us to “think globally, act locally.” We can help our environment,our health and our economy by buying fruits and vegetables that are in season and grown by local farmers. Strawberries in February may be a luxury we cannot afford.