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Local, Organic and Costly
Podcast: Farmers' market advocate Brent Warner on why good food doesn't come cheap.
[Editor's note: This is a summary of a podcast you can download or listen to from this page.]
Deadly outbreaks from contaminated food have fueled the 'buy local' movement like nothing else, says Brent Warner, president of Farmers' Markets of Canada.
That's good news for farmers, right? Not necessarily, argues Warner, especially when it comes to organic food. Even as food prices go up, Canadian farming incomes remain the same (if not lower) as they were in the 1940s.
"We cannot provide organic food and cheap food in North America," he says. "If people want good local food and they want it organic, great, but they've got to realize they've got to pay for it."
Deconstructing Dinner launches its 2009 season of programming with a retrospective and forward-looking presentation from Warner, recorded at the annual conference of the Canadian Farm Writers' Federation.
Voices
Brent Warner, interim executive director, Farmers' Markets Canada (Sidney, B.C.) -- FMC has been created to help connect Canadian consumers to their local farmers and to address the needs of farmers' markets across the country. Brent is a former industry specialist in agritourism/direct marketing with British Columbia's Ministry of Agriculture & Lands. Brent is a horticulturalist who has also served as secretary of the North American Farmers' Direct Marketing Association.
Related Tyee stories:
- Slurping Prawns, Sizing Up Organic Miles
Hand-picked entries from 100-Mile Diet blog. - So, You Want to Be a Farmer?
Podcast: Who will help raise Canada's food? Why not you? - Will We Ever Eat Well Again?
Will Wal-Mart will bring organic food to the masses?
![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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Fiat lux
3 years ago
All organic doesn't have to
All organic doesn't have to be costly.
We can provide organic beef for far less than the feedlot garbage, pumped full of chemicals, hormones, steroids and grain, but nobody buys it. We have to sell our beautiful, clean calves with the tastiest meat, at the sales, where they're pumped full of shots as they're being loaded on the trucks of the buyers. Then the whole criminal procedure is repeated every time they go to other feedlots, controlled by the same multinational mafia, who fix prices at both ends.
Yet, when we see organic beef advertised by the supermarkets, the prices are outrageous. Up to $25./lb. Daylight robbery.
The whole food market is controlled by international racketeers.
We've been in organic production for 30 years and know what can be grown and for what price?
E.g. Years ago, we've tried to produce sun dried, organic chives. All who tried them were full of praise. The highest price we were offered was $15./lb. when the stuff was selling in the small jars in the stores for $450./lb.
So, it is not the production that's expensive, but the racketeers who control the markets.
Ed Deak, Big Lake.