Dear Governments:
Please give us food price controls!
This week I was thrilled to buy my very first basket of Ontario peaches of the season! I'm not normally a seasonal fetishist (I tend to roll my eyes when people use "seasonal" as the be-all and end-all of positive adjectives), but peaches are one of the foods where imports really don't taste nearly as good as the local and seasonal variety that came off the tree less than 24 hours before I bought them.
I saw some Ontario peaches in the supermarket earlier this week, but the ones in the farmer's market are usually better and yummier. So I waited until market day, looked at all the farmers' tables and chose the very best-looking basket of peaches, and handed over my money. $7. Rather a lot for fruit, but I'm willing to pay.
Then, later the same day, I went to the supermarket to buy ice cream. It wasn't anything particularly special, just regular commercial ice cream. I don't normally buy large tubs of ice cream (I don't have the space in either my freezer or my jeans) but the flavour I wanted didn't come in anything smaller than 2L (#FirstWorldProblems), so I bought that. It cost me $5.
I also noticed that the crappy California import peaches were like $2 or $3 for a basket, even though they've had to be driven all the way up here on a truck.
And meanwhile, McDonald's has a dollar menu.
This is not right! Of all the foods I've described here, it's best - for me, for the environment, for public health, for the local economy - for me to be eating the Ontario peaches. They should be most affordable! If I had hungry children and limited money, the Ontario peaches would be completely out of reach, and McDonald's would be my best bet for making sure no one goes to bed hungry.
I shouldn't even be thinking "Well, peaches are expensive, but I'm willing to pay." I should be thinking "Well, potato chips are expensive, but I'm willing to pay." And then buying local fruit straight from the farmer to save money.
Dear Governments: Please give us food price controls! Charge a levy on my potato chips and use the money to make the peaches more affordable while still paying the farmer decent compensation. I want to pay $7 for the privilege of eating a bag of chemically potato chips, so that I can pay $2 for a basket of peaches straight off the tree.
I don't mind all the taxes and levies and whatnot on alcohol, because I do agree that it's a "sin" (in the "sin tax" sense, not in the catholic sense) and an indulgence. I have no objection to the principle of eco fees, it's just the way they're being implemented (not on the price tag, added at the register with no warning) that's a problem. I'm more than happy to pay extra for subpar purchases in order to make more optimal purchases more affordable.
The relative prices of food are broken. We as individuals can't fix it ourselves, we need broader policy to make this happen. Help us! Fix it! Give us affordable responsible choices, less-affordable irresponsible choices, and a decent income for our farmers. We can't do it alone!
4 comments:
True true true. The hugest obstacle - in the US, and Canada too often takes its cues from them - is the enormous influence of corporate food producers on government. The corn industry, the sugar industry, the fast food industry (linked to both of the above) - the entire industrial food chain helps control the government. X-ref Michael Pollan.
If delicious peaches straight off the tree from local farms were $2/basket, wouldn't demand quickly outstrip supply (driving the price up)?
I don't know, there are too many unknowns there. How many people are choosing not to buy the farm peaches simply because of the price? I know for some people it's that farmer's markets are inconvenient, and some people simply aren't that picky about their produce and buy whatever's in front of them. Plus, how many more peaches could farmers grow for us if they were selling more peaches and/or making more money? I assume there are ways for farmers to reinvest sales into their business and use it to increase production, but at the same time it's not quite as simple as manufacturing widgets. Would supermarkets carry farm peaches if they could be priced lower? If so, would there be any farmer's markets left? Would the farmers be able to grow us even more peaches then since they don't have to spend their days in market stalls?
I think the more important question is why is crappy food so cheap? How are the industries that support unhealthy food able to sell their food at such cheap prices? Once you start to uncover that, you learn it's not so much that produce is too expensive, it's that the crap is too cheap.
Post a Comment