MB Civic

Go to article
http://www.grist.org/comments/food/2006/11/01/farmbelt/index.html

From Tom Philpott in Grist Magazine on the logic of the farm belt going local instead of multinational.

Farm Belt residents increasingly turn to the supermarket, and thus the vast and far-flung industrial networks that supply it, for their sustenance. The region’s corn returns to its residents in the form of corn-syrup-sweetened Coca-Cola and corn-fed McDonald’s burgers. If this odd arrangement actually generated wealth in the region, it might make some sense. But farming is such an economically disastrous endeavor in the Midwest that it’s a wonder anyone still does it…

…Rebuilding farm economies in the heartland might require public investment in new distribution and processing infrastructure. If that sounds like a crazy socialist experiment, consider that under the current Farm Bill, the federal government props up economically and environmentally suspect commodity agriculture to the tune of about $20 billion per year.

Capitalists who preach the Radical Consumerism model on food, global warming and energy would say “wait for the market to tell us what to do”… problem is that’ll be too late.
-MAB