From Farm to Skip
- From: Burkie <Burkie50@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2008 04:59:17 -0800 (PST)
From Farm to Skip
by
Gary Burkholder
Reading the news this week, and throughout this past summer and fall,
there's been a lot of talk about the heaps of food that goes to the
skips/dumpsters and ultimately the landfills of our countries. We've
all heard the words "Food Shortages" and even casual comments
regarding "Rationing." Meanwhile, others went quietly about
supplying fresh, wholesome food to buyers of their own farm-produced
products without such negativism. With its beginnings in the UK in
1997, enhanced by the continued improvements on internet E-trade,
direct farm-to-consumer trade has become more popular. With the
advent of the internet and development of E-Commerce, creative
pioneering groups of producers in the UK have been marketing their own
produce directly, successfully to their consumers for many years.
Long ago, I advocated buying fresh food and vegetables from local
Farmers Markets in the USA....enabling folks to meet, greet and get to
know their food producers on a first-hand basis. That concept has
grown significantly these past five years. Obviously, it has appeal
to those who patronize their own Farmers' markets, where in-season
"fresh" or home-reared and processed is absolutely the best-tasting
food there is.
When we stop and consider the foods we buy at our grocers' stores, the
price we're forced to pay is often several hundred percentage points
higher than what we pay for the local produce. To add to that cost
is the cost of processing, refrigeration, packaging, storage and
distribution, notwithstanding the costs of advertising and marketing,
over and above normal costs of doing business, which adds
significantly to the cost of foods. Finally, those purchases are
taxed at the point of sale, often-times exceeding the initial price
paid the actual producer of the raw ingredients used to build the
final product being purchased.
Let's consider this for a moment. A handful of grain is produced on a
farm, hauled from the field to a depot, stored, moved to a rail car,
to another storage facility, off-loaded again, then stored again,
commingling that handful with millions of other "hand fulls," only to
be reloaded again and taken to a mill for processing, stored again,
then loaded to be taken to the company to produce their cereal or
bread or beer. Once the product is made, it is packaged, boxed or
packed, reloaded and hauled to a distributor, off-loaded again, stored
again and then distributed to a retailer. There it is off-loaded
again, the boxes are opened, the product stocked on shelves from which
we as customers can buy it. And so it goes, until the sell-by or use-
by dates occur. Sure enough, the little package of bread or cereal
gets yanked off the shelf, removed from the store and straight to the
dust bin/trash barrel or skip/dumpster.
It's no wonder that food costs have risen significantly this past
spring and summer! Yes, the raw ingredients rose significantly, to
the actual benefit of some farmers and ranchers, but so did the cost
of their inputs of seed, fertilizer, fuel and equipment. Once
acquired, processors added to their ingredient cost, passing that
directly on to the consumer.....their profits didn't diminish, as
reflected by numerous quarterly financial reports. Again, especially
in the USA , the silent beneficiaries of these higher prices were the
local and state treasuries, as VAT/sales tax revenue gained for those
government entities far exceeds the cost of the base ingredients of
any processed food we purchase.
Now consider and ask yourself if that's the end of this tirade. My
answer is flatly "NO!"
All that withdrawn product is now WASTE. WASTE thrown into garbage
bags, empty boxes, sacks, plastic bags, plastic wrappers, styrofoam
trays along with all the related empty containers for cleaners,
disinfectants, cups, glass, cans and other containers in which these
products may have been packaged. Heaps and heaps of WASTE. Don't
forget, just because some produce turns brown, has darkened leaf tips,
bruises, punctures or other blemishes, or meat that darkens naturally
with age, doesn't mean it's gone rotten or bad; many of those thrown-
away fruits and veggies are still perfectly good and could be used to
benefit people or animals and their nutritional needs!
Today, we read statements made by UK and European leaders regarding
the supply and retailing side of food production on
http:www.warmwell.com:
November 7 2008 ~Curvy cucumbers and funny shaped fruit to make a
comeback? "We cannot continue to waste this much food before it even
leaves the farms.."
Sainsbury's said last week that "bonkers" EU restrictions prevented it
from launching a Halloween range of misshapen fruit and vegetables
that would have been up to 40 per cent cheaper than the standard
alternatives in stores. The range was pulled because EU regulations
make it illegal to sell forked carrots or onions that are less than
two thirds covered with skin. Sainsbury's Sue Henderson said, "We're
not allowed to use up to 20% of what's produced in this country and in
the current credit crunch climate, we cannot continue to waste this
much food before it even leaves the farms."
EU agriculture commissioner, Mariann Fischer Boel, does want to change
many of the dafter rules. She is quoted by the euobserver.com
"I can't stand it any longer to be confronted with the curved
cucumbers. I want to end this debate, that the EU is regulating
everything into the details. My immediate reaction was to get rid of
it all. But I have met stiff opposition in the member states. Mainly
due to massive lobby from the retail and whole sales business, aiming
to keep the standards"
If EU ministers are blocked over approval of such relaxation of rules
the decision passes over to the EU Commission. This would make it
possible for Mariann Fischer Boel to pass her proposal with effect
from July 2009.
November 7 2008 ~ Perishable goods stranded at ports because of credit
squeeze
Australia 's farmonline.com reports that "beef and lamb exports are
starting to pile up at some international ports because importers
can't afford to pay. Stories are trickling back to Australia of
importers being refused credit and reluctantly reneging on contracts,
leaving tonnes of mostly perishable goods stranded in countries like
Russia , South Africa , China , India , Italy and the Middle
East . .."
As the site says, the real hurt from the global financial crisis might
just be starting to hit exporters and farmers - not to mention those
countries that need to import perishable foodstuffs. See also food
security page."
What dismal news! Here we have perfectly good food ingredients being
thrown away because of legislation and warped-thinking rules or
regulations, whilst good food safety rules get overlooked and over-
ruled by the very institutions that have been assigned the caveat to
insure "food safety."
Here in the United States and Canada , millions of pounds, yes,
MILLIONS of pounds of beef, pork and chicken has been recalled because
of contamination of E-Coli, Listeria and Salmonella bacterial
outbreaks. That's just plain terrible WASTE! Oh, and I cannot
leave out the fact that wholesome fresh fish was viewed being dumped
back into the ocean, after exceeding more crazy EU-imposed quotas this
year. Another blatant WASTE, only this time it was the ocean that
served as the skip/dumpster A most convenient method of disposal,
but hardly acceptable! After all, why incur the expense of catching
more than one's quota, just to dump the catch back into the ocean with
perfectly good fish that catching has doomed to die?
While on the subject of WASTE, let's not forget to mention the loss
of hundreds of thousands of sheep, cattle and birds resulting from
their annihilation by culling policies of the UK
government....millions of tons of WASTED food protein occurred because
of refusal to vaccinate for such diseases as Foot and Mouth and Avian
Flu.
We all have our own nutritional needs to meet. We have a moral
obligation to do what we can to reduce our own WASTE. If the
Environmental groups want to focus on Waste, they could do the world a
favor. Waste Reduction and Containment should be our new priority.
What a shame to be an animal or plant to be grown, cultivated,
harvested to end-up unused, totally wasted in a skip/
dumpster........and we tell ourselves, we are "civilized." Even our
cave men ancestors did better at utilization of their resources than
our societies do, today.
We can do better than we've been doing, that's for sure.
Gary Burkholder
Abilene, Kansas USA
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