Apocalypse is upon us! Buy local!
No, that’s not a bumper sticker (though it could be . . .). Neither is it an alarmist forecast. The state of the worsening worldwide economy has become so . . . normal, one no longer needs to cite any sources to prove it. We’re all becoming too familiar with layoffs, benefit reductions, see-sawing consumer goods prices, and a stock market with personality issues. The entities faring best in this situation, of course, either cater to a demographic that (historically speaking) will remain unaffected by earnings flux or offer strategically price-deflated goods via mega-franchises that are often not, shall we say, . . . fairly traded?
So why buy local? Sometimes it costs more. In certain areas, seeking out local vendors is a challenge, and then traveling to their places of business consumes time and fuel. Most Fair Food Fighters are probably already familiar with philosophical reasons to support a local market, so calling for a renewed campaign to support local trade would simply make this another voice in the choir.
So, let’s not do that. Let’s be selfish here. After all, it’s the apocalypse.
What do I mean by that? Are there zombie hordes gathering to harvest your brain? Sadly, for we horror film fans, no. Has nuclear fallout given rise to a federally un-represented demographic of radioactive mutants? Again, no. What about the rise of New Ethnic Empires or secessionist city-states or hysterio-mayhem? No, no, and again, no. We haven’t seen so much as a horseshoe of the apocalypse, much less the mystical beasts and their horrific riders themselves.
So what am I talking about? Well, in my spare time, I teach courses on apocalyptic literature at a nearby university. Let’s condense sixteen weeks of sleepy classroom attendance, unfair paper writing assignments, and more reading than you’d care to sign up for: an apocalypse is simply a series of events (usually "bad") that engenders what we in the biz call a paradigm shift. That is to say: things suck repeatedly on a massive enough scale to change the way we think about life, the universe, and everything. An apocalypse (the secular version, anyway) doesn’t have to burn the entire world. Largely, when they do occur, they’re localized. I’ll give you a moment to think of a few examples we’ve seen in recent years. . . .
Caught up? Let’s move on. Apocalypse is definitely the new thang. It’s everywhere: movies, books, television, video games (both computer and console, for you connoisseurs), fictional internet blogs. CNN, Fox News, MSNBC. We’ve got apocalyptic songs and apocalyptic politics and apocalyptic "End of All Things, Half-off for the End of the World" retail close-out sales. If you don’t think The End of the World as We Know It is in the zeitgeist (a five-dollar word for the spirit of the age–you’ll thank me at your next Scrabble game), fair enough: how’s Walden Pond treating you?
So what has any of this got to do with food? Are we seeing riots? Not yet . . . but what’s the full impact of the 2008 Midwest Floods going to be upon yield? How about the recent drought in the Texas Panhandle–you know, the one as severe as the early days of the Dust Bowl? What about the states that are running out of unemployment aid?
That’s all to say things can get worse. Sure, fuel prices are down, which lowers the cost of shipping price-deflated goods to the Mega Marts I mentioned up above. But as more of us lose jobs, there’s less money exchanging hands. That’s a problem. We can argue supply and demand until we’re all blue in the face, but it don’t mean jack when you don’t have the cash to even enter the discussion.
Buying local food is an investment. No, don’t worry–it’s not going to disappear overnight and leave you wondering about retirement and college tuition. Supporting local food ensures that you have a sustainable (buzzword!) market at hand. Look at it this way: if the only folks buying local are you and a dozen comrades from the co-op, fine. Though unrealistic, this model might work swimmingly . . . as long as everything stays the same. But, what say that inflation spikes, more people are laid off, and fewer and fewer dollars trade hands? Mega Mart now carries too much overhead, some supply lines aren’t worth filling, and shipping just ain’t what it used to be.
Pop!
Now you’ve got, say, two thousand people looking for a viable alternative for their grocery needs (not you, you’ve already cultivated your retro victory garden, right?). Can your dozen-faithful-supporters local supplier absorb that kind of rush? No way. Now you’ve got real supply and demand on your hands.
But what if, say, half of your town had already been investing in this sustainable local foods model? Local farmers and ranchers have expanded like a Thanksgiving waistband to accommodate this. They’ve hired local workers, they’ve got new spinny chairs in the offices! But, they’re not paying for unnecessary food miles. They’re not paying for warehousing. They’re not waiting, like the Mega Marts, to see which down-turning franchise districts are draining funds from other stores. Best of all, they’re better equipped now (in our hypothetical situation) to absorb greater demand, when and if it hits.
And what’s better, when the zombie hordes do arrive, at least you’ll already know where to shop.
You’re right, Darin, and I like the way you put it: We’re experiencing a variety of apocalypses and have been for years.
The biggest apocalypse in my mind is the destruction of rural America — you know, where the food is. Work by Ken Meter of the Crossroads Institute really opened my eyes to this (the word apocalypse literally means unveiling or revelation, after all) — we are mining our most producting farming counties with factory farming, driving the price down to absurd, unsustainable lows, exporting or dumping the product internationally, and then selling subsidized fast food back to the people in those regions because they can’t afford to buy locally grown real food (jobs pay nothing — thanks CAFO owner — and local/organic is expensive yuppie chow, right,?) Consequently, in real dollars, and Meter has the research to back this up, rural America’s economy is worse off today than it was in the Great Depression. Literally. At least in the 1930′s, rural America was experiencing low single digit growth. Today, it’s negative. No growth. That’s the apocalypse.
I was talking to a farmer who remembers selling product in La Crosse, WI, back in the late fifties, running the delivery route with his dad. Back then? They had 45-50 stops. La Crosse, of course, was never a teeming metropolis, but back then there were little groceries on every corner and every restaurant bought some local food. Today, this same farm makes less than 5 stops in La Crosse.
Point being, rural America use to have a self-sustaining local economy. But the supermarket chains, grocery manufacturing, and factory farms all consolidated to the point that small farmers like my buddy (and most of our farming parents or grandparents)Â got thrown under the Big Bus in the post-WW2 expansion. America streamlined them right into oblivion.
The apocalypse was two generations ago — we’re just still feeling the after shocks.
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