Cycle of Food Poverty

The other day I was reading a post by Stonehead, and thinking how it relates to food available to me here in Amsterdam and my own family Thanksgiving plans.

At the supermarket, which is more important, quality or price?

This was the question I was asked in a survey recently.  Indeed, like Stonehead mentioned in his post, here in The Netherlands most people are saying price is more important now.  This is mentioned from time to time in the media here.  The bad economy is taking it’s toll everywhere, and everyone is trying to save money on food at the supermarket.

What really gets me however is the black and white nature of this question.  You must choose between A and B.  You must accept the underlying logic that if you pay more you will get higher quality, and conversely in if you pay less it will be lower quality.  You have to accept that all food comes from the supermarket.  You have to believe the price you pay for your food at the cash register is the true cost of production.

In my case for example, more than 80% of my food comes from the local farmers market.  Most of what I buy at the supermarket are non food items.  Thanks to the structure of food subsidies, what I buy at the market is generally cheaper, and also of much better quality in my opinion.

So think about answering this question in terms of purchasing a roll of kitchen paper towels.   If I choose the 19 cent roll over the 29 cent roll, does that mean I’m choosing price over quality?  Is this a quality or a marketing decision?  Am I giving up something by buying the scratchier, less absorbent and unbleached paper?  In this case at least, I don’t see any advantages in buying the more expensive item, and in fact prefer many of the qualities of the cheaper one.  In fact, I’m dissatisfied with the quality of most of the paper towels in the supermarket.  In fact I’m dissatisfied with the quality of most things in the supermarket.  How can anyone assert I’m choosing quality over price?  In the end, I’m buying what the supermarket chooses to sell me.

Even if I buy food at the supermarket, I always have the same feeling.  There’s hardly ever any quality available for purchase, and the idea of paying more money to get something better is not sensible.

In fact, another study in The Netherlands recently showed people who go to discount supermarkets in order to save money, don’t really end up saving any money in the end.  This is because where they might save money on a specific item, they make up for it by buying something else they don’t need or at too high of a price.

Thanksgiving Turkey

Okay, on to Thanksgiving.  I live in Amsterdam, but all of my family is in the US.  This year we’re going to visit family for the Thanksgiving holidays.

In fact we frequently visit family for Thanksgiving, and there’s often tension over the food.  Steph and I are vegetarian, and most of the others don’t have any real idea of what a vegetarian meal consists of.  If we do nothing, we’ll be served specially prepared vegetarian bread stuffing cooked apart from the turkey and a spoonful of cranberry sauce, and the topic of discussion for the entire meal will be that it doesn’t look like we have enough to eat and do we like the stuffing they cooked specially for us?  If we cook our own meal, it comes under intense scrutiny and the subject of ongoing negotiations.  There will be 9 other non-vegetarians at the meal to share with.  If we cook something too tasty we will be in competition with them for our own dinner, and if we cook too much vegetarian food it will be our fault for flaunting our own food over that of the others and making too many leftovers that get wasted.

Then comes the topic of the Thanksgiving turkey.

As I’ve done the last few years, I’ve suggested getting a fresh turkey from a local small farmer.  It was pretty hard to find these turkeys a few years ago, but they are becoming more common in the US now.  These have to be ordered some weeks in advance, and I offered to look around for one.  Since Steph and I are the vegetarians, it’s not for us, so it’s nothing that’s being forced on anyone.  It’s just an offer.  Of course a fresh turkey needs to be basted as it cooks, and will come out a little drier, because it’s not injected with all the juicy chemicals of a Costco Butterball turkey.  It will cook a little differently, and doesn’t have the built in plastic thermometer, so you have to use a normal meat thermometer.  The cost?  Well, I looked into this, and the larger sized turkeys from a local farmer were nearly $200.  $200 for a turkey?

Well, $200 for the turkey is too much, and if it doesn’t cook or taste right, dinner will be ruined.  It might taste weird.

Steph and I are spending something in excess of $2000 for our plane tickets, hotel, rental car and so on.  The two other families coming are spending pretty much the same; they don’t have as far to travel but are with kids.  It’s honestly more than any of us can afford, and a huge waste of fossil fuels.  It upsets me a little every time we make the trip to the US.  $200 for a turkey is too much?  I might have even been willing to pay for it, if it truly came down to the cost.  I think as much as anything, it’s more sort of meat eaters versus vegetarians thing or something.

It doesn’t bother me.  Steph and I are the vegetarians.  It was just an offer.  It’s their meal.  We weren’t going to eat it anyway.  DO I SOUND ANNOYED?!

The Tesco £1.99 Value Chicken

Stonehead mentioned this in his post I linked to above, and a few years ago this triggered a wave of protests across Europe over cheap chicken in supermarkets.  There’s hardly a supermarket left that dares to offer chicken at that price around here.

Basically what happened was factory chicken farms were starting to become more common in Europe, and Tesco could make more money off selling the cheapest chickens, and so stopped selling the others.  Basically, the whole factory farm industry was very heavily subsidized in the first place.  They buy feed from subsidized farmers, transported with subsidized transport and so on.  The farmers then raise the birds very intensively and inhumanely, in very unsanitary conditions, ignoring all safety and environmental considerations.  But then, after all that, by selling to their customers in volume, Tesco is in the position to demand the farmers lower their prices below their cost of production.

What’s really important here, is besides quality, health and safety issues, this is all only possible because of the massive government subsidies and policy support behind it.  In fact, this is the most expensive and energy intensive way to raise chickens.  It’s also the most unhealthy for people, chickens and the environment.

Since this consumer revolt never took place in the US, this is very much the model behind how poultry is raised there.  It might not seem like it to consumers now, but $200 is not all that an unreasonable price to pay for a turkey.  Paying the ‘real’ price for a Costco Butterball turkey in the US would likely be many times it’s actual sale price.  It wouldn’t surprise me if the actual, unsubsidised, cost of a Butterball turkey were closer to $500 or more.  Local and small farmers have to unfairly compete against this.

The Subsidies

The EU spends about half of their budget on food subsidies, and the proportion in the US is similar.  It’s true the US has spent a lot of money on bank bailouts and wars recently, and this probably dwarfs food subsidies.  Under ‘normal’ circumstances, food subsidies are one of the largest, if not the single largest, government expense in the US.

Not only do governments subsidize their own food production for their own people, but a large portion of foreign aid costs are because trade policies first destroy local agriculture, then make them dependent on food aid.

So as Americans get ready to vote, and many other countries are debating solving their budget problems through cuts or taxes on the middle class or wealthy, think about this.  In most places, the largest part of tax burden is disproportionately on the lower incomes.  Of the money that is collected in taxes, the bulk of it will go to subsidize food.

The food that’s produced with these subsidies is the most expensive and energy intensive food in the world to produce, and will be sold at the lowest price to people who can’t afford anything else.  Either that or it will be given away as food aid.  It will be distributed in a way that disadvantages farmers, but benefits the larger supermarket and distribution chains, food and agricultural companies and other patent holders, owned by the wealthiest people.  It will in turn create a dependency on more cheap subsidized food, resulting in more taxes and more energy consumption.

Many people think in the era of austerity measures that if government spending is going down, it must be going down on food too.  This is simply not the case.  This is government spending the wealthiest don’t object to, because it’s a tax on the poor and middle class, that primarily benefits the wealthy.

So the next time you go shopping at the supermarket, ask yourself the question. Which is more important, quality or price?