The readings assigned for this week focus on the
relationship between urban centers and the food that supplies them. Looking at
today's modern city, it is hard to envision the city as a once an urbanized
space where people, food, and livestock coexisted. As the city continues to
grow, agricultural production has been pushed further into the hinterlands.
Unless consumers live in an agriculture based town, consumers have become
separated from the production of food, relying on technology and large trucks
to stock our shelves. Refrigeration has allowed cities to push food further and
further away with little (visible) With separation, food has become less fresh,
less authentic, and shockingly--less expensive. Although my wallet may
disagree, Steel (2013) poses that "we have never spent less on food than
we do now; food shopping accounted for just 10 percent of income in 2007, down
from 23% in 1980."
When considering present food
systems within the United States, distance to agriculture is not the only
variable that differentiates it from our earlier food system. Markets were once
places where life happened, a place where community was created and sustained--all
centered around the presence of food. Today, the place where we buy our food
looks a lot different. We have added refrigerated walls, sterile aisles, and
neatly packaged goods with long expiration dates. Although this has aided to
the convenience of shopping, it has greatly removed the social networks that were
once embedded in the shopping experience. As the presence of super markets
such as Whole Foods, Trader Joes and Publix dominate the city, those without
access to them are left deserted.
Places like The Borough Food
market offer a glimmer of hope—some places within cities have committed to
authentic food. Although the presence of markets has recently grown, the price
of food is greater to those of the ‘super’markets. Steel argues that “the price
one pays for real food, made in traditional ways is the real cost—opposed to
the artificially low prices we have gotten used to paying for industrial food.”
How do we reconcile the fact that we spend less on food than ever before, yetpeople are still unable to buy fresh, affordable, and fair food?
How do we make these prices
affordable for people who are unable to purchase food offered at farmers market
prices? Especially those who may not qualify for SNAP?
Hi Melanie, I think you've summed up the readings well here, and I like that you mention the social aspect of food shopping in your post. I agree that there were once important social networks formed through interactions within traditional market places. The rise of supermarkets have affected city-dwellers in many ways, and sometimes the more social aspects, like being able to talk to the people who grow your tomatoes or butcher your meat, as well as neighbors and other members of the community, seem to get overlooked. Farmers' markets still offer the chance to create and maintain those relationships, but to many it seems like these are more of a novelty, not a way to consistently feed yourself, and I agree that price has a lot to do with that. The ability to acquire most of one's groceries at a farmer's market on a regular basis is a luxury that few can afford, and they're typically run seasonally anyway.
ReplyDeleteI understand the concept that in order to eat higher quality foods people should be willing to pay what it's worth (which seems difficult considering people are so used to paying less for most products than the real cost of producing them), and maybe if a greater number of people behaved that way these fresh foods would be more affordable, but truthfully, I can barely afford to feed myself shopping at supermarkets as it is.