Are You a Food Snob?

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Current agricultural policies, which deliver cheap food via staggering taxpayer-funded subsidies to large industrial-scaled farm operations, are driving family farmers and the stable rural cultures they once supported to extinction. The public's growing interest in organic and locally grown foods is actually one of the few bright spots on the horizon for small farmers and small towns.

Little of this cheap food produced on megafarms finds its way to starving people in the Southern Hemisphere. Muller discovered that the top three recipients of U.S. agricultural exports are Japan, the European Union, and Canada, and that none of the top 10 are nations considered undernourished. “We produce food for people who are able to pay for it, and sometimes use food as a strategic political tool, but do not produce food out of moral obligation.”

Since most of what winds up on U.S. supermarket shelves is heavily processed and packaged, poor families see little savings on their food bill. Low prices paid to Iowa farmers make very little dent in the cost of corn flakes on the South Side of Chicago. “Processed foods are a lot more expensive than organic whole foods,” notes Jim Slama, president of the Chicago-based environmental advocacy organization Sustain, noting that farmers' markets, buying clubs, and community gardens can provide low-income people healthier food at lower prices.

Eager to settle once and for all the matter of whether he was a food snob, Mark Muller turned to the dictionary, which defines snob as “one who tends to patronize, rebuff, or ignore people.” Industrial agriculture seems to fit that definition far more than organic growers and natural foods shoppers. Industrial agriculture rebuffs family farmers and ignores obvious health and environmental concerns. And it's nothing short of patronizing to try to pass off tomatoes you can bounce off the floor and strawberries that taste like globs of dried toothpaste as nutritious and tasty.

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