Bob Comis

Expanding access to real food.

Owner of New York based Stony Brook Farms., Apr 04, 11.

Tagged with health, food, nutrition, economics

A couple of years ago at a farmers market, a woman approached my stall, a little apprehensively. She looked old and beaten down. Her face was weathered and worn. Her hands looked rough and gritty. But, it was clear that she was younger than she looked. Her clothes were poor. Her jeans were worn thin around the knees and had faded spots of dirt here and there on her thighs. Before she even said a word, I imagined a life of hard work and hard times for her.

She came over to the stall and without looking up at me started looking over the meat case, and then after a moment, she fingered the edge of the price sheet for a moment and then picked it up to take a closer look.

As she looked, I waited, without saying anything, wondering how things were going to go. I had long ago stopped stereotyping people. Yes, I had imagined a hard life for her, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t willing to pay half a day’s wages on pasture-raised, local pork, or grassfed lamb. I’d been surprised by too many people to make that mistake again.

She carefully placed the price sheet back on the table and placed the small orange wee-bee little pumpkin paper weight back on top of it.

Then for the first time, she looked up at me. I smiled.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hello,” she said, and then as we looked at each other silently for a moment, I was taken very much by surprise. Her eyes quickly welled up with tears; one slipped out and slid slowly down her cheek. She raised a hand up and wiped it off. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Don’t worry about it,” I replied.

“It’s just ... it’s just that I am so frustrated.”

I didn’t say anything. It was clear that she wanted to speak her piece.

After a moment, still with tear-filled eyes, she said, “You know, I want ... ,” she wiped another tear away, ” ... I want so badly to stop eating grocery store meat. It’s terrible. Terrible for you. It tastes terrible. It’s all full of crap, hormones, drugs, and God knows what.”

I nodded.

“But this,” she said, sweeping a hand over the meat case, “I just can’t afford it, any of it.”

...

I believe I have an ethical obligation to find a way to provide real food security for people of limited means. Nobody should have to cry because they can’t afford real food, which is one of the reasons I want to sell my pork in Price Chopper.

Of course, real food security is not only about developing infrastructures to make it possible to get local meat into supermarkets like Price Chopper. There is cultural work to do as well, including changing the “race to the bottom” supermarket mentality. Supermarket executives and managers need to be convinced of the value of supporting farmers by paying decent prices for non-industrial meat, and in turn, taking less of a profit margin to keep the prices down to help provide real food security. That is asking a lot of large corporations acting in competitive markets.

Is it too much to ask? The corporate mantra is that all that corporations do is give customers what they are asking for. So, let’s call them on it. Let’s start asking for broadly affordable local/regional meat that supports our local/regional farmers by compensating them fairly.

No more tears. Real food security is an ethical imperative.