What is the Future of Our Farm and Food Landscape?

I picked Syracuse to win the NCAA basketball title this year, so I am feeling pretty good about my crystal ball. But here's a much harder question than picking a tournament champion - what will our food and farming system look like in 25 years? Are we at the dawning of a new era of small scale, local organic agriculture? Or are we instead likely to continue on a path of larger, more industrialized farms with food transported even further distances?

It will take 25 years for us to really answer that question, but here are my prognostications. Of course, nothing is inevitable. Thirty years ago people may have assumed that rivers catching on fire and nuclear power were inevitable. Organizing has a way of changing those perceptions. We can change food policy just as we've changed environmental policy.

Organic agriculture will continue to thrive. This is an easy one. Once a consumer gets "hooked" on organic foods they rarely look back. The infrastructure for organic foods is increasingly well developed. There is now even an organic price index at www.newfarm.org. With organic corn and soybeans selling for twice the price of their conventional counterparts, farmer interest will continue to increase.

But there's probably a limit to the growth that consumer preference can advance. I have an uncle who honestly thinks that if you don't have chemicals on your food then you're with the terrorists. He is not going to change his mind no matter how many health studies and taste tests attest to the benefits of organic.

Consumers also have the problem of making their food preferences known in our prepared foods/dining out society. It's easy to choose organic when shopping at the Wedge. It's not so easy to make that choice when dining at your local Mexican restaurant, even in Minneapolis. And it will be a long time before a traveler can ask for the organic selection at a roadside diner in the rural Midwest.

Providing consumers with the option to buy organic will continue to be a challenge for the organic foods industry, particularly with the resistance of many of the major food conglomerates. Policy tools such as incentives or mandates for organic production - which several Scandinavian countries have adopted - may be one vehicle. Regardless, there is plenty of room for growth for years to come.

Local foods are the next big thing. Local foods are preferable to well traveled food for plenty of reasons. Buying local helps the region's economy, reduces transportation and greenhouse gas emissions, and may have more nutritional value because they are fresher. Food safety and agro-terrorism concerns also entice people to buy food from known sources. But one reason stands far above the others - it just tastes better. That same uncle of mine who would never consider buying organic food can't get enough fresh local tomatoes and corn when they are in season.

Apparently a lot of other people feel that way also. A University of Nebraska study found that taste is the number one criteria when people are choosing between brands or products, even higher than quality or price. A recent University of Minnesota study found that consumers are willing to pay a higher premium for locally grown, even higher than for organic.

So the consumer demand is there, but a couple of big hurdles have to be jumped - weather and logistics. Minnesota winters make local fruits and vegetables hard to find for much of the year and that seasonal variation keeps the food distributors more interested in maintaining steady supplies from places like California.

Consumer demand is driving increased interest amongst farmers, distributors and researchers to find a way to supply local food. An increasing number of farmers in northern climates are using greenhouses, sources of waste heat and other innovative ways of lengthening the time of harvest. Imagine if the research and investment that went into bringing us iceberg lettuce, hard tomatoes and flavorless strawberries from California were instead directed to finding sustainable methods of lengthening the season for Minnesota crops.

Some farmers and marketers are also working to reclaim the regional pride and tradition in certain foods. Whether it's artisan cheese, fresh peaches or Cajun seafood, creating a food identity allows a region to become something more than another outlet for chain restaurants. This is increasingly seen as a valuable development tool.

Many farms will get bigger and more industrialized. If the organic and local food movements continue to grow, it will certainly help diversify Midwest agriculture. But much of the Midwest will remain dominated by corn, soybeans and other feed grains. Given the very low profit margins for these commodities, many farmers are left with little choice but to get bigger. More horsepower, genetically modified crops and other technologies provide the tools to farm more acreage. Most of these crops are then fed to larger and larger livestock farms.

Many of us think that this system is not sustainable in the long-term. Yet what I have come to appreciate is the ingenuity used to overcome cracks in the agricultural system. For example, the industry continues to find ways to circumvent the problems of concentrated livestock. Antibiotics and other medicinal supplements are used to overcome disease and other health issues. Altered feed rations and new manure handling technologies are used to reduce the manure pollution from concentrated livestock. These temporary fixes may last for a long time.

The long-term impact of these quick fixes, however, may be even larger catastrophes. Just as building higher floodwalls can mitigate floods but make the problem worse downstream, we're building a food system with less tolerance for unusual events. Mad cow disease, foot and mouth disease, ineffectual antibiotics, the release of uncontrolled genetically modified material - any of these issues could have devastating consequences. The lack of diversity in our food system makes the damage from potential catastrophes all the greater.

Much of our food system will get more global. The growing hog industry in North Carolina provides a good demonstration of some of the changes in our food system. Only a few years ago North Carolina farmers raised hogs with North Carolina grain, much of it grown on their own farms. But because of the growth in the industrialized hog operations, farmers needed to import grain from the Midwest, which made Minnesota farmers happy. In the past year, however, the North Carolina hog industry has built a coastal port to receive Brazilian soybeans. In certain times of the year, Brazil now has the ability to produce and transport soybeans to North Carolina cheaper than the Midwest.

We are just beginning to see this growing trend toward a global food system. In recent years, agribusiness corporations have increased investment in Brazil, Argentina and China while also closing processing plants here in the Midwest. These corporations understand that the cheap land and labor in these countries results in cheaper commodities. With the low cost of ocean transportation, it may not be uncommon to have Brazilian soy and Argentinean corn feeding North Carolina hogs that are subsequently exported to Europe. We truly know much more about the production of clothing on our bodies than we do about the food in our bodies.

So if these trends continue as expected, then our food system will get more local and organic while also getting more industrial and global. Does this make sense?

We will likely see the growth of two parallel food systems. One will be utilized when consumers buy at farmers' markets, food co-ops and directly from farmers. The other food system will thrive with the consolidation in the grocery industry and the emergence of superstores such as Wal-Mart and Target. Unfortunately, this lends itself to a disjointed community, where people don't shop in their neighborhood but at the regional superstore or at the health food store across town. Over the course of several decades - or perhaps rather quickly after a food system crisis - I believe the local food system will re-establish itself as the primary food system.

I look forward to reading these projections 25 years from now to see how far off they were. Of course, all of us, through our organizing, policy advocacy and purchasing choices, have the ability to help make our desired food system a reality. I'll also keep track of how many times I pick the eventual NCAA basketball champion. I pick Syracuse every year. I'm from that area and I choose my basketball team like I choose my foods - local.