Asking Yourself: ‘Where does my food come from?’

The biggest question to ask about your food is: Where did this come from? And that begins the telling of the story.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan

With Firefly Fields, we are on a mission to contribute to a growing awareness and movement to support the environment, the people, and sustainable family farms by creating a more direct link to the consumer.

With 450 diversified acres, our family farm, the Jennings Family Farm, is able to produce a LOT of whole, organic food – capable of feeding many individuals and families. Over the years through many rotations on the farm, you may have seen organic spelt, rye, oats, buckwheat, hard red spring wheat and soft red winter wheat, soybeans, black beans, yellow corn, white corn, Hopi blue corn, black Aztec corn, red corn, alfalfa, clover, hay, honey, beef, and we continue to tinker and adjust. We value and incorporate the direct, face-to-face feedback we get from people who actually eat the food we grow – often impacting the types and varieties of crops we plant year-to-year. On top of having mixed crop rotations, we use integrated management systems that include cultural, mechanical, and organic methods to handle pests, and feed the soil with cover crops and composts to avoid synthetic chemical pesticides and fertilizers. It may sound simple, but we cultivate fields and crops that are safe for people and animals to move and live in, that replenish the underground biota, and provide nourishing food we enjoy at our own table. …shouldn’t that be the norm?

The way we farm as a family at Firefly Fields is different from the industrial food complex. While we acknowledge the industrial food chain may provide some efficiencies, abundance, and cheap food, it does so at a heavy cost that as a society, we are unable to completely quantify over space and time. We know that the miles of monocrops, chemical fertilizers, processing plants, redundant and long-distance transportation, are detrimental to the environment, people’s health, the farmer, and the family farming economy. On our farm, we do not use chemicals that require large amounts of energy to produce, pollute soil and water, and cause human health impacts. Today, increasingly as land is bought up or ‘acquired’ from smaller family operations and swallowed into the dark hole of large, faceless, industrial agricultural systems, the local wisdom, connection, and reverence humans have with and for the land is further diminished and more deeply removed with each generation. This removal and disconnection from the land as a society is most concerning.

Another big question to ask might be: Did you or your children grow up knowing and helping a farmer or farm family with picking rocks, harvesting strawberries (or other crop), pulling weeds, milking cows, etc. at their farm?

At every cog in the food machine…something is lost beit the nutritional value, environmental and human health quality, and the number of family farms that are able to keep their doors open. Much of this cheap food lacks the nutritional density that a small organic farm family dedicated to the land can cultivate and replenish (see Building a New Foundation). The goal for industry is more often focused on the quantity produced and less so on how it is produced. Additionally, industrial produced food uses a lot of energy and resources, emits a variety of pollutants, and pays the farmer just a few cents of every food dollar spent. And to top that off, consolidation in the food system is also concentrating management decisions into fewer hands.

After peaking at 6.8 million farms in 1935, the number of U.S. farms fell sharply until the early 1970s. Rapidly falling farm numbers during the earlier period reflected growing productivity in agriculture and increased nonfarm employment opportunities. Since 1982, the number of U.S. farms has continued to decline, but much more slowly. In the most recent survey, there were 2.00 million U.S. farms in 2022, down from 2.20 million in 2007. Similarly, the acres of land in farms continue its downward trend with 893 million acres in 2022, down from 915 million acres ten years earlier. The average farm size was 446 acres in 2022, only slightly greater than the 440 acres recorded in the early 1970s. SOURCE: USDA, Economic Research Service

For example:

• Four firms control 85% of the beef packing market; 82% of soybean processing is controlled by 4 firms.  (1)
• The top four food retailers sold 45% of America’s food in 2016, compared to only 15% in 1990.  (2)
• Large-scale family farms and industrial nonfamily farms (the same thing in our opinion) account for only 5% of farms, but 63.8% of production (in $). Small-scale family farms represent 89% of U.S. farms, but only 17.8% of production. (3)
• IMPORTANT: In the U.S., large-scale family farms gross annual cash farm income of $1 million or more. According to USDA (2012), average number of acres for small farms = 961 acres; midsize = 1582 acres; Large = 2926 acres; Very Large = 4673 acres
• Consolidation of farms, food processing operations, and distribution warehouses often increases distance between food sources and consumers, which mean more energy consumption. (4)

How food is grown, processed, transported, and eaten impact nearly everything. We are learning as a people that the choices we put on our plate not only impact us individually, but also on a local community and even global level – reflecting our voices and our values for how we want our society and environment to benefit. So as we ponder and consider, what we can do to make a difference the Center for Sustainable Systems has a few recommendations:

• Eat Local
• Eat Organic
• Eat Less Meat
• Reduce Waste
• Use Less Refrigeration

Ultimately, I think a key to awareness that leads to action then adoption of behavioral change is to ask yourself at every meal: ‘Where did this come from?‘…Do you know the geographical location of the field the food was grown? Is the food in season or shelf-stable, or has it been transported for miles and miles with refrigeration? Do you know the type of farm, organic or conventional, small family or large-scale industrial? Do you know the faces of the people that grew the food? Can you go to the farm and see it for yourself? Is the food whole or has it been highly processed? Once you start asking yourself these questions, you start to truly know the story and understand your role in it.

Sources:

1. USDA, ERS (2016) Thinning Markets in U.S. Agriculture.

2. USDA, ERS (2021) “Retail Trends.”

3. USDA (2022) America’s Diverse Family Farms.

4. Heller, M. and G. Keoleian (2000) Life Cycle-Based Sustainability Indicators for Assessment of the U.S.
Food System, The University of Michigan Center for Sustainable Systems, CSS00-04.