The Economic Pamphleteer: Why not food-based communities?

During the late 1990s, it appeared to some of us that by the 2020s the industrial food system might be largely replaced by a sustainable food system (Ikerd, 2008). By then it was clear that the industrial food system was not ecologically, socially, or even economically sustainable. The number of farmers markets was doubling every 10 years (Sauer et al., 2022), and organic food sales, growing even faster, doubling every three to four years (Greene, 2014). In less than 50 years, the local food systems of the 1940s had been replaced by the industrial food systems of the 1990s. It seemed logical that by the mid-2020s, the industrial food systems might be replaced by more sustain­able systems of food production and distribution. That now seems highly unlikely, if not impossible. Nevertheless, the sustainable agri-food move­ment has persisted despite minimal support from government programs and passive-aggressive opposition from the “industrial agricultural estab­lishment .”[1] A special issue of this journal in 2016, entitled Short Supply Chains, featured articles focus­ing on potential alternatives to industrial food systems (Hilchey, 2016). However, the articles revealed more challenges than successes. In an Economic Pamphleteer column in 2020, I ques­tioned whether the local food movement was just another food fad or the food system of the future (Ikerd, 2020). Large agri-food corporations had co-opted the organic food movement, and the growth in farmers markets, community supported agricul­ture operations (CSAs), and other local food op­tions had seemingly slowed or leveled out. [1] I count among the “industrial agricultural establishment” the American Farm Bureau Federation, corporate agribusinesses, and agricultural commodity groups.