Garden freedom

Watch this video: Michigan Woman facing jail time for her vegetable garden

I can hear my neighbor mowing his five acre, chemically enhanced, monoculture front lawn right now, at nearly 9 pm on a Friday.

My favorite part of the video is when the government official defines "suitable." We must all be lawn-loving lemmings in America!!

Farm to Consumer Legal Defense

First off - did you know there was such a thing as the "Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund?" I'm sad to think of the circumstances that led to its creation. How uncool is it that in AMERICA we have the need of a fund to defend farmers who want to sell their products to people.

Last month they did report on something pretty cool though. Three towns in Maine have voted to adopt the Local Food and Self-Governance Ordinance (pdf). I'm not a fancy lawyer or constitutional scholar that gets paid lots of money to determine the legality of the ordinance, but it basically has the groundbreaking audacity to say that farmers can sell food directly to their neighbors without having to navigate a system of rules, regulations and licenses.

In other words, farmers don't have to pay the state and conform to the arbitrary (and often costly) whims of bureaucrats to earn a living.

How novel, eh? It's like people want freedom in America. Crazy stuff.

The preamble is rather pretty:

We the People of the Town of (name of town) , (name of county) County, Maine have the right to produce, process, sell, purchase and consume local foods thus promoting self-reliance, the preservation of family farms, and local food traditions.

We have faith in our citizens’ ability to educate themselves and make informed decisions... We support food that fundamentally respects human dignity and health, nourishes individuals and the community, and sustains producers, processors and the environment.

Though I didn't ever meet them myself, I feel as if this is really one of those things the founders of this country would say is a pillar of America. Small farmers selling pumpkins to their neighbors without the state inspecting their pumpkin fields and demanding that there be an accessible toilet outside of the house and at least 50 feet from any pumpkins that is cleaned 5 times a day by a certified and licensed toilet bowl cleaner.

An argument in favor of less government for better food...

The post is about the causes of perceived elitism in locally-produced small scale food, and adds to this outlook I have that the government will always favor the big guys at the expense of individual citizens. Food "safety" laws are far less about safety and far more about providing an advantage to the industry.

Is the Local Food Movement Elitist?

I [an individual farmer] can produce a gallon of milk from my barn for about $2.40 in hay, grain, amortized goat costs, and a tiny chunk of my mortgage payment....That's not too bad - my local Stewarts is advertising milk for 3.80 per gallon, so I could sell a few gallons to my neighbors and offset some feed costs, without costing them more, maybe even save them some pennies.

My friend Judy, who runs a dairy, observes that it costs $9 for her to produce a gallon of goat's milk. Now why the difference? Why does it cost her $9, which isn't even remotely competetive and me $2.40? Well the main difference is that she had to get set up to sell her goat's milk. She had to put in a bulk tank, build a barn to specifications, put in the second septic system between the milk room and the barn septic, add restroom facilities (even though her house bathroom is three steps away), and pay 16,000 dollars for pasteurizer.

As I'm adding up my costs, I don't have to count any of those things.

Of course, the big difference is that Judy *can* legally sell her milk, and I can't. In order to sell milk, I'd have to build the milking parlor, get the bulk tank, run power to the barn, and buy the 16K pasteurizer. Nevermind that for someone milking 6 does, this is ridiculous overkill - them's the rules. And look, my organic milk now costs $9 gallon - and gee, isn't that elitist, to think that ordinary people can afford organic *milk!?!*

The local food system is elitist in large part because it is forced to be. Others have documented the ways in which small producers are discriminated against - the way subsidies favor large producers, the way externalization of pollutants favors people who don't actually live where they produce their food. Joel Salatin in _Everything I Want to Do is Illegal_ carefully documents ways in which beaurocratic regulations have nothing to do with food safety - and indeed, the system that produces the 1,000 cow hamburger can't be said to be primarily focused on keeping eaters safe.