Will Perspectives About Farming Change Now?

As this opinion piece in CalMatters illustrates, now more than ever, the importance of a stable food supply is a national priority. We can live without many goods, but not without food, and not all that well without healthy foods. Here on the Central Coast, the downturn in the foodservice market has taken a disproportional negative toll on the food supply chain, from buyers to farmers, suppliers, food processors and those directly dependent upon restaurant, hotel, and school consumption to enable the movement of produce from farm to table.

COVID 19 has clearly shown us that the food system is a major part of our nation’s critical infrastructure. Failure is not an option for agriculture. Success is the only way forward to keep our citizens fed and our nation strong.

Yet, efforts have long been underway to limit our success. Farmers and the California food production system are often labeled as “Big Ag,” greedy and uncaring industrial-scale mechanisms. These labels dismiss the fact that farmers live, work and raise their families in our communities too.

For example, farming operations on the Central Coast are asked to accept and comply with contradictory regulations that force land out of production and reduce employment to attract wildlife where food is grown despite food safety risks. When farmers want to build housing for agricultural workers, they’re prevented from accessing streamlined permitting tools, let alone approval and clearance through some jurisdictions, to support the construction process. Farmers are told that housing for H2A guest workers or domestic farmworkers, isn’t the “right type” of housing development.

And where the costs of operating a farm in California have risen due to increased regulations as well as rising labor costs, the price of food in the U.S., on average, has had little to no change for decades. The message to farmers is: keep producing, produce more with less land and production tools, comply with more regulations but we will keep paying the same, or sometimes less. The we is all of us.

Many people are wondering how this pandemic will influence changes in our society. We are hoping it lifts a spotlight for the 98.5% who haven’t had to wonder where their food came from and increases awareness and appreciation for the 1.5% who got it to the supermarket. Many other nations don’t have the luxury of so few feeding so many. We hope we emerge from this pandemic with a renewed respect for our farmers, our farmworkers, our processors, and all the people throughout that chain who make it happen every day.

We have challenges ahead of us to continue supplying safe and healthy fruits and vegetables amid pandemic pressures. As the CalMatters commentary so aptly begins, “Some say the coronavirus crisis changes everything. It should change our complacent and sometimes hostile attitudes about agriculture.”