Affordable Food

Valerie Everett

As the recession trudges on destroying everything in its wake, the news channels are ablaze with a term that has been used to describe different situations in underdeveloped countries.

Food insecurity

Food insecurity is the state in which people live in hunger or with the fear of starvation.  Food security, on the other hand is when all people (within a particular region) at all times, have physical, economical and social access to safe nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life (fao.org definition)

The price of gas at the pump has risen by 38%  in one year (data) which means that anything that comes to us from somewhere else will cost more because of fuel prices. In the recent past, oil companies have reduced the price of gas a little to assuage the general population in the United States one in six who believe it is not the actual price of gas that increased, but the greed of oil corporations and speculators of gas prices.

There is an argument that food insecurity in the developed World arrived long before the recession and increase in gas prices. If food security means access to safe nutritious food for a healthy life, then the increasing bulge of the collective waistline of these countries is an indication that food security might be more complicated than was first imagined.

At the grocery store, healthy nutritious food, void of any harmful antibiotics and pesticides is the most expensive food and is usually one small section of the store. Many communities do not have stores with organic/non-GMO sections. More and more consumers at the store lean towards this food, opting for the "less is more" principle where nutritional value and safety trump abundance.

As a response to this need local farmers and local farmer groups have come together to provide organic nonGMO produce for their communities at prices that rival grocery store prices. If one thing was exposed by the documentary Food Inc., it was that large farms tend to be controlled by large corporations that impose unsafe food practices merely to provide the population with more food. The only way we can return to having more options and cheaper nutritious food is by returning to local farmers who have safe, globally conscious  and responsible farming practices.

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