Sustainable farming in Arizona: Do You Want to Depend on Foreign Countries for Your Food?
By Kevin Rogers, Arizona Farm Bureau President
Did you know that Japan must derive more than 60 percent of its daily calorie intake from imported food. Right now, the Japanese are experiencing dramatic food price increases and running into shortages in some basic food items. Are you comfortable with such a scenario existing in our country?
I farm in the Phoenix area. My family grows alfalfa hay for the area’s dairies and the families that raise horses and other livestock in and around the city. And, the cotton I raise produces cotton seed oil that can be found in the vegetable cooking oil you and I get from the grocery store. I am part of Arizona and American agriculture that produces for our local market. My farming neighbors produce milk, vegetables, citrus, beef, lamb, pork, eggs, nuts and much more.
Fully examine production agriculture in Arizona and the rest of the country and you’ll conclude that it’s critical to keep the 2% of the U.S. population that farms busy producing food. It’s why I’m involved in Arizona Farm Bureau.
Farm Bureau is a non-profit, non-partisan, non-governmental organization that is run by farmers and ranchers to represent agriculture before local, state and national policymakers. We are a lobbying organization at all levels of government to ensure the continuation of a viable, safe, healthy and reliable agricultural industry in the United States. American Agriculture faces many challenges because we operate in the global marketplace. Many of the countries we compete with do not have the same costs of regulation, taxes and labor as America.
Arizona Farm Bureau’s mission is to help Arizona and American agriculture stay competitive in this global marketplace. If American agriculture’s costs to produce food and fiber exceed what other countries can do, production of agricultural goods will shift to other countries. This isn’t good for you and me and America in general.
Japan proves that it’s not good for any country to be so largely dependent on other countries for their daily food needs. When food prices rise, as we’re currently experiencing, countries with large food imports often see their food costs rise twice as fast with larger increases. While we’ve seen Arizona food prices at the grocery store grow nearly 19 percent overall in the last year, Japan has been forced to watch food prices increase more than 30 percent in the same time period. Purchasing one cantaloupe for $40 in a Japanese grocery store doesn’t appeal to me.
Surveys and focus groups Arizona Farm Bureau has recently done tell us people do not want to depend on foreign sources for their food. They compare that to our dependence on foreign oil and the recent contamination issues with China.
Not only are you concerned with foreign production of our food supply, you’re actually asking for more locally-grown products. Webster’s Dictionary declared “locavore” the “word of the year” for 2007: Eating locally produced food supplied by local farmers.
We’ve geared up for the locavore movement. Your Arizona Farm Bureau website www.azfb.org has a listing of local growers with whom you can purchase food. Click on “Fill Your Plate.” We also regularly update our listing of local farmers’ markets.
But beyond what we do to highlight the local agriculture market, it’s important to support American agriculture. In the United States, imported food makes up anywhere from 13 to 15 percent of the food Americans consume by volume, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. This percentage is likely to increase.
If we don’t support American agriculture, we’ll place our self-sufficiency at a perilously low level, where a rich nation relies too much on foreign supplies to put food on the table.
Editors Note: Kevin Rogers is president of the Arizona Farm Bureau and a member of the American Farm Bureau Board of Directors based in Washington D.C. The Farm Bureau has nearly 18,000 members in Arizona and over 6 million nationally.
Key Words: Arizona farmers and ranchers, food security in Arizona, local Arizona agriculture, Organic Arizona agriculture, Food Safety in Arizona, sustainable farming in Arizona.
