The high price of cheap food
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houses, which cost about $150,000 each and hold about 25,000 birds. A 1995 survey by Louisiana Tech University found that the typical grower had been raising chickens for 15 years, owned three poultry houses, remained deeply in debt and earned about $12,000 a year. About half of the nation’s chicken growers leave the business after just three years, either selling out or losing everything. The back roads of Arkansas are now littered with abandoned poultry houses.”

Concerned about illegal immigration issues? Then you should know that America’s supply of year-round, inexpensive fresh produce depends on vast numbers of illegal aliens. Not all growers use illegal aliens, but using them is so preponderant that it drives down prices overall.

Many live in virtual slavery. If that sounds exaggerated, consider the words of Douglas Molloy, chief U.S. attorney for the south Florida region that supplies as much as 90 percent of America’s fresh tomatoes from December to May. In Gourmet Magazine’s March 2009 issue “when asked if it is reasonable to assume that an American who has eaten a fresh tomato from a grocery store or food-service company during the winter has eaten fruit picked by the hand of a slave, Molloy said, ‘It’s not an assumption. It’s a fact.’” He says his district is “ground zero for modern slavery.”

The Gourmet article tells the story of a Guatemalan illegal, Lucas. His employer/landlord cashed his checks, deducting for room and board (the “room” was the back of a box truck without running water or toilet). Showers from a backyard hose cost $5. If Lucas inquired about his balance he was beaten. If he was sick or too exhausted to work, he was kicked in the head, beaten and locked in the truck. On Nov. 18, 2007, after two and a half years, he saw a gap in the truck’s ceiling and punched his way to freedom. Officials say he was deprived of over $55,000.

Lucas’ case is not unusual; since 1997 law-enforcement officials have freed more than 1,000 people in similar situations. They believe those represent only a fraction the problem: “Frightened, undocumented, mistrustful of the police and speaking little or no English, most slaves refuse to testify. ‘Unlike victims of other crimes,’ said Molloy, ‘They hide from us in plain sight.”’

Competition from countries with even lower wages and less regulations makes keeping prices low critical for conventional farmers.

China currently supplies “the preponderance of our apples, garlic and, very soon, potatoes,” says Terra Brockman, executive director of The Land Connection, an Illinois nonprofit that “envisions community-based food systems in the Midwest in which every farmer has the opportunity to grow food in a sustainable manner, and every person has the choice to enjoy local and organic foods.”

The Land Connection’s vision: “Every farmer has the opportunity to grow food in a sustainable manner, and every person has the choice to enjoy local and organic foods.”

She cites economist John Ikerd’s prediction that an OFEC (Organization of Food Exporting Countries) will arise with “even worse repercussions that OPEC. We can live without oil; we can’t live without food.” A growing disillusionment with, and awareness of the hidden costs of industrial agriculture has made sustainable and/or organically grown products the fastest-growing segment of the food industry. And advocates for sustainable food have, for the first time, found a place in federal government. Most prominent is Kathleen Merrigan, the USDA’s No. 2 official.

Merrigan has a background in environmental planning and policy, and has worked as a senior analyst for organizations promoting research and education in sustainable agriculture and within the USDA. Still, advocates of industrial agriculture, such as the American Council on Science and Health, are fighting tooth and nail against any shift away from “conventional farming.” The ACSH calls itself “a consumer education consortium concerned with issues related to food, nutrition, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, lifestyle, the environment and health.” Associate director Jeff Steir recently took the Obamas to task for