Food Sovereignty: Freedom from Regulation? From the Food Safety News:

With some fanfare, Sedgwick, a town of about 1,000 residents, passed the Local Food and Community Self-Governance Ordinance unanimously at a town meeting. In essence, the ordinance says food grown, produced, or processed locally is exempt from any federal or state laws that require food sold to the public to be prepared in licensed facilities open to government inspectors.

…Can they do that?

The short answer is no. The slightly longer answer is that the declaration raises issues of the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution, which gives federal law preeminence, and a state’s police powers to protect the public welfare through regulations such as building codes or environmental safeguards.

Well, despite my Northern roots, I fully believe in states’ rights. Sure, the Constitution is the law of the land… but heck not even the feds are keeping it, only when it favors their side. There’s nothing in the Constitution that gives the federal government the authority to control and manage the food supply in the country, no way. And the Bill of Rights (10th amendment) gives the states the right to manage affairs that are not enumerated in the Constitution. Not to mention that the feds should be doing a HECK of a lot more inspecting all that foreign food supply rather then slapping Aunt Martha for her banana bread she sells at the auxiliary club.

Nonetheless, the federal government is pretty powerful…. to thwart even their unConstitutional grabs for power can have dire consequences. They just may send in the OxyElite Pro Force or something, lol!

But if the town really wants to make things in their community more “home grown” without federal agents picking through their banana bread, maybe they could change their tactics. Hone in on the “food sold” part, as is stated in the story:

federal or state laws that require food sold to the public to be prepared in licensed facilities open to government inspectors

What if the town made all local food exchange a barter system? You know, Aunt Martha’s banana bread for Old Charlie’s eggs. Do those transactions fall under food safety laws? It’s not like anything is being sold…

Or how about community gardens? Share and share alike?

You know, part of the problem with all these laws and regulations is that Americans don’t interact within communities anymore. There’s a cold distance between folks, and the government has become the intermediary. Towns that don’t like to live like that need to realize this– you just can’t kick out government intervention, you HAVE TO BOND together in communities like the olden days. And bonding may mean that you GIVE things away and volunteer and share. It’s the money transactions that spur the regulations, I’d think.

Anyway, these are just a few thoughts. I study history, especially social history– how people interacted with each other in the past. One of the reasons for America’s greatness was the closeness of the community. But today, who even knows their neighbors?

So I think I’ll be relying on farmer’s markets this year. I’m not terribly enthusiastic about it… there are no farmer’s markets in my local area (so it requires traveling, which is not terrible), and I’ve noticed that prices there are not much lower than the supermarket prices (but the farm food is fresher). Still, I can always make our visits an adventure for the kids and a way to get out of the house away from the work. I think we’ll enjoy it. We’re DEFINITELY going blueberry picking in July. My kids have been eating tons of blueberries, which I buy frozen in the store. $10 a bag! The store should be sending me Paper Culture thank you cards for all the money they are getting from me. Sheesh. So we’re going to pick fresh berries like mad, and I’m going to freeze all our pickings.

Picking berries, years ago.

More good news is that my apple tree is blossoming like mad this year. We had blossoms last year, but a nasty frost killed them and we got no apples. I pray we get a good crop this year.

I also picked up some discounted blackberry vines from WalMart. They look a tad sickly. :S Here’s hoping I can just plug them in the back garden and get them to grow. I love blackberries.

How about you? Do you have any plans for the summer gardens? I had such high hopes of a massive veggie garden, and an herb garden, and grapevines and berry bushes… but I don’t even know if I can tolerate living here anymore. We experience devastating flooding all too often. I just don’t know.

I’m so proud of them.

My apples are producing, too– we have the MacIntosh and JonaGold varieties in the yard. The bugs seems to be getting to them first, but I’m hoping I can get enough for a few pies yet. Be prepared to pack some diet pills, because I’m getting ready to cook– meals AND desserts! Mmmm. I’m compiling a bunch of autumn recipes, so stay tuned!

Many local and real food advocates chafe under commonly higher prices, not realizing that in fact, much of this higher price does not end up in the farmer’s pocket. It is rather siphoned off as regulatory expense to comply with asinine government regulations that either do not scale down to smaller producers, or are outright capricious and inapplicable.

Last year, here at Polyface we entered the mandatory Workman’s Compensation (WC) world when we passed our third employee. This is a state mandated program administered by a private company. I’m not sure about all the arrangements, but there’s virtually no competition. After our insurance agent filled out all the paperwork he could, he set up a three-way phone interview so I could finish the loose ends. “Only 15 minutes,” he assured me. It took an hour and the questions were outrageous when applied to us.

Our interns and apprentices, who receive free room and board plus a modest stipend in return for their education, had to be treated like employees. On our farm, we integrate cattle, pigs, and poultry to such an extent that these different types of animals are in the same area and everyone handles chores for all of them. But in WC land, employees must be segregated between “Beef and Pork” or “Poultry.” They can’t mix. The risk actuarials are different so they must be separately categorized.

The real kicker was a delivery driver who takes frozen meat and eggs to the restaurants and home customers. Since we’re a farm, we can’t have such a delivery driver. The only delivery driver we can have is a live animal hauler–highest risk in the book. If we were a delivery service, we could have a low-risk delivery driver, but that’s impossible with a farm. Farms don’t have those kinds of employees.

Bottom line: our little farm operation is paying more than $10,000 a year for government-mandated Workman’s Comp using an assessment system written for Tyson and Cargill. It’s absurd. And immoral. Guess who pays that huge cost? The customer. In a thousand different ways, this scenario plays out across the local food movement, arbitrarily and capriciously prejudicing the price. And that, dear friends, is the main reason why local food is more expensive.

One of my favorite bloggers runs a dairy farm in Montgomery County, NY: Northview Diary. It’s a beautiful and personal journey into the life of the rural Upstate NY farmer, loving the farm life but struggling– often with tears of frustration– about the burdensome government regulations and problems with bureaucrats. Our farmers deserve much better.

We are seeing Big Government take over the food supply. This is frightening to me, knowing full well how Big Government blunders and butchers its way through people’s lives. It is high, high time to grow, buy, and sell locally– to grow one’s own food as much as possible and to support the local farmers as much as possible.