More than one billion pounds of milk are shipped annually to
Concentrated food production, with food shipped long distances from farm to processor to consumer, is increasing for beef, pork and produce as well as milk, he added. Vegetables have been found to travel an average of 1,546 miles before ending up in midwestern consumers’ shopping carts.
Vickers proposed that states and communities encourage local food production. That would decentralize the food systems thereby reducing its shipping distances and vulnerability while providing economic stimulus to local communities. Vickers is assisting a group of
Vickers also noted that industrialized food production requires cheap labor, cheap grain, cheap water and cheap fuel. “We can’t count on these in the future. Water is already in short supply in the west,” he noted.
Vickers was selected as a Food and Society Policy Fellow in 2001. That program is administered by the Thomas Jefferson Agricultural Institute in partnership with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, with primary support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
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