Only Reconnect - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 111

Americans move house, meaning that an average American moves 14 times
in a lifetime. Homes have become commodities, and you trade up when
you can at the cost of losing some sense of permanence. Even worse, this
promotes a distrust of those who do remain in one place for a lifetime,
who are, as Tall puts it: 'often interpreted as being unambitious, unadventurous - a
negation of American values' . More worryingly, the meaning of place is
changing. It is increasingly something that is centrally designed and
created, rather than accumulated over time. Inevitably, this means increas-
ing disconnection from local distinctiveness and nature, resulting in places
coming 'to mean proximity to highways, shopping and year-round recreation, rather than
natural situation or indigenous character' . 28
Countering the Shrinking Food Pound
At the turn of the 21st century, farming cultures are now in crisis all over
the industrialized world. How can this be? How can an industry showing
extraordinary growth in productivity, and sustained over decades, have lost
public confidence owing to persistent environmental damage and growing
food safety concerns? The food that is supposed to sustain us is now a
source of ill health for many, and the systems that produce that food
damage the environment. This can no longer be right.
Once again, the devil is in the detail. One of the reasons why many
farmers struggle is that the proportion of the food pound or dollar that
is returned to farmers has shrunk. Fifty years ago, farmers in Europe and
North America received as income between 45-60 per cent of the money
consumers spent on food. Today, that proportion has dropped dramat-
ically to just 7 per cent in the UK and 3-4 per cent in the US, though it
remains at 18 per cent in France. 29 So, even though the global food sector
continues to expand, now standing at US$1.5 trillion a year, farmers are
getting a relatively smaller share. Over time, the value of food has been
increasingly captured by manufacturers, processors and retailers. Farmers
sell the basic commodity, and others add the value. As a result, less money
gets back to rural communities and cultures; and they, in turn, suffer
economic decline. A typical wheat farmer, for example, receives 6 cents
of each dollar spent on bread, about the same as for the wrapping. But if
farmers are receiving such a small proportion of the food pound and
dollar, what happens when they sell directly to consumers? Do their farms
and landscapes change for the better?
Jan and Tim Deane were the first farmers in the UK to sell vegetables
directly to local consumers through a formalized box scheme. Their
12-hectare smallholding in Devon would barely register as a field on a