This week I spoke with John Ikerd, about The State of Our Food System in Light of the Pandemic!

John Ikerd is a Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics at the University of Missouri in Columbia. We discussed how the pandemic has brought to light many of the problems with our current food system, from the huge Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO’s) to the mechanized industrial factory farms. These large operations don’t have the ability to adjust their production to accommodate a pandemic. They run like a well oiled machine, and it can not stop. They are set up to slaughter animals of a certain size, and if the animal gets too big, they don’t fit in the mechanized processing plant. Dairy farmers need to milk their cows, whether or not there is a market for their milk. Processing plants are set up to package a certain size container, and can’t switch their machinery to accommodate the pandemic.  The whole industrial food chain is dependent on nothing changing, and this pandemic has caused everything to change.

What we need, and what is working during this pandemic, is a local food system that is resilient and able to adjust to market changes. It is the local farmer that is delivering boxes of food to their customers. It is the local farmer supplying the farmers market, and it is the local farmer working within it’s community to build relationships that help to sustain us all.  We need to support the local, sustainable farmers who are growing organic food, building the soil, minimizing waste, and caring for animals in a humane way.

John has been around long enough to see the impact that our industrial food system has had on both the farmers and the land, and he is strongly advocating for us to wake up and push our government to support policies that are resilient, local, just, and environmentally sound.

If you missed our interview, you can listen to it here.

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