Are America’s food quality problems a function of our size?

And if so, then what?

In early October, my wife, one son and I spent some time driving in rural & semi-rural France: Bayeux, St Mere Eglise, Senlis, etc., in a visit to the Normandy invasion beaches.  I’ve traveled to every state but Alaska, camped all over the American West, but previous trips to Europe have been business-related; I’ve not before traveled outside major European cities other than by train or plane. Hence, many of my observations were new to me.

Driving in and between these towns and villages, one notes their size and that they are surrounded by farmland, observations that raise domestic behavioral questions.

Basically, the distance from one village to another is about twice the distance a man can walk with his team of draft horses to work the agricultural land around his village. One radius from Village A, meeting a second radius from Village B. Because it rains so often , this land is quite productive of agriculture.

Because Europe has been settled for so long and was settled long before the Industrial Revolution brought mechanization to agriculture, these villages and surrounding farmland are unchanged since medieval days.

This gives rise to two thoughts: why farmers have such political power in Western Europe; and why their food is both of higher quality and lacks the chemicals - mostly some form of preservatives - found in American food.

Browsing down a village Main Street filled with trailers from which are sold everything from roasted chicken to vegetables, fruit, poultry, fish, beef, etc., the food bought by the villagers is caught, slaughtered & aged, and harvested / picked within a day or a very few days of sale and consumption.

This fresh produce & protein  then is transported a few kilometers and sold, fresh, each morning, to customers expecting farm-fresh food availability every day and lacking large pantries or large refrigerators - and the behavioral habits to make them useful - to prevent spoilage. The daily schedules include time for this shopping and bringing home this fresh food.

Shoppers - both commercial restaurant and home - are accustomed to buying fresh food for their kitchens and tables on a daily basis. Preservation is not an issue. Even in larger cities - Paris or Brussels, for example, food quality is expected to be similar to that found in Bayeux, and their farm-to-table infrastructure built to meet those expectations.

Contrast this with America. Our food often is grown over a thousand miles from us and must be transported without spoilage. Much of our produce is modified to create the thicker skins or tougher fruit needed to put - literally - tons of it, without damage, into semi-trailers as it is mechanically harvested.

Our size has resulted in our food being grown at a significant distance from our kitchens, in flour being milled at a distance, and, even if baked into bread locally - or in the nearest metro, which may be a hundred or more miles away from us - it then is packaged and shipped to a supermarket in which it might sit for days before being purchased and moved to a pantry by a shopper who, because of pantry and refrigerator space, shops only once every week or two.

Although some cities that have been around for a while (NY, CHI, SF) have small local markets in addition to the supermarkets found in newer metros such as Dallas, Denver, Atlanta, Los Angeles, etc., and their suburbs, the supermarket is the primary food retail point for nearly all Americans.

The distance, distribution and buying habits of the American food shopper differ drastically from Europeans, as do expectations for fresh food and the ability of the food production and distribution infrastructure to meet those expectations. A supermarket miles away differs significantly from a Farmer’s Market to which one can walk and from which a day’s fresh food can be brought home by that walking shopper. Our supermarket infrastructure may require preservatives …

This seems an unrecognized problem.

I grow the vegetables and fruit I can in raised beds in my backyard; this is an interesting hobby, but by no means can an average suburban back yard provide what it takes to feed a couple, let alone a growing family, nor is there time for most to do so.

We bake much of our own bread. Before we moved from CA to AZ, we had hens and fresh eggs daily in Glendora, a suburb of Los Angeles up against the San Gabriel Mountains. I spent summers as a kid and in college working on a small family ranch in the Sierra Nevada mountains in CA, and have gathered eggs and milked cows daily, slaughtered and butchered my share of cattle, hogs, and fowl, and picked bushels of corn, beans, peas, lettuce, squash, etc.

I like and enjoy fresh food and am all-in on RFK Jr’s MAHA.

But … Can America really remove the preservatives allowing our continent-wide food distribution system and wealth-induced pantry and refrigeration space and both adults in a family working, allowing-dictating-habituating supermarkets and food that can withstand days or more than a week in transport, on shelves, in cabinets… before consumption?

Will our food distribution system need to be massively altered to be healthy again? Who’s going to pay for that?

Will our shoppers modify their shopping days, schedules and habits to ensure higher-quality food?

If all we do is to remove preservatives, who will deal with the huge amounts of spoilage and wasted food money as this transition takes place? Will the waste end the transition?

Unless the shopper is also not a member of the 9-5 workforce, when will that shopping be done? Will shoppers spend an hour at a daily or every-other-day Farmer’s Market before heading to their cubicle at 9:00am? Where will they park their cars as they do?

If the middlemen are removed, futures aren’t bought, and farmers can’t invest in seed or breeding stock…

How would a Farmer’s Market - or Markets - be run for a metro the size of a NY, LA, Dallas or Chicago? Who is going to move their farm to the outskirts of Houston or St Paul or Seattle? Or alter their eating habits and preferences to exclude what cannot be locally grown?

Will farmers alter their habits and schedules, cutting-out the middlemen, buy their own trailers, convince food regulators that fresh beef, fish and vegetables sold out of a trailer designed for just that, are acceptable?

Will the FDA, even under new management, work with this distribution and retail? One can find a Farmer’s Market in most American cities today; Phoenix has several. But produce is one thing. I’ve seen nothing like the trailer-based butcher shops with fresh beef, pork, fish, shellfish at any American street market. This is at least as likely due to the FDA as it is distance from the source… but updating the FDA won’t move Waco, TX., or Sheridan , WY closer to the ocean…

A whole host of questions must be asked & answered, habits changed, distribution altered, to get fresher food onto our tables.

Is anyone having these discussions?

It seems naive to assume that removing preservatives is something that can be done without massive alteration of every part of our food system, from farm location to pantry to table.

Reality must drive our expectations. Ensuring higher quality food is nice - but can we provide it?