ROOTING FOR AMERICA’S ASPARAGUS FARMERS

We’re thrilled to be co-hosting, along with Screening Liberally, a showing this evening of the award-winning “stalk-umentary” Asparagus! If I were a film critic, my blurb for Asparagus! would be “Hilarious and Heartbreaking!” This saga of how the War on Drugs is destroying American asparagus farmers is funny, tragic, and infuriating, documenting our government’s demented decision to use our tax dollars to pay Peruvian farmers to grow asparagus instead of coca.

This strategy has done virtually nothing to stem the production of cocaine, but it’s nearly wiped out the family farms of Oceana County, Michigan, where the farmers are struggling to compete with cheap imported asparagus.

We here at Eating Liberally pride ourselves on providing tasty and topical food at all our events, but a fall screening of a film about a spring vegetable poses particular logistical challenges. Needless to say, there’s no locally grown asparagus this time of year. Sure, we could buy fresh asparagus at Whole Foods, except that it’s from Peru, which is, like, the whole point of this film.

Ah, but what about frozen asparagus? After all, everyone knows frozen’s the next best thing to fresh, right?

So I could get a 12 ounce bag of asparagus spears from Trader Joe’s for only $1.99, except that, it’s from, of course, Peru. How about Whole Foods? They’ve got 12 oz. bags of organic asparagus spears for just $2.29! Too bad they’re from China.

If you’re willing to pay more, Whole Foods also stocks 9 oz. boxes of organic asparagus from Cascadian Farms for $3.99. Why is it more expensive? I have no idea, because it, too, is from China.

There is only one source for American asparagus, and that’s good ol’ Bird’s Eye. My local supermarket sells their 10 oz. packages for $3.99, the same price as Cascadian Farm’s Chinese asparagus. OK, so it’s not organic, but if ever there were a situation where local trumps organic, this is it. I mean, if it weren’t for Bird’s Eye, these Michigan farmers might be out of business altogether.

Consumers are clearly willing to pay more for organic produce. When will food manufacturers figure out that we’re willing to pay a premium to get fruits and vegetables that are domestically produced, too? Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods are no doubt compelled to source their foods as cheaply as possible. But those low prices don’t reflect the cost of transporting imported foods to our store shelves, not to mention the toll our globalized food chain is taking on our farmers.

Why can’t more companies offer us grown-in-the-USA frozen produce so that those of us who are lucky enough to be able to spend a bit more at the market would have the option of supporting American farmers? And even if you aren’t particularly patriotic, you might be happy to pay a bit extra to get food that’s not made in China. Or South America, at our expense.

Sometimes it seems the only thing we manufacture in the US these days is an appetite for cheap consumer goods and crappy processed foods. Most farmers who grow “specialty crops”--the USDA’s pet name for fruits and vegetables grown for human consumption and deemed unworthy of the largesse the USDA bestows on commodity crop farmers—can’t make a decent living off their land and have to take second jobs off the farm, which is also the only way many of them can afford health insurance.

I don’t know what the solution is, but as Asparagus! so ably shows, the answer is not to pay Peruvian farmers to grow asparagus, unless the question is, “How can we destroy our own farmers?” Three cheers for Bird’s Eye for being the only brand that can say “Product of the USA.” My boxes of American asparagus spears also say “please call us with comments at 1 800-563-1786…or visit our website at www.birdseyefoods.com.” I’m going to call them just to say thanks, on behalf of the fine folks of Oceana County, the former asparagus capital of the world. And thanks, too, to the filmmakers of Asparagus! for spreading the word about our endangered asparagus spears! Now, speaking of spreading, I’ve got some hors d’oeuvres to prepare…