How to buy better food

Why do we always talk about buying from farmers near your place of business, your home or near place of use? Because the reason vegetables become expensive is not their cost to produce, it’s the cost of transportation. With low availability of cold chain solutions like refrigerated vans, cold storage and the like, 50 percent of these vegetables will go to waste when they reach Balintawak or the bagsakan or depot where wholesalers go to buy in bulk, repack and resell to supermarkets, groceries and even delivery apps. With 50 percent of the produce gone, the trader now doubles the landed cost of said vegetables. Your P10 pechay instantly becomes P20 (net yield after waste) plus cost of transport.

When I buy a P100 papaya from Cavite, the same size fruit would be P190 in supermarkets in Metro Manila. Multiply that margin of P90 for fruits, vegetables and other essentials and you have burgeoning cost of groceries or market budgets. But that extra does not go to the farmer. It goes to transport cost.

And because transportation costs a lot, farmers will make sure they are cost efficient by making sure their vegetables are perfect, at least when they leave their farmgates. To ensure they are in perfect shape, they will need to spray them with pesticides or preservatives to prepare them for the long ride to Manila from say, Benguet. Tomatoes are actually shipped while still green and the trader hopes that through the long journey they will turn semi-red when they get to the depot or bagsakan. So think about it, are you not better off buying tomatoes that are already red when you get them? Or pechay with some holes because they are organically-grown? Taste your tomatoes.

Next cost is cost of seeds and cost of fertilizers. Seed dealers sell mostly hybrid seeds, which produce well under variable weather conditions. The downside is that farmers cannot replant the seeds and they have to buy seeds again and again. The solution? Open Pollinated Varieties (OPV), not hybrid, which give the farmer sustainability because he can keep saving some fruits and replanting its seeds again. They may yield lower or yield optimal amounts of produce when grown organically, but they taste way better than the commercial kind. So do farmers have a choice? They do. They grow the better ones for their own consumption and sell to traders the commercial traditionally fertilized kinds which you, the consumer, are used to anyway.

Give yourself the taste test. Try a blind taste test on Organic vs Traditional. Train your senses, train your taste towards what is tastier. Only you can tell the difference when you taste it. Use pechay in nilaga, tinola and any recipe calling for clear broth. Then use organic pechay in one and commercial in another pot. Do the taste test. Why clear broth? Because other recipes like karekare and pinakbet may hide their true taste profile. But a clear broth will reveal the difference in taste.

The cost to refrigerate. We are still using non-earth friendly refrigerants like freon because the new high tech eco-friendly state-of-the-art refrigerants are more expensive. Further, there is still a dearth of cold chain players and the ones who are present in the market are using old technology that they tooled up for and will need to be depreciated over time. For this reason, lobbyists will block new technology until such time that the investments of the old tech have been adequately depreciated. Meanwhile, we will continue to contribute to greenhouse gas emissions because of these refrigerants.

Though the technology is already available to switch to earth-friendly cold chain systems, we will have to wait until big business is able to recoup its investment. It’s the same story for electric vehicles and solar power. Until they have recovered their investments, we the consumers wait while paying expensive electricity or fuel bills.

This is why Slow Food is pushing every consumer to be more conscious about our broken food system. Farmers are under the spell of Big Agri, traders and consolidators have no choice but to save on cold chain systems and continue to use “non airconditioned” trucks and jeeps to transport fruits and vegetables…therefore we continue to have food waste and the cost of all these produce become double. So are you still wondering why your pechay tastes like gas even if you pay a high price for it?

If the system does not change, then we the consumers must adapt. The work around is to buy closest to point of use as possible. I buy fruits from Cavite where I am most of the week. I buy vegetables from friends who grow them organically. And my seafood from a neighbor on our Viber community. He gives me freebies when I complain, he has incentives and treats for customers who show off their food prepared with his fish or shellfish. It’s a community of like-minded fish-loving people.

Buy local. This means buying from the source. My vegetable supplier (of what I don’t grow in the farm) delivers three times a week and my neighbor and I pool our orders for one delivery charge.

Our ECHOfarmacy now supplies me with fresh herbs that I can serve as mint or tarragon tea. I also send herbs to my Vietnamese food supplier and what comes back to me are full meals of my favorite Viet specials. We barter and have fun. My herbs for her food.

If you have a food business, rather than buy retail, establish a relationship with a farmer or group of farmers. You both win with lower landed cost and better quality if your farmer producer is sure of his or her market.

So why is our food system broken? Because tradition dictates that Big Agri sells pesticides and fertilizers to get you cheaper food. But is it really cheaper in the long run?

It’s also broken because we have not used technology to make supply chains better. Because lobbyists and unenlightened politicians continue to support big business of traditional agricultural systems in the name of food security.

But we can all help by buying local from a farmer who we know and this may be the start of a quiet revolution to change the way we eat.