Saving rural economies one farmers market at a time?

NPR ran this interesting story earlier this month (the broadcast is available here). The U.S. Department of Agriculture has launched a pilot program that enables participating farmers markets to accept food stamps as part of its “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” program. Not only that, but the food stamps are worth twice as much at the farmers markets than elsewhere.

While President Obama has been an outspoken supporter of the slow food movement and changing America’s eating habits, many questioned his appointment of Tom Vilsack as the Secretary of Agriculture due to his supposed agribusiness leanings as the governor of Iowa (think corn subsidies). Today, however, Vilsack is calling for a “diversification of agriculture” — and this pilot program is a small step toward changing how food is produced and distributed in the United States.

And Obama, Vilsack and the USDA are certainly bringing a visible change to Washington.

One participating farmers market, the White House Farmers Market, which, as the name implies, is just steps away from the White House, is the first market of its kind since Thomas Jefferson was in office. And, so far, vendors are reporting positive results:

"I have seen women walk by with extremely expensive St. Johns suits, and then all of these great professionals pour out of these federal office buildings," says Mary Ellen Taylor, who sells vegetables from her farm in Purcellville, Va., at the market. "But along with that woman who has that suit, I also have redeemed more WIC coupons here at this market than any other market that I am in."

For Vilsack, this program is about more than helping Americans eat better. It’s about “rural economic development,” “creating wealth in rural communities” and “repopulating rural communities”:

“Ninety percent of farmer family income comes from off the farm. They are required to work off the farm in order to keep the farm. It is important for us to have additional markets that make it easy for them to improve their bottom line and at the same time creating jobs. So ‘Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food’ is focused on creating wealth in rural communities.”

I think it is wonderful to hear members of the Obama administration supporting sustainable farming and distribution, not to mention the talk of reshaping struggling rural economies. But perhaps Vilsack is being overly optimistic and a little disingenuous in his assessment of the extent to which the slow food movement can help rural places.

The potential beneficiaries of the “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” program appear to be “rural” persons who live in micropolitan areas and rural communities adjacent to metropolitan areas. Otherwise, one of the central tenets of the slow food movement — minimizing the environmental degradation created by current production systems — will be undermined by the high transportation costs associated with linking rural and urban places. The farther a farm is located from a metropolitan center, the less likely the food will be considered "local."

While touting the benefits of sustainable farming and its transformative potential for rural America, Vilsack notes that he does not want to challenge the hegemony of large corporate farms that produce the vast majority of the food Americans consume, choosing to refer to agribusinesses as "family" operations. Yet the rise of large corporate farms has dramatically decreased the number of rural persons who work on farms. Today, the figure is roughly seven percent of the rural workforce. The growing market for slow food that Vilsack identifies can hardly compete with the low prices offered at supermarkets absent some sort of fundamental restructuring of our food system — making it unlikely that slow food will drive a rural economic recovery.

The “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” program certainly has laudable intentions, but I’m concerned that the revitalization of rural America Vilsack discusses is not a realistic expectation.