Food Security

A few news stories caught my attention this week with food security showing up in the articles. As a farmer, it’s my job to stay up to date on what’s happening with my industry especially when it comes to disease outbreaks.

For the last two years thanks to the COVID19 pandemic, everyday folks have become up close and personal with what growers have had to deal with since the dawn of agriculture. Today, less that 2% of the population in the United States are farmers. Out of that pool less than 2% are involved in organic/sustainable/regenerative agriculture that direct markets what they grow. That means that 98% of the rest of the world has little idea about how their food is raised, where it comes from and how it is kept safe from being decimated by disease.  

The big one is the most recent outbreak of bird flu in the U.S. A., one outbreak being reported in Virginia. Considering most migratory fowl is now moving from the south to the north, this bit of news put a blip on my radar. When most people read the words bird flu (also swine flu, dog flu, horse flu) 98% tends to anthropomorphize their own experience with human flu—you get miserable sick and sometimes die. The other 2% understand that their livelihoods can be wiped out before their very eyes and they have absolutely zero control over the situation. Let me explain.

In America, we have a government agency called the United States Department of Agriculture that governs our food system. It is comprised of a vast network of agencies, including the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) that surveil farming and food production to protect national food security which includes livestock health and any threats to national economic viability.

I’ve joked among my fellow farmers that if APHIS would have been in charge of the COVID19 response, it would have been wiped out a lot sooner. They never laugh because they know how disease outbreaks in our food system are controlled. It’s not pretty, especially when the disease is zootonic, meaning it can pass between humans and animals. And if it has the capacity to cause economic devastation, there will be no mercy.  Forget about the tyranny of having to wear masks, anti-vaxxers, or 5G conspiracy theorists. No one would be self-medicating with livestock de-wormer. There would be no legal challenges hinging on a right or left leaning court. Infected individuals and those in proximity would be removed, period.

Protecting America’s food supply and economy from highly contagious infectious diseases is controlled by depopulation. Yes, that’s a very ugly work and means exactly what you think it does. And it happens much more often than the 98% realizes.

When APHIS comes calling there are no personal property rights or privacy. If disease is found it isn’t only the sick that is removed and destroyed, but every individual of that species with a specific radius. It doesn't matter if it’s dozens of chicken barns each housing up to 20,000 birds or a few fancy backyard chooks for the kids, everything in an identified disease management zone gets destroyed and removed.

It’s not just livestock producers who can get caught up in disease mitigation. In 2000 during the Plum Pox outbreak that affected much of the growing area for our local markets local inspectors tromped into my parents’ backyard in a residential neighborhood to inspect their two flowering cherry trees which were susceptible to disease. Due to the capacity to cause severe economic damages to the region’s commercial fruit production, my parents had no say in the matter. They were still a few miles outside of the eradication zone, but the inspector wanted to identify all stone fruit trees in case the borders expanded. My parents were mortified at the prospect of losing their stunningly beautiful trees. Over the mountain in Adams county entire orchards were being uprooted and burned. It was illegal to purchase and plant new stone fruit trees within a disease zone. This is how I ended up raising livestock instead of planting a peach and cherry orchard as my original farm business plan entailed.

It's not just in the United States such unforgiving practices are utilized when it comes to controlling infectious diseases in the name of food security and economic stability.

I have fellow farming friends throughout the world thanks to the Internet. Last week one of my dairy pals from Wales was extremely upset 51 of her milk cows tested positive for Bovine Tuberculosis (bTB), a highly infectious zootonic disease that can spread between cows and humans. Cows who test positive are automatically removed from the farm and destroyed. Before the 1950’s when antibiotics were discovered to treat tuberculosis in humans, those diagnosed with TB were often forced into sanatoriums by public health officials with stays averaging six to nine months. And people today howl indignantly about quarantining at home after being exposed to or testing positive for COVID19.

You know what happened to pigs throughout Asia when they go swine flu? They didn’t binge watch Netflix series and sip warm TheraFlu; they were depopulated. And no, you can’t eat the meat of infected animals. Between 2019 and 2021 Asia lost two thirds of their pigs to disease making pork scarce and costly.

If you’ve crossed international and state borders one of the most frequently asked questions is Are you carrying any fruits, vegetables, live plants, meat, or dairy items? I drove across the country with a horse, two dogs and a cat. Not once was I asked to see their health papers, but at the Arizona border I had my oranges confiscated to reduce the spread of citrus canker, a bacterial infection spread by the movement of fruit and wood. In the last year Customs and Border Patrols’ (CBP) issued 1,049 Emergency Action Notifications for unmanifested/prohibited animal products coming from countries with active diseases and infections in agricultural products. They were the ones who were threatened in Mexico over inspecting avocado imports which has now led to the recent ban on Mexican avocados jeopardizing your avocado toast and guacamole.

You know what secures most of the livestock supply today? Vaccines. Without them modern commercial agriculture would not be possible and food would be much more expensive. The eradication of viruses takes years to accomplish and only through stringent public health protocols under which there are no exemptions. Even then, 100% containment may not be possible due to the reservoir in the wild.

Speaking of which, last week Penn State University released research on growing COVID19 infections within Whitetail deer populations. A Washington State University zootonic disease researcher was quoted in the New York Times as saying, “That could be a big problem for food production stability.”

So far we’ve been dealing with blips in the food supply due to processing, transportation, and workers getting the products on shelves which means the human factor has been the weak link. However, we often fail to consider food security at the very source—the plants and animals themselves.

So the next time you feel a bit cranky over having to wear a mask, quarantine, or flash your v-card, remember that it’s not just your health that is at risk, but your food supply. COVID19 has been a wake-up call for the 98% as to what your farmers must deal with on a daily basis.