4 Startling Problems with the Food System + How We Combat Them

written by

Nolan Masser

posted on

February 22, 2022

Chances are, you are here because you care about clean, healthy, responsibly-raised food. Unfortunately, our existing centralized food system is working against all of that good stuff.

The food system in America is currently designed to benefit a relative few companies. Think of it as a funnel: The corporations profiting at the top of this “funnel” state that the efficiencies of this model make food cheaper for customers like you. While there is a kernel of truth to this, it results in many significant issues, including: 

  • Pollution and erosion of our environment
  • Economic hardships for farmers and laborers
  • Food shortages and waste
  • Unhealthy, low-quality products

That’s why Red Hill Harvest is working toward a direct food model. We believe that making nutritious local food available to consumers and using regenerative agriculture will relieve these problems. Read on to learn more about these systemic issues and how we combat them.

Environmental Impact

It should be no surprise that the current food model has taken a heavy toll on the environment. For one thing, food miles (i.e., the distance food is transported from production to consumer) are exponentially higher than necessary. Since retailers opt for the cheapest products, they usually buy from conventional farms with the best prices. This means more trucks rolling in from corporate farms and therefore, more pollution.

Yuck!

Competing only on price also means irresponsible agricultural practices and production methods are common. For example, using harsh pesticides and herbicides and keeping animals in over-capacity barns for their entire lives. Food manufacturers, packers, and retailers encourage producers to sell below the real cost of production. We’re left trying to reverse the environmental damage from these harmful practices. 

Have you ever seen a beef feedlot? Don’t be fooled by the greenwashing you see in advertisements. Unfortunately, many corporate farms take the cheap route–at a detriment to the environment.

Economic Impact

When retailers only care about finding the cheapest option, local farmers are pushed out of the equation because they can’t afford to sell that low. Food monopolies continue to form and suppress competition.

Practices like reverse auctions, in which the sellers bid instead of the buyers, contribute to this issue. The bid always goes to the biggest packer, pinching the farmer out of a fair price.

For example, we are located within 10 miles of a warehouse for the largest retailer in the U.S. Because of our size, we had to sell through a large packer who took a cut of the already ridiculously low prices they paid. We no longer sell to that retailer because we simply couldn’t afford to. Instances like this also contribute to those unnecessarily high food miles we mentioned.

Under this centralized food system, local farmers struggle to make a living because they can barely get paid what their products are worth. And the government has to pick up the cost in subsidies to those farmers.

Food Shortages

The current food system is not resilient enough to withstand a major disruption, like a global pandemic. Sure, our centralized food system can deliver high quantities of food quickly to grocery stores. But the limited number of companies able to fulfill each step of the supply chain (i.e., farms, processors, distributors, and retailers) mean an outbreak at one facility can affect the availability and price of food nationwide. 

Oh, no!

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw the meat-processing industry struggle when workers got sick, forcing many plants to reduce or pause production. Livestock prices dropped, affecting farmers’ livelihoods. Some even had to cull animals that could not be processed. At the same time, we’ve seen widespread food shortages.

How can there be food shortages when we have too much food? Hmm…

The current concentrated food system results in limited options, but it doesn’t HAVE to be that way! A snowstorm in Colorado, fire in California, or even a pandemic should not mean people go hungry. 

Food Quality

Under our current food system, supermarkets can’t offer a vast selection of food types and be profitable. So, they offer the least expensive products to make it simpler and more cost-effective for them. 

Customers like you are left with cheap, unhealthy foods and few options for clean eating. You don’t know where or how your food is grown and processed. This contributes to many health issues we face today (e.g., obesity and food sensitivities). 

Meanwhile, farmers can’t differentiate their products. They simply need to meet minimum standards. There is no reward for producing higher-quality food. Anything they spend on more responsible agricultural practices is a lost expense. Wow…

How Red Hill Harvest is Making a Difference

At Red Hill Harvest, we believe the solution is clean, responsible farming combined with a direct food model. Is it possible to achieve this balance? Yes!

We use regenerative agriculture, focusing on healthy soil and limiting chemicals and fertilizers. These materials may make produce more visually appealing, but they reduce the nutritional value. We aim to improve the environment through our farming practices, not in spite of them. For example, animals on pasture create healthier soil and animals.

Consumers should have confidence in the food they’re buying. To us, a diversified, direct-to-consumer system means providing the cleanest, most nutritious, least-handled food directly to our customers. It also means more options and healthy competition.

As a country, we need to rely more on local food producers through channels like farmers’ markets and CSAs. A growing number of local farmers are even using e-commerce, creating convenience for customers who want to shop local and enabling farmers to expand their reach. 

A diversified food system will be the most sustainable one. As a consumer, you can make a difference and support this movement by shopping locally. Get to know the farmers in your community and learn about their food. If there’s one thing we farmers love, it’s educating people on clean eating! 

Ready to invest in local, responsibly grown food for your family? Shop our selection of grass-fed beef and fresh produce today. Have questions? Send us a note and we’ll be happy to help!



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From field to barn! How we harvest potatoes at Red Hill Harvest!

From field to barn! How we harvest potatoes at Red Hill Harvest!

This week on the farm, potato harvest was all we had on our minds! The weather has been a challenge during this year's harvest, from being too dry early in the season to 10 days of rain in late September, but hey, that’s farming. This week's goal is to get as many of the remaining potatoes out of the ground and back into the storage. Here’s how we do it! Step 1: Prep fields for harvest -  Before a field of potatoes is harvested, the tops of the potato plants must be killed. This tells the potatoes to put all their energy into growing thicker skin instead of growing in size. We terminate the potatoes 2-5 weeks before harvest, depending on the variety. (Some varieties take longer for the skins to set.) In a non-organic system, potatoes are terminated using a chemical desiccant. This is a very effective way to get the potato vines to die and leave the field ready for harvest. However, we must take a different approach to the 50% of our potato crop that is certified organic.   Once our organic potatoes have matured, we will run a flail shredder through the fields to mulch the vines into tiny pieces, killing the plants and sending them into full skin development mode. While we wait the 2-5 weeks before harvest, weeds tend to pop up now that the crop canopy is gone and sunlight reaches the soil. We often run the flail shredder or our weed burner ahead of the harvester again to help separate potatoes from other materials during harvest. Step 2: Dig - Once the fields are prepped and the conditions are right, we head out to the fields to bring in the spuds. We have a harvester that can dig two rows at a time. We chose this smaller machine because it matched well with the destoning system we use in the spring. To briefly explain the long process of planting, we make a bed of soil, use a destoning machine to pull the rocks from the bed and lay the stones into the tire tracks, and finally, we plant two rows of potatoes in the rock-free bed. Using this system, we can limit the damage caused by handling potatoes and rocks together. Here’s how the harvester works… First, the potatoes are dug out of the ground and transferred onto a slatted conveyor belt. This conveyor is the first separation method, removing all the loose dirt and small rocks. The remaining material continues up the belt and onto the main separation table.  This table has a series of counter-rotating shafts that grab onto vines, mud clumps, rocks, and other foreign materials and pull them down below and back into the field. From there, the potatoes go to another conveyor, where we have two people standing to remove all of the foreign material that the harvester missed. At this point, it is crucial to get all of the rocks that the destoner missed out of the potatoes because the next stop is the truck! The potatoes ride up the conveyor and into the truck, which drives alongside the harvester. Once the truck is full, it returns to the shed, where it gets unloaded! Step 3: Unload - When the truck returns to the shed, we back it up to our ELIMINATOR…  Dun, Dun, Dunn! Ok, maybe it's not that scary! The potatoes unload from the truck and ride up yet another conveyor, which dumps onto a star separation table. The table allows any soil that may have passed the harvester to be removed from the potatoes. Then, the spuds get one final hand grade. Removing all of the material before the potatoes head into storage is important. After the final grade, the small potatoes are removed. These potatoes are not desirable for making french fries and do not look nice in a package with bigger potatoes, so we remove them and pack them separately. Once sizing is complete, there are only two more conveyors before they reach the bins! We use an automatic bin filler, which uses sensors to fill each bin to its optimal level. After the bins are filled, they’re off to the cooler! Step 4: Storage - Most potatoes in the United States are stored in bulk, which means they are stored in one big pile. We choose to use the bin method for variety separation and quality.  The first reason is simple: we grow over ten varieties of potatoes on our farm. It is much easier to keep them separate in bins rather than piles.  Most importantly, though, we use bins to keep the quality of our potatoes high. With varying field conditions, potatoes in one area of the field may be more prone to rot. Rot will spread like a disease in storage if not properly addressed. Separating the potatoes into boxes can better control an outbreak of rot; we only lose 1,000 lbs of potatoes rather than the whole pile. This method takes a lot more time and money, but it is necessary for our operation, especially storing potatoes for nine months like we often do!   Each bin is labeled with the variety, field name, and date harvested. The organic potatoes are then put into a cooler at 38-40 degrees Fahrenheit, and the non-organic potatoes are put into a cooler kept at 50-60 degrees Fahrenheit.  Why do we store them at different temps? Almost all of our non-organic potatoes are sold to vendors who make fresh-cut French fries! If the potato's temperature gets colder than 45 degrees Fahrenheit, it will turn dark brown when fried. YUCK!!  On the other hand, we keep our organic potatoes at a colder temperature because they keep much longer. Also, we do not use a sprout nipper, so the cold temperature helps to keep the potatoes from sprouting while in storage.  As a small farm, we choose the smaller, simpler equipment and storage techniques to give us the ability to produce many different types of specialty potatoes. The spuds we raise would not fare well with the large equipment used in other parts of the world. Many farmers use various techniques to bring in the crop for their unique situations. We plan to continue to adapt our harvest methods as new engineering technologies are discovered. I hope you learned something about how we harvest potatoes today! If you have any questions, please email us at info@redhillharvest.com or call (570) 900-1566. If you’d like to try some of these potatoes for yourself, here are some of my favorites! Organic Purple Potatoes Organic Red Potatoes French Fry Potatoes Baby Yellow Potatoes

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3 reasons why you should (NOT!) go vegan.

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Red Hill Harvest

205 Mt. Pap Road, Pitman, PA 17964
570.492.3425

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