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It always amuses me to see hipster Millennials boasting about growing a vegetable garden or acquiring a chicken. As a child of Depression-era parents, having a backyard vege patch and a chook or two was nothing “revolutionary”: it was just what people did.
More notably, though, it was never more than supplementary: we still lived off the weekly grocery shop. Even the produce from my father-in-law, a former farmer immigrant with half of a double block dedicated to growing vegetables, was never more than a fraction of our regular food supply.
And it was a boom-and-bust cycle. For a few months of the year, we’d be knee-deep in tomatoes, beans and corn. And zucchinis. Those bloody zucchinis (you want zucchini recipes? I know ’em all!) Sure, some of it we’d freeze or preserve, but have you ever tried freezing beans? Revolting.
So, home-grown vegetables are great, but they’re never more than a niche or a hobby. Growing your own is also a harsh lesson in the realities of food: it takes a lot of work and a lot more land than you’ll find in a suburban backyard, let alone an apartment balcony, and it’s a boom-and-bust seasonal cycle. We have the much derided “factory-farming” for a good reason.
Even Virginia Fallon and the Maori Party are talking sense, for once.
The reason I’m currently interested in all things produce is our skyrocketing food prices. Vegetable gardens are the solution to the issue, people who can afford food assure us, and right now I’ll give anything a go to avoid buying yet another $4 broccoli from our supermarket duopoly.
As Fallon found out the hard way, though, not everyone has a green thumb.
I have tried gardening before, and some years ago managed to grow a crop of tomato. Yes, tomato. For weeks I nurtured my plants, watering them religiously, staking and tying them carefully, yet the fruit of my labour was just one single fruit. Harvest time was quick, though, and no, it did not feed my family […] Ultimately my gardening efforts ended with me mumbling on down to the supermarket to fork out for the things I’d already forked out for and killed.
Not everyone is such a brown-thumb, though. But, as I said, even a dedicated and productive backyard farmer is never going to supply more than a supplement to a normal family’s food supply.
The real problem with vegetable gardens is they’re offered as a solution to poverty. NZ is in the grip of a food crisis, and telling anyone already struggling to afford the basics that they should grow their own produce is just one more way to shame, one more way of accusing people of not helping themselves. Look at all that bare land! Go and work it, peasants!
The only problem with this proposal is that consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables correlates strongly with socio-economic status. The lowest groups tend to consume the least fresh produce.
It’s a diversionary tactic when the real solution to the nations’ hungry bellies comes from Parliament. Last week Te Pati Maori launched a petition calling for GST to be cut from all food, though whether that’ll bear fruit is anyone’s guess.
The Government has acknowledged we’re in a crisis by cutting the tax on fuel. Gourd only knows why it won’t do the same for vegetables.
Stuff
Bad puns aside, if the aim is to drive down the cost of food, this is a sensible proposal.
Given patterns of consumption, cutting or eliminating GST on fresh produce, as Australia, is only going to benefit the already well-off. Like it or not, if the Maori Party want to drive down the food bills of Maori, they’re going to have cut GST on KFC as well as organic, heirloom tomatoes.
Aside from equity arguments, applying GST on food selectively is, as former Australian Treasurer Peter Costello put it when negotiating Australia’s GST legislation, “a nightmare on Main Street”. To get an idea of the reality, take a gander at the ATO’s extensive guidelines on food and GST.
Whether the green types will admit it or not, modern, industrialised farming is the only way a planet of 9 billion people has been and will keep being fed. Let’s not pretend home-grown produce is anything more than a hobby activity (if a worthy one).
And if you want to cut household grocery bills, tax is one of the biggest levers available.
