Gino has two cows...

OK, so here's a little math problem that would be a nice one for Mia's fourth grade class:

Gino has two cows.  One excellent dairy cow can make as much as 30litres of milk a day. In the super market, "fresh" milk costs about euro 1.60 per litre.  If Gino sold his milk to local families at 1 euro per litre, (a nice savings for the families, and their milk is much better and much fresher than the supermarket milk), he would earn approximately how much per month? If the wholesale buyers give him 20 to 30 cents per litre, how many more cows does he need to make the same amount of money?

Milking each cow takes about 40 minutes a day if he does it by hand and is really good at it.  Putting the milk in bottles and delivering it from the back of his little 50cc electric cart takes about one hour a day.  So how much does Gino earn per hour for his two cows?

That's the math question.  The real question, is why is nobody doing it?  Gino earns about 1800 euros a month for a bit more than 2 hours of work a day.  A factory worker here earns about 1200 euros a month for 9 hours a day of shift work.  And yet I can't think of a single farmer that lives with only a few cows.
(Obviously there are too many risks involved in only two cows -- if one gets ill, you're sunk.  But 4 cows or even 8 and that's loads to have extras for a rainy day and cover for any sickly ones, and with a milking machine 8 cows are milked in no time at all, and this is for the purposes of the argument anyway!)

But even the smallest of dairy farmers has at least 40 or 50 animals.  What's missing??  The direct link between the producer and the consumer is missing. Heh, the missing link!

Antonella's brother-in-law has a Kiwi farm (true story, not like gino!).  Recently, he's getting as little as 10 cents per kg. Today the  national average retail price for kiwis in season (november) is about euro 1.80 per kg .  In between the farmer and me, 1.70 cents has been absorbed into the unproductive part of "the system".  (How on earth the farmers can live on 10cents a kg is beyond me, and if it continues, there will be revolutions. Actually, there already are in Tunisia).  How happy I would be, and the farmer too, to go straight to him and pay him 1 euro a kg, hey even 1.50! for his kiwis.  I save, and he earns appropriate money for his work and production.

And if he is earning 1 euro a kg -- or even 1.50 -- then he has no need to produce quantity.  No need to pump chemical fertilizers into his plants because he must get maximum production at all times.  No need to continually overwork the land.  No need for drastic pesticides.  here's another good problem; at 1 euro per kg, how many kgs does the farmer need to produce to make a decent income?  How many kgs fewer is that than those he needs to produce at 10 cents per kg? And if he has to produce fewer kiwis, he's left with more spare time...more than enough to take his kiwis to market or to his neighbours and sell them himself.

The Kiwis is an exaggerated example, but this situation is the norm, not the exception -- this situation is systematic.   Producer gets 40c per kg for Clementines, I pay 2.25.  8cents per kg for Zucchini, I pay 1 euro.  Dairy farmer gets 20c per litre for milk, I pay 1.60...  The lions share of the money in our exchanges for food products is not going to those who make it, but to those who control its movement.

The REALLY GREAT thing about this is that the solution is easy, its legal, it doesn't involve any extra work, no revolutions and no suffering on anyone's part, in fact it brings a significant increase in quality of life and the food you eat -- JUST BUY LOCAL!!  Go to the farmers market, get to know them, buy your produce from the farmer directly.  There's no law against it (well, except for the stupid raw milk thing in Canada, that's just dumb.  You can buy raw meat, and that's a whole lot more dangerous).

You pay less money, get better fresher produce, which is also more nutritious because in season, and less dangerous because if produced in small local production its much less likely that scary pesticides and fertilizers have been used.  No packaging, no styrofoam trays, no cellophane wrappers, no plastic containers.  No transport, so no diesel fumes poisoning the air.

Down side is less choice -- but how much choice do you really need? And here's the thing...why on earth would you want tomatoes or strawberries in february.  Out of season vegetables are YUCKY! (and much less nutritious)

And you are left with lots of surplus in your food budget to be able to pay the actual worth of a few special imported items.  If you pay 20% less for 90% of your food consumption, you have saved enough money to be able to pay a hefty premium for special imported items. Pay 4 euros a kg for fair trade bio bananas, and you know you're getting quality without someone else suffering for your choice.  So the stuff that you can't live without, but just doesn't grow locally -- that stuff we're willing to pay the middle men for, provided they are  paying the farmers in the first place.  So not even the middle man suffers (much) he still has a job, only his job is providing us with products that add value, not ripping us off from every side of the spectrum.

If there are no local farmers markets,  CSA (Community supported agriculture -- GAS in italian) groups are also an excellent way to get food direct from the producer, save money and increase quality while still maintaining a good deal of choice.

Humph, that's me done on the soap box for today!  And in other news...we go to sign for the mortgage tomorrow!  We should complete on the little farm by next week, yahooo!