SOS 117 - Designing a Food Label Assignment

               For this purpose of this assignment, I chose to focus on the locavore movement as it pertains to the State of Arizona. As a land-locked state with a lot of desert in the southern region, it can appear, at first, as if we are unable to grow any crops locally.  But this just isn’t true. According to the University of Arizona, about 36% of our total land area is used for farming, of which there exist over 10,000 farms with an average size of 2,610 acres (A Look at Arizona Agriculture).  The Arizona Department of Agriculture touts that our agriculture industry is worth an estimated $23.3 billion, creating over 138,000 jobs.  We are the third largest producer of fresh produce, and fourth in the nation for the largest area of organic vegetables.  That doesn’t even include our massive cattle operations, which is one of the five C’s of Arizona.  In 2018 alone, Arizona produced 455.7 million pounds of red meat and 4.2 billion pounds of milk (A Guide to Arizona Agriculture).  As the locavore movement gains in steam, I wanted to focus on all of the wonderful foods that can be farmed – and sold – within our borders.  Far beyond just cotton, copper, cattle, citrus, and climate, there are a wealth of foods that can be grown within our borders that would help someone making a new transition towards a more sustainable and local diet.

I created a label that would be easy to recognize by the average Arizona consumer as being a product farmed locally within our borders.  It begins with an outline of the state, embedded with “Arizona” on the southern border for easier recognizability as an Arizona specific product.  As we are “The Grand Canyon State,” I used the words “Canyon State Grown” for the label to distinguish it as a locally grown product, and added in a heart graphic because we are also known as “The Sweetheart State,” since our founding took place on February 14, 1912.  Both of these additions, I feel, make the label stand out and easily recognizable among the gallery of stickers we see printed on products available at the local supermarket.  I made the words red with black shadowing, on a green background to draw in the customer’s eyes, even on a small sticker. 

The goal of the logo is to attract the eye of the consumer at the average supermarket and let them know that this crop was grown here, where they live.  It appeals to locovores because Arizona provides a stunning array of crops beyond the Five C’s, which can enhance pride in the local economy. It tracks food miles better than the fine print on packages of berries farmed in Mexico, it provides the freshest produce because it isn’t being shipped from halfway across the globe, and lets the consumer feel a connection, however small, with the local economy, almost a provider-customer relationship between their product and the farm it came from (Module 5 Lecture: Food & Culture: Non-Nutritional Goals Through Food, 2:30).  They know that this cantaloupe was farmed here (we are currently 2^nd in the nation for cantaloupe, honeydew melon, pistachio, and date production), that the steak they’re eating came from the Town of Gilbert, or that even the roses we grow in this state (which produce 75% of all roses grown nationwide, according to the Department of Agriculture), will be fresher than roses shipped across the continent.  It gives a glimpse into the complex agriculture that exists within our borders without people having to research it, and encourages people who may not have ever considered eating local to try a juicy peach from an “ag in the middle” farm that would otherwise disappear, were it not for the ability to use my label to sell their local food in a values-based supply chain, such as Sprouts (Chase & Grubinger, 2014, p. 62).

That being said, local does not always mean sustainable.  Even though we have a very high number of organic farms, and a local farmer’s market almost every day of the week, we also have a very high level of industrial agriculture.  Yuma is home to the “winter lettuce capital of the world (A Look at Arizona Agriculture).” In recent years, it has come under fire for its use of undocumented migrant labor, poor soil health, dangerous working conditions, and taking shortcuts to produce more lettuce for less cost.  These shortcuts have resulted in deadly outbreaks of foodborne illnesses, and raids by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, leading many commercial farmers to continue their operations shrouded in a veil of secrecy to protect their much needed labor force.  There is rampant use of antibiotics and poor living conditions among many of the cattle farms.  We see monocropping, heavy tilling (which abuses the state average of ½-inch of topsoil that we start with), heavy use of undocumented labor in subpar conditions, poor animal welfare, and a general disregard for the environmental health through the use of heavy pesticides, herbicides, and other such chemicals.  While the focus for the label was to attract the eye of customers within Arizona who would otherwise have no clue where their food came from, or to attract customers looking to keep their dollars closer to home, as it stands, the label itself doesn’t address any of the number of concerns with commercial agriculture within the state, nor does it stop the state from exporting over $4.2 billion worth of crops to over 70 different countries (A Guide to Arizona Agriculture).  The only thing the customer knows when initially looking at my label is that it was produced within the borders of the state.  There would have to be a barrage of other stickers and logos in order to know anything more without having to research it.

Upon reviewing the extensive list of labels on the Ecolabel Index (Ecolabel Index, n.d.), the label that stood out most to me was the “Certified Naturally Grown” label.  This is another label, like mine, that leaves a lot to the imagination.  Prior to looking at their website, I thought to myself, “what does ‘Naturally Grown’ mean?” I can make assumptions.  Perhaps it is more in line with the USDA Certified Organic label and there is a rigorous process to become certified.  But perhaps not.  Could a backyard farmer become “certified naturally grown”? Would the cotton farmers in San Tan Valley be “naturally grown” since it seems that they don’t really use heavy pesticides or herbicides, just (in my belief) GMO seeds?  What is and isn’t natural?  Who defines it?  Vagueness like this is at the crux of my own label.  Yes, it was grown in Arizona.  That we can feel good about.  Our dollar helped a local farmer and kept money in the local economy.  But under what conditions?  What kind of farmer?  Would we still feel good about a steak from the Town of Gilbert if we knew that the steak spent all of its life eating corn from a bucket, wading through inches of mud and feces?  Or would we want a cow grazing on pastures in a smaller and more sustainable environment?  Would we still eat that Yuma lettuce if we knew that it was picked by undocumented migrant workers from Mexico who lived 6 to a room with no running water?  Or would we want to know that the lettuce was rotated to protect soil health and picked by volunteers, interns, and properly compensated workers?  What does “local” mean?  What does “natural” mean? 

A deep dive into the “Certified Naturally Grown” website (Certified Naturally Grown, n.d.) shows a list of criteria that are more complex than those for the USDA Organic label.  In addition to all of the requirements for the USDA Organic sticker, CNG requires that livestock have stronger living conditions, access to pasture, and feed requirements.  The produce requirements explicitly lay out how the soil must be managed, the land requirements needed, crop rotation, details on how to handle pests and weeds… all topics that are only briefly mentioned in the USDA Organic seal. 

In my dream world, my sticker would require much of the same tight regulations as the “Certified Naturally Grown” or USDA Organic badges of honor, but they would also have to be farmed in Arizona to benefit a farmer who lives in this state.  I would require third-party, random inspections, because I simply don’t trust the government to do their job up to my standards.  They would have to verify the following criteria: The crop would have to be sustainable, and the soil maintained, but could be made from GMO seeds or through “The Normal Borlaug Method” (of expedited and specifically engineered generational modifications).  Livestock would have to be treated humanely, both while they are alive and leading up to their slaughter, including allowing them grazing room and the absence of antibiotics to fatten them up or keeping them pregnant while separating them from their calves for their milk supply.  Workers would have to be compensated appropriately (whether that be through an actual paycheck, or in exchange for room, board, and experience, depending on the type of worker).  There would have to be strict labor laws in place to ensure that workers are treated just as well as the cows.  

While I personally don’t mind undocumented migrant labor (I have several friends who are either DACA recipients or undocumented) and do not believe them to be the social ill that President Trump thinks they are (as they are taxed for benefits they can never receive), I would also prefer to have them treated the same way that we would treat local laborers.  No use of heavy chemicals that could give them cancer, no 14-hour days of back breaking labor without even so much as a bathroom break, no sleeping in shacks, 6 people deep, without access to running water and heat/air conditioning.  I prefer to see migrant laborers as human beings who are just trying to help their families back home.  To me, that’s honest work. And honest work is honest work, whether you are a United States Citizen, here on an H-2A Guest Worker Visa, or just walked hundreds of miles through life-threatening conditions with the dream of making a few dollars to send your children to school so they don’t have to do the same thing you do. I know this is a pipe dream, but maybe one day we will have a better path to citizenship for these migrant workers who have been building our great nation since before the founding.  So, in that way, I would welcome and shelter undocumented migrant workers by limiting the government’s presence on my farms, while still providing transparency about worker conditions (in line with how the Census just does a head count, not a citizenship count).  Frankly, this is the Arizona way.  As Arizonan’s, we’ve never been too keen on Big Government, and my sticker would reflect that as well.

I know that my label is a bit of a pipe dream unless I plan to start including the sub-par conditions of commercialized farming in Arizona, but my little green sticker would be my foot in the door to making these destructive industries held accountable for their crimes against the environment, the animals, and their workers.  I think that if it were to attract enough locavores and environmentally minded people with a deep dive website like CNG and nationally recognized certifications like the USDA Organic sticker, we could see my little green sticker on everything from hamburger meat and cantaloupe, to roses and wines.  After all, Arizona is home to some of the most nationally competitive farming ventures, and we make good stuff, right here at home.

References

(n.d.). Retrieved from Ecolabel Index: http://www.ecolabelindex.com/ecolabels/

(n.d.). Retrieved from Certified Naturally Grown: https://www.cngfarming.org/

A Guide to Arizona Agriculture. (n.d.). Retrieved from Arizona Department of Agriculture: https://agriculture.az.gov/sites/default/files/AZDA_GuideToAZAg-R5.pdf

A Look at Arizona Agriculture. (n.d.). Retrieved from University of Arizona Cooperative Extension: https://cals.arizona.edu/fps/sites/cals.arizona.edu.fps/files/education/arizona.pdf

Chase, L., & Grubinger, V. (2014). Food, Farms, and Community: Exploring Food Systems. Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England.

Module 5 Lecture: Food & Culture: Non-Nutritional Goals Through Food (n.d.). [Motion Picture].

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Grade: 98/100

Professor Comments: Nice work on this, Kathleen! I hope you're feeling better today. 

Rubric Comments: 

Food Label/Logo: 40/40 - I appreciated all the little Arizona reinforcing touches throughout your label, Kathleen. 

Question 1: 10/10 - Excellent connections to course materials throughout your assignment! 

Question 2: 10/10 (no comments)

Question 3: 10/10 (no comments) 

Question 4: 10/10 - This section was well-considered. 

Question 5: 8/10 - Your discussion wasn't superficial, to say the least!, but you only touched on one label... one more would have rounded this out nicely. But, you did an excellent job with the label you selected and discussed and researched! 

Question 6: 10/10 - "As Arizonan’s, we’ve never been too keen on Big Government, and my sticker would reflect that as well." I smiled.