Photo from the BBC.
Recently, on my way back from Nairobi, I got into a conversation with my cab driver on the cost of maize. The price of it has skyrocketed recently. In Kenya, where maize is the staple grain and a huge percentage of the populace spends more than half their income on food, this can mean serious suffering and malnutrition.
It’s a common argument among sustainable food activists that Americans spend far too small a percentage of our income on food—about 10 percent in 2006 according to the U.S. Department of Labor. This puts us at the bottom of the list with most countries spending a far larger percentage, many two or three times as high.
Spending more money on food is all well and good for those of us likely to read books about the food system written by New York Times writers, but what about the average American? There are two sub-questions. Can Americans spend a larger percentage of our income on food, and will we? The answer to the first is undoubtedly yes. Unlike Kenyans, there are a lot of areas where we can cut back.
For the answer to the second, I’ll turn to you. How about it? To reach French levels of expenditure (and presumably food quality), we’d have to spend roughly an extra $60 a week on food. That’s more than the entirety of our entertainment costs.
To get to brass tacks, are you willing to trade in your weekly Netflix delivery (and throw in your Wii while you’re at it) for your weekly CSA delivery?
