What Price Asparagus?
added 12/21/10
by Rosemary Fifield, Director of Education and Member Services
Asparagus, once a seasonal treat in New England, is now available year-round in the Co-op’s produce departments. For a small part of our off-season, it comes from California; for at least seven months of the year, that asparagus must be shipped from either Peru or Mexico.
For the person concerned about the sustainability of their eating habits, an immediate reaction might involve the distance traveled by that asparagus— its “carbon footprint.” For Peruvian asparagus, however, a source of even greater concern should be its “water footprint” and the effect our off-season demand is having on the lives of poor people in Peru.
Exploiting the Poor
Peru is the world’s largest exporter of asparagus, with approximately 95 percent of it grown in the Ica Valley, one of the driest places on earth. Since the 1990s, a few large agro-exporters have purchased 90 percent of the valley’s wells in order to reclaim large blocks of desert using groundwater delivered through hundreds of miles of pipeline. This “greening” of the desert became unsustainable in 2002, as water use significantly exceeded the amount of recharge, and the water table in the valley plummeted at unprecedented rates. Still, the exploitation continues unregulated, and now the region’s small and medium-sized farmers, as well as city dwellers in Ica, are losing their domestic water supply. Unless action is taken, overexploitation of the aquifer will eventually exhaust the water resource upon which over a third of a million people depend for daily survival.
According to a report released in September, 2010, by the development charity Progressio, poor people in the valley suffer the most. Ninety-nine percent of the water used every day in the Ica Valley goes to agriculture; the poor must survive on as little as one-fifth of the minimum amount of water needed for basic health maintenance as defined by the World Health Organization.
Seeking a Better Future
Much of what is happening in Peru can be attributed to inadequate planning, poorly developed infrastructure, and lack of regulation due to corruption and bribery at the regional and national levels of government. At the same time, the Progressio report states, the failure of consumers and retailers to demand environmentally responsible business practices and corporate social responsibility from their suppliers is also to blame. Finally, we cannot ignore our expectation to have everything available to us year-round regardless of cost. The U.S. is the largest importer of Peruvian asparagus, followed by the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.
The Progressio report warns that boycotting Peruvian asparagus is not the answer, for that would negatively affect the 10,000 Peruvian farm workers now reliant on the industry for employment. Instead, consumers and retailers must exert pressure going forward in an effort to prevent similarly catastrophic scenarios in the future. By demanding social and environmental best practices from our suppliers, we can drive change. As one exporter told the study authors, “Companies are taking up new protocols to secure their market, and this has brought a silent revolution in the way things are done. For example, 20 years ago, if you said you were to provide a bathroom in every field for the workers you would be called crazy; now it is second nature.”
By insisting on products that are certified humane, fair trade, sustainably grown, and so on, we consumers can exert our influence on the social, environmental, and animal welfare practices of producers and retailers. The growing “fair food” movement seeks improvement of working conditions for farm workers in the United States. We can support U.S. trade policies that demand higher standards from our trading partners. And we must reduce our demand for imported foods from countries that allow corporate exploitation of their populations or their natural resources for monetary gain.
To read the Progressio report go to
http://www.progressio.org.uk/sites/default/files/Drop-by-drop_Progressio_Sept-2010.pdf
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