Community nutritionist Audrey Maretzki is leading a four-year extension effort to help Pennsylvanians understand the roles that different businesses and interests play in local, regional, and global food systems.

"Safe, high-quality food is simply taken for granted," says community nutritionist Audrey Maretzki. "The food system is extremely complex, but we tend not to recognize that, because when we walk into a grocery store, the items we want are right there. Most people give little thought to how the products get to the store." To raise awareness of these issues, Maretzki helped establish the Northeast Network for Food, Agriculture, and Health Policy Education in 1988. Funded by a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the project united land-grant university experts from 12 northeastern states and the District of Columbia. They collaborated to develop educational materials on the history and current status of the food system in the Northeast, connections between diet and health, and ways in which local, state, and federal policy decisions affect different sectors of the food system.

Now Maretzki leads "The Pennsylvania Food System: In Search of Our Common Wealth," a new, four-year Penn State Cooperative Extension effort to help Pennsylvanians learn about their local food system. She and a college-wide team of specialists are developing new ways to help cooperative extension agents explain the food system to the general public, such as by using theater as a teaching tool. "In recent years, we've realized that the food system has become so complex and diverse that people need help understanding it," she says. "Everyone depends on this intricate web of businesses, but very few people understand how the system works and how we can influence it with our purchases, our support for certain businesses and laws, and our participation in policy debates about food issues. Through cooperative extension, we hope to bring farmers, processors, consumers, taxpayers, and many other stakeholders together in community coalitions concerned with the food system and its future. People in different parts of the system have different perspectives to share. It's like the story of the blind men and the elephantpartners in the food system think they understand it, but usually they see only one sector clearly. We need to examine how all of these businesses are interrelated and how regional systems fit into the national and global network."

Agricultural scientist Herbert Cole says understanding the global distribution of food is important because Pennsylvania's food system does not stand alone–it is part of a national and international marketplace.

Recognizing global connections is important because Pennsylvania's food system does not stand alone, says Herbert Cole, who examines food issues as director of SANRUE, a project concerned with sustaining agriculture and natural resources in urbanizing environments. "Our state is part of a national and global marketplace," he says. "Even in colonial times, Pennsylvania imported items such as salt, sugar, tea, coffee, citrus fruits, and spices. Today, grocery stores regularly stock fresh fruits and vegetables from around the world–red bell peppers from Holland, grapes from Chile, tomatoes from Mexico, and apples from New Zealand. At community meetings, I often ask members of the audience if they worry about produce being out of season. Some older people may raise their hands, but younger people almost never do. Global distribution of food lets us buy almost any item year-round, eliminating seasonal restrictions in our diets."

This globalization, coupled with changes in consumer demand and automation in food production and processing, directly affects local producers who must compete for markets with the rest of the world. "The days when farmers could just grow a crop and expect to sell it are over," Cole says. "All segments of the food system, from producers and processors to retailers, have to respond to consumer demands or go out of business. For example, people want consistency and predictability, and as a result, most foods are pre-processed, even in the food service sector. There are probably very few restaurants left that peel their own potatoes–they buy them in plastic pails, already peeled or cut into french fries. With automation, fast food restaurant employees can press a button, and the frozen Idaho fries come out the same every time. Fries from six different potato varieties and growing locations would require different cooking temperatures and times, so processors look for large quantities of very consistent farm products."

This technology puts Pennsylvania potato growers at a disadvantage because most of their farms are small, and the state's soil types and weather conditions are extremely variable. "States such as Idaho, with larger farms, federally subsidized irrigation water, and more consistent soils and climate, are better able to compete in growing potatoes for automated frying," Cole says. "About half of Pennsylvania's harvest goes to potato chippers, and most of the rest goes to the fresh market. Some growers can sell to processors who make fries for institutions such as schools, because these fries aren't as standardized as fast-food fries, but the market doesn't pay as well."


Finding profitable market niches and adding value to farm products will be pivotal to the survival of Pennsylvania's small producers and processors. "In North Dakota, durum wheat growers have formed a cooperative to make pasta," Cole says. "Instead of selling a lot of wheat to a broker for a basic commodity price, they sell a wheat product in a little box directly to the supermarket–for much more money. Pennsylvania firms can find similar niches by tapping into consumer demand." One such demand is the preference for foods that are fresh or associated with a healthy lifestyle. Organic produce sales in the United States soared from $3.9 billion in 1989 to $7.6 billion in 1994. Organic milk sales are rising, too, which could create opportunities for small Pennsylvania dairy producers. Horizon Organic Dairy, a Colorado-based company, sold milk from about 300 cows in 1992. Today, it sells milk from 10,000 cows, and its sales reached $7 million last year, compared with $1 million in 1993. "Even in a highly competitive global food system, savvy food businesses that give even a minority of consumers what they want can prosper," Cole says.