Cheaper eats: Who’s paying?

It’s interesting to me that I’ve been seeing a lot of stories in the press lately about the high price of food here. I can’t help but wonder about the timing, as South Korea and the United States continue a sometimes contentious effort at nailing down a free-trade agreement.

From Friday’s Chosun Ilbo:

Koreans pay more for their beef than residents of any other country. A private organization called Consumers in Korea released on Thursday a survey of the prices of 20 major commodities conducted earlier this month by consumer groups in 29 countries. The results showed that the price of domestic and imported beef in Korea is the highest.

Prices of other food and commodities in Korea are also comparatively high. The consumer group said Korea ranked among the top five most expensive countries in eleven categories out of twenty.

U.S. beef imports have been a major sticking point in the ongoing FTA negotiations. But, as the article points out, the food-price disparities don’t end there. According to this speech last year by U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow to the Korean Importers Association, Koreans pay up to 10 times more for agricultural products than the average international consumer.

Added to high housing and fuel prices, the situation is particularly acute in the nation’s capital, as I’ve mentioned before, and as pointed out in this editorial in the Korea Times.

It is serious indeed that prices in Seoul for the three basic necessities of life _ food, clothing and housing _ are more than double those of New York, while the per capita income of Seoulites is less than half of New Yorkers. The rapidly strengthening Korean currency is one reason. But there are other structural problems, too.

[snip]

Food prices, particularly meat prices, are two to four times higher here than in the U.S.

This can be attributed directly to restrictions on the import of foreign agricultural products, high tariffs on what is imported, and government support for Korean farmers, many of whom work small plots, and use older, less-efficient farming methods. This makes food production more expensive, with higher prices passed on to consumers.

As an urban consumer in Seoul—one who was previously accustomed to the cheap, plentiful and diverse foods available in a U.S. supermarket—the contrast is stark.

Fresh fruits and vegetables are prohibitively expensive. One of my first blog posts was about a $6 tomato purchased at a local market near my home. That’s an extreme example, but not much of one. Then, there are things that are just not available, unless you are lucky enough to find them in boutique “foreign” markets or on in various black markets around the city. A variety of fresh herbs, many spices, lemongrass, and limes are the things that spring immediately to mind, but there are others.

Like a lot of expats, I’ve noticed that it is often cheaper to eat out at the small, neighborhood shikdangs (small mom-and-pop restaurants often specializing in one or two traditional Korean specialties) than it is to buy groceries and cook at home—even if you’re making traditional Korean food. But maybe this is because of volume. I’m not sure the same holds true for families. It may be cheaper to feed myself or my husband this way, but if you have to take out a family of four? I’ve wondered if its because a lot of restaurants and some city residents still buy produce from the open-air markets or guys who drive those small trucks around pedding fruits and veggies.

Ironically, when I lived in the States, I tried to do most of our shopping at a large farmer’s market or a smaller organic food co-op that supported locally grown seasonal produce. But, that was still when Whole Foods and Publix were just down the road in a pinch.

A big reason fresh produce in the United States is cheap because we rely on legions of low-paid migrant farmworkers—many of whom are undocumented—to do the harvest. I didn’t like the idea of supporting an industry that relied on exploiting a powerless and largely hidden illegal workforce.

Then there’s the issue of the safety of the food supply and quality control. Situations like the recent outbreak of E. coli bacterial contamination in pre-bagged spinach or the salmonella outbreak in jarred peanut butter have also prompted more U.S. consumers to rethink the country’s reliance on the very “efficient” large-scale industrial farming and food processing conglomerates.

I don’t think it’s realistic for the Korean government to try to protect Korean farmers who want to grown rice the same way their family has for generations. But I still have to wonder about the long-term results of opening up the food market.

I don’t know if I think the U.S. is a good example of where Korea wants to be. Most Americans eat too much red meat and too few vegetables, and, as a country, we have a growing problem with obesity caused by excess consumption of high-calorie, high-fat, processed food.

But opening up the food markets to imports and forcing Korean farmers to be more competitive doesn’t necessarily mean throwing the kimchi and rice out with the bathwater, as Doug Henwood, writing about the WTO ministerial meeting that year in Cancun in the October 10, 2003 issue of The Nation points out:

South Korea isn’t an impoverished country whose population is dominated by a peasantry that would be ruined by opening up to food imports–it makes cars and cell phones. Why shouldn’t South Korea import food?

When you say things like that, it’s often assumed that you want to turn over world agriculture to Monsanto and Cargill. It’s as if the only two choices in the world were an embattled tradition and big agribusiness, as if it were impossible to reimagine technology and trade in more humane, progressive ways.

[snip]

Of course, the political and emotional urge behind the “No!” is the desire to protect people and nature from the traumas that typically come with capitalist development. But erecting barriers to trade may be the wrong strategy. Instead of tariffs and import restrictions, which can pit workers in rich countries against those in poorer ones (is it OK to put a Brazilian steelworker out of work to preserve an American job?), why not generous income support and retraining? Why not shift the focus from protecting the job to protecting the worker?

I can’t think of any country that has successfully pursued a policy of agricultural isolation and protectionism. This would be increasingly difficult here, where only a small fraction of the population farms, and this population seems to be shrinking–half of farmers over age 60 and few children opting to stay with the family business.

I still think that the problem of South Korea’s low birthrate is also due to the high cost urban families face in feeding, housing and educating children through adulthood.

It will be interesting if South Korean leaders can come up with a way to encourage a freer market for food without becoming a dumping ground for cheap hamburger and corn-syrup laden snack products. At the same time, encourage the population to continue to preserve its unique food culture, and provide a way for farmers to adapt to the change. It’s a tall order.