The Cost Of Blueberries In January

I’ve been blessed to hear yet another free trade apologist tell me the advantages accrued from NAFTA and how free trade agreements always work for the good of the people. Though there is, of course, some price to be paid for such an unequivocal boon to humanity.

The overwhelming miraculousness of free trade agreements seem to be that blueberries are available to people in Wisconsin in January. I have to admit, that’s a real plus for all those times in January that I really get the urge for a blueberry. It’s also seems a little bit unnatural to me, whenever I stop and think about it. It’s kind of like having three feet tall blueberries. I saw that once when I was a kid in some comic book showing what the future might look like. I kind of thought it was cool back then, but I kind of thought it was weird and unnatural, as well.

Not that there’s anything all that weird about blueberries picked somewhere in Central America where it’s warm and shipped thousands of miles north to get to my local supermarket. But it does alienate me, the consumer, from feeling any connection to how my food is farmed and from the people who do all the work of farming. It’s almost a miracle, but it’s more like three foot blueberries: unnatural.

When you stop to think about it — really think about it — it’s not very miraculous at all. It involves an incredible amount of shipping, an incredible amount of fossil fuels required to get those blueberries from Oaxaca to Waupaca. And then there are the wages and working conditions of the average blueberry picker to be factored in. Turns out the average Mexican picking berries gets about $20 a day. No sick days, no insurance, no paid vacation. Doesn’t sound like a miracle to me. Miracles come from above, this sort of arrangement sounds like it comes from below.

So exploitation is part of the downside of the miracle of trade deals. But as I said, there’s a price to be paid for progress.

I was also told by the expert — who was being uncritically interviewed on NPR — that we get our clothes a lot cheaper as well. He said that if we didn’t have our clothing being made overseas, we might only have enough money to own one pair of shoes. Yeah, he said that. It’s funny, though, because I’m old enough to remember when most of the clothes I wore were made in the United States by unionized workers earning a decent living. I can’t recall who it was making my sneakers, but I do remember wearing Levi Jeans that were made in the U.S.A by union labor. As a teenager, I had more than one pair of jeans. In fact, I had a bunch of them. I had way more jeans then than I do now. I had more jeans than I needed back when I was earning minimum wage.

But let’s for a moment suppose that if it weren’t for trade agreements negotiated by corporations that I wouldn’t be eating blueberries in January and could only afford one pair of shoes. Is that really so bad compared to the environmental cost of a global economy, where products so trivial as plastic straws are shipped from China to my local Walmart? Could I live without plastic straws so long as it saved the expense of shipping it halfway across the world? Could I forego my fetish for footwear if it were clear to me that corporate power was being increased and my own power as a worker was being decreased by trade agreements that superseded the will of the voters, in my country and in other’s?

I suspect I could. I suspect I have. I no longer eat blueberries in January. Despite the fact that some “expert” on the NPR recently told me it could be more fuel efficient to have them shipped from another continent than it would be to transport it in a non-fuel efficient pickup truck to my local farmers market. Yeah, he actually said that. Now, admittedly, I haven’t looked at the numbers, but I have learned the hard way that well-paid smarty pants experts often lie. So without being a expert in transportation, agriculture, or logistics, I’ve come to distrust experts who unzip their pant and tell me it’s about to rain.

So, no, I don’t eat blueberries in January. The last of the local apples are beginning to reach their expiration date around then, so I rely on dried fruits until spring. But I’ll tell you what, I enjoy the hell out of blueberries when they are in season here. I fully enjoy in season whatever I can find that is locally sourced. It makes me feel connected, not only to the people who grow the food I eat, but to the planet I live on. Just not so much to the apologists who are interviewed on NPR.