The greatest obstacle in growing the local food movement is wealth inequality. That’s why health food is a fringe area of the supermarket and why grocery stores and farmers markets fall along racial and economic borderlines in our towns, cities, and states.

It’s why, despite over a century of marketing and literature, local food is less than 1 percent of the total food market. Even organic food is just 5 percent of the food market, and only 1 percent of all farmland in the US is certified organic.

The healthiest foods, and the foods that benefit local economies, are the most cost prohibitive. But only in one sense. There are also large hidden costs to so-called affordable food, for example, carcinogens in pesticides that negatively affect the human nervous system. In the end, which is more cost prohibitive?

Created by Monica Bruckner, Montana State University

There are also real food costs that are absorbed by nature, such as nitrogen fertilizer pollution from farms along the Mississippi River. This has led to a 6,000 square foot “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, where fish cannot survive.

95 percent of Americans eat the foods that directly contribute to these issues, of which I have mentioned just two. Also, consider: topsoil erosion, antibiotic-resistant superbugs, air pollution, water shortages, nutrient loss in produce, deforestation, and myriad other ecocatastrophes.

The main benefit of capitalism has been to evolve beyond material scarcity. Machines now produce food, clothing, shelter, and other goods in excess. So much so that scarcity is now something that must be enforced in order to keep certain power structures in place.

A few examples: Amazon’s “Destruction Zone”, H&M burned 12 tonnes of unsold clothing, Burberry burned $38 million worth of unsold clothing, and there are over 16 million empty homes in the US (with a homeless population of 567,715).

Of course, food is no exception. Grocery chains in the United States send 40 percent of their food to landfills, and another 30 percent of food never leaves the farm. 11 million American children are food insecure. In Arkansas alone, 1 in 5 children are food insecure (the highest in the nation).

Abundance is our reality, but hunger and homelessness persist. Food spoils in the field. Houses remain empty. If we search long enough for the roots of these crimes, we find poverty. And from its burning branches, we find a rigidly enforced system of wealth inequality.

In part II, I'll examine food apartheid and food deserts, what defines them, how they're created, and begin to consider possible solutions.