Mankind has existed as a species for more than a million years. For most of this time, finding enough to eat was the dominant preoccupation. It still is for a substantial portion of humanity in developing countries.

But as memories of food deprivation during the Great Depression and two World Wars fade into the past, the developed world has become largely populated by people who have never known food shortages and starvation. Food comes from grocery stores and the shelves are always full.

North American society really did not even know food shortages during the Second World War. Granted, there were rations on some imported items such as sugar, but there was always enough food for the middle class to eat. North Americans last knew real food deprivation during the dirty thirties. Even then, the problem was not supply, but unemployment and the ability to buy. Though the latter still exists for a very small segment of Canadian society today - as demonstrated by the existence of food banks and inner-city soup kitchens - the possibility that there will not be enough food never crosses the modern citizen’s mind.

It has been a little different in Europe, where memories of severe food shortages and starvation during WW II are more recent. Worries about food supply dominated European agri-food thinking for decades thereafter. That’s why there has been such an emphasis placed on agricultural research in Western Europe, and why the average citizen has supported large subsidy payments - and taxes to fund them - for European farmers. But there are signs that this sympathy is also evaporating as the non-farming public demands more and more of farmers in return for continued subsidy support. And tolerances for environmentally damaging farm technology continue to drop. New limits on manure production and usage in the Netherlands and on the large-scale use of water for irrigation in France are examples, as are new laws to limit the heavy use of pesticides and fertilizer characteristic of agriculture in most EU countries.

Substantial public sympathy for farmers continues in both continents; witness the intensive - though short-term - outpouring of support expressed for farmers at the time of the Family Farm Tribute concert in Toronto. But it’s nothing like it once was.

Few in the developed world believe that the reliability of their food supply is a worry.

Expenditures for food can be an issue. A survey of Ontario and Quebec consumers for Ontario Agri-Food Technologies in late 1999 found that 38 per cent of Ontarions believe the cost of food or “not enough money for food” was one of their top three concerns about food. This concern is generally higher during times of recession and high unemployment (as in the early 1980s and again in the early 1990s), or high inflation (mid 1970s). But statistics show that only about 11 per cent of disposable income is spent on food purchases in Canada. Most Canadians can buy all the food they want; most of their money is left for other things.

Indeed, many Canadians have shown an increasing willingness in recent years to pay more for what they perceive as safer food or better quality. Some of this money has flowed to the organic food sector, despite questionable evidence about the quality or environmental sustainability of some organic agricultural practices (higher bacterial levels in food and dependence on soil tillage for weed control, as examples). A lot of money also goes to purchase so-called health foods, exotic herbs and the like.

This tendency – and the associated angst – is also, undoubtedly, why many Canadians (and those in other wealthy countries) have been so willing to heed scary messages about modern food production practices spread by activist organizations, regardless of the credibility of the advocates. And there is no reason to expect this pattern to end.

Agriculturalists in general - and many farmers, specifically - are having a hard time adjusting to the new reality. Their reason for existence, they believe, is to feed a hungry world. They’ve been told this need will intensify - rather than diminish - in years ahead, because of a human population increasing at two-to-three times the total number of Canadians every year. They’ve struggled for generations trying to produce more for less, even though real farm income has scarcely improved during this tenure. They genuinely believe that they are good environmental stewards and do produce quality products. And they’ve been accustomed to a society appreciative of their efforts.

But all that is changing. The customer asks for - rather, demands - perfect produce, free from any hint of disease, insect damage or blemishes, free from residues of pesticides or any artificial additive, in ample supply year round, available at a price which does not interfere seriously with purchases of other necessities (winter vacations, 19-inch computer monitors, surround sound, skylights in the den, SUVs, to name a few), marketed at all hours of the day, in near-table-ready form - and grown the “old fashioned” way without genetic modification.

In a way, the phenomenon is not new. Aristocracy has made these demands for centuries. Prince Charles is no different from wealthy nobility of generations earlier. What’s new this time is the way in which the middle class has joined the ranks. Even mainstream churches have joined those apparently more worried about genes in their soup than about world hunger.

It’s the curse of affluence.

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