An Urban's Rural View

It was, the anthropologists tell us, a transformational moment -- the beginnings of civilization, really -- when our ancient ancestors started growing food. Farming produced food surpluses, which changed everything. Labor specialization developed, cities sprouted, trade flourished.

Fishing, by comparison, is a throwback to the hunter-gatherer stage of human development. Unlike the farmer, who creates food that would not otherwise exist, the commercial fisherman creates nothing; he finds fish and scoops them up. Next to farming, fishing seems primitive.

And yet, as I'm coming to realize spending five months a year in an ocean-side town, fishing and farming have a lot in common.

Newport, Ore., is the homeport of more than 200 fishing boats. In 2011 the seafood landings in this central Oregon coast town totaled more than $44 million. Off Newport, the Pacific teems with halibut, rockfish, tuna, lingcod, black cod, salmon, shrimp, scallops, clams and Dungeness crab.

You want fresh and local? In Newport you can buy seafood right off the boats, or at local markets that advertise where their products were caught and even by which boats using which methods.

You need but glance at the trawlers and long-liners in Newport's deep-water harbor to grasp that fishermen and farmers share an addiction to expensive equipment. You'll see old boats and new boats, big boats and small boats, but the trend is clear: Boats, engines, deck gear, radar, sonar, radios, freezers, computer-mapping systems -- everything a fisherman needs to compete keeps getting more technologically sophisticated.

Fishing, like farming, is a high-risk business. Neither farmer nor fisherman can do much to stimulate demand for his products; for both, the weather can turn success into failure. And like poultry and hog raisers, some fishermen produce under contract.

Scallops in many Newport fish stores are now labeled "Gulf of Mexico." According to a fishmonger who used to carry local scallops, a big national steakhouse chain has agreed to take all the scallops Newport boats haul in.

"I helped these guys get started with scallops and now I can't get any, but I understand," the fishmonger said. The contract price isn't always as high as the market price, but "I never met a fisherman who wouldn't prefer the security of a guaranteed market."

A twenty-something woman with flaming red hair was walking down the coast highway in Newport carrying a "Label GMOs" sign. She's campaigning for signatures to put a mandatory labeling initiative on the 2014 ballot.

I wouldn't sign her petition but my sense of the people I know here in Newport is that many would. Most of them aren't activists, but they agree with the activists that people have a right to know what's in their food.

Time will tell whether this particular initiative can get enough signatures to land on the ballot this year, or win voter approval if it does. Over time, though, more and more states are likely to require mandatory labeling. Massive industry lobbying may win some battles but probably not the war. The "right to know" argument and the electorate's anti-corporate mood will prevail.

Food makers and grocery chains should stop fighting labeling state-by-state and court-by-court. They should fight instead for a mandatory federal labeling standard, one that gives consumers information without trying to scare them.

They should agree that the consumer has a right -- not to a warning label, which is what the activists want, but to the details of which ingredients have been genetically-engineered and what percentage of the total product they represent.

The companies have already lost in Vermont and have been forced to fight that state's new labeling law in court. Maybe if they lose in Oregon, too, they'll rethink their strategy and offer consumers a real right to know.

Urban Lehner

urbanity@hotmail.com

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