Shoppers seldom know the facts behind the food in their neighborhood supermarket.

• As they pass the shelves of pickles, how many think about the thousands of migrant workers picking cucumbers for poor wages in North Carolina?

• How many are aware that about 70 percent of the processed food in the grocery aisles contains ingredients derived from genetically modified soybeans, corn and other plants that some scientists suspect could trigger allergies in people?

• And how many consumers, accustomed to cheap chicken, really think about the repetitive motion injuries or mutilated fingers suffered by workers in processing plants as 90 birds a minute whiz by their work stations?

In rural America, however, issues of food production and processing have a much more immediate impact on people’s lives. Oftentimes these food and agricultural workers are members of Glenmary mission parishes.

Some Glenmary parishioners raise chickens or cattle or grow field crops like soybeans, corn or winter wheat. But in most Glenmary missions, those involved with food production do field labor or work in mechanized food processing settings. Latino workers in Glenmary areas pick Vidalia onions, tend egg production facilities and work in chicken processing plants. Some of the dirtiest, smelliest, most back-bending jobs in our economy find migrant workers starting at first light to bring food to American tables.

To help journalists—and the readers they serve—better understand U.S. food production, the Catholic Press Association sponsored a tour (Oct. 29–Nov. 2) focused on agricultural issues. With only a few days for travel, the tour committee (which included assistant Glenmary Challenge editor Jean Bach and me) focused on the 125 miles between Knoxville, Tenn., and Asheville, N.C.

This mud-on-your-shoes tour visited organic farms and talked with family farmers. It examined huge agribusiness practices and discussed genetically modified foods. It spoke with Latino workers and heard from Church ministers.

The National Catholic Rural Life Conference, a voice for Catholic social teachings concerning farm issues, emphasizes that when consumers better understand the structure of agriculture, the power of the food processors and the economic conditions of farmers and workers, people will grasp the connection between eating and the entire agricultural system.

For Catholic journalists, reporting stories in the light of faith transforms their writing into ministry. This year’s farm tour introduced journalists to some names and faces behind the labels in the grocery stores and the eye-appealing displays of their meat and produce departments. It pointed out how journalists could help consumers play a more active role in shaping this industry through their stories of farmers and food workers.

After Jule Morrow, a farmer in western North Carolina, saw his tobacco revenue shrink by 73 percent in three years, he turned to producing vegetables for the Asheville market. His tailgate marketing offered fresh, locally grown produce like potatoes, tomatoes, onions, cabbages and salad greens with no pesticides or herbicides. Yet, the uncertainty of selling from the back of his pickup truck sometimes forced him to discard nearly 60 percent of his unsold vegetables.

Fortunately during that first year a local Church of Christ asked him to form a partnership with its congregation, known as "Community Supported Agriculture." CSA represents an agreement between a farmer and a group of consumers that ensures high quality produce for consumers and a steady market for the farmer. Simply put, small farmers face the choice of either gleaning a barely adequate income behind the super tractor of agribusiness or plowing an alternative field.

Jule collected $80 from each of the 28 CSA members in late April then supplied each with a box of fresh organic produce every week for eight weeks. The 13- to 18-pound box changed its vegetables during the growing season, but it consistently represented a value between $21 to $24 for the weekly $10-box. In June the members could sign up again with an additional $80 for a second eight-week period.

The CSA program benefits farmers because they receive revenue up front and minimize some of the risks of farming. Consumers get safe, healthy produce plus they realize a connection to the land and food production. Some families even bring their children to the farm to roam around on pick-up days.

Another grower, Annie Louise Perkinson, the mother of a young family, represents a new generation of farmers conscious of good foods and the environment. On her farm in Fairview, N.C., she raises organic strawberries, blueberries, salad greens and seasonal vegetables for the local market. Committed to farming the land that’s been in her family for generations, she accepts some inevitable economic trade-offs: "Our income is very low, but our lives are very rich. We eat good food."

The stories of these small farmers beg a closer relationship with consumers. CSAs, farmers’ markets and food co-ops bring consumers and farmers together while they support the local community. They encourage a healthier food supply and discourage trucking fruits and vegetables thousands of miles across America. In the end, food production reveals some positive moral implications: fresher, tastier, healthier food grown with respect for creation.

Nationally, food production relies increasingly on an industrial structure that encourages vertical integration. That means that one large firm outside the local community controls everything—the production, processing and marketing of the food product. The thrust of U.S. agricultural policy emphasizes large-scale production for low consumer prices and for the expanding export market. But the policy creates winners and losers. The National Catholic Rural Life Conference voices concern about the lack of a farm safety net, the levels of agribusiness concentration and environmental problems associated with industrial agriculture.

The concrete effects of this current trend touch both rural and urban America. Rural America suffers pollution of air and water from large-scale factory farms that use open-air cesspool lagoons for animal waste. Also, as capital intensive agriculture pushes farmers off the land–-and America has lost 300,000 family farms since 1979—small businesses fail in surrounding towns, communities destabilize and rural resources diminish.

Another effect is the increasing use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that represent a significant component for increasing mechanized production. Agricultural firms rushed GMOs into crop production without extensive testing as a way to resist insect pests and weeds.

Critics contend that GMOs contain the potential for causing allergic reactions, genetic pollution and ecological concerns; hence consumer groups are lobbying for appropriate labeling at the grocery store.

Vertical integration inevitably brings a corporation greater control and power. Mary Clouse and her husband bought a North Carolina chicken farm in 1977 and worked it for 12 years. Because of the vertical integration of the chicken industry, Mary had a contract with a company that owned the chickens, supplied the feed, slaughtered the birds and marketed the meat.

Mary, as well as her farming neighbors, always came up short. The contracts gave full control of the process to the firms, but full responsibility for any problems to the farmer.

The mortgage debt incurred by contract poultry farmers keeps them serfs on their own land and intimidates them from speaking out, fearful of bankruptcy if the company cancels their contract and stops delivery of young chicks.

In the cucumber fields of North Carolina migrant workers also suffer from the demands of large-scale processors. Forced to work 12-hour days six or seven days a week during growing season with no minimum wage standards, exposed to toxic pesticides in the fields and living in substandard housing, migrant workers blame the major processor, Mt. Olive Pickle Company, more than the local farmers. The Mt. Olive Company claims it does not employ the workers, but the workers point to the tightly controlled contracts that barely keep farmers in business. The farmer becomes a contractor of this industrial agriculture corporation, and both small farmer and migrant workers feel the squeeze from the contract.

When the bishops of the South issued their pastoral letter on the poultry industry, Voices and Choices, they stressed the poultry industry simply exemplified trends in all agriculture. Their pastoral letter "is about awareness, not answers" (Voices and Choices, page 1. For an overview of this pastoral, see the article by Susan Sullivan on page 14 in this issue of Challenge).

Bishop John McRaith of Owensboro, Ky., one of the signers of the pastoral, reflected about the uncritical acceptance of bigness in business as very costly: "Somebody’s paying the price, not only for bigness but for cheap food." He and the other bishops worry about the dignity of each person, the rights of workers and the care of creation.

In Glenmary missions agricultural workers frequently ask the parish for help with personal struggles and work- related problems. Difficulty with language, confusion with red tape and intimidation over legal matters make many workers vulnerable to a system that exploits them with poor wages and unsafe working conditions.

"The tour made me realize the plight of the guest worker in the U.S.," remarked Jean Bach. "After I returned home, I’d walk through the produce department and think about how I am involved, how my actions play a part in the lives of agricultural workers—some of whose faces I can now recall."

This year’s Catholic Press Association farm tour gave journalists a snapshot of some folks who produce our food and process it. It offered them a context for understanding how everyone participates in the system, and it revealed a more conscious way of approaching food. The conclusion: eat responsibly with awareness, because eating is a moral act.