Ever since President Obama took office in January, he’s kept his eye on the grand prize of making political discourse more civil. He’s held up the ideal that Democrats and Republicans can find common ground and move beyond shrill partisan warring that has characterized politics for the last twenty-five years.
In looking for places to boost this unifying project, the sunny patch of common ground on the White House lawn holds great promise.
When First Lady Michelle Obama and her daughters together with Washington school children recently turned soil to start the new White House vegetable garden, they tapped into a deep well of America’s heritage–the agrarian ideal and the related notion of self-sufficiency–but also into modern dreams of a more healthful food system not just for elites but for everyone.
These ideals and dreams capture the imagination of people everywhere on the political spectrum.
In the past year, as I’ve given talks about my book Kitchen Literacy: how we’ve lost knowledge of where food comes from and why we need to get it back, I’ve found myself talking with people from far right to far left, some from traditional farm backgrounds, some from city centers, some Christian fundamentalists, some Buddhists, some young, some old. I have been inspired to find people of all sorts excited by the hope of rebuilding local, regional food systems that can revive rural economies and provide better, more wholesome foods to more people.
Like no other issue, the aim of rebuilding local agriculture has the potential to unite people in communities all across the nation– to get us talking again about what is important and what is possible.
And strategies from both political camps are clearly needed.
With so many recent food recalls and food-borne illness problems, reforming government oversight of our food system is crucial. The USDA has a long history of sympathizing with producers, not consumers, creating an undeniable conflict of interest when it comes to food safety. Both FDA and the USDA have long been governed by leaders who rotate through revolving doors from big food and agri-business to government–drawing the credibility of the agencies into serious question. Another key area for reform is reducing farm subsidies that favor only the largest commodity crop producers.
But we also need a bottom up approach to rebuild our food systems on a regional and community levels. Already citizens are working at the grassroots to identify barriers to thriving regional agriculture and to figure out new solutions. Small farmers are seeing themselves not only as producers in a large corporate-governed commodity system, but also as entrepreneurs who can tap niche and local markets. And even consumers are figuring out how to parley the power of their pocketbooks by taking personal responsibility for their shopping, by supporting local farms at farmers markets and by starting backyard vegetable gardens.
On a practical level, the new White House vegetable garden will certainly grow great tasting lettuce for the first family and may even inspire local school kids to eat their veggies. On a more symbolic level, the garden can nurture a mix of personal responsibility and government reform that has the potential to re-unify America.
As new seeds poke their heads through soil this spring, we can be hopeful.
Nowadays when I see bees in my garden, I pay close attention.
I have noticed at least four different types. They buzz purposely—so focused on the periwinkle blue flowers of my rosemary hedge. I crouch down to examine their fuzzy bodies and the gorgeous floral interiors that are the center of their apian attention. The wondrous dance of bees and flowers has been evolving for millions of years, but in the past few, it has it become frighteningly tenuous.
Since Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) was first recognized in the U.S. in 2006, news about the plight of honeybees and native bees has only worsened around the world. Last year alone, an estimated 30 billion bees died.
Bees pollinate over 80 percent of all food crops and are responsible for about one-third the calories we eat, and though we rarely remember this fact, we are wholly dependent on the busy little buzzers.
Although a specific cause for CCD has yet to be been nailed down, several building factors have likely contributed. Pesticides could be causing the immuno-suppression of bees, or a combination of factors, such as blood-sucking varroa mites, diseases, and nutritional stress, might all interact to weaken bee colonies to the point of collapse.
What’s clear is that all likely contributing factors are linked to our industrial approach to pollination:
We’ve become too dependent on a single bee species to pollinate our crops, which makes our agriculture extremely vulnerable to problems caused by pathogens, especially in the face of environmental stresses.
Global exchange of bees has allowed the spread of pathogens. Although the Honey Bee Act of 1922 long prohibited importation of hives to prevent the spread of disease, varroa mites likely hitchhiked in with smuggled queen bees, and at least one virus associated with CCD is likely to have entered the U.S. in 2005, when Congress approved an exemption in response to pressure from almond growers, who were in desperate need of pollination by more commercial hives.
Just last week, the Seattle PI reported massive fraud in honey, with tons of honey from China flooding into the U.S. contaminated with illegal antibiotics—unapproved for food in the U.S.—but used widely in China to cope with prevalent hive diseases. In most organisms, indiscriminate antibiotic use increases the likelihood of antibiotic-resistant diseases.
Rather than enhance habitat to keep bees well nourished with floral nectars, beekeepers have increasingly used corn syrup as a supplemental feed, leading some researchers to question the nutritional adequacy of bees’ modern diets and whether that might play a contributing role in vulnerability to disease.
With news of last year’s honey production cut in half in the UK and farmers fearing for their orchards in Italy, the European Parliament took action on the bee front. In November, according to the Christian Science Monitor, the EU approved the creation of Bee Recovery Areas. Though the Parliament’s vote will carry no legal weight, it is a strong recommendation for EU member states to take action.) Bee Recovery Areas would be pesticide-free zones planted with nectar rich flowers—swaths of bee heaven located in the midst of farmlands that have become inhospitable. The areas would amount to less than 1 percent of the land, but would offer important refuge to these crucial pollinating insects. In addition, France and Germany have already banned a class of insecticides implicated in massive bee-die offs.
Here is the U.S., government policies have thus far focused on determining the specific cause of CCD, breeding disease resistant bee varieties (with genetic engineering techniques), and figuring out how to better track bee health. Yet last year’s Farm Bill also recognized the importance of improving habitat for bees—both honey and native.
Already, on-the-ground work of increasing habitat favorable to bees has been started by key non-profit groups, such as the Xerces Society, which has been collaborating with farmers to plant more hedgerows of bee-nourishing plants close to crop plants. Funding for some of these projects has come from the USDA through existing conservation cost-share funding programs.
No matter which particular cause ends up as smoking gun, farming with fewer pesticides, organic farming, and planting more hedgerows close to crop plants will all be important approaches to consider—and soon—as we aim to avert this global bee catastrophe.
Bees are undoubtedly industrious creatures, but they are not industrial.
Finding a solution to the CCD crisis demands we recognize that agricultural models based on industrial production are neither resilient nor sustainable. We must recognize the ecological context of farming.
At this point, improving habitat for bees—both native and honey—may be the single most important precaution we can take.
I am glad to think that my rosemary hedge might offer some small swath of refuge to bees in this troubled world.
To learn more about pollinators’ plight and what you can do to help, including how to plant for bees, see the Pollination Partnership website, which offers free regional planting guides. See also the website of the Xerces Society.
If you want to read a book, check out The Forgotten Polllinators—which helped inspire me to realize that we must all become more “literate” about the ecological context of our kitchens.
Lately, I’ve enjoyed giving greater attention to what I eat and where it comes from. I’ve canned fresh local tuna, grown leafy greens and purple potatoes in my garden, baked fresh breads, learned the stories of my apples and berries, and generally taken a slow-food approach to nourishing my body.
But last fall, I realized that I’ve been taking far less care with my mind.
Increasingly, I’ve been reading on the internet. It’s all great stuff: New York TImes op eds, articles from The Atlantic, a few favorite blogs that invariably bring me to new websites, an audio or video clip here or there, and, of course, emails. Like a bee, I flit about sipping different nectars in the stimulating world of cyberspace, usually too late at night for my own good.
But there’s a downside.
I used to read about 50 books a year. Now I’m down to about 20.
I had the vague sense of feeling somewhat scattered, but I didn’t realize the extent of it until I returned to my reading roots and started a big fat book.
The Song of the Dodo by David Quammen had been sitting on my to-read shelf for about three years. Even though I wanted to read it, I kept avoiding it because, frankly, it was so darned long. I kept choosing shorter books and a growing diet of internet hors d’ouevres and snacks.
Last fall, I finally mustered the courage to tackle it. When I opened the book for the first time, I flipped to the back. Yes, there were really 625 pages of text plus more of epilogue, glossary, notes, and appendices to bring the grand total to over 700. With a deep breath, I began, and within a few opening paragraphs, my anxiety dissipated. I was engrossed.
Quammen’s book is magisterial. He weaves together adventure, travel, history, natural history, and big ideas of science, and then reveals them to be deeply relevant to the ominous modern catastrophe of extinction. I’d recommend it to anyone with an interest in nature.
But aside from the book’s compelling content, I found myself utterly delighted by the experience of reading a big book again.
The sturdy hardback fell open in my hands in an easy way. The book’s weighty body felt good to hold. I enjoyed the reader’s ritual of choosing a lovely bookmark to hold my place as I progressed through the long work.
I didn’t devour the book in a gluttonous rush but parceled out a few chapters at a time. Now and then, I dipped into other books for a change of pace. I didn’t take it with me on a two-week trip to New England because it was too big and heavy. Yet while I was gone, I missed it.
I picked it back up as soon as I returned.
It was as I read this hefty book that I realized my brain was entering a very different space. Rather than bopping around in a scattershot fashion, I was drawn to focus.
I was on a path carefully crafted for me by a brilliant writer. It would tramp along and then build to some overlook, only to descend into another canyon of questions. One had to read through several chapters of spiders, komodo dragons, and ever evolving gyrations of scientific thought to reach a higher summit of understanding. Only then was I ready for the next part of the adventure.
The tome demanded my attention and diligence. Reading it was a regular practice. Each time I picked up the big book I found myself on the monumental journey once again. Entering its space of stories and ideas was a balm and a boost for a mind wearied by daily doses of bad news. Every day, I found myself looking forward to a quiet eddy in the evening when I could pick it up and enter into its other world. In the process of reading, my mind was recalibrated.
I finished about two and a half months after I’d started. Turning the final page and reading the last paragraph was a milestone not only in the story of the book but also in my life as a reader. I felt as if I had lived through a significant experience. By reading, I’d traveled all over the globe, discovered wondrous new creatures, and met the great minds and ideas of biology—all over the course of three centuries. I knew far more about the world than I had when I started. I heaved a deep breath and sat quietly, trying to absorb the import of it all.
In these fast-paced times, when readers’ attention spans are shrinking like puddles in the sun, publishers say the market demands shorter and pithier books. Some even look ahead and wonder if books’ days are numbered.
To lose big books would be tragic. Reading a great fat book is a classic quality experience. There is nothing like it.
In fact, a revival of book reading may be just what’s needed in light of the current economic downturn. Books remain an unparalleled “technology” for engagement, entertainment, and enlightenment. Compared to a movie, concert, or a play, reading a book is a great deal, and compared to internet surfing, it offers a deeper, more meaningful experience.
In the same way many of us have chosen to nourish our bodies with more “slow foods,” I’d like to see a similar attention given to how we nourish our minds—a shift toward slow and quality in the realm of reading.
To match the slow food movement, we need a slow food-for-thought movement.
Today’s announcement that President-elect Obama will be appointing Iowa Governor Thomas Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture is a major disappointment for those who have been rattling for reform of our food system. Vilsack has been a major proponent of biotechnology and biotech companies. (The Organic Consumers Association has called him “a shill for Monsanto and corporate agribusiness.”) He’s also been an ardent proponent of corn and soy based biofuels, though they arguably use as much or more fossil energy to produce as they generate—a non-solution for getting ag off its heavy petroleum diet. Moreover, biofuels have come under intense global scrutiny over the past year because they’ve driven up world food prices creating hunger problems in the developing world.
Of course, few Secretaries of Agriculture have been reformers (see below). The one area where Vilsack might make a meaningful contribution is with renewable energy—but he’s definitely a fuel guy—not a food guy.
The Ghost of an Ag Secretary Past
Last week Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times followed up on Michael Pollan’s seminal letter to the next president and recommended that President-elect Obama appoint a Secretary of “Food” to replace the long-standing cabinet position of Secretary of “Agriculture.” The idea has been sizzling around in the blogosphere, and there is now a petition at FoodDemocracyNow.org to support any one of a slate of great candidates, already signed by luminaries of the food cognoscenti.
It’s a compelling idea. America has become a truly urban nation, with less than 2 percent of us farming but 100 percent of us eating. And with all that eating, our country now faces a crisis in public health owing to epidemic obesity-a result of overproduction of insalubrious foods. Appointing a Secretary of Food rather than of Agriculture would signal a shift of emphasis—from concern about the business of agriculture to concern about consumers and food quality. Since the USDA has long been guided and girded by agribusiness and commodity-crop producers, the only way to get out of deep ruts of lobby-driven policies would be to tap a real reformer, someone who could put forth—and act upon—a new and bold vision.
And that begs the question, has there ever been a real reformer at the USDA?
Over the department’s history, most Secretaries of Agriculture have come and gone with little fanfare and few waves-simply overseeing the business of the behemoth agency and functioning as über ambassadors for America’s big commodity exporters. Few Secretaries have been farmers-many have been politicians, journalists, academics, farm businessmen -one even owned a yellow cab company. And yet from this august and not-so-august set, one Secretary arguably stands out as the most influential and reform-minded of all: Henry A. Wallace.
When FDR appointed Wallace as Secretary of Agriculture in 1933, more than one-quarter of Americans were farmers. The nation was in the grips of the Great Depression and that twin calamity, the Dust Bowl. As one of two Republicans in FDRs cabinet, Wallace served from 1933 to 1940, becoming as Kenneth Galbraith called him, “second only to Roosevelt as the most important figure of the New Deal.” Eminent historian Arthur Schlesinger would later call Wallace “the best secretary of agriculture the country has ever had.”
To understand why Wallace was so influential and “best,” one must have a sense of his background. Henry A. was born into a family of agricultural editors. At the close of the 19th century, his grandfather and father had started a popular farmers’ journal, Wallaces’ Farmer, which was widely read in agricultural circles. And so young Henry grew up steeped in the world where farmers’ concerns and farm policy were literally the mainstays of life. Following the family model, he became an idealist and intellectual. He took over the paper’s helm when his dad, Henry C. Wallace, went to Washington in the 1920s, to accept an offer to serve as Secretary of Agriculture in the Harding Administration. If there ever was a “first family” in agriculture, the Wallaces were it, and Henry A. entered office with considerable stature in both the nation’s capitol and farming community.
Henry A. had also studied plant genetics and became deeply involved in developing and marketing hybrid corn, one the key innovations in 20th century agriculture (perhaps second only to synthetic fertilizers). His fascination with plants bordered on the mystical, and his company Pioneer Hi-Bred, started in the 1920s, would go on to become one of world’s biggest seedhouses (purchased by Dupont in 1998 for nearly $8 billion). As an accomplished scientist, Wallace held the optimistic belief that science could solve many of agriculture’s problems by breeding drought and pest resistance into crop plants.
Most important, Wallace was acutely attuned of the predicament of farmers. Through the 1920s, the decade when our nation became predominantly urban, farmers had struggled to make ends meet. Their plight only deepened with the depression. Between 1929 and 1932, their per capita cash net income had declined from $162 to only $48.
In the years following WWI, many farmers had taken out loans to shift from horse-power to gas-power and to increase land in production to meet post-war global demand. Under a burden of debt, they grew more crops to make ends meet, but the more they sent to market, the lower prices were driven—even below the cost of production in some cases. As the economy and markets collapsed, many had lost their land or were reduced to poverty conditions.
Wallace rose to the challenge by thinking out of the box and promoting a whole host of New Deal programs to help farmers, including the Rural Electrification Administration, the Farm Credit Administration, and perhaps most significant, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA).
With the AAA, Wallace boldly promoted the policy of increasing farmers’ income by controlling farm production according to a national plan. As Wallace saw it, benevolent government intervention in land-use planning to prevent gluts was the only way to give farmers the same opportunity that industry and business already had to boost income by decreasing supply.
As a reformer, Wallace held firm to his ambition of preserving the rural way of life and restoring farmers’ economic stature in the national economy. In the past, farmers had functioned atomistically, but in the new context of economic uncertainty, an individual farmer’s life was strangely hitched to the fate of distant nations, corporations, and cities.
Many of Wallace’s policies were highly controversial. In particular, he ordered the slaughter of millions of pigs to keep them off the market—a move seen by many, including farmers, as outrageous during a time of widespread hunger and poverty; but they worked. As farm production declined, prices gradually rose. Between 1932 and 1936-during the Depression—gross farm income increased by 50 percent, restoring 90 percent of farmers’ former purchasing power, enabling many to stay on farms that would have otherwise been lost.
In the arena of soils, Wallace recognized that extreme problems of erosion, as evidenced by the dark clouds of billowing dust, owed largely to poor stewardship. The Soil Conservation Service came into existence under his leadership-and he, along with other USDA leaders, promoted ideals of “interdependence” and “permanence” for agriculture—ideas that carried both ecological and economic meanings. Their belief that agriculture could be reformed with science and better stewardship of soil to produce food for the long haul is an ideal that might be neatly summed up with today’s buzzword: sustainability.
“Interdependence” also held political meaning for Wallace as he aimed to shore up a divide between country and city by pairing policies that aided rural farmers with policies that aided the urban poor, such as food stamps and school lunches.
Over the course of his tenure, Wallace presided over a massive expansion of his agency. The USDA grew from 40,000 to 140,000 employees, while expenditures rose from $280 million in 1932 to $1.5 billion in 1940. Given his strong interest in science, Wallace greatly expanded the agency’s scientific research programs. Despite the rapid increase, the agency was widely recognized as the best run in Washington during the 1930s.
If there was ever a reformer at the USDA, Henry A. Wallace —with his farmer-and soil-centered policies—was it.
With a bold vision, intellectual breadth, zeal, compassion, scientific sophistication, and family standing, Wallace succeeded admirably in achieving his goals of preserving family farms, boosting farmers’ income, and advancing the ideal of a permanent agriculture through the severe crises of depression and dust bowl.
However, in the long term, his work with hybrid corn plus structures he put into place at the USDA would eventually morph, inflate, and become tools to powerful lobbies and economic forces—ultimately conspiring to unravel the agriculture that his proud family had once so staunchly advocated for. Wallace’s pro-farmer reforms were undone as America’s farms became corporatized, and his pro soil efforts were undermined by later policies that put production before stewardship, though the Soil Conservation Service—now the Natural Resources Conservation Service—still continues to promote conservation, a notable legacy.
Henry A. Wallace went on to become Vice President in FDR’s second term, an avowed anti-fascist, and then shifting leftward ran as a third-party candidate for the Progressive Party, a move that deeply tarnished his reputation owing to ties with Communist Party funding. The scarlet “C” coupled with news about his eastern spiritual quests would marginalize him—and his legacy—in cold war America.
Nevertheless, if the ghost of this great Ag Secretary Past had his pick today, my guess is that he’d be pleased by the Food Democratists’ slate. Those of us who talk now about sustainable farming and linking small farms with urban eaters are reviving his ideals of interdependence and permanence. If he had President-elect Obama’s ear, he just might whisper: there is opportunity in adversity—pick a reformer!
For more about Henry A. Wallace, check out some of the sources for this entry:
American Dreamer: The Life and Times of Henry A. Wallace by John C. Culver and John Hyde
A useful website about the New Deal hosted by Columbia University
A Green and Permanent Land by Randal S. Beeman and James A. Pritchard, about the ideal of permanent agriculture in the 1930s
At climate talks in Poland last week, delegates considered the issue of farm emissions. Globally farm animals generate 18 percent of greenhouse gasses—that’s more than cars, planes, and buses. According to The New York Times (“As more eat meat, a bid to cut emissions”), delegates considered some technological solutions, such as converting waste methane gas into an energy source. This elegant approach has already shown great promise. San Francisco Bay-area consumers know the Straus Creamery has a methane digester that creates more than enough energy to power its organic milk, butter, and yogurt processing operations.
The possibility of capturing energy from methane offers a tremendous opportunity for reducing greenhouse emissions and water pollution from farm animal industries and should be vigorously pursued in the policy realm.
Yet just as important, especially in the near term, may be the simple personal approach of eating less meat.
According to Dr. Pachauri, head of the IPCC, if everyone ate less meat, it would be more effective at reducing green house gasses than switching to hybrid cars. (shifting to a non-meat diet would reduce 1.5 tons of carbon dioxide per person per year, while trading a sedan for a hybrid would reduce emissions by roughly 1 ton per year). This revelation prompted one Huffington Post blogger earlier this year to pronounce: “Vegetarian is the new Prius.”
While eating less meat would seem to be a relatively easy solution, whereby each individual could take some personal responsibility to address today’s most pressing global problem, the idea of eating less meat has long been a difficult and charged topic in America.
Thirty-seven years ago, Frances Moore Lappé made brillliant arguments in Diet for a Small Planet about eating less meat as a way to reduce world hunger. The book sold over 3 million copies and inspired a small set of readers to experiment with lentil loaf and consider other ways to take personal responsibility for global-scale issues.
Yet Lappe’s ideas were controversial. Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz’s response was unyielding. “Americans are not going to eat one less hamburger a week. They are going to eat one more hamburger a week. Furthermore, they need have no sense of guilt as they do so.” His solution for world hunger was to make it an opportunity for American business. He pressed farmers to tear up windbreaks, and produce more grains for still more meat production and exports.
And indeed, as he predicated, our nation’s appetite for meat continued to grow. According to the USDA, in 2000, American’s annual meat consumption reached a record 195 pounds per person—57 pounds more than the average consumption in the 1950s.
The tone of Butz’ response captured the fact that meat-especially beef—was not just another food item on our dinner plates. Eating meat has long symbolized prestige and even national pride. Since European immigrants began flocking to the U.S. in great numbers in the late 19th century, the availability of cheap meat has been considered one of the key advantages of being American-one that the developing world now wants to get in on.
Moreover, meat has long been a powerful business in America. As Michael Pollan recently chronicled in An Eater’s Manifesto, it is politically almost impossible to say anything about reducing meat consumption in America—let alone to develop policies along those lines, health and environment issues notwithstanding. Oprah would surely agree.
As a result, our nation’s all-or-nothing discourse about eating meat—that one should eat it or not, should feel guilt or not, should be a red-blooded American or a quirky vegetarian—has generally prevailed.
However, given the urgent press of climate change, the idea of eating less meat is gaining new attention, especially among consumers.
As more people consider ways to take personal actions to conserve energy and reduce carbon, food choices have already come under greater scrutiny, with more people talking about eating local and food miles. Cutting back on meat consumption, and choosing meats that generate less carbon, such as chicken, will likely become more common, too.
The idea that one need not go “cold turkey” and avoid all meat also makes the prospect of changing diet more palatable. New York Times food writer and cookbook author Mark Bittman has recently adopted an eat-less-meat habit, sharing low meat recipes as part of an easy, delicious modern approach to cuisine. As Bittman has pointed out, it’s much easier to go low on meat than to say no to meat. Indeed, with greater availability and variety of high-quality vegetables, beans, and grains-plus more appealing and varied recipes, inspired by a more cosmopolitan cuisine, the possibility of eating very well with a low meat diet is now greater than ever before.
As health problems associated with overeating have become more widely known, it is becoming clear, too, that eating less in general will be important for reducing obesity and improving public health. How this awareness will translate to shifting Americans’ diet remains to be seen, but already we’ve seen the American Medical Association lobby for farm policies that favor production of more fresh vegetables.
Finally, Francis Moore Lappé’s arguments for eating less meat remain crucially important especially as global hunger issues resurge with grains diverted for ethanol production.
Despite long-standing cultural, political and economic barriers to the idea of Americans eating less meat, now is the time to break them. With concerns for health, the environment and social justice lining up, American consumers’ decisions about what to eat could play an important role.
While nation’s duke it out—and delay and punt—over who’s going to pay to cope with greenhouse gases, consider pasta primavera.
In my recent book Kitchen Literacy, I concluded by urging readers to learn where their food comes from and how it is raised. In developing my own “kitchen literacy,” I’ve enjoyed getting to know one of the farmers who grow the veggies I buy: Zöe Bradbury.
At age 29 and already accomplished in advocacy, education, and farming, Zöe just started her own organic farm this year. Her rainbow colored carrots are to die for, her beets brilliant and sweet, her fennel fabulous, but most impressive have been the energy, passion, and muscle she has invested into her farm.
Back in April, when she told me she was planting thousands of artichoke, strawberry, and asparagus plants and hundreds and hundreds of beets, leek, squashes, and more, all plotted in Excel (she learned to farm by spreadsheet when she worked at a CSA), I was astounded. I couldn’t even begin to fathom the cascade of tasks she had arrayed before her. Then she put in an irrigation system and bought a team of Belgian Draft horses. I happened to visit the 7-acre farm when she first hooked the horses up to an old, renovated John Deere disker. I got to watch her get jostled around as she learned anew a skill that’s mostly been lost to oil-based farming.
Zöe sees herself as part of a rising movement of young farmers taking the reins of America’s agriculture. With the average age of farmers is now approaching 60, this new generation of farmers will play a crucial role in our country’s future. Zoe joined her sister and mother who already grew specialty lettuce and hot-house tomatoes and peppers on family land.
Zöe is committed to making her farm a closed-loop system. She strives to reduce outside inputs as a way of keeping costs down but also as a way of living better on earth. She sees her work building a farm that can supply our local communities as a key part of rebuilding a more sustainable agriculture. And best of all, she loves her work.
Eating Zoe’s carrots has been terrific not only because they taste fabulous but because when I buy them, I feel like I am helping in a small but tangible way to create the world that I want to live in.
Typically kids from rural areas move away and never come back to the communities where they grew up because they find few opportunities for work. I am grateful that Zöe has come back to rural Oregon with the verve to forge her own opportunity. Many other local people are excited about her return, too. Some are neighbors and friends who have known her since she was a kid; some like to stop by and watch her work with the draft horses or who pitch in to help with old equipment; others are newbies excited about the prospect of buying great fresh and local food.
By all accounts, the birth of this small farm has brought a spirit of promise and renewal.
Of all our national holidays I’ve always loved Thanksgiving best. Aside from the fun of cooking and eating terrific food together, it’s the only national holiday that hasn’t degenerated into an entirely commercial affair.
In fact, it even seems to recognize America’s natural abundance. The story of Thanksgiving is fundamentally about our American relationship with the natural world.
While the cynic in me could tell stories about pumpkin patches of my childhood now paved over by shopping plazas, the optimist in me chooses to focus on the hopeful elements of the holiday, and also on some interesting possibilities that are gaining fresh credence with the growing local foods movement.
The power of sharing
The story of the first Thanksgiving has been heavily mythologized for 300 years, but in short it goes like this: Pilgrims shared a celebratory harvest meal with the Indians who had helped them through their first rough season. Without Squanto’s expertise planting corn and squashes, the Pilgrims’ harvest would have been very lean.
Although it’s not clear if the Pilgrims actually invited the Wampanoags to dinner, the Thanksgiving story includes the powerful idea that sharing food creates relationships.
Since I’ve lived in a small town, I’ve experienced this sharing first hand. The pumpkin that I’ll use in pie this year comes from the garden of a neighbor, who gave it to me as a gesture of thanks for help I gave her with her son. I’ve also had neighbors share everything from fresh caught salmon to crinkly Savoy cabbages.
While the fresh food is delicious, what is especially gratifying is being part of the web of appreciation, abundance, and local knowledge; community and backyard gardens give us the potential to spread the goodwill of thanksgiving throughout the year.
Core value: local
Of course, the original Thanksgiving dinner was an entirely locally grown and harvested affair. (Governor Bradford sent men to hunt for more wild fowl when 90 Wampanoag guests showed up unexpectedly; the guests went out and hunted more venison, too.)
The key elements of Thanksgiving cuisine were and still are foods notably native to the Americas. The turkeys we eat today (though now bred for enormous breasts with regrettable effect on the fowl’s physique and well being) are the descendents of wild turkeys. Of all domestic meats, only turkey is native to the American continent.
The cranberries that we enjoy in sauce today are related to the wild cranberries that grew and grow in coastal bogs. Same with potatoes, squash, and corn-all food-stuffs of the New World. The pumpkin, too, was also a native vegetable. As such, pumpkin pie is a far more American dessert than the proverbial apple pie.
And so the story of Thanksgiving gives a gentle bow to the notion of a food system that fits into its place. Creating meals in season, with local produce, is a way we can aim to better fit our eating into the places where we live.
I am fortunate that on my Thanksgiving table this year, we’ll have potatoes, greens and onions from our own garden plus squash and cranberries from nearby organic farms. The traditional turkey is harder to source locally. Our bird comes from California and is labeled “free range,” but I don’t know more than that.
Cook to your heart’s content
Thanksgiving is one of those days when everyone gets into the kitchen, rolls up sleeves, and cooks. It is a time when we can enjoy mashing potatoes and making pies while visiting with family members. It reminds us what fun it can be to cook.
This is important because the simple act of cooking well is something that can fundamentally help to improve our health and food system. By buying simple, high-quality, fresh ingredients and spending less money on pre-packaged products and meals out, we can create better tasting, healthier food for our families.
If we bring some of these hopeful ideas of Thanksgiving to our tables not only on the third Thursday of November but also to meals throughout the year, we just might help to build a healthier and better food system.
In the months leading up to the election, food activists (see the video by The White House Organic Farm Project, a.k.a. TheWhoFarm.org below) have been salivating over the possibility that they could convince the next president to turn up some sunny expanse of White House lawn and put in a lush and leafy organic farm. The bounty of veggies could feed not only the first family but also Washington’s needy and fresh-food-deprived school children. The example of the first family eating fresh vegetables, prepared by a savvy chef, could also direct positive new attention to the goal of reforming America’s notoriously unhealthy diet.
The election of Barack Obama makes this dream a distinct possibility.
Ever since I saw Obama’s logo, the now familiar O with undulant red-and-white stripes across the bottom half, evoking at once our American flag but also our agricultural landscape—spread before a dawning sun, I’ve been excited. I thought: WOW—This is the first time I’ve ever seen a candidate put land upfront, and the power of the sun to boot—both potent symbols.
Of course, the wide stripes of red and white are commodity crops—corn and soybeans—the stuff of an ethanol frenzy that Obama, as Illinois Senator helped to kindle. Ever since, America’s ethanol policy has been widely criticized for elevating global food prices and spurring hunger crises in several developing nations.
Yet despite his fondness for turning corn into fuel, Obama’s platform also clearly indicates that his administration will be far more open to helping family farms and to developing sustainable agriculture than any other president to date.
Some key ideas from the Obama platform include support for immediate implementation of County of Origin Labeling law, stricter water quality regulation for CAFOs (Confined Animal Farm Operations), assistance to help farmers afford to certify their crops as organic, and increased incentives for conservation of wetlands, grasslands and forests on private farm and ranchland.
According to his platform, Obama would also implement a $250,000 support payment limit and close subsidy loopholes so family farmers would get the safety net they need but corporate mega-farms would be prevented from farming for federal largesse. Obama would also institute a new training program to encourage young people to become farmers and offer tax incentives to make it easier for new farmers to secure land.
As another hopeful sign, President-elect Obama has read Michael Pollan’s “Open Letter to the Next Farmer in Chief” (published in the New York Times last month). In it, Pollan made a compelling case that to address America’s pressing health care, energy, and global warming issues, the new president must reform America’s food system.
So keep your eye on that White House lawn, and let’s hope that what happens there will help Americans to envision a new way of eating and also help to spur policy changes that will make a more sustainable and healthful agriculture possible.
November 4, 2008 will be best remembered for the historic election of Barack Obama, but it was also a day when Californians voted their gut and their appetite.
With the passage of Proposition 2, over 63 percent of California voters cast ballots in favor of a higher standard for the treatment of animals raised for food. The new law will phase out caging practices that prevent the state’s farm animals-primarily chickens—from lying down, standing up, turning around or extending their limbs, by 2015.
In the weeks leading up to the vote, I wondered how it would turn out. Basically consumers were being asked to pay a little more for the comfort of knowing that farm animals were treated a little better.
For many this accounting is not so easy. Most of us unconsciously practice a double standard regarding the treatment of animals. We adore and spoil our pets, but we also love our steaks and fried chicken. Farm animals will be killed no matter what, so most of us simply choose not to think much about them.
Historically, before the industrialization of meat production, butchers, cooks and eaters expected to know more about the animals that would become their chops and roasts. Many understood that how animals were fed and raised determined the quality of meat, milk, and eggs. As urban eaters became distanced from farm production over the past century, this understanding was gradually lost, and the very idea of knowing about food production seemed to become irrelevant.
But things have changed over the past ten years. America’s eaters have become increasingly aware of problems with animal agriculture-a trend that dramatically peaked last spring with the largest beef recall in America’s history, triggered by an undercover video of a sick, “downer” cow being cruelly prodded straight into the meat supply. This vivid image reinforced consumer perceptions of a disturbing pattern of disregard for public and environmental health and for worker and animal welfare.
Today’s industrial animal factories are some of America’s biggest polluters, contaminating water and emitting more greenhouse gases than the transportation sector. The enormous scale of animal agriculture-with, for example, a single facility housing hundreds of thousands of chickens—has exponentially increased the potential risk for pathogens to harm pubic health. And the corner cutting and cost cutting of industrial scale producers has edged out smaller regional farms and polluted rural communities.
In the past, these problems have been regarded as unpleasant but necessary tradeoffs for the cheap and ample meat and eggs Americans have come to expect. However, rising consumer interest in local and organic foods and growing awareness about environmental and public health issues related to industrial meat production have drawn that conventional wisdom into question, compelling many to look for better ways of doing things.
Earlier this year the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production (an august and diverse panel, including former Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, former Kansas Gov. John Carlin, former president of the Western Montana Stockmen’s Association Dan Jackson, and other food and agriculture notables) released a report that examined the effects of industrial animal agriculture in four crucial areas: public health, the environment, rural economies, and animal welfare. The report charts an impressive blueprint for reform.
California’s Proposition 2 followed up on one of the Pew Commission’s animal welfare recommendations to phase out the “most intensive and inhumane production practices within a decade to reduce risks to public health and improve animal well being.”
Beyond its meaning for farm animals, the vote for Proposition 2 clearly signifies that urban consumers are no longer comfortable taking the resigned out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach that has long sanctioned unsavory industrial animal production practices.
For too long, America’s urban consumers paid scant attention to how their meat was produced, but the passage of Proposition 2 makes it clear that meat consumers don’t want to be clueless anymore.
With gas prices rising to over $4.00 per gallon, long-hidden costs of the fuel embedded within our food system are beginning to show with higher prices at the supermarket checkout. The legacy of once-cheap oil, petroleum now pervades every phase of America’s food production. It’s used to make fertilizer and pesticides, to pump water for irrigation, to power tractors and other farm equipment, for ripening fresh fruits, for processing into cans and boxes, and, of course, for shipping foods from distant farms to our market shelves. Anticipating scarcity, critics long have warned about the amount of oil in our diets—that foods travel more than 1,500 miles from farm to plate—that it takes more than 10 calories of fuel to make just one calorie of food.
But criticism of such inefficiency in our modern food system goes back farther than you might expect.
Consider an article by James Collins that ran 91 years ago in the Saturday Evening Post—about our “costly national habitat of useless hauling.” At a time when the national food system was still just emerging and its promise remained ambiguous, Collins admonished that the average American family spent 20 cents per dollar on freight costs alone.
“There is certainly not a word to be said in defense of our national habit of wiring the West to send us certain food products that we could raise in our own neighborhoods,” Collins wrote. “…And when this habit is followed up in its various ramifications it reveals downright waste and collective boneheadedness.”
History is especially fascinating when it reveals how conventional wisdom can turn entirely upside down. And now, it’s cartwheeling head over heels once again as more and more people are becoming interested in the merits of eating local poultry and produce and rebuilding regional food systems.
It’s a good time to look again at the “collective boneheadedness” that Collins identified so clearly back in 1919—just as America’s food system launched into its petroleum addiction. As price pressures for hauling increase, adding more local foods to our diets may become not only the best tasting option but the most economical as well. As Collins advised, “eat less freight.”
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