Good Growth

Our local Whole Foods Market is decked out with pumpkins (some pretty big ones--that a person could sit on--for $50), and the seasonal squashes and other goodies are in, if not as plentiful as last year. The summer's heat blasted many local farms, with the result that Fall menus will likely feature veg from Mexico and Chile rather than from around here as many of us would like.

I had planned to have acorn squash at least, but that gave up the ghost long before Halloween decorations even made it into the stores. So I've got a few peppers coming in, and maybe some late eggplant, but aside from the herbs, that'll be it.

What this post is really about, though, is work. Real work: the stuff that needs to get done in order for people to survive. And the work of the season is harvesting. With the U. S. economy in the doldrums, and anti-immigrant fervor at a peak, one would think that farmers would have their pick (ahem) of potential hands to pull up the onions and pop the corn off the stalk.

Not according to this morning's New York Times, however--and this isn't the first I've heard of this problem. The upshot is that although America is a far fatter and less healthy nation than it should be, and even though the unemployment rate is embarrassingly high, farmers can't find nearly enough local workers to get the job done. I've heard more than one report of people signing on to harvest crops, and leaving after a few hours because they thought the work was just too hard.

I know I tend to romanticize farming; I even have the temerity to use the term "farm" metaphorically in the title of this blog. But farming lives somewhere at the center of our American identity (think of our pastoralist forefathers, amber waves of grain, and all that). Many of our ancestors farmed this land, or the land from whence they came. My own name even contains "farmer" in German (although we still haven't figured out how one could farm owls). But farming seems to have evolved into something different in recent decades.

The growth of agriculture has meant not an increase in the number of people who farm. Rather, it has morphed into fewer, larger farms owned by conglomerates. The idyllic-sounding "family farm" has become a memory to many, because small farms now find it so difficult to compete with Big Ag: Bigger machines, more oil (including fuel manufactured from corn, which--if I remember correctly--used to be a food crop), larger spreads of monocultures, genetically engineered species. Everything's designed to be more efficient and cheaper to produce, and then we hear complaints about how hard it is for mega-farms to make a profit. Heaven help the small farmer, unless she happens to live near a city where she can sell her fresh harvest to a restaurant or at a farmers' market.

I'm always amazed at the small-government advocates who don't seem to give a hoot about small anything else, because they'd rather buy their genetically-engineered corn at WalMart for pennies, rather than pay more for better food from more sustainable sources. Yes, I know the Large Marts all over the place are touting their local sources and organic produce--but all that's a piddle in a puddle when we look at the big picture.

The picture isn't pretty. After reading about farmers' trying to hire unemployed workers to fill in gaps from lower numbers of immigrant workers, and the unwillingness of the new hires to do the work after only a few hours on the job, I couldn't help but wonder about what we've become. Fat and lazy? Disconnected from the earth that sustains us? Softened by electronic toys and digital media that distort the very idea of farming ("Farmville," anyone)? Do any of these people really care about where our food comes from--what they put in their own bodies? It seems that most folks these days would rather work at Micky D for minimum wage than get out into the open air and get some exercise for the same amount of money per hour.

At my rapidly advancing age and stage of decripitude, I can't quite afford to give up my own job--despite the increasing stress afforded me and my colleagues as we watch beloved co-workers laid off, our own work-loads increase, and as we face the challenge of teaching students whose preparation levels seem to drop every quarter. But don't think for a minute that if the axe fell on me I wouldn't be looking for seasonal work in the field to supplement my meager retirement prospects. I'd certainly be a great deal healthier, sturdier, thinner, and freer of stress-induced belly fat than I am today.

But this is a philosophical as well as a practical concern. What have we become? Why is farm work, the foundation upon which civilization itself was built, held in esteem so low that so few people think it worth doing? When we talk about culture (that ineffable essence that describes what it means to be human) and cultivation (how we educate, nurture, and exercise our vast intellectual possibilities), we're using the language of farming. (Agriculture: ager = field, cultura = tending, tilling.) Even traditional American teaching cycles are arranged around the agricultural needs of our ancestors; kids get off in the summer because at one time they were needed in the fields. And shall I also mention all those seasonal festivals that arise at planting, tilling, and harvest times?

I'm going to be talking about the origins of agriculture in my first-level art history classes next week, because when we began to farm, we also began to create the monumental works that mark a culture and provide it with a physical identity. Turkey, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Bronze Age Greece--the makers of temples and tombs were all farmers first, and only later warriors. It was to help account for crops that writing was invented among some people. Some of the most enduring painted and sculpted images from antiquity depict farming or honor agricultural products and nurturing deities.

Lately I've also been thinking about growth. And although that's a post for another time, about the only really beneficial growth I can think of these days has to do with crops and kids. Most of the other senses of the word we're currently using are essentially unsustainable. But growing crops--and growing children both provide us with hopeful metaphors. It's not coincidental that some of the first formal schooling our offspring get is in kindergarten--a garden for children.

But schooling has little to do with gardens these days. Except in a few schools that actually cultivate garden classrooms (about which I've written elsewhere), we've taken our kids out of the fields and plopped them down into over-crowded classrooms, tempted them away from the out-of-doors with myriad electronic gizmos, and taught them to eat Happy Meals that will end up making them fat, unhealthy, and reluctant to do the real physical work it takes to harvest real food.

That Mad Farmer, Wendell Berry, has the right idea. We need to re-ground ourselves in the metaphors that arose from our nation when it was young. Before we became enamored of constant growth, upward mobility, and efficiency, we knew something about the cycles of things. I just hope we can remember them before it's too late.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

--Wendell Berry
"Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front"
From The Country of Marriage, 1971

Image credit: Ansel Adams, Farm Workers and Mt. Williamson, 1943. This is a rather idyllic photo taken at the Manzanar "relocation" camp outside of Lone Pine, California during the second World War. Despite their forced internment at the camp, the incarcerated Japanese occupants contributed to the U. S. economy by farming. A woman I met in Philadelphia, who had been at Manzanar as a child, told me that farming helped the internees maintain their dignity because it was honorable work. The photo is available through Wikimedia Commons, from the Library of Congress collection of Adams's photos of Manzanar.

Eating and Buying

In the first segment of this particular rant about food (Eating and Being), I offered up some suggestions about how to make our food consumption more meaningful. I see far too many people treating meals as if they were stops at a fuel station--a necessary pain in the pocketbook, that takes valuable time away from families who need to be doing other things.

Like what? Endless soccer practices and games where kids are exposed to bad sportsmanship on the part of angry parents? Extracurricular activities whose primary purpose is to pad the record of a college-bound teenager trying to get into Harvard? Cheerleading practice? This topic deserves a ramble of its own, but it also leads into the second aspect of the role food plays in our lives: purchasing the raw ingredients.

Readers of this blog will already know that I'm a firm espouser of "from scratch" whenever possible. There are myriad reasons for this, not the least of which has to do with our over-consumption of highly-processed, over-packaged foodstuffs. So I want to use this post to address a couple of issues that have to do with the declining economy and our ability to enjoy healthful meals. I've already discussed a little of this in previous posts, but not all that recently, and I'll try to bring them together here.

Some arguments against eating more simply and avoiding over-preparation are constructed around costs: Eating fresh organic food is more expensive than standard supermarket fare (or: A box of mashed potatoes is "cheaper" than buying whole potatoes and cooking them).

I thought of looking up a variety of foods and the boxed versions and comparing prices, but I don't have the energy, so my counter-argument goes something like this: A few russet potatoes (scrubbed to remove dirt and surface pesticides if they're not organically grown) cost maybe two bucks. Roast these in the oven sliced and seasoned with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper, and you've got a nutritious version of french fries. Or roast them with some garlic and then mash them with a little salt, pepper, and low-fat milk for an absolutely delicious side dish. Buy the packaged french fries (or even "oven fries") and you're paying not only for the potatoes and the energy it took to transport and cook them--but all this plus the packaging (a plastic pouch), storage (freezer), preservatives, additives, salt (by far more than anyone needs), and voila! It's not only cheaper to roast your own, but nutritionally superior and less environmentally impactful. A box of prepared mashed potatoes might seem cheaper on the shelf, but not when you analyze portion size, ingredients, processing, packaging, and advertising costs, and consequences to your health from eating foods with far more salt and other crap than is necessary. Add on a premium for buying the low-salt or low-fat version, and you, my friend, have been had.

The major problem as I see it is that Americans have lost touch with their food. They don't know where it came from, they know nothing about who grew it, they seldom note its country of origin (many organic foods, especially out-of-season varieties, are transported huge distances), and if they buy packaged foods, they're not very critical about ingredient labels and/or portion sizes. Food has become the equivalent of a human gas station where one goes to "fill up" rather than to enrich one's body and enhance one's life.

The good news is that many are now becoming more conscious of the problem. Recent online articles, like this one from Reuters, Agflation: The Real Costs of Rising Food Prices, are raising awareness about the real costs of feeding ourselves, on a global scale. This one's an eye opener because it discusses a wide variety of problems occurring both in the United States and world wide, as we try to find alternative forms of energy to fuel our automobiles--not our stomachs.

However, it's also our good fortune to live in a moment where alternatives to the standard way of doing things are beginning to emerge. The Slow Food movement encourages people to think about what they eat, and to take care and time in preparing it. Farmers' markets are popping up on a regular basis (our local market opened today for the season; I'm not quite up to the trek yet, but I'm hoping that by next weekend I can partake), Community gardens are sprouting like dandelions in vacant lots, and Community Supported Agriculture is keeping small farmers in business and allowing new farmers to make a more certain living by soliciting subscribers for seasonal produce, cheese, eggs, pastured meat, and other goodies.

We're also lucky to have a First Lady who's not afraid to get her hands dirty, and who understands the importance of food as sustenance for both the body and the mind. Her victory garden is starting to look great; I just hope she resists the complaints of the chemical fertizier industry who seem to be shaken by her insistence on an organic approach (the letter the MACA people sent her is posted on La Vida Locavore--a blog I highly recommend as a resource connected with today's diatribe). The White House Blog will keep us posted, and is the source of the picture:

This week's assignment: visit your local farmer's market, or at very least seek out the "locally grown" section of your supermarket. Even Safeway and other behemoth conglomerates are featuring options like this, and the only way to keep them going is to use them. Eating seasonally and locally not only insures food freshness, but allows us to rely less on the energy required to transport the food, and to support the local growers whose own livelihoods depend on our consumption of their products. And don't forget to plant what you can--even if it's only a few herbs in pots on a sunny window sill. If you've got space for a garden, grow what does best, and share or trade with friends and neighbors. Please make sure the kids involved; they learn more about science and maths in gardens and kitchens than in many formal classrooms. They also get the connection between land and food imprinted on their brains, and will remember the time they spent with mom, dad, or the grandparents out planting and harvesting veggies they're far more likely to love than if someone simply tells them to their carrots.

I know there are consequences to radically shifting our patterns of consumption; but these are times for radical change and it seems prudent to use the moment to reshape the market so that we have more to say about what we eat and how we get it. For every supermarket that goes out of business, or has to reorganize its priorities, there's another tapping into the recognition that we can't go on living on pulverized, packaged, over-salted, fat-infused mashed potatoes. In the long run we all win: our bodies are healthier, the growers get their due, what we eat tastes better, and our healthcare costs go down. What's not to love?

Photos: Farmer's Market in Lhasa, Tibet by Nathan Freitas via Wikimedia Commons. White House Garden photo from the White House Blog.

Smaller, Better, Wiser

I watched a News Hour broadcast the other night about some of the things American troops are doing in Afghanistan to help win the war for hearts and minds. And although I do think there is a military role beyond blowing things up (accidentally or not), I was a bit disturbed by the description of some of the aid work U. S. Forces are engaged in.

PBS's Margaret Warner has been reporting from Afghanistan all week, and I appreciate the perspective she's providing. But in her Reporter's Notebook piece for the segment on the Nebraska National Guard "Sodbusters" Agri-business Development initiative, she describes their work as follows:

This is the soft side, the warm face, of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, an exercise in nation-building (not reconstruction but building anew) designed to help this agrarian society -- among the five poorest on the planet -- leapfrog into the 21st century. It's a tall order, in a country where the literacy rate hovers at about 25 percent. The gameplan is to help the Afghans develop the economic and social wherewithal to withstand the blandishments, ideology and threats of the Taliban and its array of insurgent allies.

For that, the Army and National Guard units have deployed ADTs and PRTs (provincial reconstruction teams), augmented by experts from the State Department and other agencies, to build bridges and roads and help the Afghans develop their skills at earning a living, governing and managing their own affairs.

This sounds well-intentioned and certainly indicates a more productive use of our soldiers. But it's also just too big.

Why are we talking about "leapfrogging" into the twenty-first century when these people have been denied, through both our efforts and those of the Russians, the gradual development of their own ways of life, and a more natural progress toward integration of tradition with new technologies? Why are we even talking "agri-business" here instead of sustainability?

In our own country the family farms that formed the backbone of the Republic are being driven out of existence by the Big Bidness Giant Farm Conglomerate types who worship at the altar of Monsanto and other chemical companies bent on genetic modification and patenting of seeds stolen from traditional farmers in other parts of the world. Why on earth would we want to subject Afghanistan to even more manipulation of their traditional ways of maintaining their land and their livestock than they've put up with since before the Soviet invasion?

For multiple generations, Afghan farming communities withstood drought and meteorological misadventure by using methods that worked for them. Part of what has made the Taliban successful in this region is that they don't threaten these ties to the past. (For a brief history of the bad policies--ours and those of the former Soviet Union--that led to this mess in the first place, see my post about Saving Ariana from a few weeks ago.) I had hoped that we had learned something from our mistakes, but it looks now as if good intentions are getting in the way of good sense. There are programs that show promise, but I can't see that trying to turn a neolithic economy into a post-nuclear agricultural machine overnight is going to win us any long-term allies.

Instead of building infrastructure these folks might not be able to maintain, encouraging wanton growth, and addicting farmers to chemical fertilizers and modern mega-farming techniques, we need to be starting small, and working within traditional parameters. "Infrastructure" should mean wells, low-tech sanitary systems, simple solar technologies (like solar ovens), reliable, renewable energy sources, and food-storage facilities--not fancy paved highways and bridges in seismically unstable areas.

Help these people do what they already know how to do, and protect the aid workers who are trying to build sustainable communities--rather than making them dependent on high-dollar foreign technologies grounded in foreign values. The wise path is not paved with concrete; it's worn by goats and sheep and herdsmen, and maintained by men, women, and children who have worked the land since long before our ancestors left the coasts of Europe have their way with this continent.

The last time I looked, we weren't doing such a great job in our own twenty-first century economy. Maybe we could learn something from the Afghanis.

Image credit: Northwestern Afghanistan, by Koldo Hormaza, via Wikimedia Commmons.