What's [Not] New Under the Sun (Or the Moon Over Which Jumped the Cow)

Whoa. Just had THE weirdest case of historian's deja vu.

A little background: I've spent the week reading testimony from a series of Congressional hearings held in late 1888 and early 1889. The subject was the transportation and sale of meat products. Livestock producers complained about low prices for their cattle. They blamed a collection of meatpackers that they called the "Big Four": Armour, Swift, Morris, and Hammond. The farmers told senate investigators that the Big Four colluded on prices at stockyards, driving prices into the ground and cattle producers into bankruptcy.

As I read the hearing testimony, however, it became clear to me that there is and was little historical evidence of these charges and that the true culprit was over-supply of livestock and decreasing demand for meat (mostly in export markets).

Moreover, this downturn in prices came only after record high prices which, no surprise, had led many investors to buy land and cattle (investors who, for the most part, had no experience and no idea what they were doing). They then flooded the market with (mostly poor) livestock and prices plunged. Anyway, the cattle producers were dead certain there was a conspiracy against them and had no interest in hearing any facts to the contrary.

So today I'm reading an article in the Wall Street Journal about rising milk prices. Same deal, except with milk rather than cattle. Dairy farmers want a federal probe of prices because, they say,

they have too few buyers and too little competition for their milk. The industry is dominated by two players: Dean Foods Co. of Dallas, which is creating a national brand in what had been a fragmented industry, and Dairy Farmers of America Inc., a Kansas City, Mo., cooperative that buys milk from farmers and sells some of it to Dean Foods.

Only toward the end of the article do we learn anything to the contrary:

Many economists doubt that Dean Foods -- which benefits from being able to buy plentiful supplies of cheap raw milk to make everything from bottled milk to cheese to ice cream -- is to blame for this year's depressed milk prices. Indeed, the company's market clout wasn't enough to stop the prices farmers received for their milk from hitting record and near-record high levels in 2007 and 2008.

Yes, I realize this is milk, rather than cattle, but the principle is the same: When the going gets tough, food producers are quick to blame "monopolists" for the sharp price gyrations that are a normal part of the food industry.

Moral of the story? Hmmmm. Beats me. Those who don't know history are bound to repeat their mistakes? We should all read more history? We should all listen when historians speak? We should step back and take the long view? I dunno. (Hey! It's the best I can do on a Friday afternoon after a looooooooooong week.) (Long week, you say? Aren't they all seven days long? Not mine, buddy. Not this week. MY week ran 75 days.)

Tip o' the mug to Dan Mitchell of Daily Bread.

Another Update on Jack McAuliffe

For those of you who are following along: Jack is now in San Antonio, living with family. Good news, that, because he can't quite live on his own yet. As near as I can tell, he's back to his usual feisty self (at least based on several e-mails I've had from him recently). Bare minimum, he's sick of people fussing over him (not, ahem, that anyone plans to stop doing so). He told me he wants to have a t-shirt printed that says

Thanks for your concern, but I'm not disabled- I'm just crippled.

Anyway . . . He has a ways to go before he's fully recovered, but he's doing okay.

And With All That In Mind . . .

I now resume my fishing expedition. Got interrupted last week by all kinds of crap -- but now back to meat.

(Seriously. Am hoping no one and nothing trips my rant trigger and that I lay low so I can focus on research and writing.) (*1)

I've been wading through several thousand pages of testimony/evidence/etc. from a 1918 Federal Trade Commission investigation into the affairs of what were then the major meat-packing companies.  (Yes, that's thousands of pages. Sigh.)

But hey, it's all good. The new book moves forward.

________

*1: Which, heh, I could manage if I stop reading newspapers, magazines, blogs, twitter, etc. Isolation. I need to become a serious isolationist.

The Politics of Food and the Historian's Work: Where the Twain Shall Meet, Part 3 of 3

Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three 

Want to hear something even sadder? I’ve not even finished writing this new book, and I’ve already been accused of being a mouthpiece for Corporate Food.

I’m not. I’m a historian who has chosen to write about a complicated, contentious issue. (Again, I was more or less oblivious to this “food fight” until I was well into the project.) I don’t know where the “story” will go.

Why? Because I’m still researching its contents and, like any historian, I let the facts guide me toward clarity and understanding. But I doubt it will be a “story” one that either side wants to hear. It’ll be too complex. It won’t toe the party line. It won’t conform to the mythology that is the underpinning of both sides’ arguments.

Hey, that’s the nature of real life: it’s complicated and it almost never fits into the either/or, black/white scenario that we’d like it to. That’s also the curse, and the blessing, of the historian’s work.

All this leads to an obvious question: When I’m finished with the book, will I have an opinion about the “food fight”?

Answer: Certainly. By then I’ll know something about the issues, ideas, and events that led to this moment in American history, and I’ll have enough facts to make an informed judgment about this debate and to take a stance on it.

Put another way, I’ll be a more educated, informed citizen. With luck, you’ll read my book and you, too, will have enough information to make your own judgment. And you, too, will be a more informed citizen. At least that’s my hope.

The Politics of Food and the Historian's Work: When the Twain Shall Meet, Part 2 of 3

Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three 

Frankly, it’s painful to watch this conflict unfold. The issues involved are extraordinarily complex, they are global in nature, and involve the lives of billions of people. Unfortunately, that complexity is obscured by the way in which the public debate is taking place.

On one side are committed, passionate grassroots activists, many of whom are focused on what they regard as a "food crisis," for which they propose various solutions.  (*1)

On the other side are people who produce the food. They're hindered in part by their own diversity: There is no single “farm” voice, no single “producer” voice, and as a result it’s hard for food producers to present a coherent defense of the attack on it. (*2)

On one side is a vehement offense ("modern farming is evil and so is corporate food"), on the other a disorganized, bewildered defense ("we're feeding the people of the world! how can we be evil?"), all of it spiced with hefty doses of glib, ignorant chatter that insult one side or the other. (*3)

Lost, and nearly invisible, in the middle are the hundreds of thousands of people --- chemists, biologists, agronomists, economists, etc. --- who have been studying issues of sustainability, global food production, and the like for decades. (I get the distinct impression that many of the antagonists on both sides are blissfully unaware of the history of the "sustainability" issue.)

These are people working in public and private institutions, working with farmers and food manufacturers alike. (Much of their research, it should be noted, is, in this country, taxpayer-funded.) Unfortunately, much of what they have to say is lost amidst the noise.

Result? The public discussion over the modern food system has become so politicized, and its participants so polarized, that people who learn that I'm writing a book about the history of meat assume that I must be "working" for one side or the other. That I intend to either defend big corporations, or write a diatribe against “factory meat.”

Not true. My “agenda” is simple: to explore what it means to be an American. “Meat” is simply a vehicle for doing so.

That’s it. That’s the beginning, the middle, and the end of my agenda. I’m not out to “get” one side or the other. I’m not assuming that one side is right and the other side is wrong.

I’m only  interested in exploring the long view of the big picture. I’m trying to figure out “what happened” and why in hopes of furthering my understanding of who we are as a people and a nation. It’s what I did with my other three books. It’s what I do. It's what other historians do.

Sadly, some people don’t believe that. To this day, many “beer geeks” believe that one of the “corporate brewers” paid me to write the beer book. That’s not true, but since I didn’t toe the “party line” on the subject of beer (Big Beer is evil. Small Beer is saintly), it follows that I MUST be in the pay of the corporations.

Next: Where the historian and the debate finally meet

 ________________

*1: The phrase “food crisis” is itself interesting. It’s a loaded term --- akin to “pro choice” and “pro life” --- that is used to commandeer and define the terms of the debate.

*2: You’re thinking, “Wait! The “food establishment” is big corporations. Surely they can defend themselves.” Easier said than done. Big food corporations, for example, simply ignore the assault as not worth their time, leaving the troops on the ground --- farmers --- to defend themselves. Or, more typically, they aim toward more "ecologically correct" foods by mining all that research being carried out in universities and other laboratories.

*3: For a prime example, see this essay by Nicholas Kristof in a recent issue of the New York Times. It's been awhile since I've read anything quite so inane. No surprise, the many of the nation's hardworking farmers took offense.

E-Books and Libraries? A [Mostly] Good Idea

Loyal reader Dave pointed out this news item about the Sony reader being used for library books: People who have one of the readers and a library card will be able to "check out" a copy of the book and read it on their device. He wonders what I think about it.

My reaction: Great idea! Libraries are feeling the hit from the financial crisis. Indeed, they're being hit with a double whammy: Their own budgets are being cut (because, for example, sales and property taxes used to fund libraries are down) even as the public flocks to libraries in record numbers (because they're checking books and dvds instead of buying them).

So my guess is that this would allow libraries to provide a service at a low cost.

My question is this: at what point will e-books be inexpensive enough so that people will buy them instead of "borrowing" them from a library? As a writer, I hope that sweet spot shows up sooner rather than later: I only earn money from books when someone buys them. The more books people buy, the more money I earn. A library purchase, of course, is a one-time event: the library buys the book, and thousands read it for free.

Don't get me wrong: I'm a serious fan and supporter of libraries. Have been all my life.

But I gotta say that the British system sounds good to me: writers there earn a bit of money every time someone checks out their books.

BUT: the best part of this news item is that Sony would also partner with Google and make its collection of digitized books available as well. That's GREAT news. As it stands now, the agreement Google has hammered out will provide for access to that digital collection at only one computer terminal per library. Not good. Not good at all. (I'm simplifying part of a very complex agreement, but that's the gist of the relevant part of it.)

So: Sony, have at it. If this actually pans out, I'd even (finally) spend money on one of these e-readers, if only so I could get access to the Google books.