My Brain At Work: Somewhat Random (and Possibly Useless) Thoughts On the Origins of Craft Brewing

As avid readers (because there are some, right??) know, Jack McAuliffe, the acknowledged founder of the craft brewing movement, is a friend. In January, Boston Beer Company --- known to you as Sam Adams --- will introduce New Albion Ale, based on the recipe Jack used to make his first beer in the late 1970s.

That means that lately there’s been an unusual amount of attention paid to Jack and to his brewery, New Albion. Which means that I’ve been hearing more than the usual iterations of a question I’m often asked: “Is New Albion really important?”   

By which the questioner means:

 “Hey, McAuliffe’s brewery only lasted a few years. Most people interested in craft beer had never even heard of the guy until your book came out. He can’t be that important.”

To which I usually say something like

“He deserved the credit. Would someone else have done what he did? Eventually. But at the time, he inspired others to do what he’d done, namely cobble together some raw materials, build a brewery, and make beer.”

(And I mention Ken Grossman and Sierra Nevada as an example of the direct influence of Jack and New Albion.)

So that’s the background. (Yeah. You know me: The background takes more time than the main point. What can I say? I’m a historian. Context is everything.)

Anyway, this has been on my mind. Or, more accurately, my brain has been busy pondering the “Would someone else have done what he did?” I say “apparently” because I didn’t realize I was even thinking about this until yesterday, when the following crashed into my brain’s foreground and grabbed my attention:

When people have asked me the aforementioned question, I’ve usually skipped over the “would someone else have done what he did” part and spoke mainly to the “direct influence” part of why Jack matters. Because of course I had no idea if someone else would have done what Jack did.

Until now. Thanks to my busy brain, I now have a different take on the issue of “does Jack matter?” (*1) It goes like this.

It’s hard to imagine that a craft brewing industry wouldn’t have shown up eventually, right? After all, at the same time that craft of beer pioneers were doing their thing, the “good coffee” movement started. Other entrepreneurs were experimenting with a return to good bread. Micro-distilleries began showing up in the early 1990s. Natural foods were going great guns in the 1980s.

So at some point someone would have come up with a “craft brewing industry.” (*2)

BUT: it’s not clear to me that, without Jack (or some one like Jack) it would have looked like the do-it-yourself, self-reliant industry that it was and to a certain extent still is.

Let me explain:

Jack’s brewery failed, but the way he built his company became the foundational model for the craft brewing industry that emerged in the early 1980s.

Ken Grossman, for example, had already dreamed about opening a brewery, a dream inspired in part by his love of good beer but also by a visit to Anchor Brewing in San Francisco. But when Ken visited Anchor, he saw an insurmountable obstacle: a full-blown brewery with “real” brewing equipment. Grossman knew he couldn’t pull that off, or at least not until he’d devoted a few decades to saving the many thousands of dollars such a venture would require.

When he visited New Albion, however, he saw instantly that here was a model that he could emulate and do so with relatively little cash. (He and his then-partner Paul Camusi scrounged $50,000 in start-up funds, mostly from family.) If he could find spare parts, which was what Jack had done, he could use his engineering/carpentry/handyman skills to build a brewhouse.

So he did, and so did other early pioneers, and the rest, as the cliche goes, is history.

But let’s ponder an alternative history, one based on a combination of speculation and fact.

Here’s a fact, one based on my six years spent thinking and writing about meat in America:

Food and food fads are like anything else: if there’s a profit to be made, if there’s a fad to ride, someone will jump in and try to make some money on it.

In the 1980s, for example, a couple of marketing types in California noted the interest in “natural” foods and began selling “Rocky the Ranger” chickens, which they touted as free-range and natural. The chickens weren’t, but that didn’t matter. Plenty of people were willing to pay big bucks for natural poultry. (Among them was Wolfgang Puck, just then hitting his stride and his celebrity, who began serving Rocky at his restaurants. He was none too pleased to discover, during a blind taste test, that neither he nor other tasters could tell the difference between high-priced Rocky and plain ol’ chicken).

Here’s another, more relevant example:

In the mid-1980s, Jim Koch, then working at Boston Consulting Group, had a early-mid-life crisis and decided he needed a job with more soul than helping Fortune 500 types figure out how to make billions rather than millions. Brewing was in his family (as he’s fond of pointing out, he’s the fifth generation to work in beer), and when he pondered his future while perched on a barstool, he noticed that yuppies, as they were called then, were dropping serious money to pay for imported beer (think Heineken and St. Pauli).

That market niche intrigued him. After a bit of investigation, Jim learned that there were a handful of people scattered around the country making what amounted to nineteenth-century beers (real, pure, made from four ingredients, blah blah blah). There, Koch decided, lay his future. In this case, he skipped the do-it-yourself route and instead contracted to brew his lager using “real” brewmasters at “real” breweries.

Jim Koch happens to be a guy with a soul. (*3)  The company he built melds with and has been a key component of the craft beer industry.

But it’s clear that what Koch did, some other suit-and-tie could have done, too. (*4)

Which brings me, finally, to my point. (Thanks for sticking with me).

Had Jack McAuliffe not built his whacky, nineteenth-century-inspired, spare-parts brewery, a craft beer industry would have emerged anyway. But it likely would have been built by suits-and-ties; business types with more interest in profit than beer who’d wangled bank loans and built a brewery along the same lines as conventional brewing (read: Anheuser Busch) except in miniature. And then, I’m guessing, sold to the first big brewer who came along (and remember that both Miller and AB “came along” and started buying/acquiring shares in small fry in the late 1980s).

Instead of the “think local/think pure and real” craft brewing industry we’ve got now, with all its glory, creativity, and dynamism, we’d have ended up with a bastardized version in which the Big Boys made a few shitty “craft” beers, and instead of the few thousand breweries that now exist in the U. S., we’d probably still have, oh, 79 or 80. And I doubt we’d have locally owned and operated brewpubs. We might have chain restaurants with brewing equipment prominently displayed behind glass, but that’s not quite the same thing as the truly fascinating, truly local brewpub culture that has flourished in the U. S. in the past 30 years.

So. Jack matters not because he succeeded --- he didn’t --- but because of the way he built his company: from scraps, with next to no cash, and with a truckload of heart, soul, and hard work.

End of great idea.

For now. Part of my busy brain has been thinking hard about a new book and what it wants to write (and why would I get in its way!?) is a book about, well, I’m not quite sure yet but something about the craft beer industry, the nature of contemporary capitalism, the shift to the local, and the way all things digital have transformed all of it. I have the feeling I’m going to be thinking this book out loud, if you will, here at the blog. So it’s possible that this is a tentative first step toward this vague, amorphous, and possibly bad idea that’s churning around in my brain. We’ll see.

And comments and feedback are most welcome. Have at it.

Oh: And no, not quite finished with meat book. But I have  written a major chunk of that pesky new chapter my editor wanted. 

UPDATE AFTER THE FACT: I should have included this link first time around. Two years ago, Jay Brooks and Natalie and Vinnie Cilurzo went to the New Albion site with Jack. Jay made sure to document the visit.

__________

*1: I’m continually impressed by how much work my brain does without me even asking it to. Brains are important, you know? If we have a Mother’s Day and a National Pizza Day, and a “Talk Like A Pirate” day, why in hell don’t we have a “Thank Your Brain” day?

*2: Hmmm. That raises a fascinating question that I only thought of while writing this blog entry: How long would it have taken Charlie Papazian to go the next step; to travel from homebrewing-as-national-movement, which was what he was primarily interested in in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, to “let’s take homebrewing to the next step”?

*3: Some would disagree with that view. But I would argue that one need only look at the way he’s operated his company to know that when he said he intended to build a corporation with a heart and soul, he meant it.

*4: Indeed, the essence of the messy craft beer boom of the 1990s was precisely that: suit-and-tie types bringing in big money to cash in on what was then seen as a profitable market niche.

I’m Peddling As Fast As I Can; Or, That Slice of Heaven-and-Hell Known as “Revisions”

For those who are wondering --- and I understand if no one is (it’s a big world; lotso other stuff about which to wonder): Yes, I’m still working on the manuscript, and yes, I’m almost finished. Truly. I am finally --- FINALLY --- down to the end.

As in: Stretch your arms as far apart as they’ll go. That’s where I started. Now hold your thumb and index finger as close together as you can without them touching. That’s where I am now.

Whew. And: YAY!

But: I’m currently at that almost-the-end stage of the process known as “revisions.”

Whenever a writer says “I’m revising,” those who work in the business (other writers, agents, editors, whoever) nod knowingly and say, with sympathy, “Ohhhh. Good luck!” Emphasis on the sympathetic tone of voice.  

For those who don’t work in the biz, revisions go like this:

First the writer writes the manuscript, in my case a 100,000-word piece of non-fiction based on five years of research. Said writer writes the whole damn thing: Introduction! Chapters! Epilogue if there is one!

And then emails her editor and says “Remember me? The history-of-meat person? I’m finished!” (*1)

And the editor says “Great! Send it along. Let me take a look.”

And six or eight weeks later, give or take a month or two, the editor calls or emails and says “Oh, this is such great stuff! Wow. I’m so impressed! But . . . .”

That’s the abracadabra, not-so-secret word that unlocks the gate that leads to hell: “But . . . .”

The editor articulates that “But” in the form of pages (and pages and pages . . .) of comments and notes --- always emphasizing what a trooper the writer is and what great work this is --- “But:

Please re-write the entire manuscript. And add a new first chapter, and I think the last chapter isn’t really the last chapter, so write a new last chapter.

And so, dear readers, the writer begins her descent into that small slice of hell known as Revisions.

Translation: My poor abandoned blog sits idle and neglected because I’m rewriting the entire manuscript and writing a new first chapter and a new last chapter, the latter of which will likely require still more research, all of which is driving me slowly but inexorably insane.

The good news, however, is that I’ve been revising since June and I’m now down to the penultimate chapter (I’ve always wanted to use that word but never had a reason to until now). Hooray!

But of course once  I've revised the entire manuscript (and written those two new chapters), I'll return to word one, page one and --- start over! This time in order to examine every. single. word. to ensure that all 100,000 are engaging and lively rather than stilted and dead. (*2)

And I need to have it finished by the third week of October because the house is putting together its catalog for Fall 2013, which is when my book will come out, and so the editor and the VERY IMPORTANT sales and marketing departments need to see the manuscript so they can add their two cents to the project because no book goes out without input from sales and marketing and that’s when titles get changed and the author doesn’t even know it until the book jacket design shows up in her inbox and she discovers that the title she slaved over no longer exists but hey that’s life and I’m not complaining. (*3) (*4)

So. That’s what I'm up to. I shall return.

_______________________________

*1:  Okay, hyperbole: My editor  knows who I am. I am extraordinarily fortunate to work with her. (See also *4 below.) She understands that long, complex pieces of work take, ya know, a long time to create.

*2: The payoff for this insanity is moments like this one: When the beer book came out in the fall of 2006, I did a ton of interviews (aimed at persuading people to read the book) and during one of them --- a hilarious phone sit-down with two beer guys ---- one of the guys said “Well, this wasn’t that hard, right? I mean, the story and facts were all there and all you had to do was write it down, right?” After I was through howling, first with laughter and then with tears, I knew I’d succeeded: If I made five years of blood, sweat, and lotsa tears look THAT EASY, well, by god, I’d done my job! (Because, in case you missed my point, neither the facts nor the story were “there.” I had to go find the facts [which took three or four years] and then make sense of them and then turn them into a “story” [which took another year or two].

*3: Which is why, ahem, this time around I came up with a blunt, straightforward title to which no one could object and which no potential reader could POSSIBLY misinterpret.

*4: Seriously. I’m not complaining. The self-publishing crowd thinks that traditional-publishing  dinosaurs like me should throw ourselves off the nearest tall building because it’s just SO EASY!! to crank out a book and whip up a digital file and put it on Amazon and make zillions of dollars and why would anyone want to deal with traditional publishing houses and editors because among other things traditional publishing just takes so. fucking. long. and why wait a year when you can publish an e-book RIGHT NOW?.

I disagree. Quality takes time. And in my case, a LOT of time because I do all of my own research and writing. I have no paid assistants. So there’s one benefit of traditional publishing: My publisher paid me an “advance” that, in effect, subsidized much of the cost of creating this book. (My beloved husband provided another chunk of “subsidy.”) But I also enjoy the input of a professional editor --- the one who read the manuscript said “Okay, it’s not bad but let’s make it better. Here’s how.”

The benefit of that extra set of eyes and perspective is, literally, priceless. Everything I’ve ever published has gone through the mind of an editor who marked it up in red pencil or digital “ink” and the work has ALWAYS, without exception, been improved immeasurably thanks to the editor’s input.

And yes, it increases the time needed to move a book from idea to published work -- not least because mine is not the only book coming out of the house. I have to wait my turn for the attention of the editor, the copyeditor, the jacket designer, etc. It’s worth it.

Yep, It's Time to Revisit the "Basics"; Or, I'm A Historian, Folks, A Historian

Apropos my comments as reported in yesterday's Los Angeles Times: Once again, it's time to remind readers (and myself . . . ) what's what here at the ol' blog and in the ol' professional life. Short version: I'm a historian. Historians spend their time thinking about the past; trying to understand "what happened"; and taking the Long View of the Big Picture.

And that's pretty much the beginning, the middle, and the end of what I do. I write history.

"Pretty much," but not entirely.

My work as a historian includes a delightful bonus: During the course of my research, I learn a great deal about my subject, and that knowledge informs my view of both the past AND the present.

So when a reporter calls to ask me about "current events," I'm qualified to do two things.  

First, I offer historical context on those events. For example, I told the reporter from the LAT that definitions and the technology of "humane" slaughter have changed over time; that Congress has weighed in on the subject from time to time.

Second, if the reporter asks me to do so, and if I have an informed opinion, I also weigh in on whatever current situation prompted the reporter's phone call, in this case, the closure of a California packing plant. But my comments about the CURRENT situation are informed by my research. The opinions I express are based on what I've learned from that research.

Let me rephrase that: My opinions are my own. I'm not paid by anyone or any company or any organization. I don't represent any group, company, organization. I'm on no payroll.

It's worth reiterating the source of my opinions: When I work on a book, I amass facts, information, and knowledge (such as it is). I use that information, insight, and knowledge to shape my opinion about "what  happened" in the past and what's happening now.

Here's one example: When I wrote the beer book, I (naturally) spent a lot of time and energy thinking  about alcohol in general and its place in American society. As a result of that thinking and study, I concluded that we Americans "enjoy" a sick relationship with booze; we demonize it and infantilize our relationship with it.

But I arrived at that conclusion after several years of studying the history of beer and booze in America. The conclusion --- my opinion --- was based on and stemmed from my research. When a reporter asks me about American's relationship with alcohol, I offer my informed opinion.

So it's been with the history of meat in America. I didn't know a damn thing about meat when I started. Knew nothing about slaughterhouses, the meat industry, what role meat has played in our diets, or how, if, and when that role changed.

More than five years later, I know a little something (okay, more than a little) about all those things. But I got there the hard way: I studied these matters and thought about them and studied some more. And arrived at conclusions. Conclusions based, again, on my work.

And when we humans have studied a subject and developed opinions about it, we often express our opinions. And sometimes our opinions are different from those held by other people. (Gee, what a profound conclusion....)

But expressing an INFORMED opinion about a matter does not mean that I'm a "shill" for one side or the other. (*1) The last thing I'm trying to do is dupe, swindle, or fool people.

And I'm here to tell you: Given how hard I work, it's disheartening to see that work confused with shilling. Alas, it happens. (*2)

Here's an example, one I've elaborated on in other contexts (not least here -- the relevant section is clear at the end, so you can skip most of the essay):

When the beer book came out, some beer geeks concluded that Anheuser-Busch funded my work on the book and that I was a "shill" for Big Beer. (They could not have been more wrong on both counts.) Why? Because I didn't write a book bashing "big beer." They don't like big beer and they assumed that a history of beer in America ought to express their view. When that book did not, its author was denounced as a shill.

Again, I'm a historian. (Maybe if I just keeping saying and writing that sentence, people will get my point??? I can hope.) As I noted here:

I didn’t write Ambitious Brew in order to “take sides.” I wrote the book because I thought the history of beer in America would enrich my understanding of what it means to be an American. Period. End of story. It never occurred to me to “take sides.”

So, too, with the meat book. I'm not a shill (unless, apparently, you disagree with me). I'm a historian who has spent the past five-plus years doing immersed in the history and culture of meat in America. Do I have some opinions? You bet. Am I willing to express them? You bet. Will I continue to do so? Yes.

I hope you will, too --- and I plan to greet your opinion with respect, and to distinguish your informed opinion from shilling. Because there's a BIG difference between those two things.

____________________

*1:  This business of denouncing someone as a "shill" simply because that person disagrees with you. Where the hell does that come from? If I'm a shill because I disagree with you, then aren't you also a shill because you disagree with me? (Think about it for a minute. Please.)

*2: I often wonder if the problem is simply this: Most Americans have NO IDEA what historians do. None. For that, I blame historians.

The Lehrer Episode: When the Truth Doesn't Matter, We All Pay the Price

I'm a fan of smart people, especially smart writers. I could list boodles of such creatures --- and one of the great joys of a tool like Twitter is that it allows me to "follow" their work and thinking. Among them has been Jonah Lehrer: one of those absurdly young (he's only 31), hard-working, and therefore unnervingly prolific thinker/writers.

I say "has" because --- boy oh boy has he screwed up. I won't go into the details here (there's plenty online, but this is the place to start, followed by this piece about the start of his "downfall" earlier this summer).

Briefly: in the space of a few weeks, he's been caught recycling his own material and now, worse, flat-out lying in print. I'm sorry for him --- and baffled, too.

But that's not what prompts this post. Fury does.

Because I am furious. Here is yet another case of "facts" turning out to be lies. Another case of a writer making stuff up and passing it off as truth. (There have been so many of these in the past few years that if I linked to even half them, this post would be saturated in bright blue.)

Why do I care? Because I write non-fiction. Because I'm a historian and history is based on fact, not fiction. (*1) Let me repeat that: Historians start with FACTS. We don't get the pleasure of making stuff up. Our reputations, and the public's regard for our discipline, rest on our honesty.

So when people like Lehrer fuck with the facts, it makes EVERY non-fiction writer, historians and otherwise, look bad.

God knows the practice of history is already suffering thanks to the fictional history that's become so popular these days. (When a writer is praised for making "history" seem like a novel, chances are it's because that writer is taking liberties with the facts, typically by making up dialogue or ascribing knowledge of inner thoughts and motivation when he/she has no knowledge of them.) (And if no one minds, I won't mention names. I'm not interested in engaging in a public pissing contest.)

The more often Americans hear about fuckups like Lehrer (and what a shame that, in my mind, that's what he's become), the more likely they are to mistrust all writers of non-fiction. And the more likely they are to disregard substantive history in favor of the fictional stuff.

I can't say I blame them. After all, we know that politicians, to name the obvious example, lie on a regular basis as a way of promoting their cause. So why not journalists, public intellectuals, and historians?

It's no wonder that we Americans "enjoy" a reputation as "anti-intellectual." Why  bother with hard thinking and fact when any ol' made up shit will do?

Yes, I am more than a little pissed off.

UPDATE:  Michael Sacasas just remarked, via Twitter, that the Lehrer episode

could be the subject of a Lehrer-style book of neuro-moral psychology.

Indeed. As I said above, there have been SO many of these episodes that I wonder what's really going on. Surely more than a cavalier disregard for fact. Is this nothing more than the ease with which information is transmitted (and verifiable)? Or is there some weird, contemporary neuroses at work (perhaps connected to the ease with which we can communicate)? Who knows?

_____________

*1: Yes, yes, yes. I KNOW that a work of history reflects the historian's personal biases and interests. That no history can ever be objectively "true" because truth, to a certain extent, is in the eyes of the beholder. The facts that I amass and analyze are ones that I've chosen. And the analysis I arrive at is based on the way I choose to interpret those facts. But the operative word here is FACT. Historians start with FACTS.

"Blessay"? "Translations of Expertise"? "Blogging For Intent" You Be The Judge

The problem with stalling around waiting for an editor to come back with comments so I can revise the manuscript so we can push forward to publication is that my brain has time on its hands. (CAN a brain have hands?) Which means I'm thinking about not just this and that, but the other, too. To whit: I read an essay the other day written by Dan Cohen, a historian whose area of expertise is the "digital humanties." (No, I'm not gonna  explain. Ask ten people, and you'll get ten different explanations of what that is and does. Google it. Or Bing it. Or whatever.)

Cohen, suggested using the term "blessay" to identify a particular form of "new" writing: The blog essay that is relatively short, and both expertise- and idea-driven. An essay that's not just a short "here's what I had for dinner" blog entry, but also not a five- to thirty-thousand word essay weighted with footnotes and written for a peer-reviewed or for a traditional publication (like The New Yorker). An essay written for "an intelligent general audience." (Nope. Can't explain that either.)

His essay prompted a Twitter-based debate and quite a few comments at Cohen's blog. I missed the debate (and only came across the essay after the fact on my Google reader feed) so I had to do some backtracking to find said Twitter-debate.

What I found intriguing, however, was that the discussants quickly shifted from the merits of Cohen's term of choice to a discussion of the audience for "blessays."  For whom are such blessays intended? (Other than "an intelligent general audience"?

One Tweeterer (I'm waiting for someone to tell me that's the wrong term to use) suggested that the audience is

 para-academic, post-collegiate white-collar workers and artists, with occasional breakthroughs either all the way to a ‘high academic’ or to a ‘mass culture’ audience.”

To which I mentally replied: Ugh.

(I hasten to add that the people who were responding via Twitter to Dan's essay were all people I "follow." They're all WAY smarter than I am, and way more educated than I am [not, frankly, that either of those states is hard to achieve].)

Others chimed in to say that such essays were similar to the work created by "public intellectuals" back when there were still such things (there are still), back, say, in the mid-20th century. And one person wondered:

 Do academics who blogs get readers from outside? (not so much big but wide audience)

To which I thought "Hmmmm."

So where am I going with this? (Bear with me; I'm thinking on the fly.)

A large chunk of what appears on THIS on this "blog" are precisely the kind of essays that Cohen suggests naming "blessays": I use my particular form of expertise (I'm a historian) to comment on what teachers back in the old day called "current events": I discuss Events of the Day by framing them in a larger historical context. (Sometimes I also describe/talk about my work as I do it, to give readers a look behind the scenes of how historians "do history.")

I write "blessays" in part because doing so helps me think about my own work, but also because I'm aware that, in general, Americans don't much care for history, and who can blame them? (Read: the teaching of history, like the teaching of most subjects, is done badly if at all.) So my general goal in blogging is to "do" history in real time, if you will.

Who is my audience? Anyone who comes strolling past. I don't care if the reader is "intelligent," a "para-academic," an "artist," or works in a "white-collar" job. I don't care if the reader collects garbage, collects debts, or collects comic books. I don't care if the reader is from the "outside" world, wherever that may be, or the inside one.

All I care about is communicating the complexity of the human experience to ordinary folks like myself. That means I intentionally structure my blessays to be as accessible as possible to as many people as possible.

After all, the truly amazing and wonderful aspect of the web (and of software/platforms that have made "blogging" so simple and accessible) is that our potential audience is everyone, and so we need not limit our content for a specific audience.

Can we (self) impose limits to our intended audience? Aim the content for a specific slice of possible readership (eg, "para-academics," and no, I don't know what that is or means. I'll look it up when I'm finished.) Of course!

But slapping a label on the scholar-who-uses-blogging-as-a-way-to-communicate-with-a-general-audience strikes me as defeating the purpose of the scholar-driven blog. If we wanted to aim at "intellectuals," middle brow or otherwise, well, hell, we can all just write conventionally (on paper) and send said writing off to someplace like The Atlantic or The New Yorker and hope the editors there will take the piece.

So:  it's the big, 'ol high-middle-low brow audience for me and my decidedly low-brow form of scholarship. But if no one minds, I think I'll just stick with "blogging."

Making Meat, the Writer's Pitfall, and Online Interaction With Readers

Finally, a good example of the way website/online interaction can inform a writer's work! (*1)

A couple of days ago, I commented on a New York Times op-ed piece about land use and meat supply. You can read my comment here, but what’s relevant is the point I made about farm land: Farmers compete with city folks for land. What’s farmland now may, in ten years, contain houses or office buildings, a shift in land use typically identified as “urban sprawl.”

A person identifying herself as Louisa commented on that blog entry. Here is her comment:

Not quite…it’s not land vs. urban spaces, which are actually pretty efficient, but land vs. SUBurban spaces, with all the sprawl that entails. I live in a small town surrounded by farmland. Every year, more farmland is bought up by developers to turn into another grossly oversized subdivision filled with 4,000 sq ft houses- whose owners then turn around and lobby for nuisance laws that are aimed at, among other things, farm smells and sounds. After moving out into the country because it’s “so picturesque.” So yes, we do need to have the conversation about what kind of agricultural system we want. But we also need to have a conversation about what kind of living space we want, and whether we want to do more to protect farmland from becoming suburban sprawl.

I am grateful that Louisa took the time to read and comment (more grateful than she probably knows!), but as important, her comment reminded me that I need to beware of the writer’s pitfall: Don’t assume readers know what you mean. I’ve spent so many years working on the meat book that I tend to write/think in shorthand and make assumptions about what readers know and don’t know. In this case, I should have been more clear about the relationship between farming methods and urban societies.

First to her comment: She’s correct: The more houses, office buildings, and gas stations we build, the more likely we are to use what was once farmland. As I type this, I’m sitting in a house that is sitting on land that was part of a farm just twenty years ago. So, yes, I’m aware of the “urban sprawl” part of the equation. (And, because I live in Iowa, I’m also aware that, as Louisa points out, when people move to houses like mine, they often complain about rural smells and sounds.) (*2)

But I failed to make a more subtle distinction. Americans have chosen to live “in town” rather than “in the country.” Nearly 80% of us live in “municipalities” of one kind or another. Only two percent of us work as “farmers.” So that two percent has to figure out how to make food as efficiently as possible. If we shut down all the Ames, Iowas, razed the “sprawl,” and forced everyone to move to, say, Manhattan or Brooklyn, we’d still have the same equation: Nearly all of us would rely on a tiny minority to make our food.

But even if the agricultural two percent suddenly had access to farmland once devoted to houses and office buildings, it’s unlikely they would decide to send their cattle, hogs, and chickens out into the “pasture” to range freely.

Why? Because those are labor-intensive forms of agricultural production, and we’d still have just 2% of the population making the food. That’s a primary reason that farmers back in the 1950s embraced confinement as a way to raise livestock: they faced a serious labor shortage. They didn’t have enough “hands” to raise livestock the “old-fashioned” way. If they wanted to keep farming, they had to figure out how to do it without additional labor.

Why was there a labor shortage? Because after World War II, farmers’ sons and daughters decided they wanted to live in town, not on the farm. So --- as those sons and daughters left the farms, they became part of the “urban majority” who relied on farmers to produce food for them. But those farmers, in turn, were left short-handed and in need of ways to make their operations more efficient. (*3)

So when I write about the connection between life in an “urban” society and systems of farming, I need to be more clear about what I mean. City folks are not farmers. They rely on others to grow food for them. In an urban society like ours, most people have CHOSEN not to be food producers. The people who do produce the food are then faced with a quandary: How to make enough food for everyone?

It’s perhaps worth repeating the point I made in that blog entry: When a people choose to live in an urban society rather than an agrarian one, they also enjoy the benefit (luxury) of time for intellectual work. The farming two percent make it possible for the rest of us to sit around and invent iPads and smart phones, blog, write critiques of the food system, or whatever. We can engage in "other" work because we don't spend time growing or preserving food.

Again, the physical form of the urban setting is irrelevant. Sure, if we all moved to Manhattan, we'd free up land for farming. But it's unlikely we'd have more FARMERS. We'd still have 98% of the population living in an urban setting, and two percent making the food.

So. Memo to self: in the manuscript of what is becoming a “real” book, I need to be wary of skipping A so I can get to B.

Again, many thanks to Louisa for her help. __________________ *1: We writers hear this all the time: We can engage with readers! (Yes, of course.) We can use feedback from readers to shape our work! Umm. Okay? Maybe? Not sure. And I've been one of the doubters. But now I "get" how interaction can, in fact, shape my work.

*2: Indeed, that conflict was one of the first ideas that came to me when I decided to write this book. See this blog entry I wrote for Powell’s Books six years ago.

*3: Another point is worth mentioning: Even those “young” people who chose to stay on the farm were no longer willing to work 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. They were even more willing than their fathers and mothers to embrace labor-saving tools and systems of production, including livestock confinement.