Time Offers A Primer on the "Food Crisis"

Coming up from "fishing" for a moment to pass on a link to this piece in Time magazine about the "food crisis." There's not much new here --- the analysis of both the problem and the possible solutions are both well-worn --- but this is Time, after all, about as mainstream a publication as there is and so no one ought to expect ground-breaking analysis.

And of course because it is so mainstream, the content is all, well, not glib exactly, but . . . not exactly textured either. Still, if you're not up on the "food fight" unfolding in many quarters these days, it's definitely worth a read. As far as I'm concerned, the money quote is this one:

A transition to more sustainable, smaller-scale production methods could even be possible without a loss in overall yield, as one survey from the University of Michigan suggested, but it would require far more farmworkers than we have today.

Hmmmm. Gee. Isn't that one reason that immigration is such a contentious issue? Because most Americans don't want to engage in manual or agricultural labor?

Indeed, that's part of my frustration with the "change the food system" folks: revamping the food system would require Americans to face up to the quandries of farm subsidies, private v. public good, export issues, land use issues, and the messy, contentious matter of immigration to boot.

As I've noted here before, the issues of the food system are extraordinarily complex. It's easy to say "Gee, let's all eat local and meet our farmers at the market every week and savor those heirloom veggies," --- and so so so difficult to figure out now to change a deeply entrenched system rooted in money, politics, and tradition, and turn entrenched cultural values on their heads (which, as a historian, I can tell you is no easy feat).

And still feed 250 million people (plus a few zillions others around the planet).

But, I digress. If you have time, read the article. You'll learn something about an important topic. Now: Back to fishing. (Tip o' the mug to Tom Laskawy at Beyond Green.)

Okay. Back to Fishing (For Words and Facts)

Alrighty. Off again to fish for several days. Until, ahem, something else sets me off. Actually, this is good time for an update: I'm closing in on the halfway point of the book. I'm also ready to write the next chapter, and when I write, I need to descend into the cone of silence.

Did I really just write that I'm at the halfway point? Wow. How did that happen? Seems like only yesterday that I was ready to toss the whole damn thing out the window. Hmmmm. Books happen in mysterious ways.

"Mad Men," "Far From Heaven," and the Nature of Social Change

Frank Rich has a terrific essay in today's Times op-ed section. (Well, okay, he writes for that section most Sundays, and most of the time his essay's are terrific).

The short version, if you don't want to read the whole thing, is this: Forget Woodstock. If you want to find an era of social and cultural upheaval, and one that, in many ways, mirrors our own season/era of discontent/uncertainty, look at the early 1960s, the same era explored in the AMC series "Mad Men." (The third season of which debuts tonight.) (*1) I

agree. "Mad Men" is fascinating on many levels, but what's most interesting is seeing an era of immense turbulence play out in the confines of a Madison Avenue ad agency. As Rich points out, we know what's about to happen to these men and women; we know bra burning, war demonstrations, and the Stonewall riots lie just ahead.

But these characters are, of course, completely unaware of that.

Which was precisely what I found so fascinating about the film "Far From Heaven." When the film came out in 2002, reviewers mostly focused on the film's "authenticity" and the costumes, and the way the film's "look" mirrored that of the technicolor glossies of the 1950s.

As far as I was concerned, they completely missed the point of a brilliant film (which, as a result, didn't get the attention it deservered). This was a film about how eras of profound social and cultural are born. If I remember correctly, the film is set in 1958. I

won't bore you with the synopsis (you can read that for yourself), but the plot revolves around the characters' struggles' with racial, sexual, and personal issues. In the course of the film, they they make decisions about how to resolve those issues. They opt for change rather than misery because the change makes more moral sense than the status quo.

Put another way, the tensions they're experiencing seem to them to be the result of moral values that no longer seem to make sense. Or, as Yeats put it "The center cannot hold." They have NO idea that in another decade, their small decisions will produce events like Stonewall and Woodstock. Bra burnings and the march on Washington.

That's how change begins: Ordinary people of the kind portrayed in the film make small, seemingly insignificant, decisions about how to live their lives. Then others, unconnected to them and living in other places, do the same. And as thousands and then millions of people make the same kinds of choices, well --- from decisions and choices come change: Stonewall. Selma. Woodstock War protests.

So . . . my words of wisdom on a Sunday afternoon. And now? Back to work.

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*1: I got hooked on "Mad Men" after a friend told me about it. I bought the first season on dvd, but managed to get my act together to record the second season when AMC re-aired it this past spring. So I"m caught up and plan to record the third season as it happens. That's the plan anyway.

Let Us Now Praise . . . Alan McLeod (Again)

As some of you realize, I'm a big fan of common sense, reason, facts, and, well, good thinking.

Which is why I'm a fan of Alan McLeod, the brains behind A Good Beer Blog. A prime example is his recent essay about blogging, "professionals," "amateurs," and a whole lotta other topics in between. No, I'm not a beer blogger or a beer writer --- but I so appreciate good writing and thinking regardless of topic. I hope you to, too.

Which is why you oughta read Alan's blog. (And, no, I didn't know that I'd inadvertently referred him, via Stan, to the piece that inspired this instance of rumination. Frankly, and as I noted a day or so ago, I'm a bit baffled that anyone reads my tweets. Who knew?)

(Yes, I know that's irrational: Presumably I bother tweeting because I assume someone's going to read the tweet. Certainly that's my hope. In my experience, however, life is chock-ablock with unrealized hopes and so, ya know....)

"Profood" v. "Industrial" Food. Where Is the Middle Ground?

As some of you know, I'm writing a history of meat in modern America ("modern" in this case meaning 1870-2000) so I try to stay current with what's what in the world of food and food politics. So naturally I read up on things like the "profood" movement. I inadvertently hurt some feelings with a Tweet I posted yesterday, and for that I apologize. (Frankly, it never occurred to me that anyone would actually READ the Tweet.) My tweet was as follows:

I have come to the conclusion that the "profood" people are, um, out of touch with reality.

The "profood" in this case refers to a group of people who advocate changes in the American food system. You can read more about it here. As near as I can tell, profood types are all about the "family farm" and sustainable foods and eating local. They also want better food, more "real" food served in, for example, hospitals and schools.

I admire their energy and agree with their general thrust: I hate the idea that the nation's schoolkids are eating crap every day. And I become almost unhinged every time I see an adult hand a two-year-old a coke or a bottle of "apple juice." (Which is mostly corn syrup.)

So I'm all in favor of eating well. (And if you read this blog, you know I practice what I preach.

And I'm also keenly aware that millions of people rely on "convenience" foods out of both choice and necessity.)

My problem with this "movement" is its simplistic approach to a complex problem. The profood people, inadvertently or intentionally, are demonizing the existing food system. As near as I can tell, they hope to achieve their goals in part by tossing the baby out with the bathwater, or, in this case, the entire existing food/farming system out with the foodproducer/farmer.

As one farmer said, they'd like to force him to live in the 19th century, while they get to live in the 21st. That won't work. There is no way "family farms" and "local foods" are going to feed 250 million people. No way. No how. (And that's only counting the people here in the US. There's also the matter of foods exported to other countries.)

But here's my biggest fear about "profood." They're (unintentionally) advocating what amounts to a two-tier food system. One system --- local, sustainable, organic, etc. --- for the rich. And "industrial" food for the rest of us. Because "local" food produced on "family farms" is expensive food.

And here's the brutal reality that seems to escape the profood people: Many Americans rely on "industrial" food to fill their stomachs because that's the food they can afford. They can't shop at the groovy local "coop" store (aka "health food store") and buy those four dollar quarts of "local" milk and those two dollar local tomatoes. Or those three dollar heads of organic kale.

Moreover, millions of working Americans can't take time to plant food and then can or process the harvests. Because, ya know, they're too busy working for a living.

That's what I mean when I wrote that some profood people are "out of touch with reality."

So I'm all "profood" and I favor changes in our food system --- but turning back the clock and/or creating a two-tier food system isn't the way to go. Put those carrots on the school lunch tray, please! But just know that the schools will only be able to pay for those carrots when the carrots are grown in the most efficient way possible: On a large "industrial" farm.

Otherwise, only a few will get carrots. And many will get none at all.

First Draft Follies: Woodstock

Welcome to First Draft Follies, an ongoing series here at the blog. The material is presented "as is" from the first draft of the manuscript that became the book Ambitious Brew. In a few places I added one or two words in brackets -- [like this] -- for clarification.

This edition is particularly folly-ish, and prime example of how easily I wander off-track when something interesting catches my brain. Because let's face it: Woodstock had nuthin' much to do with beer. For the record: I was not at Woodstock. Indeed, I was not even aware it was happening. (I was an exceptionally oblivious fifteen-year-old.)

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Eight hundred miles east of Milwaukee, four men of disparate personalities and backgrounds were organizing an event that they hoped would make them rich. They planned to hold the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in August in rural upstate New York.

The quartet spent the summer of ‘69 lining up acts; researching the merits of temporary toilets; signing food vendors, and scrambling to find a location after their first choice was snatched from them at the last moment. Hugh Romney and the Hog Farm commune agreed to operate a free food kitchen, babysit kids on bad trips, and provide concert “security.” (For that task, Romney informed a Woodstock Ventures representative, he would require “‘fifty cases of seltzer bottles and three truckloads of chocolate cream pies as ammunition.’”) (*1)

By opening day, August 15, 1969, a city-sized swarm of hippies, heads, and freaks had established camp at Max Yasgur’s farm. Outside the site, vehicular traffic overwhelmed the region’s roads and highways.

The cops, fearing the worse, blockaded the parking lots, a decision that exacerbated the chaos and produced the largest traffic jam in New York state history. Thousands of people abandoned their cars and walked the last several miles.

For three days, a crowd estimated at anywhere from 100,000 to a half a million, listened to music, danced, sang, made love, died (two people), and sloshed through odorous mud spawned by torrential rain.

The “official” food supply--hot dogs and hamburgers--ran out almost before singer Richie Havens, who went on first because the opening act was stuck in traffic, plucked a guitar string. “Bring food,” the organizers begged the outside world.

That was easier said than done, thanks to abandoned vehicles and barricaded highways. Locals who knew the back roads delivered carloads of cold cuts, water, soda, and fruit juice, but, given that all the nearby towns combined were not as large as Woodstock City, their efforts fed the encampment’s fringes but not much more.

No matter. Most attendees were beyond caring about food. Kids drank acid-laced kool-aid and water, smoked and ate hash, ingested god-knows what other drugs, and guzzled wine from that basic hippie accoutrement, the goatskin.

Beer was conspicuous by its absence. Art Vassmer, who owned a general store in nearby Kauneonga Lake, sold out his stock of six-packs. Some kids hauled in coolers loaded with beer, but that ran out long before the music did. A local bar owner showed up with a truck loaded with beer.

It sold “like crazy,” less because kids craved beer than because liquid of any sort was welcome on a hot day in August in a temporary city cut off from the outside world.(*2)

Nor did any of the long-haired, mud-soaked trippers care whether the national beverage was available or not. Who needed beer when pot, hash, and acid were as accessible as the air and rain and far more fun?

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*1: Robert Stephen Spitz, Barefoot in Babylon: The Creation of the Woodstock Music Festival, 1969 (New York: The Viking Press, 1989), 90. *2: Joel Makower, Woodstock: The Oral History (New York: Doubleday, 1989), 217.