The Politics of Food and the Historian's Work: When the Twain Shall Meet, Part 1 (*1)

Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three  This three-part rumination is prompted by a comment from Tim Beauchamp, who blogs at Open Fermenter and who I follow on Twitter. (He provides excellent Twitter content, by the way. None of this “I’m at the grocery store now” crap from him!) For some reason, today he complimented me in a tweet and ended with:

She may be the Upton Sinclair Jr. of today. (*2)

I was touched by his sweet words in the rest of his tweet (modesty prevents me from including those), but --- I gotta say something about the “Upton Sinclair” business. (Tim, this is NOT an attack on you. No way, no how.) He inadvertently hit a nerve. And proved a point that I’ve been wanting to comment on:

That the current “food fight” has become so heated, so contentious that people assume that because I’m writing about meat, I must have an agenda.

So, Tim, thanks for prompting me to get busy writing a blog series that I’d been putting off. (The next beer’s on me.)

I’ve mentioned before, I’m writing a history of meat in modern America (c. 1870-1990). I spend most of my days digging through primary materials, hunting for information, trying to figure out “what happened” and then writing about what I learn.

But as part of my research, I’m also learning as much as I can about current agricultural issues, our existing food system, government food policies, and the like. That’s been an eye-opener. I had no idea how politicized these topics were.

Sure, I knew there were recurrent debates over, for example, farm subsidies. Over food tariffs and export quotes. Yes, I knew about the conflict unfolding here in the midwest over land use: Should large feedlots be allowed to exist? What kinds of controls ought to regulate their wastes? How can we reconcile the rights of homeowners with farmers?

I was, however, more-or-less oblivious to the other food fight: The one between the nation’s food producers --- farmers and manufacturers --- and the people who want to dismantle the existing food production system and replace it with one that is more “sustainable” (preferably more “organic”). (*3)

Next: My "agenda" __________

*1: No pun intended. Honest.

*2: Upton Sinclair was a committed socialist whose intent with The Jungle was the reveal the misery of factory working conditions. As he himself said (and I'm paraphrasing), he aimed for the nation's heart and accidentally hit its stomach.

*3: More accurately: I wasn't completely oblivious to the issues or the debate, but I sure didn't know how, um, heated it had become.

Drive-by Posting No. 387

Not really. I mean, yes, this is a drive-by posting. But it's not number 387.

I'm still off on my fishing expedition (ie, writing the new book). (WHY do I keep referring to it in terms of fishing? I've never been fishing in my life.)

Anyway --- slow blogging will continue until such time as I've broken the kneecaps of the current chapter. And waded through the 79 books and 300 articles and all the primary research for this chapter. This would be SO much easier if I didn't have to, ya know, do research. If I could just make up some random facts. But it is what it is, and I'm going back to it now.

By the way: what the hell happened to summer? One minute it was here; the next minute the trees are turning yellow. Sigh.

Dumbass [Government] Move of the Day, Week, Year, Century

Just read it yourself. Leaves me speechless. Well, not quite: If the books were THAT fucking dangerous, kids like me wouldn't be alive, right? Because, ya know, I would have ingested all that lead from all those thousands (literally) of books I ate, er, read, as a child.

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.

______________

*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.