Whose Traditions?

Vanessa sent me an aricle (Organic Food: Worth the Cost?) recently that reiterates one of my main frustrations with the current organic food debate. The main knock on organics is that they cost more than "conventional" foods and will forever remain a niche reserved for the well-to-do.

When did genetic engineering become conventional? I must have missed that memo.

I'm reminded of a story one of my college professors told about serving as a Methodist minister in Arkansas. On one occasion he was placed in a small country congregation with a rather high average age that did not approve of his attempts to liven things by putting some contemporary songs in the Sunday morning singing mix. They wanted some more of "that good old-timey music." The next week he brought a recording of some ancient gregorian chants.

For the vast bulk of the 10,000+ years of agricultural history food has been raised locally without the use of unnatural inputs. Yet somehow we don't call this traditional anymore. The practices of dousing crops with fossil fuels refined into various chemicals, pumping animals full of antibiotics so they can survive in CAFO's long enough to make it to slaughter, and air-freighting strawberries from Chile to Wal-Mart has only happened in the last 60 years or so, yet this new kid has booted out generations of knowledge and progress and taken the traditional label for itself.

Why don't we change our use of language to reflect the situation a little more accurately. Let's call food raised locally by farmers working in close partnership with their natural surroundings to constantly improve the health of their land, crops, and ultimately us conventional or traditional and food extruded at the end of a long industrial process completely reliant on the depletion of fossil fuels resulting in global environmental collapse and widespread health degradation weird. Then let's find a way to free the markets so that the price of weird food at the grocery store actually reflects its true costs (like the aforementioned environmental problems, health crises, erosion of communities, etc, etc.) Then the choice at the store wouldn't be between "cheap" conventional and "expensive" organic foods but rather between sky-high weird and relatively inexpensive traditional wares. I'd like to see ADM market its way out of that one!

After all, what's more traditional- a tomato raised in your county or a Twinkie?

May Showers and Flowers

Last night Brooklyn enjoyed one of those gentle evening rains that comes with just enough lightning and thunder to remind you of the comforts of shelter. The morning glowed with a vibrancy only possible in spring when the plants and trees are still awakening from their winter slumber. Everything’s in full bloom and green already but the water and energy seem to propel life forward all the more strongly. The sun and breezes infused the air with depth. As I carried out some business in downtown Brooklyn and Park Slope this afternoon everyone seemed happier somehow and had a livelier spring in their steps. Instead of horns honking and people rushing, things moved at a more leisurely pace with strangers offering drivers directions and dogs leading their owners on walks in the park.

The afternoon also gave me the opportunity to read these words spoken by an anarchist farmer in Massachusetts back in the 1970s: “Kids should be given the opportunity to do productive things to improve the world, not simply have learning poured into them like so many empty vessels.” Word.

Enjoy spring days that follow rainstorms. Look people in the eye and smile when you pass them on the sidewalk. Think about things growing and your connections through them to the ground. Why not?

Here are V and I at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden recently.