Getting What We Pay For

About two and a half years ago, I wrote a piece (one of several I contributed over a couple of years) for my local food co-op's "Eat Local" blog. I recently came across it again and thought I would take the liberty of rerunning it here. As I explain in the tab at the top of this page called "The bookcase that became a blog," while these days I mainly write about birds and other encounters with nature, I see those interests as absolutely related to my interest in organic gardening, sustainable agriculture and the local food movement (for one thing, there are not a lot of birds that thrive when there is nothing but corn or soybean fields to be seen from horizon to horizon), and it was in writing about those things that Penelopedia first took shape. So here's a return to my blogging roots. If you find this post interesting, you can find others on related themes by perusing the list of tags that appears toward the bottom of the sidebar. (If you don't find it interesting, never fear, we will return to our regular programming after this brief interruption.)
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One of my favorite writers on the subject of food and gardening is Joan Dye Gussow. In her book This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader, she recounts,

“I came across a… cartoon of an angry housewife holding a bag of groceries and shouting at a man in a cowboy hat, ‘What do I care if a bunch of farmers go broke? I buy my food at a grocery store!’ The conviction that she’s expressing is close enough to how most of us act that discomfort makes us laugh. Most of us buy food as if the only question that needs asking is whether we have enough money to pay for it.”

It’s so true. In fact, what many of us have been taught about being a good provider or a careful shopper revolves largely around paying as little as possible for our family’s food. Sure, we know how to check for ripeness, or spoilage, or bruises, or sell-by dates. And sure, we know our basic food pyramid facts and the importance of eating enough produce or whole grains. But most Americans shop once a week in the big box stores; we use our manufacturer’s coupons carefully clipped from the paper, buying the name-brand packaged goods that have come to mean food and home and the American way of life. And we feel virtuous at the thought of the full refrigerator and the dollars carefully saved on the family-size pack of pork chops or the 2-for-the-price-of-1 cookies or the hard, pink strawberries on sale.

When we’ve been taught like this, it’s easy to feel an initial sense of shock at the thought of deliberately paying more than the minimum for food. But it’s worthwhile to see what happens when we start to ask ourselves, “What am I buying with my food dollars? When I save a few dollars on my grocery bill, how are those savings achieved? Does my spending support my values, or contradict them?”

When I know that mass-market meat is relatively cheap because animals are constrained and crowded together in huge quantities for “efficiency,” living in conditions that no animal would choose and creating lagoons of manure that must be managed, I generally can’t bring myself to “save” those few dollars. And when I know that produce or grain-based foods are relatively cheap because they are grown in vast monocultures that require large amounts of pesticides and leave the soil depleted rather than enriched with organic matter, I really don’t want my savings to be bought at that price.

On the other hand, I feel positive pleasure when I know that my food dollars are going to small-scale local producers of grass-fed cows who practice rotational grazing, so that the animals fertilize the very ground that produces the grass they eat. I feel good when I support local farmers who take the trouble to use row covers and diversified crops to manage insects, and who plant the best-tasting, most nutritious varieties because their fruit and vegetables will be sold nearby,  at the peak of ripeness, and so they don’t have to sacrifice those qualities in favor of those that best survive long-distance transportation.

So let’s encourage those around us to question the assumption that food should cost as little as possible. Speaking for myself — and I have plenty of reasons to be quite careful about my spending — I don’t feel I can afford to buy food as if the only question that needs asking is how cheap it is.

Time Magazine Cover Story: Real Cost of Cheap Food

This week Time magazine gives cover-story prominence to an issue I feel strongly about: namely, that the industrial-scale cheap food we have become accustomed to comes at too high a price and is not sustainable. The article notes:

The U.S. agricultural industry can now produce unlimited quantities of meat and grains at remarkably cheap prices. But it does so at a high cost to the environment, animals and humans.

Price subsidies for commodity crops result in price-per-calorie dysfunction like these examples provided in the article. One dollar can buy:

• 1,200 calories of potato chips
• 875 calories of soda
• 250 calories of vegetables
• 170 calories of fresh fruit

The fruit and vegetables are still the nutritional bargain here, but people get fuller faster (and fatter) eating the cheap calories.

When we enjoy a cheap hamburger from animals finished on grain in high-density feedlots, or bargain-price pork or chicken where thousands of animals are raised together in close proximity, we are getting that cheap meat at the cost of:

• a horrendous (at the very least, a most unnatural and crowded) quality of life for the animals
• routine antibiotic use to prevent control disease in such unnaturally large concentrations of animals
• pollution from the huge quantities of waste produced in such concentrated areas
• increased chances for food contamination from large, high-speed processing plants
• increased use of petroleum-based fertilizers to grow the endless monocultures of cheap corn to feed the animals
• our own health and enjoyment of the food (did you know, for example, that the fats in grass-fed beef and dairy products - such as humans have been eating for thousands of years until the last several decades - are considerably better for us than the fats from grain-fed cattle?)

Bon Appetit food services company (which manages the dining programs at both St. Olaf and Carleton colleges here in Northfield and relies heavily on local, sustainable producers), Niman Ranch beef, and Chipotle restaurants are highlighted as examples of how to take a different, healthier, more sustainable approach in large-scale food production. Our own nearby Thousand Hills Cattle Company is a premium source of grass-fed beef; you can find their meat at Just Food and other area co-ops, and I believe I even saw some at EconoFoods recently.

I encourage you to read the article, which concludes:

The industrial food system fills us up but leaves us empty — it's based on selective forgetting. But what we eat — how it's raised and how it gets to us — has consequences that can't be ignored any longer.

Interested in Local Food/Sustainable Ag? See "Fresh" Aug. 7

Received from Just Food Co-op (Full disclosure: Just Food is currently a client in my professional life, which I usually keep separate from this blog. Regular readers of Penelopedia will know that my support for the co-op and issues surrounding local food and sustainable agriculture long pre-dates any professional relationship with Just Food.)

“Fresh” Showing for One Night Only in Northfield

Food has been in the news a lot lately, from problems with our food system to the struggles of farmers. A new film called FRESH celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are reinventing our food system. Forging healthier, sustainable alternatives, they offer a practical vision of our food and our planet’s future. FRESH addresses an ethos that has been sweeping the nation and is a call to action America has been waiting for.

Just Food Co-op, the Northfield Arts Guild, and the Cannon River Sustainable Farming Association Chapter will be showing the film “Fresh” at the Northfield Arts Guild Theater at 411 West 3rd Street in Northfield on Friday, August 7 at 7 p.m. (doors open at 6:30 p.m. Please purchase your tickets in advance at Just Food Co-op to guarantee a seat).

The film will be followed by a lively panel discussion, moderated by local CSA farmer John Ostgarden. Panelists are Atina Diffley (Consultant, Organic FarmingWorks, and former farmer and co-founder of Gardens of Eagan), Matthew Fogarty (Executive Chef for Bon Appetit at St Olaf College. His crew serves 32,000 meals per week while fulfilling Bon Appetit's mission to provide fresh food grown sustainably, and purchased locally whenever possible), and Erica Zweifel (Northfield City Council Member, Third Ward). Tickets are $10 and are available at Just Food Co-op (516 Water St S, Northfield) or online at www.freshthemovie.com. Seating is limited, and we expect to sell out, so get your tickets early!

Producer Ana Joanes is a Swiss-born documentary filmmaker whose work addresses pressing social issues through character-driven narratives.

After traveling internationally to study the environmental and cultural impacts of globalization, she graduated from Columbia Law School in May 2000, awarded as a Stone Scholar and Human Rights Fellow. Thereafter, Ana created Reel Youth, a video production program for youth coming out of detention. In 2003, Ana and her friend Andrew Unger produced Generation Meds, a documentary exploring our fears and misgivings about mental illness and medication. FRESH is Ana’s second feature documentary.

Among several main characters, FRESH features:

Will Allen - 6ft 7” former professional basketball player Will Allen is now one of the most influential leaders of the food security & urban farming movement. His farm and not-for-profit, Growing Power, have trained and inspired people in every corner of the US to start growing food sustainably. This man and his organization go beyond growing food. They provide a platform for people to share knowledge and form relationships in order to develop alternatives to the industrial food system.
Joel Salatin- world-famous sustainable farmer and entrepreneur, made famous by Michael Pollan (also in the movie) - author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Joel Salatin writes in his website that he is “in the redemption business: healing the land, healing the food, healing the economy, and healing the culture.” By closely observing nature, Joel created a rotational grazing system that not only allows the land to heal but also allows the animals to behave the way the were meant to – as in expressing their “chicken-ness” or “pig-ness”, as Joel would say.
David Ball -supermarket owner, challenging our Wal-Mart dominated economy. With the rise of Wal-Mart and other big chains, David Ball saw his family-run supermarket dying, along with a once-thriving local farm community. So he reinvented his business, partnering with area farmers to sell locally-grown food and specialty food products at an affordable price. His plan has brought the local economy back to life.

FRESH empowers us to realize that our individual actions in fact do matter. Throughout the film we encounter the most inspiring people, ideas, and initiatives around the US. And thus, FRESH showcases real people first and foremost, connecting audiences not with facts and figures or apocalyptic policy analysis, but with personal stories of change.

Gary Holthaus Speaks on Sustainable Farming -- and Sustainable Life

Last night at the Northfield Arts Guild I heard Gary Holthaus read to a full house from his recent book, From the Farm to the Table: What All Americans Need to Know about Agriculture, and talk about sustainability. I hadn't read much about him beforehand, and expected the talk to take a mostly narrative and informative tone. Had I done my homework, I would have known to expect quite a bit more: poetry and metaphor and the soft-spoken rage of a wise man of mature age.

The first chapter of his book, which he read aloud, says the ancients got it exactly right when they spoke of the four essential elements: earth (healthy soil), air, fire (sun), and water. All of these elements are essential for sustainable life on earth. "As any farmer knows, everything depends on them," he read. (We have, of course, sadly depleted and/or polluted three of the four.)

He went on after the reading to take questions and to discuss specifics like the nutritional and anti-erosional benefits of rotational grazing, and the practice of "agri-dumping" our government-subsidized corn and beans and cotton into other economies, while American multinationals peddle costly genetically modified seed, bringing prices down and costs up and putting thousands of small-scale local farmers out of business. In India, suicides by cotton farmers are epidemic, as a member of the audience pointed out.

In my additional research this morning, I learned that Holthaus is also the author recently of The Unauthorized Bible: Selected Readings by Gary Holthaus (The Boston Wesleyan Press, 2003). Here are excerpts from a press release on this book:

Holthaus tells near to life stories of real people experiencing modern times in short, sweet prose that is lyrical, universal, and visionary. He speaks tenderly of the Earth and exploited creatures, as those living beings suffering at the hands of global slumlords. He speaks through the voices of Old Testament prophets, of Jesus, of Lao-Tzu, of a Northwest Coast tribal elder, and of other wisdom figures, and what he says through them expresses pure, righteous anger.

The Unauthorized Bible is a social, economic, political and environmental critique of America’s powers and principalities. And, at its heart and in every voice, it roars a spiritual, humane and godly outrage over what is happening to our Earthly ecosystem and to "the poor of the land" (essentially most of humankind).

If someone were to ask Holthaus "by what authority" he writes these things, he would likely say that the condition of the Earth and its peoples are all the warrant he needs to propose an unauthorized reading of the Bible: a gospel of justice, environmental sustainability, inclusiveness, and universalism.

The gift of this book is that it stirs the heart to outrage. It will bring tears to your eyes and fill you with indignation and fury. The Unauthorized Bible will stir a social controversy because it shows us the results or our dismal performance in time and space. Holthaus, as most poets and prophets must, does this without the usual authorizations.

Gary Holthaus received an Individual Fellowship for Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1990. He has been a commercial fisherman in Alaska, a big-game guide in Montana, a wheat packer for Quaker Oats, a school teacher and worked "too long," he says, moving steel beams around for Iowa Steel and Iron Works.

The RC Blog has also reported on Holthaus's visit, and includes a podcast of the reading. The visit was sponsored by River City Books, the Arts Guild, and Just Food Co-op.

More on Food For Thought

I recently wrote about the Food For Thought curriculum at Kenyon College, as I was fascinated and delighted that a top liberal arts college would build a whole academic sequence exploring the value of local, sustainable food production. When her dad and I delivered our daughter there last Thursday and ate lunch in one of the cafeterias, I noticed Food For Thought signs around the serving area, encouraging all who eat there to think about where their food comes from and who produces it. The college has been buying at least some of their produce from local providers since 2004. I found more about the program's outreach to the entire college community on their website:

Kenyon’s efforts to educate about food do not stop at the classroom door. Working with the College’s dining service, AVI Foodsystems, Food for Thought has begun to turn the cafeteria into a classroom with materials about food and local rural life. Signs at food stations highlight local ingredients in menu selections. Tabletop displays, many created by students in conjunction with their coursework, explore the history of agriculture in Knox County, offer biographies of local food producers, and examine the nutritional value of the foods we eat. Plans are underway for a series of student-produced films on local agriculture, to be shown in the dining hall on a large-screen monitor.

I'll continue to follow this program with interest, and to be equally interested in what our local colleges are doing along these lines. I know that St. Olaf has the STOGROW farm, and that the Bon Appetit food service buys much of the farm's produce for use in the dining hall there. There is a nice discussion of Bon Appetit's contributions to sustainability at St. Olaf in this report.

Carleton has its Farm Club Organic Gardens, and their site says they have sold produce to the food service providers in the past. In conversation with a Carleton faculty member not long ago, I was given to understand that Carleton's current food service provider, Sodexho-Marriott, is not set up to easily allow individual sites to support local food producers. I understand the economic benefits of contracting with large suppliers, but I hope they'll find a way to build in some flexibility in that regard. There is more information about food and sustainability at Carleton in this report, which notes that "an emphasis is being put on purchasing from Food Alliance certified farms in the Midwest" but acknowledges that as of the date of the report, that proportion is less than 2% of the food budget.

Academically speaking, I see that in Carleton's biology department, David Hougen-Eitzman -- who with his wife, Laurie, operates the Big Woods Farm CSA in Nerstrand -- teaches a seminar on sustainable agriculture. At St. Olaf, student research on agricultural practices has been put to use by farmers who rent St. Olaf land, and incorporated into biology and environmental studies classes, according to their Natural Lands webpage.

It's good to see the interaction between these institutions of higher learning, which are not land-grant universities offering standard programs in agriculture, and the status of our food and our local farms.

"Food for Thought" at Kenyon College

In about 11 days, my eldest daughter is heading off for her first year at Kenyon College, in Gambier, Ohio. Remembering those heady days of perusing a course catalog and trying to decide what classes to register for, I was ... well, perusing her course catalog and deciding what I would take if I could go back to college now. I discovered to my joy that Kenyon offers a special cross-disciplinary, multi-course initiative that explores food, farming and rural life. It's called Food for Thought. Here are some outtakes from the catalog:

Understanding our food sources raises many questions of national and global significance. How will rising petroleum costs affect the availability and cost of food? What is the impact of current farming practices on the environment? How do the cultural meanings we associate with food influence eating habits? Does the loss of small landholding farmers diminish the foundation of a democratic society? ...

Much of the work accomplished in these courses will contribute to an ambitious public project to build a sustainable market for foods produced in and around Knox County. Students and faculty are conducting research on local food supplies and consumer buying habits, developing a local food warehouse and retail outlet in Mount Vernon, and creating exhibits to raise public understanding about the many ways our food choices affect us as individuals and as a society...

Courses in the program include practical issues in ethics, sustainable agriculture, solar energy, photography, American culture and the environment, anthropology of food, and introduction to environmental studies.

By taking three courses, completing a summer internship on a farm that uses ecological production methods, and attending workshops and conferences, students may receive The Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association (OEFFA)-Kenyon Certificate in Ecological Agriculture. This program:

... gives students the opportunity to develop intellectual skills and practical knowledge regarding food and farming systems. Students will (1) develop an understanding of the complex nature of agroecosystems, (2) critically analyze the social, political, and economic institutions in which food and farming systems are embedded, and (3) explore the interplay of social values, personal responsibility, and the achievement of environmental and community goals.

For additional information about Food for Thought, visit the Kenyon Rural Life Center Web site.

If I could go back to college with my current life experience and passions, this -- at least in part -- is what I would be doing. There's no doubt in my mind about that.

Why Eat Locally? (Part two of an ongoing discussion)

Last week I wrote about the fuel dependency argument for increasing the amount of locally-produced food we eat. This week I’m thinking about the words by Wendell Berry that provide my quote of the week: “Eaters must understand… that eating is inescapably an agricultural act, and that how we eat, to a considerable extent, determines how the world is used.”

The essay from which these words are drawn goes on to talk about the industrial food economy, in which “the overriding concerns are not quality and health, but volume and price.” The scale of production has increased, at the cost of plant and animal species variety, the health of the environment, and the ability of the smaller farmer to compete.

Articles about the benefits of eating locally often discuss the hidden costs of “cheap” food -- the mass produced, commodified, packaged food that fills our supermarkets. Those costs come in the form of tax money going to subsidize commodity crops through price supports and tax breaks, road transport subsidies, the below-market price of the water used in western agriculture, long-term environmental costs, and more. The price of our groceries often doesn’t reflect these costs, but we pay them, regardless.

I suspect that our country, and the world, needs some large-scale agriculture, but I’d be very sad to live in a world where that’s all there was. I want us to think about “how the world is used” and make choices as if the future of small-scale farming were at stake -- because it is. I’d like to know that in every suitable climate, family farms can use sustainable practices to produce varied and healthy crops and make a decent living doing so because consumers (literally, "eaters," in Berry's wording) value high-quality farm products for their freshness and flavor and beauty and variety and nutrition ... and also value the local farmer's essential contributions to our culture, our landscape, our local economy, and the future of our food supply.

STOGROW Farm Open House... and Square Foot Gardening

I stopped by the STOGROW farm open house this afternoon. STOGROW is St. Olaf College's student-run garden research and organic works farm. The farm uses organic and sustainable methods to produce fresh produce that it sells to the Bon Appetit kitchens on campus. Bon Appetit then uses the produce in daily meals for St. Olaf students and for the various organizations that visit St. Olaf during the summer.

Not only does the farm feature enough tomato and squash plants to feed an army, it is an educational garden, demonstrating a variety of techniques such as raised beds, French intensive double-dug beds, and square-foot gardening (read on for more about that).

Mel Bartholomew's book Square Foot Gardening, and now a companion website, advocates planting modest amounts in neatly divided square-foot plots, making them easy to take care of and allowing people to grow some of their own food in a small space. I highly recommend it for people who would like to do just that. His website shows permanently constructed divided beds, but you can approach the technique more simply; I've often just laid twigs on the ground to mark my squares.

STOGROW Farm Tour this Saturday

I'm planning to stop by the STOGROW farm tour this Saturday. STOGROW is St. Olaf College's student-run garden research and organic works farm. The farm uses organic and sustainable methods to produce fresh produce that it sells to the Bon Appetit kitchens on campus. Bon Appetit then incorporates the food into daily meals for St. Olaf students and for the various organizations that visit St. Olaf during the summer.

They're hosting a summer festival Saturday, July 21, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The event will include tours of the natural lands, beekeeping demonstrations, music, face painting, sheep shearing, and food . The festival is free and open to the public. More info is available here.

The farm is located just west of the St. Olaf campus, at 8997 Eaves Ave. (just off Highway 19 on the "hospital" road), directly behind the Cannon River Watershed Project.