Eating is an Agricultural Act

Whatever morsel you are putting in your mouth, whether packaged ramen noodles or organic sweet potato, powdered ‘lemonade’ drink or yogurt smoothie, you are eating from the farm.  Granted the foodstuffs may be processed, amended and altered beyond recognition, but the raw materials are plants, or from animals that eat plants.  Everything we incorporate into our meals and our snacks, all  the good stuff and most of the bad stuff, was once upon a time truly ‘farm fresh.’

‘Eating,’ proposes farmer, writer, and environmental legend Wendell Berry’ is an agricultural act.’ The relationship of humans to farming is basic. Wherever you live and work, though it may be far removed from any landscape resembling a farm, you are as tied to agriculture as any dairyman, market gardener, or Midwestern corn grower. Choosing what we eat is at the heart of Berry’s concept of the ‘agricultural act.’  Farmers raise what consumers choose, and our preferences determine what it is profitable to grow.

We may choose to eat what is familiar, convenient, or affordable.  We often choose the tempting - the salty, starchy, fatty, and sweet foods we seem hardwired to crave.  In the U.S. our choices probably are determined by what we find attractive on the supermarket shelves, or listed on the menu marquee of a fast food restaurant.  The food industry has been more than happy to cater to our desires, especially for products that are quick and convenient to get on the table. For a long time now, it seems, many of us have made our selections about what to eat based pretty much on the enticing full color photographs on the boxes of microwaveable meals.  

But American consumers are changing, and we are increasingly choosing food that looks and tastes like what it is, food straight from the farm.  We are discovering that the pleasures of eating are not limited to the faculty of taste.  We seek out foods that are organic and locally grown.  We show a preference for foods that are fresh and high in nutrition.  We are trying out foods that probably never graced our childhood plates, kale? edemame? chorizo? and we take these fresh foods into the kitchen and experiment with how to cook them.  Then we recommit ourselves to the agricultural act when at last we sit down to eat.

When writing about agriculture and the food industry in his essay The Pleasures of Eating, Wendell Berry reminds us that through our choices in the marketplace, we, the consumers, are driving the agricultural machine.  The foods we value and place in high demand are the foods that producers will scramble to provide.  We are the motivators and the moderators of our agricultural system.  Chew on that.

For more from teacher, poet, novelist, and essayist Wendell Berry, you might begin with Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food or It All Turns on Affection: The Jefferson Lecture and Other Essays.  

Or follow these links:

http://www.ecoliteracy.org/essays/pleasures-eating

http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-wendell-berry-poet-prophet/


                                      

                                     Photo of Wendell Berry thanks to www.neh.gov