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.
http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-wendell-berry-poet-prophet/
Photo of Wendell Berry thanks to www.neh.gov
Photo of Wendell Berry thanks to www.neh.gov
