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Artificial refrigeration was perfected throughout the 1800s, but wasn’t available to consumers in the US until the early 1900s. There was some health concern at the time about “articifial ice” as opposed to the natural stuff cut out of rivers and lakes.
Pastor Wilson dislikes the rhetoric of Michael Pollan, the “food-like substances” bit. The Velveeta he’s given thanks for in childhood is food, indeed. But it’s hard to deny the rhetoric when manufacturers themselves use it. No real ingredients = food product:
This film looks fascinating. A documentary about our food system with no commentary, no talking heads, no talking at all.
I’ve read some examples of Walmart carrying organic food, but asking the maker to remove “organic” from the packaging for marketing purposes. Now the Atlantic comes out with this article about Walmart’s stealthy local food initiatives. Add another thing to Frank’s list.
We’ve all gotten used to the idea of the “Organic” label encompassing so much that it’s all but useless. Organic farming can look almost exactly like industrial agriculture, and it has to if we’re unwilling to change anything else about the food supply chain. It scratches the prevailing environmentalist itch, without helping people or the environment (most large-scale organic farmers still have monoculture, hire low-wage migrant workers, must introduce tons of nitrogen into the soil, and use untold energy on transportation, refrigeration, etc.).
But could the label “local” be similarly diluted? I’ve been researching craft distilleries, and it seems to me the answer is “yes, but not without lying”. An blog post from yesterday chastises a distillery, referring to them as “Potemkin Craft Distilleries“. They want to be a local distillery, but in the meantime they’re importing. Bulleit bourbon also comes to mind – it seems American and small batch, but it’s a brand acquired by a big distributor and likely sourced in the UK. Confusing at best, deceptive at worst – welcome to marketing!
Organic and local are both broad terms, and organic has been reduced to meaning “no pesticides or antibiotics” – both of which could be used judiciously and should not be completely banned. If an animal gets sick, you should be able to give it antibiotics. The problem is when you hurt the animal then give it antibiotics because it makes better economic sense.
I’m rambling now. Organic and local are useful labels because they raise awareness of broad issues. But the issue for us is taking dominion and assuming responsibility for your actions in the marketplace. There may come a time when these labels cease to be helpful, and we will have to continue this struggle without having them as helpful entry points from the zeitgeist.
It occurs to me that we could use a set of theses on localism. Food, economic justice, what have you. My conversations have been bogged down by not clarifying my presuppositions. So I’m going to try to write something up.
It was in the immature stage of our discussions, but we did bring up some theses here on HPN. I’d modify some statements now. And you’ve got a whole new perspective on this stuff from the ground level.
Thank you for the reminder, I had forgotten. We’re probably not all that much further along. I’m looking forward to rereading it.
In an effort to combat resurgent food fadism, Pastor Wilson has invoked arguments that seem reminiscent of the population control folks. Cultural issues are making the strange bedfellows!
He says that the subdivision of property make it impossible for everyone to farm indefinitely. This is irrelevant to the discussion, because there’s more than enough room for everyone to farm if they want. But we aren’t arguing that everyone should farm (and I don’t want to!), we’re arguing that our food system oppresses the poor here and abroad and needs a complete overhaul.
There is much to deride in so-called sustainability. Permanence or tradition might be a better word with less baggage.
Time for less reductios and straw men, and more engagement with the economic and political issues that under-gird this discussion.
An Augustinian is going to recognize that living in this world is a dirty business. An Augustinian is also going to invite the world to be better.
If we agree on that, how should we apply it?
Just met someone who came into the store who is starting a new CSA in Moscow! It’s June-October, and limited to 15 spots. It’s under the auspices of Backyard Harvest, so your CSA subscription will also provide one for a local underprivileged family. Gyah, I’m so excited! Let me know if you want more details, or want to split a spot.
This last weekend Doug Wilson urged us to keep our priorities straight, and I think that this is an excellent point to keep in mind, especially as economic and food security issues speedily crowd the intellects of some of us here on this blog. In particular, Wilson points out that the fight against abortion is not over, and the importance of this fight rightly eclipses many lesser issues.
Cruelty to an animal is one thing, but murder of a helpless child is yet another. These are both offenses of the same species – oppression of and cruelty toward the weak – but also of a different order. Abortion is murder, and all of our exulting about the sturdy yolks of our granola-fed chickens looks pretty silly in comparison.
So yes, we should be thankful for this reminder.
But.
I think it is clear by now that we require a mass shift in mores, a near-universal cultural and spiritual repentance, before abortion will go away. This will of course come through the Gospel. But since the Christian witness is an incarnational thing, it is legitimate to ask about practical ways that we can become Gospel for people who need to experience this change. I have been attracted to issues like economics, and eventually food, because I see in them an additional – and chronically underemphasized – tool for bringing about some of the cultural change that is needed in The West.
I think here specifically of the girls who decide to abort. Some do so because of uncaring callousness; others, many others, do so because of cultural and economic pressure. This is true especially for the poor. If you’re poor, having a baby means dropping out of school, perhaps your only way out of poverty. If you’re not in school, you are likely working long hours at multiple jobs to make ends meet, and you’re going to have to stop that. A baby is a game changer for the rich, but it’s often a total forfeit for the poor.
It’s true that these folks made certain recreational (and procreational) choices, and they should be held accountable for them. But it is the first place of the Christian to remove planks, and this includes broad-brush cultural judgments we pass on our society. Abortion is murder; we would do well to contemplate the many lesser murders in which we participate daily. Since we really do inhabit a culture of death, it is likely that this death has worked its way into the corners of our culture and lives as Christians.
The Conservatives with whom Christians overwhelmingly identify have been busy for decades napalming indigenous peoples and bombing deserts to glass. Our food system reeks of death and trades the dignity of God’s creatures for efficiency and commerce. Our political discourse is inhuman and uncharitable. Countless racas are uttered against our political enemies, our denominational oddballs, and even those who share the pews with us weekly. Lesser murders are all around us, and it’s time that we got to work fixing them.
Moreover, our economics reinforce this problem in many ways. Modern American Corporate Capitalism has done much to harm the family, which in turn has eroded our sexual standards, the economic stability and centrality of families, and the economic safety of women. We must now have two working parents to make ends meet; we must now be mobile and more committed to career than family or family life; we must depend on paychecks, which is to say that our livelihoods often depend on shareholders reviewing balance sheets or a capricious market that may finally force the innovation that makes us obsolete. If the church were doing her job, many of these girls would have economic security, a community to fill the gaps in family security, and a robust morality upon which to base their decisions. If our economics promoted dignity and charity over merit and profit, the dividends for abortion could be huge.
It is worth considering that ministry to the poor – an aggressive ministry, central to the church – could be introduced as an important element of the battle against abortion. Here we find the vulnerable and oppressed, those who share a fellowship with the aborted fetus that the rich often do not properly understand. We have spent our days puzzling endlessly over even lesser problems of theological accuracy, and have delegated the problem of the poor to the economists and politicians. But clearly, voting Reagan in wasn’t enough. The ever-widening wage gap in the US tells us that the economists have blown it entirely for the last century. It is widely believed and almost universally undisputed that Pat Robertson, and much of the rest of Christian media, are out of their gourds, or at least ineffective.
When we come to the poor, politicians and economists cease to matter. We not only find some of the oppressed, but we find that these oppressed are also the oppressors of their unborn children. The opportunity for twofold good is apparent.
This is, of course, all tied to food. Economics is simply the ordering of a household. People consume water and food more than just about anything else, so in a very real sense an economic problem is a food problem. I won’t belabor this point, except to say that all of these issues are intimately related. The same corporations that are patenting our seeds and growing our food are feeding and employing our poor, and fixing our distributive problems will go along way to recreating a societal architecture that helps young vulnerable girls make the right decisions.
Please don’t hear me as saying that the poor just can’t help themselves, and that unless we repent of our economic or “food” sins abortion will not be conquered. Of course not. Abortion is murder. Food is, well, food. But the problems are related, and we should avoid the false dichotomy. My argument is that if we get to work fixing our food system and our economics – or, more simply, if we get to work helping the poor – our currently intractable abortion situation may become tractable. Put another way, only the Gospel will ultimately win this bloody war, but there are many types of soil in the famous parable, and our economics have much to do with how rocky, thorny, or rich and loamy our society is.
When ordering our problems and distributing our cool cups of water accordingly, we must take account of “the least of these.” Current wisdom counts the unborn as the least of the least, and I certainly agree. But next in line are often the poor who we then condemn as murders, abandon to the cities, and leave to be ravaged by the excesses of welfare and the predations of an upside-down food system.
Finally:
I present to you two problems. I say: “Your neighbor is having an abortion, and your other neighbor is abusing his beast and then selling it to you for food.” And I ask you: what do you do about it? The answer to the second neighbor is quite easy: buy your meat elsewhere. So that is what some have begun to do. The answer to the first neighbor is much more difficult. You may go and speak with this neighbor, minister to her, protest before her house with signs, write letters to your legislator; at the end of the day, she may still have that abortion.
One of the reasons I am going on about this food thing is because I can do something about it. It presents a very real way of “fixing culture,” and it is a way that I can deliberately pass on to my children. Not as in “I have guilt to atone for, and laying it on the Altar of Whole Foods seems like a hip way to go.” But I, and a growing number of people, look around and see all sorts of cultural sin. Like the many, I wish to do something about it. As with our fathers, I believe that the battle against abortion in our generation is an important one, but I also believe that there is utility in other pursuits like feasting, publishing magazines, starting schools, and fighting for strong families. These all contribute to culture; I wish, with no moral superiority or conviction that this is “the answer,” to contribute my garden to this project. With it comes gratitude, hard work, health, tradition, freedom of the individual and the necessity of community. My hope, eventually, is to share the real-live fruits of this garden with the poor, and in so doing bring them the Gospel, in order to set them free.
Miriam is discussing. 
Miriam 7:34 am on March 3, 2010 Permalink
that’s my photo! and when you read the back of these cans it was a type of spread…. ick.