Michael Pollan on "Crunchy Cons"

Rod while on the subject, I'm surprised by your silence on the war the Bush administration has been waging against Whole Foods. They are trying to destroy the company. Regulators during the Bush regime have allowed every merger under the sun, but now decide to pick on an organic grocer that is only a tiny fraction of the market. Just more evidence that Bush is the worst President in recent memory.

http://www.slate.com/id/2167984/nav/ais/

Bush's War on Whole Foods

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123068935035244619.html

Whole Foods Fiasco

The labels liberal and conservative have been pretty much rendered useless. Like I heard Berry once say, I am conservative about what should be preserved and liberal about those things that should change.

We need a movement based upon principles, not labels and empty ideologies.

Folks that follow conservative principles, rather than what the Republicans have become: authoritarian corporatist, can become our allies. I worked with them during the Regan years when we first started organizing the Greens here in Minneapolis.

When real conservatives see that we are grounded in principles, or what Berry calls virtue, then they will come to us. No need to court them because we aren't playing a labels game.

I've never quite understood this myth that conservatives aren't "crunchy", which liberals conjured up (and Pollan, presumably fell for). Of course, I'm preaching to the choir here, but I grew up with a conservative mother who washed all her plastic bags to re-use, for Pete's sake. When I got to NYC 20 years ago, however, I watched bemusedly as liberal westsiders claimed the patent of, and began accessorizing with the canvas tote (mom, since the 70s), composting in their kitchens (again, mom) and smartly parallel-parking their SUVs.....hmmmm. It seems to me, if you're going to co-opt an entire way of life, at least be consistent and informed.

In response to Shelley’s questions, yes, Wendell Berry’s quotes were from a talk he gave in 1974 (at the height of our last major financial crisis), and yes, hard necessity is inspiring increased emphasis on local food and farming nationwide.

I see ample evidence for the emergence of what he called the “constituency for a better kind of agriculture.” During the growing season, a place where millions of Americans gather every week is at one of the thousands of neighborhood farmers markets. For links to a market near you see:

Local Harvest
www.localharvest.org/farmers-markets

Another place the constituency Wendell described gathers is at the numerous food and agriculture-related conferences underway around the country each week of the year. As examples, below are links to a national calendar and one I maintain of events in the Pacific Northwest:

National Center for Appropriate Technology – Calendar of Events
http://www.attra.org/calendar/index.php

Tilth Regional Events Calendar
www.tilthproducers.org/calendar.htm

If you would like to read more about the left and the right coming together around good food and farming, I think you’ll enjoy John Schwenkler’s essay last June in The American Conservative:

Food for Thought: Renewing the Culinary Culture Should be a Conservative Cause
www.amconmag.com/article/2008/jun/30/00006

For information on connections between faith and farming see:

A Catholic Vision for Farm and Town
http://ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2007c/070607/070607z.htm

The Good Shepherds
www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/october/43.64.html

Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon – Food & Farms
www.emoregon.org/food_farms.php

Food & Faith
http://willzhead.typepad.com/willzhead/2006/10/food_and_faith.html

That’s My Farmer! – A Huge and Wonderful Adventure
http://gbgm-umc.org/global_news/full_article.cfm?articleid=4336

We all eat and one place we can all come together is around the table.

Bon appétit!

Lord Karth,

You might be surprised how well these two groups seemingly at odds with one another can and have worked together. I used to work for an organization that supported sustainable agriculture and although we (the staff) we more on the liberal end of the spectrum, most of our support came from very conservative individuals. I think it's a mistake to assume this is a one-sided fight. Also, I have seen the power of getting those two sides together on a single issue (or cluster of issues) and it was quite a powerful experience.

In response to Lord Karth,
I agree there is a price disparity and there are several regulatory and grass roots educational initiatives that can help.

I raise pastured poultry and have my own processing building much like Joel Salatin's model (Pollan describes it in Omnivores Dilemna) So I will talk about the chicken end of the business.

I sell my chickens at about $3.75/lb -whole which is a bit more than Costco chickens I am sure. Industrial "Organic" whole chickens sell for $2.00/lb where I live, but are prolly a bit more in Pittsburgh- So lets say I am about 75%-100% more than the average chicken.

Educating Joe Sixpack: 1. I pay taxes, provide my own healthcare costs, put my money into the local economy. 2. Chickens get to be chickens, 3. no pollution from my farm 4. health benefits etc. 5. our food is cheap only because we pay farmers to lose money through tax subsidies - $10 billion farm bill is pretty expensive- and very socialistic if you ask me 6. Teach people about budgeting for food. Make good food a priority.

Regulations that would help: 1. STOP government subsidizing of Corn/soybeans that feed Tyson, purdue chickens. I pay full price to local farmers for my feed 2. Keep Illegal aliens out of the country- they are the ones doing the "farming"/slaughtering in terrible conditions. Properly documented and organized migrant workers are one thing, but how many really are? 3. Country of origin labeling 4. Local grants for Farmers market buildings open all year, 5. Easier for farmers to receive food stamps as payments at the market.

But in the end people need to realize that farmers deserve a decent wage for what they do. Is $5/hour a decent wage? I'd be happy with $10- and that's still a bit lower than my former wage as a stock broker. I would venture that an overwhelming majority of our meat/produce is being grown at under $1.00/hr wage around the world. How many Americans could work for that? If we could get our healthcare/legal help done by illegals stationed at Walmart would we buy it there? There's a law and Bar Association that requires licensing, maybe we need something like that for food... Or go the other way- remove all licensing requirements for MD's, CPA's, JD, brokers etc. That would open a can of worms!

Dave Chirico
West Liberty Farm

Thanks, everyone, for the very interesting comments on this nice blog. I'm a full-time farmer much like Dave. I came to farming from a former lifestyle of total consumerism. I'm now what's called a "sustainable" farmer. I profess an orthodox (small "o") Christian faith, have a rifle and a shotgun (which I think the government shouldn't concern itself with in any way at all), will probably wind up homeschooling, sympathize mostly with the Southern cause in the War for Southern Independence, etc. I theoretically try to price my farm goods so as to make $10/hour, but by the time theory meets reality my wife and I combined wind up earning $10-15,000/year (plus a lot of food for ourselves) for full-time work. That's enough, though, and I take offense when our rich but simple lifestyle is denigrated as "poverty."

Anyways, I think Lord Karth makes a very valid, fundamental point. Elitism and sustainability are most fundamentally mortal enemies. At the same time I can't deny that the leading supporters of my farm are very wealthy elites (even by inflated American standards). My prices, particularly for produce, are pretty much in line with prices for fresh produce at low-end supermarkets, but that really hasn't made a difference in my customer base. There are a few $25-50,000/year households that really support us, but my failure to attract customers that choose to live modestly (even by inflated American standards) seems to indicate that what my farm-business model is part of a social fad as opposed to any nascent agricultural revolution. Of course, that doesn't please me.

I also lived in Austria for a year, by the way. The last statistic I heard was that Austria led (or was second behind Belgium) with something like 11% of agriculture being organic (as opposed to the 80%, but of course, there are all sorts of ways to phrase statistics: % of dollars, % of land, % of narrowly defined food items, etc.) I don't believe Austria is very food-independent, though, so you'd really need to look outside Austria's borders to see what kind of agriculture it lives from. I also believe your 50% "bio" figure in grocery stores is a misperception. Perhaps you could do a simple, semi-scientific survey and report back. I know there's more organic stuff in a regular Austrian supermarket than in the U.S., but you can be sure it's the non-working classes that are buying "bio" in Austria. Go to some working-class district like the 21st and see what you find in a grocery store there.

And to be fair, Dave, tell us where the nitrogen that forms the building blocks of your chicken meat came from. Synthetic fertilizers, same as mine, right? Are they eating genetically modified grains, too? It's extremely difficult to raise animal's without genetically modified feeds any more, not unless you go with certified organic feeds, which would wipe out all the profit of someone like Salatin. I have yet to meet a farmer (or hear a credible report of a single farmer) in the US that really makes a living farming, however modest, that isn't deeply connected to our whole system of fossil fuel-powered machinery, fossil fuel-based fertility, fossil fuel-based distribution/transport, etc., etc. The US is just a long, long way from any kind of real sustainability, and very few of us "sustainable" farmers are living in a substantially alternative economy. I believe you, Dave, are doing what you can, though, and I'd probably buy from you if I were living in Pittsburgh. I think we should be careful not to set our goals too low, though, nor to deny the kind of radicalism that our agrarian/sustainable/eco-friendly understanding of the world really calls for. If we were approaching real sustainability, I think we would be finding much, much less common ground with the elites that supporting us now. While sustainable farming remains marginal in so many ways, we can avoid a lot of the hard realities. That's to our advantage for the time being, but it's not "sustainable."