Pasture Raised and Grass Fed on Stony Brook Farm

At this point, I eat very little industrial food, but I do still eat it, primarily out at restaurants, but also at home, especially condiments like ketchup, mayonnaise, mustard, and also canned beans and the occasional box of brownie mix, etc. However, it seems that enough might finally be enough — E. Coli 0157 has shown up in cookie dough, sickening 65 people. How does E. Coli 0157, which lives in the intestines of heavily grain fed cows, end up not only in a cookie factory, but inside the cookie dough? How messed up must the system be for such a thing to happen?

The article states that “President Obama has identified food safety as a priority,” but it is already clear in the few public statements that I have seen that he is not serious. In a recent post I mentioned that myopia and tunnel vision are endemic in American politics, and Obama is no different. He can see only five feet in front of his face and within the margins of industrial capitalism. Food safety, yes, but without substantially compromising the profitability of our industrial behemoths (according to the numbers in the article, at any given time, there are over 600,000 cases of refrigerated cookie dough products out there), and without increasing the cost of American food. American food is cheap and must remain cheap.

The prevailing myth of the local foods movement is that all food was local until after World War II. I am not sure how this myth became so entrenched considering, for example, the popularity of Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle, which, incidentally is a socialist critique of American capitalism; the “muckraking” exposure of the vile practices of industrial meat packing companies was incidental to the socialist critique. It is clear that already in 1906, meat, at least the meat eaten in cities, was not local. (Meat packer Gustavus Swift had functional refrigerated rail cars in service in 1880, and within just six years of their appearance the percentage of live cattle shipped from Chicago to New York declined by nearly thirty percent, while the percentage of dressed cattle increased by over twenty five times [Wikipedia]. Before that, the Erie Canal eviscerated local New York farm economies, and before that cheap foodstuffs raised in the English colonies in the New World and shipped across the Atlantic undermined local English and other European farmers) The answer of local advocates, therefore, is a return to a pre-World War II local model. As evidenced by the Chicago packing industry, however, such a thing never existed. The answer, then, is something entirely new, a loosely connected web of comprehensive, including production, processing, and distribution, local-regional farm and food systems. If, however, such a thing is not even on the radar of the most ardent advocates of local-regional food, it is not even within the universe of possibility in American politics.

Sincere or not, Michelle Obama’s organic garden is a gimmick. Home gardens are not viewed by American politicians as a serious alternative to industrial vegetables and fruit, in spite of, or, more likely, because of the fact that at the height of the Victory Garden era, 40% of American produce was grown in private gardens. Organic vegetable gardens like Michelle Obama’s do not promote economic growth. In fact, they do the opposite. If 40% of American produce were grown in private gardens, the California farm economy and the fresh produce import market would collapse.

The food safety efforts of American politicians, including of politicians who make food safety a “priority,” are, even at their most energetic, geared towards only treating the symptoms of the disease of rampant industrial capitalism. This will not change any time soon. (One way to help it change would be to get private money out of American politics)

What then, is a person to do? It seems to me that there is only thing to do, opt out, quit the industrial food system altogether. This is a tall order — I am an American, which means I like ketchup, and not just that I like ketchup, I like industrial ketchup; homemade ketchup just makes me miss my Heinz ketchup. In other words, there is a tremendous amount of cultural work to do. Nevertheless, it is pretty clear that it is time to do that work. I don’t know if I will be able to do it; I am pretty apathetic, after all. But, I am going to try. I’ve already got the meat taken care of, and for most of the year the vegetables and fruit, and I pretty much only drink water and coffee. I just need to trim away the industrial accoutrements — the condiments, the snacks, etc.

When a pathogenic bacterium that lives only in the guts of heavily grain fed cows (and other ruminants) ends up in refrigerated cookie dough, it is time to get the hell out of Dodge.

My oldest younger brother, Peter, arrives today with his dog King to spend a month with us on the farm. I have a lonnngggg list of projects for us to work on! There are at least a half a dozen that have been languishing on my list for a year. They are the monotonous projects that I just can’t stand to do by myself, one of which is reclaiming about 1,000 feet of the back fence line, which has been gradually being swallowed by the woods for the past few years. Another big, monotonous project is to get the place shaped up — lots of weed whacking around trees and fence posts and in corners, trimming back limbs, and just general cleaning up; we’ll make more than a few trips to the dump and will burn more than a pile or two.

I have hardly seen Pete since we left Philadelphia (I have hardly seen any of my Philadelphia family). I am looking forward to spending some time with him.

One of the questions that we need to ask about our “leaders” is whether they are acting in good faith. Take George Bush, for example. Was he acting in good faith, attempting to spread democracy in Iraq (and elsewhere), or was he using democracy as a foil to pursue an imperialist agenda? Did he believe that the proliferation of democratic governments would really secure peace and prosperity, or did he believe that people would buy such a story, enabling him to pursue his real imperialist goals?

A little over a week ago, Secretary of State Clinton published  a piece title “Attacking Hunger at Its Roots,” in which she outlined “7 guiding principles to support the creation of effective, sustainable farming systems in regions around the world where the current methods aren’t working.” Nearly all seven principles promote, either directly, or indirectly, a neo-liberal political economic agenda, the positive outcomes of which would accrue primarily to large national and multinational corporations (seeds, fertilizers, R&D, trade, credit, etc.), while at the same time, supposedly, increasing the wealth of small-scale farmers in developing countries.

Here as with the Bush Doctrine, we must ask, are Secretary Clinton and Obama acting in good faith? Do they believe that the solution to hunger lies in seed science (especially genetic engineering), synthetic chemical fertilizers, farming for export, and “good” governance? Or, do they believe that such a list of guiding principles serves as a good foil behind which to pursue a rapacious neo-liberal agenda that unabashedly serves the already wealthy and powerful at the expense of the already poor and hungry?

The importance of this question is that if they are acting in good faith, then they are merely wrong, unfortunately misguided by a broken system in which money provides access to those who provide information that promotes their own self-interest while the alternative information of the less well-heeled never reaches the ears of those in positions of power, or if it does reach them, it does so in such a marginal fashion that it is barely a whisper. If, however, they are not acting in good faith, then, quite dramatically, they are nakedly evil.

The neo-liberalization of Indian agriculture has directly resulted in the death by suicide of thousands upon thousands of Indian farmers, to whom the benefits of such neo-liberalization has not accrued. For them farming has become a nightmare cycle of debt and chemical dependency. Indian farmers, at the urging of the Indian government, followed exactly the path Clinton and Obama have laid out in their seven guiding principles, and in response, they are killing themselves, in droves, often drinking the pesticides that have killed them to kill themselves.

Do Obama and Clinton simply think that the neo-liberalization of Indian agriculture has been done poorly and that it can be done better, and if done better, hunger and poverty will be alleviated? Do they not even know about what has grown into a plague of Indian farmer suicides? Do they think the plague is merely “growing pains” on the road to neo-liberal success? Do they not care at all?

As I grow increasingly cynical, and angry, and frustrated, and ever more deeply saddened, I find it harder and harder to cling to the notion that they are acting in good faith, that fundamentally, what they really care about is the plight of the poor and hungry, that fundamentally, what they really want to do is end hunger and poverty. I want to believe it, but increasingly, I can’t, which is itself sad, because they probably are acting in good faith. Obama probably believes it. Even Clinton, who I loathe as she embodies everything I hate about everything (especially the utter and total failure of the promise of feminism), probably believes it. I just can’t believe they believe it.