The local farm and food systems movement suffers from multiple personality disorder. One of its personalities is the foodie, who approaches the movement as a vehicle to increase his or her sensuo-aesthetic pleasure, with more or less regard to socio-political questions depending on his or her socio-political perspective. Another of its personalities is the localizer, who views the movement through the lens of the foodshed radius and food miles. Another of its personalities is small is beautiful — small farms, small artisan processors, small distributors. Another of its personalities is the broadener, who approaches the movement with a critical eye on its shared personalities. The broadener wants more out of the movement. The broadener wants the movement to expand beyond foodie-ism, beyond local-ism, and beyond small-ism, to a robust, durable, fair and just, and deeply embedded system that challenges, really challenges the stranglehold that the industrial food system has on us.
If you look at the literature. If you look at the news media. If you look at the blogoshpere. If you look at Twitterdom and Facebookland, you’ll find foodie-ism, local-ism, and small-ism the dominant personalities, with a smattering of broad-ism here and there.
You’ll find plenty of foodies slobbering over whipped Mangalitsa lard, braised pork snouts, and sliver-thin raw beef’s liver. You’ll find plenty of localies committing themselves with verve to the 100-mile challenge. You’ll find heaps of praise for all things small-ish.
What you’ll find little of — and perhaps this is going to start a fight, or get me flamed, but so be it — is a critical line of thinking that asks a simple question: Can foodies, can localists, can smallists feed our foodsheds? What does whipped Mangalitsa lard have to do with feeding people? What is the true foodshed radius of 10 million people? At what cost “small is beautiful?”
There is no question that the dominant personalities of the movement have gotten us where we are today. But, where is that? At a substantial and exceedingly definitive crossroads. We stand at this crossroads with a deceptively simple question looming before us, “what is important to us?” The answer(s) to that question will determine our choice of direction, and will determine the personalities of the movement for years to come.
I don’t want to be misunderstood, so let me be clear, there is a place for the sensuous pleasure of braised pig testicles, there is a place for tight radii, and there is a place for smallness. If, however, what is important to us is that the movement move, then that place is not at the top, that place is not dominant.
I have no problem with multiple personality disorder, it can be, in fact, a good thing. I just want to have our multiple personalities engage each other in a critical discussion about what is important to us. Which of our personalities, and there are multiples of us that I didn’t describe above — do the paleos have a place in all of this? What about the vegans? — which of our personalities should be dominant. Again, what is important to us?
As a broadist, I know what is important to me, and since I am a reformed localist and smallist, I have a sense of what is important to them. However, I am not sure about the foodies. Sometimes I think all that really matters to them is sensuous pleasure, gastronomic hedonism, couched in the language of localism. But, no matter, it is not hard to imagine that many, even most, foodies care about more than just their palates.
I would make the argument that what should be important to us, which direction we should take at this crossroads, is taking the considerable momentum that the foodies, localists, and smallists have given the movement and turn it into something grand, something powerful, something that can move and change cultures.
We need to expand and broaden our view of the movement so that we can see that the movement needs to broaden and expand. On the horizon, down the path beyond this crossroads, is change, within our reach, just a short walk away — short, yes, but difficult, full of obstacles, not least of which is the current hierarchy of our personalities.
Change, real change. It sounds so alluring, but, by itself it is just a meaningless jumble of letters. What does change mean for the movement?
First, that it will truly be a movement, rather than something that we, perhaps out of romanticism, call a movement.
Second, that the movement, with its broadened and deepened view, will see that it is first and foremost a deeply ethical movement, and that its broad ethics trump the parochial ethics of foodism, localism, and smallism. The movement has an ethical obligation to feed all people in its foodsheds, especially those most harmed, most marginalized by industrialism, not just the small percent of us who embrace foodism, localism, and smallism. The movement has an ethical obligation to surrender its parochial interests to the broader interests of the masses — and it is the masses — while at the same time challenging, pushing, changing those interests. Furthermore, and bluntly put, the movement has an ethical obligation not to advocate for the impossible — foodism, localism, and smallism can only feed themselves, no matter their intentions, regardless of how fervent.
Third, real change means getting real food — recognizable, familiar, comfortable — into the hands of tens of millions of people who otherwise would never see it and might otherwise never want it. This does not mean I think Chipotle should be the model. Given the choice by the Corbin Hill Road Farm farmshare program, the people of the South Bronx came out in droves for simple, fresh, real and good produce. Participation leapt from about 250 last year in its first season, to 1500 shares this year.
Fourth, change means trial and tribulation, it means feeling uncomfortable about scaling up instead of scaling down, it means feeling uncomfortable about extending the radius way out there, it means feeling uncomfortable about recognizing the particularism of foodism — foodists are a rare breed, and by all means, we should let them flourish and go weak in the palates over the latest iteration of pork belly (or is pork belly already so last week?).
Fifth, change means the future, a rich future, changed, by us, with our principled commitments.
Sixth, and finally, change means work, hard, hard work. First we need to convince ourselves and then we need to convince as many of the rest of the population as possible.
So, as ever, let’s get to work, let’s get to work feeding ourselves, all of our selves — with ethics, ecology, and justice.
April 7, 2011 at 9:00 am
Bob- it seems like you are pointing a lot of fingers and words towards other people when you should be pointing them at yourself. The whole “let’s get to work” slogan is a tad condescending. Do you know any farmers who are not working their arses off already? How about you get to work creating the kind of food system that you see appropriate, and the rest of us farmers do what we are passionate about. This may be different from you. We may not be interested in conforming to the dominant agribusiness model, anonymity, long food chains, peon-type wages for our labors. I agree with you on the point that foodies need to think beyond their palettes, and indeed many do. I encourage you to focus on that education. But I will NEVER aim to feed the world. The feed the world mentality is what reinforces the Monsanto ideology. I will not get on that boat, a boat that is sinking the planet and our humanity.
April 8, 2011 at 7:46 pm
How many farmers have failed despite “working their arses off” by following the local food ideals? Would they and their customers be better served if they adopted a more “broadist” ideal like Bob is proposing, or would it be better if they just quit and stopped producing food instead of compromising some of their ideals ?
If they adopt some of these “broadist” ideas to stay viable, why would that necessarily lead to a “Monsanto ideology”?
How do you start the education process without questioning the status quo?
April 8, 2011 at 2:16 pm
I always appreciate your passion and authenticity.
On this occasion I would have to agree with Rebecca.
So much prescription, definition, and control – I do not think you will change much like that, you’ll just rub people up the wrong way.
Better to climb down off the high horse, and lead by example.
April 9, 2011 at 1:59 pm
Hi Bob,
Thanks for all of your writing. I share your desire to make “good” food (for lack of a better word) more affordable, but I’m wondering: 1) just how affordable do we mean? and 2) how can we make that happen?
A couple of years ago, I worked at Polyface Farms, where I think they do a great job balancing environmental stewardship and animal husbandry standards with food quality and affordability. For instance, every year, they raise 20,000 Cornish X Rock broilers on GMO-free, non-Organic feed, with fresh pasture daily. The birds are processed and packaged on the farm. The price for a whole chicken is $3.25/lb. Is that cheap enough? For comparison, I think industrial birds go for around $1/lb. But I have a hard time thinking of ways that Polyface could charge any less without compromising its integrity. I like the model for distribution too: it costs $.28/lb for delivery to numerous drop off locations. I can’t imagine a supermarket charging a markup that low.
Is that around where you’re thinking? Or are you thinking we need to make go even more affordable than that? And if so, how?
April 9, 2011 at 7:54 pm
Even the ideal of feeding the world falls short of being a truly satisfying big picture solution. From the time we first began to farm 13,000 years ago, every advance in technology and production capacity has led to a new population explosion, creating the need to produce even more food.
There are so many complicated questions and issues facing folks who are interested in changing the ways we eat and source our food. We each choose a focus and, if we’re paying attention, that focus will evolve over time.
Reading your blog over the past few years has certainly broadened my thoughts about just and sustainable eating. But I’m uncomfortable with the idea that the best possible solution is to expand production capacity and lower the price of good meat simply because it’s unfair to expect the average American to reduce his meat consumption.
Having said that, I understand why this is an especially fascinating question to you, having chosen this particular focus for your farm.
April 9, 2011 at 9:13 pm
I’m not sure I understand the question – why would we expect foodies or locavores to feed the world, they’re not food producers? They can impact supply via food choice, no question there, but they’re not going to be feeding foodsheds.
I do understand the generalizations you’re making about folks, but don’t think that how folks think about food is quite as simple as those generalizations.
What do you make of simply having more ‘smallist’ farmers rather than having few ‘mid-size-ist’ or ‘biggist’ trying to do the job? [assuming 'small'=economically viable for the farmer]. I know many farmers feeding their families and many other families in our city from their small farm. Can they produce enough to supply Walmart? No. If demand shifts to operations like theirs, might others start up to meet demand? I think so. Scale’s important, agreed, but I also think it’s a slippery slope.
April 10, 2011 at 8:52 pm
Good points Kevin. I too wonder what Bob thinks about having many more small farmers in this country. Since the 1970s, this country has seen relatively stagnant growth in the number of farms- we hold steady at around 2 million. What if we could get to 10 million again?
April 15, 2011 at 2:24 am
For the first time in a long while — just about all winter — I decided to get thoughtful about farming. And after some time puttering around with some ideas, I thought: “Why not just see what Bob Comis is writing?” And this post makes me very, very glad that I did.
So forgive me if I get doomy for a moment: the organic bloc still represents only a very small sliver of the industrial food complex. The sub-movements you speak of, even if cobbled together into a united front, would only make up a fraction of the organic market in terms of economic power. This is just my conjecture, of course, but (sadly) I suspect it is true.
So if this is the case, how can such a movement be expected to mount any kind of challenge simply — or even primarily — using the market? Particularly when so much of that market is defined by the niche economics of bourgeois consumption? (Not that this is what you are suggesting, but I want to raise the question.) I think the answer is clear: it can’t. And won’t. Not without some other exogenous collapse of the industrial food empire, which itself would be a humanitarian nightmare were it to be a precipitous fall.
So I guess what I’m asking is: does it make sense to fight this primarily as making compromises as a farmer? Or a consumer? (Again, I realize this is not necessarily what you were suggesting.) Or do we have to abandon the hope that the market can/will/should be expected to decide on what amount to questions of justice?
So I think: yes. This has to be framed in terms of looking forward to a mature food justice movement in which foodies, locavores, threatened family farmers, the food insecure, communities affected by the externalities of industrial agriculture, etc., create a united front against the system — legally and politically. Every step forward in this country (and backwards, sadly) is made by organized minorities (in the numerical sense) who would have lost in a straight numbers game. Again, my late-night-rambling conjecture, but historically I think it would hold up.
That’s not to put it off farmers. We have hard choices to make. I’m in the bind of subconsciously hoping I fail, because if I succeed, I’m going to have to think about scaling up. And I would almost rather not grow than do that, partly for sustainability reasons, but also because I think sitting on/worrying about a bunch of machines is a shitty way to spend my life. But who would I be helping by not doing that? And who would I be helping if was part of developing a system that drove the price down for a product that is otherwise expensive when organically grown? I try not to kid myself. Idealism can be very selfish when you do the math.
But back to my point: even if the growers beat themselves up and do their best to work within the system we have, their best is nothing in the face of the vast and deeply political beast that is corporate food.
April 21, 2011 at 6:37 pm
another of your angry accusitory posts. you seem to want to blame other people for everything. be glad the foodies want your product. there is a market for such luxuries and such is good. not every craftsman must make junk. get back to the sheep pigs chickens what ever.