Pastoral Romance (how we mythologize, nostalgia-ize and generally misunderstand food production...)

[salvorhardin]

How we mythologize, nostalgia-ize and generally misunderstand food production in the past. Man, a lot of people are going to hate this essay but it's so dead on.

It's a lengthy essay (~3,600 words) so I'll just post a few brief clips, but do read the whole thing: http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/essays/pastoral-romance.php?page=all

Listening to the conversation about food reform that has unspooled in this country over the last decade, it’s hard to avoid the idea that in terms of food production and consumption, we once had it right—before industrialization and then globalization sullied our Eden. Nostalgia glistens on that conversation like dew on an heirloom tomato: the belief that in a not-so-distant past, families routinely sat down to happy meals whipped up from scratch by mom or grandma. That in the 1950s, housewives had to be tricked by Madison Avenue marketers into abandoning beloved family recipes in favor of new Betty Crocker cake mixes. That the family farm was at the center of an ennobling way of life. .....

But the idea that “Food used to be better” so pervades the rhetoric about what ails our modern food system that it is hard not to conclude that rolling back the clock would provide at least some of the answers. The trouble is, it wouldn’t. And even if it would, the prospect of a return to Green Acres just isn’t very appealing to a lot of people who know what life there is really like.

Nevertheless, a “bourgeois nostalgia” pervades the food-reform movement, as Amy Trubek, an anthropologist at the University of Vermont who studies food and culture, points out. This is a perception of our food history that is the luxury of people who have little or no experience with farming, or more generally with manual labor. A perception that appeals to those who have never had to cook from scratch, let alone milk cows, kill chickens, and bake bread, just to get food on the table every day. A perception of people for whom it makes perfect sense to redefine their leisure time to include things like making guanciale or Meyer-lemon marmalade. As such, it may not resonate with great swaths of the public who don’t fit this demographic profile, and it is a perception that ignores some crucial truths about our food history.

Jane and I experienced this firsthand in West Virginia. We both are skilled and enthusiastic cooks, and as part of the reporting for the book, we wanted to see how well, and local, we could eat, and for how much money, preparing three meals a day. But we also understood that we were the kind of people for whom cooking is a hobby. Outside our door in Brooklyn, there is a cornucopia of options for the nights when we are busy or not in the mood to cook. In Huntington, though, most of those options are missing. Three months in we began to notice, with dismay, that as soon as one meal was finished, we had to start thinking about the next. Four months in, the joy of cooking was replaced by a growing irritation, a longing to amble down the block for banh mi or a bowl of ramen. By mid-March, Jane wrote in her journal, “Officially sick of cooking.”

The family farm itself was not immune to these developments. By the 1920s and ’30s, the gap between city and farm diets had begun to collapse, as processed foods became high-status items in rural areas. Poor Appalachian farmers began to prefer canned hams to country hams; farm women who could afford store-bought canned vegetables and other processed food embraced this new convenience without a second thought that they were abandoning a purer, nobler way of life.

[Kali]

1. best thing since sliced bread

My mother grew up thinking "store bought" bread was a treat, better than homemade.

I don't have time to read the whole essay right now, but will do it later. It is true that cooking three meals a day from scratch - especially for creatures like teenagers who just consume and rarely taste anything - gets VERY tiresome, but I also think that in some ways the false nostalgia provides a decent vision for POSSIBILITIES as opposed to any sort of reality about food consumption in the past.

If that vision can help drive some positive changes to consumption and to me especially, changes in production (ie the valuing and improved incomes of those who ARE willing to grow food in the manner suggested by that vision) I don't have a problem with it.

[salvorhardin]

2. I agree

And the point of this essay isn't just to bash the organic, free-range crowd either. From the conclusion:

Achieving fundamental and lasting change in our food system will require the efforts of those yuppie farmers in Oregon who can afford to step outside the mainstream food culture and, as they say, vote with their forks. It will also require the more hard-won, incremental reforms at the big food processors and sellers, like Wal-Mart, that feed the great mass of people who either can’t or won’t vote with their forks.

Somewhere in the middle of these two efforts, hopefully, we can eventually arrive at a food system that makes sense for the twenty-first century. But the process of figuring out what that will look like needs to begin with a full and honest accounting of where we’ve been, and what’s possible given where we are.

[riderinthestorm]

3. Like Kali, another farmer, I don't have time to read it all but my first glance tells me it's true

Farming is exhausting. There's a reason that so many children abandon the "family farm" - its because the labor is crushing, the pay is miserable, and the "status" was (is?) depressing. Local schools are frequently limiting. I honestly believe that some farm kids would continue on hobby farming in limited ways if they could have both worlds: a city job and a country lifestyle. But full time farming? Most people say "no way" once they really get into it.

Number 2, I'm not entirely sure that it's most "cost effective". Growing and canning your own tomatoes is emotionally satisfying but the "cost" of the labor to bring them to harvest is huge. Then add in the costs of canning your own tomatoes and you may well have exceeded any dollar savings. Farmers don't necessarily have a lot of time or patience for "emotionally satisfying".

It's also dangerous. The number of farming accidents is astounding and very, very sobering.

But K&R for bringing it up. Bookmarking for a later read....

[salvorhardin]

4. Danger

The article notes that farming is one of the most dangerous occupations.

I didn't grow up on a farm (I actually grew up in a cemetery), but I did grow up in a rural area so lots of my school mates were farmer's kids and my uncle operated a large dairy farm. I can't think of a one of my friends or uncle's kids that took up their parents' occupations, for all the reasons you list.

[A HERETIC I AM]

7. I read a quote from a dairy farmer a few years ago.,.....

who, when asked why more young people aren't carrying on with their family farms, said something to the effect;

"How easy do you think it is to convince a 19 year old that he should follow a way of life that involves working 16 hour days, 7 days a week, 365 days a year with no vacation for what amounts to about $16,000 a year in take home pay?"

This was several years ago, but I think the point is still valid.

[The2ndWheel]

11. "Farming is exhausting"

For people, and for the land that gets farmed. It's also directly, and especially indirectly, one of the root causes of our modern environmental/climate issues.

[MuseRider]

15. Many of us have learned

and are trying to get others to do things differently. I have been surprised by the number of no till farmers, those who use organic fertilizers and who spray as infrequently as possible much of it by hand and not machine. I am also surprised by how many do not. Sadly most of the farmers that I know who do not are those that are working at least one job outside of their small farm so they can make ends meet. It is so much easier to do it the environmentally wrong way.

It is cheaper, easier and sometimes the only option available doing it the not safe environmental way. Hopefully we will swing back as I do know many farmers who are freaking angry at the companies who are making billions off their hard, poorly compensated work. As an occupation rooted in tradition it is going to be a hard sell to change some. The newer, less friendly way is now the tradition. It was called progress before. Sadly this is also the problem with politics, it is also rooted in tradition. I imagine it is hard sometimes to think when you are on your tractor late at night getting your planting done by tractor light and need a shower then a few hours sleep before you have to get up and go straight to your job only to repeat it all again. There is a current running to change, it will take time sadly but it is there.

[WatsonT]

5. A good read, and very good points

I fear many people, particularly on here, are completely disconnected from the entire concept of manual labor.

There have been threads regarding illegal immigration (not trying to change the subject, honest, just an example) where people seemed to literally believe that it was a death sentence for them to work outside. Heat stroke would strike them dead immediately.

It is unfortunate. I wish there were more options available for people to work part time in the summer months picking veggies/fruits and so on so they get to realize what this is all about. Food doesn't originate in stores, and gardening as a hobby is not the same as farming.

[CanSocDem]

6. Four months...???

And they were sick of cooking???

This, from the comments:

"Why the Cunningham's freakishly low threshold for tolerating domestic routine should serve as any sort of thoughtful or illuminating counterpoint to the perceived romanticism of back-to-the-land foodie-farmers is beyond me." by Hugo de Toronja

Read more like a hit piece on rural living written by a couple of clueless city folk.

More from Hugo:

"Good grief. How long does it take to boil a pot of pasta? Or poach or scramble an egg? With a simple can of garbanzo beans, some olive oil, garlic, salt, and a blender, you can make delicious hummus. Sliced fresh tomatoes with garlic salt and black pepper make a wonderful salad. (Crush some fresh garlic if you can somehow spare the time.) Buy a cheap rice maker: in the time it takes your rice maker to steam rice, you can have a tasty pilaf."

.

[salvorhardin]

8. I think you're rather missing the forest for the trees

[Gormy Cuss]

14. The author held that out as an example, and IMHO it weakens the entire essay.

It's not surprising to me that urbanites trying to shift to a much more constrained food supply system would struggle with burden of cooking after only a few months. If it surprised the author and his mate then they were pretty naive.

The overall essay does a decent job of presenting how the farm mythology gets in the way of meaningful dialogue about moving away from the least desirable elements of our food supply system like excess sodium and sugars in manufactured products and tasteless and often lower in nutrition varieties of vegetables and fruits chosen specifically because they hold up better in shipping.

I think the author dismisses too easily the potential contribution of back-to-the-landers though. It's true that many of the current generation, like the 1960s-70s group before them, will most likely leave the farms in a few years. However, the earlier group left a strong imprint on the national ethos in the form of the organic food movement. Perhaps the current group will contribute in a similar way.

Then there's taking back control of a portion of one's own food supply. In WWII many urbanites planted victory gardens because it was considered the right thing to do. These days there is some evidence that many people are again interested in growing their own seasonal food even if it's just a solitary bush tomato plant in a sunny window and in knowing the source of their food (via local sourcing and demanding country of origin labeling.)

[salvorhardin]

9. Kick for a new day.

[robcon]

10. 7 billion people: we're not going back to family farms, unless we accept mass starvation.

Farms are a production environment, and the only way to feed about 7 billion humans on Earth is to continue to increase crop yields in a production environment.

Family farms are a nice conceit - but like Ma and Pa grocery stores, they will not survive against larger, more efficient and more diversified competition, except as 'niche' suppliers in a few areas.

[KittyWampus]

12. BULLSHIT. I KNOW people who grew up on farms. Processed food was rare and a treat.

[madmom]

13. When I was a kid, our family vacation consisted of visiting our relatives in

West Virginia. My aunt would get up in the morning before daylight to start breakfast (it wasn't just for us, her extended family lived with her. We would all wake and have breakfast and go about our day. The "women folk" would help clean up and go to the garden to start prepping for the mid day meal. always an elaborate meal compared to what we were used too. Then afterward the same thing again, clean up and begin prep for dinner. This was the same routine day in day out. My aunt never worked outside the home, she would have probably enjoyed the rest, seriously. I was only about 10-11 years old but, I was well aware of my surrounding and what my country raised relatives went through just to live. The men were out in the fields or in the barn or doing the men folk side of farming and NO ONE ate until they came in, no matter how late or how cold the food got. I for one don't think I would be happy living/working on a farm.

[MuseRider]

16. Farmer here.

Mine is more of a hobby but large enough to qualify me as a farmer I think and I do raise a crop for sale/trade. Don't make any money however but we are retired and this is now our life.

It is exhausting. Out in the storms last night getting livestock where they need to be with lightning slamming around you, wind knocking you around and the rain pouring over your cap is only one of the dangers but one I kind of enjoy.

I freeze, dry and can almost enough to get us through the winter. Most of it is home grown, the rest is bought at local farmers markets.

It is a constant grind, no days off and in all weather. It cramps you socially if not economically, is very emotional at times but for me since it was a choice it is greatly rewarding.

I am anxious to read this.

K&R to read later. Thanks.