People Are Finally Talking About Food, and You Can Thank Wendell Berry for That
OPS_admin | Sep 10, 2009 | Comments 0
Wendell Berry’s now-famous formulation, “eating is an agricultural act” — is perhaps his signal contribution to the rethinking of food and farming under way today.
This article is adapted from Michael Pollan’s introduction to Bringing It to the Table, a collection of Wendell Berry’s writings out this fall from Counterpoint.
A few days after Michelle Obama broke ground on an organic vegetable garden on the South Lawn of the White House in March, the business section of the Sunday New York Times published a cover story bearing the headline Is a Food Revolution Now in Season? The article, written by the paper’s agriculture reporter, said that “after being largely ignored for years by Washington, advocates of organic and locally grown food have found a receptive ear in the White House.”
Certainly these are heady days for people who have been working to reform the way Americans grow food and feed themselves — the “food movement,” as it is now often called. Markets for alternative kinds of food — local and organic and pastured — are thriving, farmers’ markets are popping up like mushrooms and for the first time in many years the number of farms tallied in the Department of Agriculture’s census has gone up rather than down. The new secretary of agriculture has dedicated his department to “sustainability” and holds meetings with the sorts of farmers and activists who not many years ago stood outside the limestone walls of the USDA holding signs of protest and snarling traffic with their tractors. Cheap words, you might say; and it is true that, so far at least, there have been more words than deeds — but some of those words are astonishing. Like these: shortly before his election, Barack Obama told a reporter for Time that “our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil”; he went on to connect the dots between the sprawling monocultures of industrial agriculture and, on the one side, the energy crisis and, on the other, the healthcare crisis.
Filed Under: Environment
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Billionaire hedge fund manager - and primary contributor to Rick Santorum's Red, White, and Blue SuperPAC - Foster Friess let the truth slip out about politics in this post-Citizens United age during an interview with Politico. Friess was among several billionaires who attended the Koch brothers secret meeting last month where over a hundred million dollars was pledged to beat President Obama.Trying to get other oligarchs on the side of Rick Santorum - Friess said, "There isn't a person at the Koch brothers events who would not get a good return on their investment by investing in [Santorum] as president, because of what they believe about the free enterprise system." The key word there: investment. These aren't campaign contributions - these are investments that millionaires and billionaires are making to keep their tax breaks, their subsidies, and their lax regulations in place.We no longer have actual people running for President - we have a few very, very rich people like Friess and the Kochs investing in stooges to do their bidding - and hoping to see major returns in their bank accounts. So who will you vote for this year? Big Oil, Big Casinos, or Wall Street?-Thom(Who will you vote for this year? Tell us here.) -
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