Crop Cash

"We are faced with two possible futures. One is a diversity of crops, of cultures, and of cuisines that can inhabit ecosystems sustainably and produce healthy food for urban centers. The other is long-distance food from nowhere, monocultural systems that aren't sustainable, and simplified diet, especially for the poor."

This quote from University of Toronto geographer Harriet Friedmann forms pivot point in a remarkable book by Frederick Kaufman. I found Bet the Farm while exploring the literature on models of trade in food with an advanced student of fair trade and other certifications.

Kaufman explores global food markets from the pizza box outward, first detailing the incredible scale and rapid growth of global pizza, particularly the pizza emerging from a small handful of transnational companies. The incredible efficiency of the industry justifies his choice of pizza as the major exemplar of his subtitle: How Food Stopped Being Food -- he uses the word "widget" far more than one would like in a food book!

One of the questions Kaufman explores is whether Friedmann is correct to assert that food choices are necessarily binary. If they are, the university at which I teach captures the dichotomy perfectly. What we teach in the classrooms and tout in our brochures is undermined in the hallways.

The need for a different path may be intellectually compelling, but the logic of simplistic food is difficult to resist in practice. Here a bank of high-fructose snackage sits available 24/7, directly behind a space built for a real-food cafe that was proposed, encouraged, and ultimately rejected. Although many students, faculty, and staff were behind a better path, Pepsi has been ready with cash and for now, that speaks louder.

Churrascão -- Guest Blog

My favorite librarian has a blog about a year-long reading project. She is reading some of the books to me aloud, and has invited me to guest-blog about a chapter we found particularly interesting. It concerns food in Brazil!

Gigantification

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago on this blog, the movie Food, Inc. describes the frightening world of corporate agriculture, in which fewer and fewer players control more and more of our food. Now, the Obama Administration is doing something about it.

More specifically, the Justice Department has decided to enforce anti-trust laws against Big Agriculture -- something that was not likely under the Bush or Clinton Administrations. (President Bush never met a business regulation he didn't hate, and President Clinton was a wholly-0wned subsidiary of Tyson Foods.)

If successful, enforcement against Monsanto and other monopolies could be a real boon to local and genuinely organic food. In turn, this could have a significant impact on the cultural and environmental landcape of the U.S.

Border Foods

The focus of this radio story is a rather unusual hot dog that has apparently taken the Sonoran Desert region by storm during the 15 years since I moved away. Although the particular food is unfamiliar, the broader theme of this essay is quite familiar to me: the blending of cultures in the swath of land along the border between the United States and Mexico. No other border in the world comes close to the economic divide represented here, but the cultural and ecological ties go back several centuries. The lands, languages, peoples, and foods within 100-150 miles of the border often have more in common across that line than they do with the interior of either country. That is, in many ways Tucson is more like Hermosillo than either is like Washington or Mexico City. Having lived and taught in the borderlands for seven years, I am saddened that it has become so subject to the whims of far-away politicians. I am grateful to NPR for the stories it occasionally airs about this vibrant and misunderstood region.

As some of the online comments point out, the story neglects to mention the fourth border state on the U.S. side: New Mexico. It also refers to neighboring states in Mexico without listing them: Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas.

Omnivore's Dilemma

Last week, I had the privilege of meeting -- and even sharing a meal with -- Michael Pollan. For most of human history, all food was local and organic, and the biggest worry about food was simply getting enough of it. Now food is abundant but problematic. Nobody does a better job of the problems of modern food than Pollan, whose books point to valuable remedies.

For example, he advises us not to eat anything our great-grandmothers would not recognize as food. I try to imagine telling my own great-grandmother that such advice would ever need to be given. She died in 1987 at the age of 102, having eaten local, organic food all of her life (though she did try a hot dog in her last decade).

Pollan also told us that before becoming a famous author, he had difficulty getting editors interested in his writings about agriculture. When he started telling them that the articles were about food, they became much more interested. The connection between the two had not been obvious to them, which is a sad and telling symptom of our current disconnection from our food.

Read about Pollan's visit at Eating Right, Living Well. My modest geography of food page has many other links about this important subject.