"Addicted to Plastic"

Yesterday I had the pleasure of viewing a documentary film, called "Addicted to Plastic," at Reel Pizza.

Though it was a thorough, educational, and entertaining documentary, I had one major concern with one idea that it offered up as "the future" of alternatives to plastic.

The film interviewed several business pioneers who believe whole-heartedly that the manufacturing of plastic replacements from vegetable starches - corn, potato, soybean - is what will save the world.  To be sure, many companies have already made popular plant-based alternatives to previously-made petroleum products, from disposable cutlery and food packaging to biodiesel.  My problem is this: the film's main concern was what will happen to the environment and its people if plastic continues to be so ubiquitous and overused - HOWEVER, the fact was NOT addressed that the monoculturing of crops like corn will led to other, different ecosystem depletion.  The film was quick to praise an "environmentally-sound" method -- after all, how can anything made from plants be harmful to the environment, right? WRONG. Acres and acres of corn being monocultured across the United States is harmful, as well.  Soil is depleted of essential nutrients without crop rotation, meaning that more and more land must be used to continually move and expand the corn crops.  All in all, this method would be equally detrimental.  How does this conundrum get recognized and eventually rectified?

Simple Eating

After I posted my paper on 'simple living,' in our meeting on Friday, Davis brought up the question of how eating fits into my prescription.  How does one maintain a healthy and satisfying diet while living simply?

In my paper, I emphasize relationships as the most important aspect of life.  I urge people to eschew the accumulation of material goods, as they aren't alive and cannot possibly lead to a fulfilling life, because one cannot establish a relationship with them.  The only mention of food, as far as I remember, is a quote from Thoreau, encouraging people to eat only as much as they need, not to be gluttonous just because they have the opportunity.  

Davis told me to consider the onion. Or ketchup. Do we really need either?  Certainly neither hold important nutrients that are exclusive to that food and cannot be obtained from other foods.  So, does that mean that we should only eat a handful of foods,  that each contain all the essential vitamins and minerals?

Here's my take on how to eat simply.  We don't need onions, or ketchup, or many cultivated or processed foods.  What we do need, though, is variety and culture.  As I stressed in my paper, relationships are paramount.  This absolutely includes relationships to food.  A gigantic goal of sustainable agriculture and food systems is to reconnect people with their food sources - this is establishing a relationship.

Food is more than a mere source of sustenance.  If it were only that, then certainly we would take no pride in the variety of foods we can grow, make, and consume.  We would have no desire to eat more foods than necessary to stay alive.  But we are a society of eaters - eating is a huge part of culture.  Where would America be without corn?  Asia without rice?  We have as much a relationship with what we eat as with other humans.  Food, be it based in vegetables or animals, was alive.  It's still another living thing, connected to us in the ecosystem of our world.

Relationships are reciprocal.  Each side gives and takes.  We can grow our food, nurturing it, giving it the necessary elements to grow and flourish.  In return, it nourishes us our body with its nutrients, and our minds with its associated culture, heritage, etc.

We don't need onions from South America or Heinz ketchup.  But if we can grow the onions in our own gardens, or mash tomatoes from farmers market into home-made ketchup, why shouldn't we?  Humans relish experiencing multitudes of tastes and textures.  If we can somehow establish a relationship with what we eat, then there is no reason to limit the number or varieties of foods we consume.

I know my life would be considerably emptier, if not for the onion.

The Ethics of Roadkill Dining

In "The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved," Katz devotes an entire chapter on scavenging - or, a how-to on relocating the hunter-gathering within each of us.

One particularly memorable experience he had was with a group of people who, to fulfill their daily protein requirement, dine exclusively on roadkill. This was fascinating for me to read about, and actually resulting in the reconsideration of my personal vegetarian values. I may have to now refer to myself a "lacto-roadkill-vegetarian."

I've been a vegetarian in various degrees for about six years. I chose this "lifestyle choice" for a number of reasons. First and foremost is because I refuse to support factory farms - I refuse to dignify the maltreatment of animals with my dollar. I have absolutely no problem with other people eating meat - as long as it is from local farms who have treated their animals humanely. You will never hear me trying to sell another person on vegetarianism - at most, I will implore them to choose their meat selections wisely (go local!). The more people who support local animal raisers and butchers, the better. I choose not to eat happy, local animals myself simply because I just am uncomfortable with putting the flesh of an animal, that was raised for slaughter, in my body. The few times I have been persuaded to try a bite of a local, grassfed beef steak, I feel guilty for days after, the face of an unnamed heifer haunting my mind with her sad, soulful eyes. I can't make myself do it in good conscious - but as I said, it's totally a personal thing. I would encourage others to eat good meat instead of shy away from all of it. I don't think I get enough protein as it is. If others can eat a good meal, get the necessary nutrients, and feel good about it, then go for it!

But then I read about the niche individuals who dine on roadkill. It got me thinking.

Consider the roadkill. You can't get more free-range than critters living on their own in the wilderness. They're also 100% organic, and as local as made possible by their own furry little legs. Not being raised by humans, they would undoubtedly be free of growth hormones, monocultured corn crop silage, and antibiotics. All things considered, before that SUV or jeep bombing down the road led to their untimely death, the pre-mortum roadkill must have had pretty great lives, living in the wild as they're supposed to.

This all sold me on the health and sustainability aspects. As far as the moral/ethical side of this goes, here's what I think:
1) Someone else killed the animal. I didn't do it. I didn't want it to happen. Whereas purchasing a t-bone steak would support the consumer demand for meat, thereby meaning I indirectly killed an animal/caused it to die, picking up a dead animal from the side of the road isn't going to encourage more cars to hit and kill more animals. There's no market for roadkill.
2) I believe in honoring animals. How better to honor them then to save them from a humilating decomposing on the roadside, and putting their full bodies to use? Their deaths will not be worthless - in death, they can give others life.
3) Unlike in feedlots, "survival of the fittest" actually happens in the wilderness. I would be eating the dumber, less fit animals. The smarter, fitter ones would continue to live on and prosper away from the highway.

And what variety: deer, rabbits, raccoons, squirrels, skunks, various birds - maybe even larger quadruped mammals in you're lucky/they're unlucky.

So we shall see. Next time I'm driving down Route 3 and I see a poor dead creature on the side of the road, maybe (if I can convince who ever's driving) I'll pick 'er up and make a true scavenger dinner.

Prescriptions

In "The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved," Sandor Ellix Katz warns of the prescriptions for eating that seem so popular and prevalent in our food systems today (i.e. marketable diets).  This made me wonder what a prescription for eating would look like if it followed along the lines of the ideas of Katz, Salatin, and Pollan (maybe just a copy of Pollan' Eater's Manifesto?) and at the same time reminded me of an assignment I did in high school.

It was in a class called "Humans and the Environment," and we had just been reading excerpts from "Walden" and "Civil Disobedience" (H.D. Thoreau).  Our assignment was, based on our personal values and any insight we may have gleaned from Thoreau, to come up with a "prescription for living" - in other words, a basic how-to on leading a fruitful and happy life.  I thought I would include what I came up with:

Prescription For Living

“Our life is frittered away by detail; simplify, simplify.”  Henry David Thoreau’s words here can truly be thought of as a prescription for living, for everyone.  What is important in this life is pure, unadulterated, and austere.  As a society, though, we have come to forget this, and instead have crowded into our lives a world of complexity and superfluity.  We convince ourselves that we need this excessive amount of detail, so we continually add more and more, until we have shrouded our lives in a veil of addendums and falsehood.  We are left with superficiality and have no memory or awareness of the simplicity and genuineness of true living.

In today’s world, we have come to believe that objects, what we own, is what makes us content.  We rely upon what we can buy, spend money on, waste time on, to keep us happy.  As a result of this dependence, we are in perpetual want.  We always want more.  The desire for more overwhelms and overshadows what we actually need.  We forget the necessities of life, in favor of accumulating the luxuries.  We judge our happiness by our property.  We regard the man with the Porsche, the uptown mansion, the bimonthly vacations to the Bahamas, and the seven-plus digit bank account as being the epitome of happiness.  The less well-endowed community amuses itself with its laptops, video games, high-end clothing, and fast food binges.  But no matter what we have, we always feel that we would be happier with more.  We believe we will never know true happiness until we have accumulated the maximum in money and objects.  The grass is always greener: it doesn’t matter how much we gain, we will always want more than what we currently have.  

We need to realize that objects are not what makes us happy.  The acquisition or loss of an Abercrombie sweater or a PlayStation 2 will not make or break our lives!  These things, because that is truly all they are, are not necessary.  We do not need them.  In fact, they only add to the confusion.  The details like this don’t augment our lives, they clutter them.  We get too caught up in the muddle of detail, and are drawn away from what is real, and simple.  It is only when we strip away all this detail that is cluttering our lives that we are left with what we need, and what will truly make our lives worth living.  Happiness results from simplicity.  To live well, remove all unnecessary things that disarray your lives.  Live with what you need, not what you think you want.

What do you need in life? The basics: food, water, shelter.  But you don’t need them in excess.  You should have only the amount that you require, nothing more, such as Thoreau describes, “Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion.”  This is how such necessities should be approached. 

Fill your life with people and your relationships with them.  The people are what really enrich our lives.  Other people is what is important.  Surround yourself with relationships, not objects.  Objects will get you nowhere; people will.  Humans are what we are because we connect to others.  It’s our nature to associate with other people, build bonds, share emotions, communicate.  You can’t connect with an object.  An object won’t talk to you, respond to you, show you love.  They’re inanimate; they’re not real. You can’t create a relationship with them.  So why busy yourself with something that will never give you anything in return?  Instead, use your efforts on people.  But quality, not quantity, rules: otherwise, it just returns to the “always wanting more” philosophy, and that is exactly what we are striving to avoid.  The amount of people in your life is not important, the significance lies in the essence of the affiliation.  Remember that people are what’s real; relationships are the most absolute, natural, age-old establishment.  There is nothing truer or simpler than the link between humans.  

         “Why should we live with such hurry and waste of  life?  We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.  Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches today to save nine tomorrow,” Thoreau continues.  To truly enjoy life, we all just need to slow down and live it.  It’s impossible to be content if all your time is spent worrying about the future.  Concerning yourself wholly with tomorrow means that you’ll completely miss today.  Living in the moment is what it comes down to.  Stop and smell the roses, or else they’ll wilt and die before you ever give them a second glance.

This is all that life will give to you.  To make the most of it, simplify your life so you don’t get bogged down by detail.  Focus your energy on your relationships, not your objects, because in the end, people are what matter.  Finally, live in the moment; live for today. Life is about the journey, not the destination.

Apostrophe to Man

Detestable race, continue to expunge yourself, die out.
Breed faster, crowd, encroach, sing hymns, build 
bombing airplanes;
Make speeches, unveil statues, issue bonds, parade;
Convert again into explosives the bewildered ammonia 
and the distracted cellulose;
Convert again into putrescent matter drawing flies
The hopeful bodies of the young; exhort,
Pray, pull long faces, be earnest, 
be all but overcome, be photographed;
Confer, perfect your formulae, commercialize
Bacateria harmful to human tissue,
Put death on the market;
Breed, crowd, encroach,
expand, expunge yourself, die out,
Homo called sapiens. 

-Edna St. Vincent Millay

And Another...

|experiential|-----------------|research-based|

Another Spectrum of Paradigms, Perhaps?

Proponents of Sustainable Agriculture:

---Traditional
|(those who have been farming sustainably
| because that's just "how it's done")
|
|
|
|
|
|
---Revolutionary
(those who rebel against the current industrial
system, and aim to return to sust. farming)

Spirituality

Spirituality and religion are interesting topics when it comes to farming, as Davis and I discussed during our meeting last Friday.

Most farmers I know, while perhaps not practicing a common religion, have some inherent sense of spirituality, and it comes forth when they are farming. I've noted that a lot of the farmers I've met seem to have some variant of Christian undertones to their personal spirituality. I don't know why; it's not something that I feel altogether comfortable approaching them about. Perhaps it's Biblical land stewardship, maybe it's being grateful to God for bestowing the means to feed ourselves. I don't know, but I'd love to know more about the spirituality of the farmer.

My family of farmers is somewhat different. My mother claims to have some paganistic beliefs, while my father describes himself as a filthy heathen. I consider myself to fall somewhere in between, but overall we're a family of atheists.

I don't believe in a God. I don't believe in multiple gods. There is no higher power, no greater spirit. There are people. People can be individuals, or they can operate as a common force by sharing values and goals. The phrase "something bigger than us," to me, isn't some sort of god, it is the entire population. Everybody working together, besides being some sort of idealism, is the only sort of greater governing force I can believe in.

I have immense respect for the earth. I respect the soil, the water, the air. I respect the plants and animals. The earth and all of its constituents are what allows us, humans, to have life. How you can lack respect for what keeps you alive? My mother undoubtedly has a much closer relationship with, and thus greater respect for, the earth. She works the land: she farms it. She reaps what she can sow (figuratively and literally), and it is all made possible by what the earth provides her with.

I understand the intense relationship between farmer and earth. I do not experience it firsthand much, but I respect it, condone it, encourage it. The relationship can be spiritual.

I like farming and food systems because they are real. Food is physical, tangible, and scientifically explainable. I like agriculture because it is only possible/successful through a combination of scientific logic and passion. You can thank God for giving you a good corn crop this season; I prefer to thank the farmer for putting the right combination of skill, wisdom, and care into his field.


I don't want to save the world. I want to save my piece of it. Everyone should save their piece of the world. There's no point in me working to save the whole thing unless everyone else wants, and tries to do, the same thing.

One basic way to expand our efficacy is through modern science
and technology. But another is through integrated (emotional, mental,
physical, and spiritual) growth and enhanced wisdom. This means
growing in our sense of connection with nature and one another and
learning to live in ways that naturally cultivate our capacity to be human.
-Peter Senge

One More Link

Husson Talks Involve Ethics, Animal Rights

 “My sister in Connecticut prefers to believe that the grocery store sows pork chop seeds on Styrofoam trays.” <-- I hate people.

Works Cited (Thus Far)

So that the books that I'm referencing can actually be located:

• Salatin, Joel. Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal. Virginia: Polyface Inc., 2007.
• Salatin, Joel. Holy Cows & Hog Heaven. Virginia: Polyface Inc., 2004.
• Smith, Alysa and J.B. Mackinnon. Plenty. New York: Harmony Press, 2007.
  

(I know the book titles are supposed to be underlined. However, I cannot figure out how to do that in the typeface options. Apologies.)

Spectrums

... under which I can categorize/rate/describe the books I'm reading:

|--------------------------------|

farmer consumer

|--------------------------------|

science spirituality

|--------------------------------|

farming, "dirt- yuppie, incomplete

under-your-nails" analyses

"Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal"

Joel Salatin wasn't kidding when he subtitled his book "War Stories from the Local Food Front." Halfway through the book and I'm already shocked and disgusted by all the bureaucratic bullshit involved with the legal/illegal side of farming. I don't know why I've never been more aware of all the ridiculous and unfair laws and regulations set forth by the government - I mean, I've definitely watched as our own farm encountered its own share of government annoyances, but never so devastating or infuriating as the horror stories Salatin speaks of.

Salatin's got some especially unfortunate experiences about dairy farms. I couldn't help but relate, just a little bit. The most frequently asked question I get at farmers market (after, of course, "Can you really milk a goat?" and "Do you have to kill the goat to get the cheese?") is "Is your cheese made from raw milk?" There are two different groups of people who ask this: the ones who are hoping that the answer is yes, and the ones who will cringe if the answer is anything but "of course not!" The first group consists of the children of the farmstand cheese movement and the cross-cultural types who have tasted the wonders of raw milk cheese in Italy and France. The latter group consists of the people who worship USDA regulations and trust the government wholeheartedly.

Anyway, the answer I always have to give is "By law, any cheese made in the US has to be pasteurized if aged under 60 days." This usually generate blank looks, so I then point out the hard cheeses, made from raw milk, and aged for more than 60 days, and then sweep my arm over the soft cheeses, the fresh ones made from pasteurized milk. You know what, though? No one ever asks me why we can't make raw milk cheese unless it's been aged for x amount of time. I highly doubt that this is because our customers don't want to bother us vendors with nitty gritty questions. No, I suspect its probably because of the the concept that Salatin references: "the government-can-fix-it mentality." Government says this is the way it's gotta be, okey dokey - they must just be looking out for us.

Hah.

Salatin has this great analogy to describe the arbitrariness of the licensing process. He creates a little story about what it might be like to try to get a license to have an active account on eBay - something everyone's familiar with. Some of the requirements would include: a license proving that you are qualified to operate your computer; fire marshall license proving that your computer cords are up to date; proof of building inspection so the structural soundness of the desk on which you computer sits is acceptable; government labeling verification that your description of the item you are selling is accurate... and so on and so forth. I thought this was a humorous and creative analogy to convey how ridiculous the bureaucratic element of farming is.

Salatin keeps reminding us of the "ends justify the means" idea. He says, if he is able to provide a safe, clean, healthy, nutritious, and good-tasting product in the end, who the hell cares what his infrastructure is? Why should he have to adhere to all this government regulation crap if, in the end, he puts forth a superior product. Salatin had an apprentice who was also conveniently a biology major compare one of his chickens to an industrially-produced chicken in terms of potentially harmful pathogens. Turns out, his chickens were 25 times cleaner than generic supermarket chicken. There is solid, scientific proof - and yet, USDA officials still give him crap about his wall-less poultry slaughtering facility - "unsanitary and adulterated." Geeze.

Hah.

The Delicate Matter of Teaching a Child Where Meat Comes From

More Links: One Funny, One Sad

Death by Dinner

Hood Drops More Organic Dairy Farms

Youtube Vid from Ivy

Ensuring the Future of Food (Japan-style)

"Plenty"

"Like many people, we had been to farmers' markets occasionally in the past.  Too often they seemed first and foremost to offer shiatsu massage, mantelpiece knickknacks, espresso blends, folk music, face-painting."

Whaaaaat? Those aren't farmers' markets. Where are the farmers?  The places James and Alyssa are describing sound more like craft fairs, folk shows, hippie gatherings.. you know.  Real farmers' markets, like the ones I've been a part of, have strict rules and regulations.  All of the above-mentioned items would soooo not fly at a real market.  Arts and crafts? Nuh-uh.  The stricter markets don't allow anything that isn't an actual off-the-farm product: produce, dairy products, meats, cut flowers, seedlings, eggs, etc.  Even then, there are incredible regulations on which products are acceptable.  Organic standards and buy-in caps or prohibitions are the biggies. It pisses me off to no extent when people come to a FARMERS' market looking for totally not FARM products. Ugh.

"Even certified organic food is no longer wholly trusted; an $11 billion industry, "organic" foods today may include factory-farmed meat and dairy products, and even synthetic additives or artificial flavors.  Organic vegetables are frequently the end products of intensive production methods, and end up on your plate after, say, crossing the continent by diesel truck and passing through a plant that washes 26 million servings of lettuce each week."

The biggest misconception, I think, that people have about eating healthfully is that anything in the supermarket marked "organic" is automatically safe, superior, and good for you.  People who hold up tomatoes from Mexico, shrink-wrapped three to a package, or a box of pasta with 30 ingredients, most of the synthetic preservatives, and triumphantly declare, "Look! They're organic!" don't get it.  Organic almost always means NOTHING unless it is coupled with LOCAL.  The word "organic" is industrial agriculture's latest and biggest marketing ploy.  The USDA realized this in the early 2000s so they quickly decided to regulate the use of the word.  You can literally get sued for all you've got for wrongly using the term "organic."  Sure, small-scale farms can use 100% organic METHODS, treat their animals humanely, abstain from hormone use, and use nothing but all natural ingredients and the like, but if they can't afford to feed their animals USDA certified organic grain, then they cannot market themselves as organic - they can't even casually reassure their loyal customers for fear of getting slapped with a lawsuit.  This is what's going on as big box industries realize they can continue shipping crap in from all over the world, slap an infamous little green and white USDA organic sticker on it, and keep rolling in the dough, made possible by the poor suckers who don't REALLY care about where their food comes from and buy all the trendy new organic products so they can be part of the latest "fads." Disgusting.  And people laugh when I say the USDA is corrupt.

James talks about realizing the "human scale" of a salad he made from a dozen ingredients from a farmers' market.  "I could relate each item not only to its place but to its specific farm and to the faces of those farmers."  I like this because it reminds me of the presentation Russ Libby gave here at COA about a month ago.  His presentation was called "A Place, A Face, A Taste."  He described how you can identify good food - local, sustainable, etc. - by its associations with a place, a face, and a taste.  The place is simple - the geographic component.  Where does you food come from? Do you know where the farm is? Have you been there? Did you buy it directly from the farm, farm stand, or farmer?  Then of course, there is the face - the human component. Do you know the person who grew, raised, or made your food?  Do you know his name, or could you recognize him?  Can you develop a relationship with your food producers, and in turn reconnect to your community?  The third aspect is the taste - the actual nutrition and yummy factor.  Russ gave an example, if I remember correctly, about how a person he talked with went on and on about how sustainable, local food products just taste better.  When you're tasting your food, what do you taste? Bland, sterile food? Chemically altered or manipulated foods?  Or do you taste real flavors, whole and natural?

I remember reading in the book "Kitchen Literacy" about an experience of the author once when she was gathering a variety of greens and vegetables from her garden.  As she placed them on her cutting board in preparation for making her salad, a few little spiders skittered out from amongst her greens.  At first she was taken by surprise and more or less grossed out by these tiny bugs on her food, but then she realized that the spiders were just an affirmation of how fresh her food was.  Living things were literally still inhabiting her food as she plucked it from her garden.  In the end, she was grateful to know how fresh and alive the food was that she grew for herself.  I understand this.  I like dirt on my veggies. I don't think we eat enough dirt as a society.  Just like the bugs, residue of healthy, moist soil on my produce reassures me that my food hasn't been bathed in a serious of chemicals and sterilizers.  It hasn't sweat off the dirt by traveling thousands of miles.  It still retains its mark of the earth.  Dirt is my confirmation of a product's life and vibrance.

End of "Holy Cows..."

Just finished Salatin's guide to farm friendly food.  Overall, I really enjoyed it.  It was a little basic, I guess - but what did I expect from an introductory book - however, extremely thorough.  The only valid criticism I can come up with is the writing style: Salatin's words definitely show that he is a farmer first, and an author second.  From an editing standpoint I think his book could have been written a little more eloquently... he included great anecdotes and relevant stories, but I think maybe COA's Writing Seminar II could have given him a little boost.

But what's important is content!!  What I appreciated most about the book was how reasonable and practical Salatin is in all of his claims and instructions.  Unlike so many other opinions I've heard, he doesn't say that industrialism is 100% terrible, and he even admits going to Burger King every once in a while.  What he stresses the importance of is the "make it the exception, not the rule" ideology.  He says if it weren't for advancements in technology, we sure wouldn't have carcinogenic pesticide residues on our veggies - but we also wouldn't have treatment for cancer and the ability to perform open heart surgery.  Industrialization, he says, is pretty much okay in some respects, in that we definitely have a higher standard of living because of it, but our food systems are one area that industrialization never should have penetrated.  For instance, he admits that refrigerators and freezers are marvelous inventions - they allow people to store food that would otherwise go bad very quickly.  He reminds you, though, that that doesn't justify refrigerated monster trucks that drive tons of iceberg lettuce across the country from California so that we Mainers can eat a crappy salad in February.  Eat fresh, local food - freeze things when you have a surplus, so that you can eat produce or meat out of season and have a complete and nutritious diet all year round.

I really admire Salatin's series of checklists.  He provides succinct, bulleted lists at the end of each chapter, less as a way of summing up each section, but more as a method of directly instructing the reader about what to do, so there is no way one could forget any single important step.  His lists range from how to identify an eastern food system to how to reunite yourself with your kitchen; from how to show your gratitude to your local farmers, to how to become a decentralized bioregionalist.

Salatin's book is all in all an optimistic one.  He continually reminds us that we have a choice every time we eat a meal.  Rather than simply lamenting the highly industrialized, highly corrupt, highly disconnect status quo of our nation's way of feeding ourselves, he gives you a number of ideas about how to fight back - and why you should.  He makes it inescapable for one continue "being part of the problem."

I look forward to week whatever, when I'll be reading another of his books!

Interesting Links

Fox News Kills Monsanto Milk Story

Say Goodbye to Farmers Markets

Farmers Leery of Food Bills in D.C.

...and just because it relates to last term's independent study, Water Packaging Gets Creative