By Rob Archangel, 180DegreeHealth.com staff writer
Party people, what’s happening? Rob here again. ?As Matty mentioned in the comments of the last post, he’s finishing up a project and on the road until July 16th, so I’ll be stepping in for a few days giving a roundup of the Real Food Summit.
Caught Joel Salatin’s talk, and as usual, Salatin was pretty rad. I used to live in The Shanandoah Valley of Virginia, about 30 miles from PolyFace Farm, and he’s a big deal down there. People love him or hate him. ?Given that that region is home to lots and lots of industrial food processors, and a huge chunk of the local economy goes through companies like Purdue, he strikes a lot of people as threatening.
He makes some really good points about approaching farming and eating food holistically, and the difference in mindset it creates when we can rely on animals we husband to perform valuable functions, and not just be walking prime ribs and steak. ?His cows and herbivores prune the perennials, increase biomass and spread fertility. Pigs are great for rooting land and getting it ready for new growth. ?Yeah, the animals get eaten eventually, but they have valuable roles and their behavior is as important, maybe more important, than their carcasses. It contributes to a more reverential relationship.
He’s also pretty insistent about getting out of the supermarket and sourcing food direct from farmers and integrity producers. I dig that, but I’m leery of the ways that feeds into fanaticism. I know it did for me. For years, under various guises, I stressed a lot about what sorts of food I ate, whether it was vegan or WAPF-style, or low-carb paleo or stridently locavore. ?Having gone for the last year or so eating lots more supermarket food, lots more palatable refined food, than I have in a long time, and seen either no change to my health or benefits, I think there’s something to be said for the power of de-stressing and letting food play a supporting rather than primary role in my life. ?All that said, I still support deliberate sourcing and finding food with integrity, especially if it brings joy rather than guilt or stress into your life.
Paul Chek is one of today’s speakers, and looks to be interesting. Seems like he’ll be riffing on some similar themes as Salatin- the importance of healthy soil as a foundation to healthy humans. Seems clear to me that we’re not isolated and apart from the bigger world, natural as well as social, and addressing troubles in one area can create benefit elsewhere too. Like the John Muir quote:
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.
I plan to *Chek* that talk out. (See what I did there? Haha)
Until next time, amigos.
I attended a talk did at a WAPF conference and it was a solid hour of foo foo babble about LOVE, lack of it, being the sole problem of everything, or something like that. I found it quite incomprehensible, irrelevant and lacking anything tangibly useful. That said, I like his book and have seen some of his videos on youtube where he actually does talk about relevant things. But be warned, he can get real out there. First!
I think that is so absolutely right on… I think the reason we are all so damned stressed out is because there is so little community. In our modern culture we are all individualized to the max, and we are tribal animals. I think Love is exactly the issue, and the fact that talking about Love is considered a frou frou subject in our culture points to a serious disconnect from our own deeper truths…a disconnect that is reflected in every sphere in our human existence.
I think a world where it is hip to be sarcastic, jaded, and too cool to Love has everything to do with why we are all so damn sick.
I like that Skye. Though I play the card sometimes, I really value sincerity over sarcasm. It’s refreshing to not encounter that defensive ‘cooler than you’ posture.
Lack of meaningful connection and closeness is no doubt inseparable from our ill health.
A talk that Paul Chek did, that is.
Goddamnit. Quit posting so much. There are cool discussions that I don’t have time to participate whenever I feel like it. Every time you put up a new post, the previous discussion dies.
You’re in for some more roundups this week. Sorry hombre. Will keep checking in on the other articles, though, so post away.
There are only a few presenters I’m really interested in in the whole Summit. Those would be Salatin, Masterjohn, and of course Mr. Stone. I’ve seen Joel speak in person and I will admit he’s a great public speaker, really knows his shit, and knows how to entertain, but he does come off as elitist. We need to get rid of the grocery store? Come on. People in higher socioeconomic circles may be on board with that, but the lower down you go, the more people are going to laugh at you or brush you off. They don’t want a sense of elitism, not even a hint of it.
A friend of mine who runs her own local food grocery has been trying to get a co-op in North Minneapolis for a while and the community is very averse to it. She doesn’t understand why. After all, it’s not like she or anyone else in favor is telling anybody else what to do with their lives. But I started paying more attention after this and there really is an air of elitism amongst local foodists. You know how in the last post we talked about obesity and the air of elitism that naturally thin people can have around that. Well, people that shop at the co-ops and farmers markets carry that air too, even if they don’t know it, and I can see how it would be very off-putting to someone who doesn’t make a lot and is just trying to get by. Extrapolate this out and you will begin to understand why lower economic classes vote Republican. Anyway, elitism is real, and does exist amongst the middle class. Just my two cents.
I agree with that. It’s very satisfying to feel like you’re ‘right’ and better than others. Probably mostly because we look for those extrinsic motivators and validation, so we hold tight to whatever offers it.
That said, what I like about Salatin is being straight up about the economic realities of eating integrity food. It is a matter of priorities- I know plenty of people who won’t think twice about monthly Netflix and cable and smart phones and daily coffee and buying books rather than hitting a library, and blah, blah, blah. It’s not necessarily more expensive, or with the internet and innovative distribution networks, even more time-consuming to source intentionally. Honestly, I probably spend more time grocery shopping in my neighborhood a few times a week than when I used to have a partial cow in my freezer and big bins of dried goods.
Now, not everyone has those same priorities, and maybe they don’t even need to. And no doubt, the self-satisfied smug-ness of some locavores puts me off. But I’m not convinced that it’s necessarily more expensive to source more intentionally, and I like that Salatin at least forces the issue and doesn’t back down when charges of economic inaccessibility crop up.
I have some strong feelings about this, having helped with a veggie CSA for a while and on a permaculture homestead. We need farmers to be well compensated for caretaking the land, air and water, and blanket allegations of elitism or inaccessibility when compared to artificially cheap industrial foods doesn’t address that. The woman I ran the CSA with was super keen on this, made her share costs so low that the whole venture was a wash financially, and maybe a net loss. We still had to do other work to make money and get by, and the season was rough, so we often didn’t have enough food for the household and all the shares. Shareholders won, and we had the ridiculous situation of using the pro-rated couple bucks and hour she made to buy food at the farmers market at retail while the garden food got shipped off for dirt cheap prices.
All of which is to say, there’s another side to that story. Yeah, good food can be artificially inflated in cost, and yeah, price gouging for sure happens. And, farmer’s trying to do best practice work often end up getting poorly compensated and having to stop doing what they do. Makes me wonder whether the better solution is for more people to have modest gardens themselves, to grow for a household. rather than try to scale up to a small CSA size.
Don’t get me wrong. I agree with Salatin on pretty much everything. The grocery store model of sourcing food is broken. We do all need to spend more money and effort sourcing and preparing our foods. And the whole system is distorted and the prices are unbalanced. Conventional food should not be as cheap as it is and sustainably produced local foods should not be as expensive as they are.
What people like us should be aware of is to never have an attitude that other people should be doing something. If some friend of yours wants to only eat frozen pizzas and McDonald’s, that’s his choice. No one should be judged for that. As far as I can tell, it’s something that’s one bit by bit, little by little, not by telling people what to do or judging them, but by raising awareness and offering alternatives.
I think my friend Sarah has the right idea.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/253093780/tipstart
Yep- agreed that that attitude is not helpful, and probably as much about the petitioner as the person ‘in the wrong.’
Invitations rather than demands.
The ‘elitist’ attitude you so detest is an industry derived one. If you think more broadly, why isn’t it the wal-mart food shopper that is elitist. Shopping there says, “I don’t have to think about anyone or anything else, just myself.” As for the poor, the market created for them is completely determined by the middle class. Don’t argue about ‘hurting people’s feelings’ because that is an arbitrary point. Everyone is responsible for their own. Why should I have any loyalty to a product that demands our resources to go in a direction that does my children’s future no good?
Notice that the adjectives (that feed the elitist reputation) grass-fed, pastured, organic, etc. describe how things were always done. Why aren’t the adjectives required for modern methods? This makes modern processing the ‘default’ condition and something to defend when challenged. This doesn’t benefit society, just industry. My problem isn’t with tinkering in conventional foods, it’s depending on them. It makes people and relations as hollow as the products themselves. Bunny Crumpacker says that fast food has no ethnic identity. It’s only genes are plastic and sterile. Our values become based on the perserverence of industry, not the quality of our lives.
Karla,
I like that point- it’s as if the burden of proof of normalcy is on traditional, sound practices rather than wacky and extreme current ones.
Still, while I agree the the principle and support the emerging alternatives/re-valorized traditions, from a strategic point of view, I much prefer to invite rather than demand. I want to break the cycle of motivation by guilt, even if it is righteous to protect the ecology for future generations. And more provocatively, we may not even know what we think we know, so I’m reluctant to make demands based on often oversimplified stories.
What’s the difference between ‘invite’ and ‘demand’? Really. When my conveniently located grocery stores offer predominately stategically placed industrial food and when the commercials my kids are watching are basically all industry reflected, with no convenient resources to help establish a proper ‘norm’ (since they’re bumped out by the market), can that not be perceived as a ‘demand’ on how I and my family eat? There wouldn’t be that much money in advertising and lobbying if there wasn’t an effect of something stronger than an ‘invite’.
Guilt and shame is the responsibility of the individual. Matt’s RRARF program did wonders for my nervous system so that I can better moderate those feelings and stick with the topic at hand, no distractions. I’ve told a conference full of nutritionists that my dissertation title will be “How Nutritionists Destroyed America” and still worked productively along side them (as far as I know- or care). I’ve eaten Fritos in public at the same conference (provided local meals had gluten and dairy so I opted for GMO corn based Fritos instead of going hungry – Thanks Matt!). The kids now drink soda (me too) and eat cereal and cookies after meals more often without a whole sermon behind it. (I will say after indiscriminately drinking soda these past few months, the corn syrup ones negatively affect my well-being.)
You can’t reliably measure guilt or shame or demand or invite, so stick with the goal at hand. Eat responsibly to keep your nervous system healthy. Then you can see through ‘hurt feelings’ and take away what matters. Then support an economy and a discourse that reflects those values. My feelings are my problem, and yours are yours.
My use of demand or invite comes mostly from non-violent communication. A demand is a request for someone to do something because of an ‘or-else’ fear. That is, there will be retribution if you say no.
An invitation is a request for an action that (in cheesy NVC language) will ‘make life more wonderful.’ It taps into the fact that it feels good to help others, and especially it feels good when we know how specifically what we do contributes to others’ well being.
The energy behind the action is important. Yeah, we can twist someone’s arm and get them to give us a ride to the grocery store, for example. But if it comes at the cost of them resenting us and harboring anger or ill-will, maybe it’s not worth it.
It’s muddled when it comes to systemic issues. There’s obviously lots of coercion involved in institutions that control central aspects of our lives. But I guess my point is, if we can help motivate people to source integrity food because it’s awesome and tasty and the farmer’s a cool dude and he’s doing innovative stuff, and all of that,rather than with a dour, ‘if we don’t do this, everything is screwed’ mentality, we’re likely to get more converts.
I hear the frustration; I’ve been a long-time eco-activist (of sorts), and there are times when I wish I could just shake people and force them to stop buying their gas guzzling cars, or eating their pesticide laden, GMO-based, factory farmed horror food. Surely the pleasantries of not motivating by fear take second string to mitigating the material consequences of our behaviors, right? I hear that.
Only, I don’t know if that’s true. We have a world built on coercion, and I’m not sure coercing people into ‘better’ behavior could be counterproductive to building a better world in the long term.
This is an excellent point. What many people don’t realize is that we are trying to return to normalcy. Industrial interests are absolutely refactoring the debate so we are starting out on the defensive. But you are right that any rational view would reverse that position. The trouble comes in two cases. First is with people’s lack of awareness. People simply don’t know how damaging and abnormal modern agriculture is, or how big a threat it is to our society and culture. Second is that some coop and farmers market shoppers really do take on that air of elitism that they are charged with. Even if they’re not aware of it, it gets detected by others.
I’d say it isn’t just the coop shoppers but the staff that take on an air of elitism. It’s unfortunate that real food has been ‘folklored’ in much the same way as other expressions of the commoner’s life. Hijacked and put into a museum, exotified.
What a thoughtful, helpful discussion. It’s really rare to find anything like this on the Internet these days, sadly. You’ve all raised excellent points. Skye, I especially appreciated your comments about love and community. I myself just came off a year of driving myself crazy on the Paleo diet (almost literally – I definitely became orthorexic) and this site and the people on it have helped me regain my sanity. Thank you!