| Dr. Jay's Diagnosis
If you were to go solely on what you read in the newspapers or see on television, you'd be led to believe that food in America has somehow managed to join together in a nationwide conspiracy to kill anybody who eats it. Sort of like how plants evolve over generations to develop defenses against, well, being eaten themselves...
But what we see here is something different. Tomatoes and peppers don't hate humans. I'd argue that they don't even know (or care...) who we are. And as a matter of fact, if they did know they'd probably thank us for propogating their species in general through our organized cultivation of same.
The problem is of course in how it's done in the industrial food system. The roots of today's American food system lie in the turn-of-the-20th-century Chicago stockyards and slaughterhouses that led Upton Sinclair to write "The Jungle" 102 years ago, and the deadly crap that was pushed on Americans in the early stages of the canning industry (documented by Ann Vileisis in her fantastic book "Kitchen Literacy", amongst other places...). The disgraceful history of the industrial 'food' system actually led to a little bit of federal oversight (which is really amazing when you think about it, considering the perennial strains of 'free-marketism' and 'libertarian individualism' that have always been pervasive throughout American cultural and social history on through to this day...), but obviously nowhere near enough. What we've seen instead has been a system skewed towards that very same industrial food system whose disgraceful history led to federal oversight in the first place, at the expense of independent local growers and processors. Except for a few notable brief, fleeting moments in US history (WW II Victory Gardens most prominently...), our culture has always seemed dead-set on denying our agrarian roots and instead focusing on our strange obsession with "better living through science" (as long as it doesn't involve stem-cell research, because we certainly don't want to offend the imaginary person / people in the sky who live on clouds and watch over us all and pass final judgment or something like that...), especially when it comes to our food. The urban design critic in me really wants to go off on a 5,000 word tangent on the Epcot Center and Le Corb "Towers In A Park(ing lot)" influence on the layout and design of American cities right now, but I'll spare you all that here for right now. Instead, I'll get back on topic...
But the problem is that many terrible and destructive ideas throughout history have been cloaked in the cover of 'science', and today's mainstream media are completely incapable of distinguishing the good from the bad. GMO's are considered 'cutting-edge technology' in those quarters today; but we should keep in mind that just over 100 years ago, bloodletting was a widely accepted cutting-edge 'cure' for disease. Which is of course to say that sometimes our 'remedies' end up causing much more damage than the problems which they were meant to remediate.
We produce more 'food' as a species than ever before, and increase the amount every year...but yet hunger is still a fact of life for millions of Americans; and ironically enough at roughly the same levels that we now have obesity problems. Questions, questions...
What do we focus on first in a world where 6 and 7 year olds are now being diagnosed with 'adult-onset' Type II Diabetes in the same cities and neighborhoods where thousands of people are at the same time starving and sleeping in alleyways or under highway overpasses?
Welcome to America. Where too many are obese, sickened by the only food available to them; or queued up for blocks waiting for meal from a shelter, church or other charity. How do our politicians respond to this nationwide epidemic? By villainizing gay people, railing against property taxes, or grandstanding on 'populist' bullshit like 'gas tax holidays', and etc...
OMG, gas prices suck! Yes, and our development patterns all across America have sucked even more over the past 50 years...and we're now reaping what we've sown. Basic principles of physics at work here, and I really feel terrible for the people who were caught up in that mess...but I'll never shed a tear for K. Hovnanian, Toll Brothers and the rest of their 'suburban development' ilk who've led us to where tens of millions of Americans now stand. "As ye reap", etc...
The problem is, who's looking out for the well-being of these people now, though? Tens of millions of Americans soon to be desperately stranded in lifeless sterile zones with no sustenance, mixed in with our cultural fascination with heavy artillery do not a peaceful recipe make...
A sensible political solution is needed now, but "God" forbid a few of our 'representatives' would actually focus on the amply demonstrated systemic problems caused by our current industrial 'food' system. After all, we wouldn't want to offend the suburban grocery store and restaurant / fast 'food' industry lobbyists now, would we?
Marie Antoinette updated for 2008 - "Let them eat Big Macs and Whoppers, we'll be long retired to massively secured Peruvian and Argentinian estates by the time their system implodes in 3 or 4 years."
Dr. Jay's Prescription
The solution as I see it is pretty simple, though. To cure us of our affliction, I prescribe locally-grown whole foods. Or at least locally processed items that we can recognize as things that once came from the ground or from a live animal. Cheez Doodles, toothpaste tubes of 'yogurt', and Twinkies need not apply.
I would suggest that we build from the ground up a network connecting local growers and producers to community food co-ops, farmers markets and grocery stores accessible to all. I'd also suggest that community organizers must also focus some effort on securing funds to revive our rotting freight rail system at the state and federal level, because the basic infrastructure is still out there to connect rural areas to cities without needing trucks. Take a trip down to your local freight rail yard - they're pretty far off the beaten path in most places these days, but they're still out there and busily operating. These systems are currently working for ADM and Cargill's national network, and there's no reason that with some effort they couldn't work for us in local and regional food distribution systems.
On some nights, wandering aimlessly around my neighborhood in inner SE Portland, I can hear the mile-long Union Pacific trains a few blocks west of my apartment, clinking and clanging their way through the Brooklyn yards and on down towards California. There's no reason that those same trains couldn't be carrying Washington State apples to Eugene, and then turning around to Seattle with Eastern Oregon wheat and flour delivered via a branch line from John Day and Gilliam County, and on the way up meeting a train in Portland that came out with potatoes from Idaho...
We can do this, but we need to focus. And we need political support, right now.
Any politicians out there interested in making America great again? Wisconsin US Senator Russ Feingold reminds me that the very best of us still do sometimes rise to the top, but unfortunately very few of them end up running for our highest office. Maybe one day soon? |
