Hath the Foodie a Conscience?

Two very eloquent articles in The Atlantic focus a critical eye on the conscience--or, as the authors would argue, the lack thereof--of the "foodie" movement. James McWilliams' short article was inspired by B. R. Myers' phillipic, written with a vocabulary as sharp as its moral categories.

The real pleasure in Myers' writing is his willingness to mount an attack on the food movement using the language of virtue, peppered with references to Aquinas and religious tradition. Often the food debate is presented as a battle between industrial-utilitarian calculators at Bunge or Monsanto and folks like Wendell Berry or Michael Pollan, who deploy more traditional moral categories. Myers' castigation, written with perspicuity worthy of a 17th century divine, is a refreshing approach.

How sustainable now, brown cow?
Author: Daniel Schwen

While both McWilliams and Myers are frequently on-target when it comes to their critique of the excesses of the  food movement, both fail to really engage with how a sustainable food system ought to function. One assumption they both make, for example, is that meat production is necessarily more sustainable than organic vegetable or fruit production.

The reality is more complicated. Cows, it is true, are not efficient converters of feed into meat, and therefore are comparatively wasteful competitors when it comes to grain, which would otherwise go to feeding people. However, cows, like other ruminants, are capable of a miraculous chemical process whereby they can convert grass, something pretty thoroughly inedible, into beef, which is delightfully so.

Now, organic vegetable production can to a certain extent take advantage of parallel processes. For example, an organic farmer can mow his grass, compost it, and then turn it into biological matter that can grow tasty vegetables. However, this takes a lot longer, and takes a lot more labor, not to mention gasoline for the mowing devices. Moreover, good composting usually requires a source of rich nitrogen -- animal manures being an obvious choice!

Even pigs are not an open-and-shut case. They aren't ruminants, and they aren't particularly efficient converters of grain, and so, like grain-fed cows, they compete with poor human beings for food resources. Unsustainable, right? Yes, if you're feeding them on just grain. But pigs can eat and utilize a wide range of food resources, including a wide variety of waste food, from culled crops to kitchen scraps -- including tea bags!

Even the most efficient vegetable operation has crop failures and culls. Depending on the individual farmer's marketing strategy, he may even have to cull crops that are otherwise quite edible but not "pretty." Grocery stores, for one example, are notoriously picky about having pretty vegetables. True, culls are compostable, but the composting process can take weeks or even months (and will usually need a rich nitrogen source), whereas a pig will happily turn waste vegetables into rich organic matter in roughly twenty-four hours -- not to mention it will turn them into pork in a good six months.

So foodies with a penchant for meat shouldn't necessarily feel guilty. A well-conceived animal farming operation converts things that people can't or won't eat (like grass and waste food) into fertile soil and tasty food. An efficient grass-fed beef operation will use solar power more effectively (and therefore be a good deal more sustainable) than a poorly run vegetable farm.

There is no doubt that the foodie movement, when taken to excesses, is subject to the vicious gluttony and status-worship that Myers so delightfully skewers. But moving beyond appearances and peccadilloes, and taking a serious look at the mechanics of a good food system, the foodie movement basically has it right: solar-powered, soil-friendly vegetables and meats, which are often more abundant and delicious, have decisive advantages over the conventional alternatives.

Positive Ecology

In the previous post I brought up our tendency to frame human virtue in negative terms (things to be refrained from or eliminated) rather than positive; certainly, this applies as well toward our view of ecology: we tend primarily to see it in terms of what we should give up or refrain from, in terms of what is "not sustainable." Less often do we think about how an ecological approach can lead to abundance, even (gasp!) profit, or how it just makes so darn much sense to do things in nature's way. For that reason, I think, the above talk is so particularly refreshing.

Food Matters

Author: thebittenworld.com

My wife and I recently returned from a four-month stint in southwest Missouri, where we lived and worked on an organic farm in exchange for room, board and an education in natural agriculture. It was a great experience, and I would heartily recommend WWOOFing to anyone interested in farming, food, or even just cheap travel.

Being in a grocery store now feels very different than it used to. Turnips, swiss chard, arugula or even bak choy do not intimidate as they once did. Having seen animals as small as turkeys or geese and as large as a hog weighing several hundred pounds get butchered, and of course helping out myself, cuts of meat are not the obscure, inert puzzle pieces they once were, but recognizable parts of a once living whole. The prospect of cooking a whole chicken is much more welcome, especially since now I know one carcass should be good for at least three meals, if handled properly.

The wife and I are now weighing the possibilities of starting our own farm in the future, and in the mean time investigating internships (ATTRA has a database of them, most with a stipend for living expenses) and even programs like Food Corps to get some more experience:


Lately I've been considering the spiritual nature of agriculture, and particularly how conscientious CSAs might be used as vehicles to bring together people of different races and creeds. Of course, as many religious teachers remind us, any craft or science, conscientiously engaged in, can be an act of worship:

Strive as much as possible to become proficient in the science of agriculture, for in accordance with the divine teachings the acquisition of sciences and the perfection of arts are considered acts of worship. If a man engageth with all his power in the acquisition of a science or in the perfection of an art, it is as if he has been worshipping God in churches and temples.

-- Abdu'l-Baha.