[AGL] A good time to consider FOOD

[Gerry]

>From Krebs, The Agribusiness Examiner


Now that we are totally dependent upon foreign oil, how long will it be before we are totally dependent upon imported food? Have a happy Thanksgiving and while you are giving thanks, thank the trabajeros who put the food on your table.
G


COMMENTARY:
THANKSGIVING, 2006

"Bless us O'Capitalism that these food products we are about to receive through the bounty of agribusiness, our corporate lord. Amen"

It is not far-fetched for us to imagine that for millions of Americans this "prayer" prior to our annual Thanksgiving dinner might be apropos.

For decades after, since the first celebration at Plymouth, Massachusetts, the idea of Thanksgiving was to celebrate the bounty that the land in conjunction with the local farmers had yielded for the community. 

Today that land is rapidly disappearing under pavement, tract homes and strip malls, while the farmer has become simply a raw materials provider for a giant food manufacturing system which provides profits for the men and women who sit in our giant corporate boardrooms.

At the same time, our politicians, obedient to their corporate paymasters, seek to assure us that we have a safe and secure food system in this age of post-September 11 terrorism, despite the fact that our daily headlines tell us differently. 

We have become bombarded with increasing numbers of food poisonings, unsafe and unsanitary conditions in our meat processing plants and in our fields of plenty, the continued overuse of chemical poisons in our fields and orchards and the miniscule amount of food safety inspection that is conducted relative to the ever-larger number of food imports that are entering into our food system.

While our relation to the food we eat is being increasingly quantified in terms of convenience and in cheaper-the-better terms we have become disconnected not only with the land, but the men, women and children who grow and harvest our food.

As the recently returned ex-sailor who has no interest in maintaining the family farm ruminates in Douglas Unger's novel Leaving the Land (Harper & Row: New York, N.Y., 1984):  

"All that was lost to me, as lost as a cherry orchard in which people no longer knew the meaning of cherries, as lost as the unwritten language of a long-expired race of men. All that mattered was food, the wheat on the hill, the hay in the meadow, the mutton under my boot. Whatever method could raise them best and most efficiently would win the prizes of the earth.

"There was little beauty to it, in my mind. There was only sweat, and maybe a certain sense of unspeakable smallness in my soul in that all the generations behind me, of all the lost tribes of my forefathers who had dug potatoes, milked cows, sown grain, picked fruit from primeval gardens, it had all come down to me in a knowledge I only wished to lose."

Before all that "knowledge" is lost, both farmers and consumers, need to recapture that "beauty" of food, so when we sit down with family and friends to celebrate our Thanksgiving Day feast it is not just another corporate provided meal, but rather a purposeful acknowledgment of giving thanks to our God for the land and the rich bounty it provides.


"OUR FOOD IS KILLING US"
By Joe Bollig        Catholic Online 
November 17, 2006

OVERLAND PARK, Kansas --- Mike Callicrate is a straight-talking plainsman with a blunt, hard message: Your food is killing you, and your food system is killing your community and nation.
 
Callicrate, a cattle rancher from St. Francis in the northwest corner of Kansas, was one of the keynote speakers at the National Catholic Rural Life Conference's annual meeting November 10-11 in Overland Park. About 100 people attended, including farmers and ranchers, advocates, food industry professionals, and workers in Catholic social justice and rural life ministries.

The theme of the event was sustainable food, business and agriculture.

"Our food is killing us, literally," Callicrate, a member of St. Francis Parish, said in an interview after his address. "The industrial model of food production that has been forced upon us has given us food that is very unhealthy."

It's not just the food --- loaded with chemicals and hormones, and produced in unhealthy ways --- with which Callicrate has problems. He also doesn't like what the industrial model of food production is doing to society.

"The model of the industry --- the industrial model, the business model --- is very, very abusive," he told The Leaven, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Kansas City. "It concentrates power and wealth in the hands of a very few, which has always been a serious threat to human societies throughout time, and is now unprecedented.

"That great concentration ... hurts our society. And another thing is that farmers are being driven from the land," he said. "We are eliminating agriculture in this country in favor of imported food, so it threatens the survival of our country from an economic and social perspective."

Although news of the ongoing crisis in food and agriculture was a part of the conference gathering, so too was optimism, according to Holy Cross Brother David Andrews, executive director of the rural Catholic conference, based in Des Moines, Iowa. One reason for this is that the church remains committed to justice in the areas of agriculture and food production.

"We need to construct an alternative to the corporate-controlled food system that we have in place right now," he said.

That message, he added, "resonates quite well with the messages of our Catholic bishops' conference in their last publication 'For I Was Hungry and You Gave Me Food: Catholic Reflections of Food, Farmers and Farmworkers,'" a 2003 document in which they expressed concern about the growing concentration in the food system and called for an alternative in sustainable agriculture.

Brother David said he could sense a lot more optimism than at previous conferences.

"I think we know that we're on the cusp of change," he said. "It will still be uphill. It will still be challenging, but the people here are committed to changing the food system and changing the opportunities for farmers so they can get a more fair food dollar."

Some of the speakers and workshop presenters offered a look at those alternatives and change.

Callicrate talked about Ranch Foods Direct, a meatpacking and retail meat business he founded to sell directly to consumers. Maizie Ganzler, with the Bon Appetit food service company in Denver, offered an alternative business model for socially responsible food systems.

Sister Lyn Szymkiewicz, a Sister of St. Joseph, presented a workshop on how religious communities can use their own land to promote locally grown food and create a market for such food through purchases by affiliated institutions.

Arlen Wasserman, a food company consultant from the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, gave a brief luncheon address about the Sacred Foods Project. An interfaith movement, the project seeks to bring together Jews, Muslims and Christians to improve the social and environmental conditions of the nation's food system.

Bishop Ronald M. Gilmore of Dodge City, president of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference and a consultant on agriculture policy to the U.S. Bishops' Committee on Domestic Policy, said his fellow bishops are not only concerned about the quality of food and justice within food systems, but also about the spiritual condition of those involved.

"I visited with a group of bishops just a week ago, and we had considerable discussion over dinner about the rural question," said Bishop Gilmore. "I think I asked, 'How can otherwise wonderful people --- even religious people --- totally block out the ethical implications of what they are doing?'

"We know these are not demons. They are good people, but this question of how we treat workers is off their radar," he added. "How do you get through to people? We share the same faith with many of these people, and they just don't seem to get it. 



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.pairlist.net/pipermail/austin-ghetto-list/attachments/20061121/58690d58/attachment.html