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I don't care where my food comes from -- and neither should you.
UPI ^ | September 26, 2002 | Ronald Bailey

Posted on 09/29/2002 6:09:37 PM PDT by gcruse

The Reason Foundation

LOS ANGELES -- I don't care where my food comes from -- and neither should you.

By Ronald Bailey

"People should know where their food comes from," an organic farmer from Montana declared at a conference on agriculture and the environment I attended this past weekend, sponsored by the Political Economy Research Center. This notion is increasingly popular among political environmentalists. It is usually a shorthand way to express opposition to genetically enhanced crops and to convey approval for their organic equivalents.

From a nutritional and ecological point of view, the idea is bunk.

First, a bit of background. It is not at all surprising that most Americans think that chickens come plastic-wrapped without bones, that milk pours from gallon jugs, or that fresh fruit can be picked year around. After all, less than two percent of the country lives on farms today.

But when I was growing up in the 1960s I knew exactly where at least 90 percent of the food I ate came from: my family's crops. Every tomato, bean, squash, cucumber, pea, potato, ear of corn, turnip, mustard green, carrot, and cabbage I ate came from our huge garden. We picked wild blackberries and grew gallons of strawberries. We had cherry, apple, peach, walnut, and European chestnut trees. We canned nearly everything and had a root cellar. Our honey came from more than 20 beehives.

As for meat, we raised and slaughtered all the beef, pork, chicken, goat, lamb, and turkey we ate. Our milk came from our dairy herd, and we spent many hours churning butter. The domesticated meat was occasionally supplemented with squirrel, groundhog, opossum, and mud turtle. Although I didn't much care for them, our fish consisted of crappies and catfish taken from the farm ponds.

My father's standing orders for butchering the beef was to make as many steaks as possible and turn everything else into hamburger. The meat was wrapped in waxed butcher paper and stored in giant freezer chests. We had a smokehouse in which we salted our own hams. I even knew the names of the cows and pigs we ate. You can't know much more about where your food comes from than that.

It is precisely this personal food history that makes me cherish modern grocery stores and restaurants. American grocers can choose what they offer their customers from among more than 320,000 different packaged foods. As a kid, it was an enormous treat to go to the local Piggly Wiggly to buy tasty exotic prepackaged items like hot dogs, spaghetti, and Velveeta. (Incidentally, it was Piggly Wiggly that invented the novel concept that customers should be allowed to roam a store's aisles and pick out their own groceries.) And the proliferation of fine restaurants in the last two decades has been amazing.

Which brings me back to the absurd assertion that everybody should know where his or her food comes from. I knew where my food came from because it took my family a huge percentage of our time just to do the mind-numbing and back-breaking labor of raising it. Of course, we sold our surplus cows, milk, and wool for money so that we could buy incidentals like clothing, medicines, books, refrigerators, televisions, tractors, trucks, and cars. And no one hectored us about knowing where those items came from.

One of the great glories of modern life is the enormous elaboration of the division of labor and how the efficiencies gained from that division makes people much wealthier than they could otherwise be. Since we all don't have to stitch our own clothes, bake our own bread, compound our own medicines, or even cook our own meals, we are all much better off. This is why as a society we can afford to have economic niches like pet dentists and manufacturers of elastomolds for pastry chefs who specialize in baking madeleines.

And why should they care? Food today is cheap, nutritious, and safe. The last century has seen a vast improvement in food quality and safety. In millennia past, food and water were the chief sources of many deadly diseases. Consider that as recently as 1933-35, a U.S Public Health Service survey found that 5,458 children between the ages of 1 and 15 died from diarrhea and enteritis, most caused by food-borne pathogens.

By contrast, a recent survey by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control found that just 29 Americans died of food-borne illnesses between 1993 and 1997. Meanwhile, stomach cancer rates are down by 75 percent since 1950 because old-fashioned food preservation techniques like salting, pickling, and smoking have been replaced by refrigeration.

That doesn't mean people are or should be prevented from learning about where their food comes from, if that's the way they want to spend their time. Among life's greatest pleasures are fine dining and food connoisseurship. The expanding division of labor and our growing technological prowess is nurturing more and more differentiation among foods, permitting the creation and appreciation of thousands of wines, cheeses, chocolates, coffees, teas, and so forth.

I might prefer parmigiano-reggiano versus your inexplicable fondness for boursin. Or I might think that Rombauer Napa Valley Zinfandel is nectar and sniff at that swill from Australia that you quaff. Today, you can choose "slow food" (though it has some unsavory ideological baggage) over fast food, or choose both when that suits you.

Nor is there anything wrong with waking up on Saturday mornings to rush out to the local farmers market. I, too, cannot resist organic heirloom tomatoes. I buy organic not because such foods are ecologically or nutritionally superior -- they aren't -- but simply because the local lady who grows the Brandywines, Mortgage Lifters, and Yellow Pears I crave chooses that method of production. I'm glad she grows them, not least because that means that I don't have to anymore.

For those who are deluded enough to think that organic foods are nutritionally superior, the market makes the opportunity to buy them widely available, generally at a 30-percent price premium. (Ideologically motivated organic aficionados should keep in mind that organic production typically yields a third less food than other means. That means that more land is being plowed down, leaving less for forests and other wildlands.)

But there is something wrong with the puritanical notion that it's a sin to live in blithe ignorance of the ultimate sources of your nourishment. Life is too short for most people to learn how to fix their computers and cars, and too short for most to learn about food production. And that's just fine. Eating shouldn't be a moral duty; it should be a pleasure.

(Ronald Bailey, Reason's science correspondent, is the editor of "Global Warming and Other Eco Myths" and "Earth Report 2000: Revisiting the True State of the Planet.")

Copyright © 2002 United Press International
 


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: farms; food; gulla
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To: speekinout
Hate to tell you this cowboy, but in just about anywhere in the country you can't grow food year round. The problem is little season called winter. It's a cold time of year when green things freeze. We grow our own taters, tomatoes, green beans, etc. We grow enough so that we can put them away for the winter. It's a lost skill called canning.

As far as meat is concerned, it is entirely possible to purchase food from local folks that are looking for a market for well raised beef, pork, lamb and chicken. We have a source for beef raised entirely on grass, fattened on organic corn. The taste is vastly superior to anything you get at the superstore. Properly raise lamb and pork is also available if you take the time to look for it. We purchase our eggs from a lady who lives on the edge of town. These eggs have firm, yellowish-orange yolks that are outstanding. We even found a reliable source of raw milk.

By supporting locally produced agricultural products you get more healthful, better tasting food. In addition, you can support folks that are trying to make a go on family farms. By supporting producers that don't use excessive chemicals we promote good environmental stewardship without the shadow of big brother. By avoiding ingestion of hormones in our food, me and the missus are working to ensure the fertility of our children and produce more conservatives.

41 posted on 09/29/2002 8:36:24 PM PDT by Don'tMessWithTexas
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To: nopardons; Catspaw
Best corn is in the MidWest. Not super sweet. Just right. Wisconsin in particular. Go ask catspaw.

Skip past that hybrid corn but you prolly do.
42 posted on 09/29/2002 8:38:21 PM PDT by dennisw
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To: nopardons
Wanna make a bet on that , nopardons (aka Queen of Bile)? I grew up in New Jersey and know a fair amount about local produce grown the general vicinty of NYC. Take your pretentious pontificating somewhere else, lady. You try a bit too hard to convince me.
43 posted on 09/29/2002 8:38:30 PM PDT by independentmind
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To: dennisw
Gotta disagree with you, dennisw. I lived in downtown Chicago for ten years (DID YOU HEAR THAT!!!) and I think that the locally grown corn in South Jersey beats anything I've ever tasted in the Midwest.
44 posted on 09/29/2002 8:40:18 PM PDT by independentmind
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To: nopardons
Excuse me, but some of the best sweet corn in the world is grown in the Midwest. You'll never see it in the stores though. Fertilized by chicken cr@p or manure from the hog pen. We consume it as it's harvested. Alot of it is sold in the parking lot at Lowes in the city. I can't tell you how many zip-locs we've got full of the stuff in the chest freezer. This ain't no chic stuff. Just good food like grandma use to feed us.

There is absolutely no inconsistency between supporting responsible locally-grown agriculture and being a fire breathing conservative. In fact, every conservative needs to know how to grow their own food so when the leviathan begins to breathe down our necks we can survive.

I am trying to locate a good source of apples to put up some hard cider. Some day I wanna put up some home made wine and some home brew.

45 posted on 09/29/2002 8:45:21 PM PDT by Don'tMessWithTexas
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To: nopardons
dick = D-U-C-K
46 posted on 09/29/2002 8:45:50 PM PDT by nopardons
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To: nopardons
Pssst.

Ingrediants=ingredients.

47 posted on 09/29/2002 8:47:57 PM PDT by independentmind
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To: dennisw
I've lived in N.Y., Chicago, and Conn. and don't think that Wiconson corn is all that tastey. It depends on what you're used to or culitvated a taste for. I buy local corn ( the farm is just down the road a ways ), so no, I'm not buying / eating " hybrid " stuff.
48 posted on 09/29/2002 8:49:00 PM PDT by nopardons
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To: independentmind
Take that gigantic log out of your own eye ; the supposed mote, in mine, is nonexistant.

Actually, as far as bile, pretention, and pontificating goes, you take the cake, dear. Also, your class envy / hatred is beyond hillarious; it's stupifying ! LOL

49 posted on 09/29/2002 8:51:37 PM PDT by nopardons
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To: independentmind
I do that in between lengthening all of my dresses down to the floor--by hand, course.

Har - and here I am thinking that you are one of those crackpots who take flame wars personally ;)

50 posted on 09/29/2002 8:51:48 PM PDT by Senator Pardek
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To: Don'tMessWithTexas
Each to his own, dear.

I don't know what kind of fertilizer is used on Long Island, nor even down the road, here in Conn.; however, I buy my corn AT THE FARM. There are Farmers' markets in downtown Manhattan and Chicago. For those disinclined to buy there or at a supermarket, the drive to a farmstand, isn't all that long. What makes you think that you have a corner on that market ? LOL

I've had corn grown in various places. I prefer Long Island or Conn. to MidWest corn. Simple as that.

Now, NOW , you're bringing up survivalist garbage ? Goodness gracious ... anyone can grow food. Ther's nothing " mysterious " to it. If you think that the end is neigh, growing food in radioactive soil isn't the answer.

51 posted on 09/29/2002 8:58:03 PM PDT by nopardons
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To: gcruse
I even knew the names of the cows and pigs we ate.

Bad advice ... take it from someone who grew up on a farm ... never name your food.

We had a particular steer, a white-face, that always came over to the fence whenever we were playing in the front yard ... my sister, who was 3 years younger than me, and I named him 'Henry' ... well, one day Henry stopped coming over to the fence, and we learned that Henry had gone off to be butchered (this was when I was about 7 and a little too young to actually be there for that part of the farm life ... ) When the 'henry-steaks' arrived, we were all put off by it, and my sister and I cried and generally ruined it for my parents and other siblings ...

So ... don't name your food ...

52 posted on 09/29/2002 8:58:06 PM PDT by spodefly
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To: gcruse
Soylet Green is people!!!!
53 posted on 09/29/2002 8:58:08 PM PDT by flying Elvis
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To: Don'tMessWithTexas
There is absolutely no inconsistency between supporting responsible locally-grown agriculture and being a fire breathing conservative. A conservative conserves what is good.

Why should the hippies and anarchists be eating all the well grown local food? The health benefits are squandered on them.
54 posted on 09/29/2002 8:59:54 PM PDT by dennisw
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To: independentmind
 I'm quite a serious cook, you know. (I do that
in between lengthening all of my dresses down to the floor--by hand,
course.)

Martha?  Is that you?  Clinton called.
He said he feels you pain.

55 posted on 09/29/2002 9:03:47 PM PDT by gcruse
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To: spodefly
 ISo ... don't name your food ...
 

You know, we got an Easter chick when
I was a kid and named him Henry, too.
Later had to change that to Henrietta.
Anyway, old Henry disappeared to
day, and danged if we didn't have
chicken for dinner that night.  I don't
want to point fingers, but I allus wondered...

56 posted on 09/29/2002 9:09:17 PM PDT by gcruse
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To: nopardons
I had it right from the farm in Wisconsin (60 miles north of Milwaukee) and it was the best. Also at the local corn fest near Kettle Moraine State park where we camped. Not overly sweet which is an insult! It's easy to make sickenly sweet hybrids which are what you've been getting.

57 posted on 09/29/2002 9:09:55 PM PDT by dennisw
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To: gcruse
Where did you ever get the idea that Martha was a serious cook? Most of her supposed skills came from her staff, from what I've heard.
58 posted on 09/29/2002 9:12:31 PM PDT by independentmind
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To: dennisw
If you haven't ever had any corn, from anyother place, then you just don't know. LOL
59 posted on 09/29/2002 9:20:20 PM PDT by nopardons
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To: independentmind
I never watched the show, so I got all my impressions from the news. I thought Martha did everything, and did it
perfectly. This is a series letdown. ;)
60 posted on 09/29/2002 9:20:39 PM PDT by gcruse
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