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

"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.

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.")

"Seems to me the government could contract a company like Tyson into a near monopoly."

Now my bet would be on Pilgrim's for government contracts now - he is definitely a Republican - of course, like all big businesses, I am sure he greases the palms of both parties - but I think he is definitely a FOB (Friend of Bush).

Even "antique seed" sweet corn was hybridized...using the best technology they had (just cross breeding mainly). Modern techniques merely make things faster and more specific and uniform.

Since everyone has different tastes, the old fashioned corn may indeed taste best for you---but don't think it wasn't engineered to be that way, in days gone by.

I think that you are being too literal, for some here. LOL

They mean somekind of new " hybridizing " ; which seems to scare the pants off them. I, OTOH, know that food stuffs have been hybridized, for centuries. :-)

"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. "

Keep talking - I love it.

If more of our children were eating good foods and local honey, there would be a lot less allergies, asthma, and (sorry I don't know the initials), but the thing that makes children hyper. I know good food helps with the allergies. Local honey and lemon juice is just wonderful for coughs.

I can't wait until we can get 'back to the land' and start growing some good food for our grandbabies.

I buy all organic produce, but I'm not a greenie weenie or anything.

I have an African Grey parrot, and she insists that I share my fruits and vegies with her. I figure the pesticide levels in standard non-organic produce are safe for me, but I'm not so sure they're as safe for my 15 oz. baby, and I don't want to chance it. (Birds are really sensitive to toxins. Even the fumes released from teflon when cooking using a nonstick skillet, can kill them.)

No argument from me about slaughtering. I see lots of livestock on the way to slaughter. I also know how we dispatched our animals. A world of difference. we kept them calm and happy up until the very end. Resulted in much better eatin'.

I don't know about you dear, but we grow our corn ON THE FARM. Shuck it in the field. Put it up in the kitchen. Some folks sell the surplus in the city others buy it in the country. NO BIG DEAL sweetie!

Most of us don't make a big deal about broadcasting to others where we're from or which corn is best. After all, it's just CORN. You plant it, you grow it. You put it in freezer bags for the winter. It tastes good and stretches the food budget. Sounds to many of us like you're an uptight Yankee snob. No need to get all prissy about it. Country folks grow their food the best way they can and then preserve it for their families. We ain't trying to win no Martha Stewart awards.

You can talk about the need to put up food as survivalist garbage. We intend to put away as much as we can before the soil goes radioactive. Of course there's nothing mysterious about growing food. But if anyone can grow it as you say, why don't you quit putting down the folks that do and do it yourself instead of taking shots at those who do.

Finally, someone who read the article the same way that I did. I see this as a salute to the American (and, in general, Western) way of doing things. We grew most of our own food when I was a kid ... I never want to go back to having to do that again.

If one wants to buy organic, go ahead ... you have the freedom to pay that little bit extra to buy usually smaller, wormier, more bruised produce. I, for one, am very happy that I can buy lettuce in what is the middle of a Michigan winter or strawberries in the concentrated heat of a Texan summer.

The system works ... it ain't broke, so don't tinker with it.

I got a feeling that most that passes for conservativism today is ivory towered pontificating if the person doing the talking is unable or unwilling to do the work to provide a safe and nutritious diet and a godly education. We need to grow up strong children and educate them properly to repopulate a dark and dying world. That means the wombs and seed of our little ones need to be formidable.

Believe it or not NOBODY gives a rat's you know what about your sweet corn. There is a whole lot more to growing food than corn. Learning how to raise chickens and get eggs. Bringing a well fed hog to slaughter. Raising or buying a share of a Jersey or Brown Swiss dairy cow. Corn is just corn. I guess for northeasterners that's all y'all live for. But I wouldn't know cuz we don't live in Martha Stewart's stomping grounds.

Why should the hippies and anarchists be eating all the well grown local food?

They aren't. They demand that there be less acreage devoted to farming, AND they demand that food production techniques that use more acreage (organic farming) be made mandatory.

Less farm acreage plus lower output per acre of farmland equals a LOT less food.

But, of course, you see, the idea is to produce a lot less food--because, in their ideal world, there will be a lot fewer people eating it.

You may be correct in saying that we can get alot of food pretty cheap here in the U.S. That does not mean that it is necessarily the most nourishing food. We pump cows with hormones to boost production. The result is mastitis which leads to the cows passing pus in their milk. We feed cows processed cow innards, making herds susceptible to all kinds of diseases. Animals get estrogen and that is passed into the meat and we wonde why our young women are going thorugh puberty at such early ages and prone to fibrcystic diseases of the reproductive system. We promote soy oils and high fructose corn syrups and strip foods of their minerals and wonder why boys are overwight at 10 and are growing breasts.

Sure, the market works. We got cheap food. SO?

The whole is greater than its parts? If only the Reason folks could see this as a metaphor for the moral health of society.

I'm just learning about all this, but from what I've been reading, you're right and I'm trying to do what I can to feed my family more along the lines of how my grandparents fed theirs, from the family farm.

I noticed some comments above:

I'm afraid they have this illusion that the produce comes from just across town, not a worldwide system of trains, trucks, planes, and international trade agreements.

There's no way I want to turn our food supply into the next oil cartel type product we're going to get blackmailed over by some third world suicidal maniacs.

Sounds to me like it's too late.

My simple contention is that hybridization has been carried too far. The result today is sweet corn that stays sweet for 5 days after picking but tastes lousy, too sweet. I like watermelon with seeds and grapes with seeds. You find neither in the supermarkets of south Florida.

FWIW....

The new frontier in organic farming is rock powders, rock dust.

Welcome to REMINERALIZE THE EARTH: A ROCK DUST PRIMER
A Rock Dust Primer. What type of rock is best? ... These controls are off when the
soil is acid or acidic chemicals are added.". Composting with rock dust. ...
www.remineralize-the-earth.org/what/primer.html - 17k - Cached - Similar pages

This conservative outfit has been promoting organic farming for years.

Acres USA -- A Voice for Eco-Agriculture
Acres U.S.A. is North America's largest and oldest publisher of sustainable agriculture books and information teaching farmers how to grow healthy food ...
Description: If you want to be on the cutting edge of commercial-scale, soil-friendly farming technologies, techniques...
Category: Science > Agriculture > ... > Organic Farming > Information
www.acresusa.com/ - 30k - Cached - Similar pages

Evidently you live out of your head?

And I think I'm goin' out of my head
Yes, I think I'm goin' out of my head
Over you, Over you
recorded by Little Anthony and The Imperials

Now I'm gonna have that song floating in my head all day long....

"...This is the wonder of our system--that people CAN be ignorant of farm life, and get along great, just because our capitalist economy works so incredibly well....

And when the two corporations that own all the farm-land, food processing plants and food distributions systems decide, in conjuction with our progressive government, that the population would be best served by a total gun ban--and have the food....When they decide, for our own good, that private property is too much of a responsibility for the average citizen, and furthermore, causes too much strife---and have the food....When they decide, based upon careful study of crime statistics in various parts of the world, that sharia law will provide more security for the lower classes--and have the food....When they decide that Christians must renounce the divinity of Jesus because the concept of a god/man puts too many anti-authoritarian notions into the minds of men and makes them less submissive, thereby causing strife and strain ---and have the food....

However, enjoy the bliss of your capitalist ignorance.

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