Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food

Berry, Wendell. Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food. Counterpoint: Berkeley, CA, 2009. With an introduction by Michael Pollan.

It is hard for me to admit, ever, to being disappointed by Wendell Berry. And even now it isn't so much Berry, whom I do not know personally (I've only ever heard him speak once live), but the latest book to come out under his name that is the source of my disappointment. And it isn't what is in the book that disappoints me. The problem is that I have already read most of the content before in other books by Berry that I already own. This book should have come with a large warning on the ad page (I pre-ordered from Amazon, based on the advance copy description) that this book is 99% recycled material, pre-composted, repackaged fertilizer if you will. So, after rushing into the house to open the package when it arrived, I had that all-too-familiar sinking feeling as I flipped through the pages of my "new" book by Berry. Other than the introduction by Pollan, I've seen it all before. In fact, I now own multiple copies of most of these chapters in the form of other collections of Berry essays.

Even more annoying to me is the fact that the chapters come marked only with the date of previous publication. (Except for the fiction excerpts, which are marked by the title of the novel in question, but not with the date of publication.) Nowhere does there seem to be a note citing the locus of that previous publication. I cannot even confirm easily my suspicion that I already own (versus having merely already read) the non-fiction essay in question. And as you might expect, I do not object so much to reading something twice (if I cannot remember that I have read it already, that is my problem) as I object to purchasing it twice. As someone who is interested in the context within which ideas arise and the history of their publication and dissemination, I like to know how to track the paths of words and ideas in the world, especially those that have occurred elsewhere in a prior conversation. Here the essays seem to be lifted out of their primary location and recombined in such a way as to erase all sense of place. (I would say time and place, except that the year is duly noted at the top of each chapter.) That is something I think Berry would (or should) object mightily to, given that he is so keen to preserve local adaptation and local landscapes. If we cannot preserve the local nature of our thoughts and ideas from such globalized generalization, how will we ever preserve real farms, farmers, and food?

I will not do what should have been the author's, editor's, and publisher's work for them by tracking down and publishing the location of the previous publication of these essays, but I will do you the favor of listing the title and date of publication here so that you can check your shelves before you order:

Part I: Farming

Nature as Measure, 1989

Stupidity in Concentration, 2002 (which includes Berry's definition of "sustainable agriculture")

Agricultural Solutions for Agricultural Problems, 1978

A Defense of the Family Farm, 1986

Let the Farm Judge, 1997

Energy in Agriculture, 1979

Conservationist and Agrarian, 2002

Sanitation and the Small Farm, 1971

Renewing Husbandry, 2004

Part II: Farmers

Seven Amish Farms, 1981

A Good Farmer of the Old School, 1985

Charlie Fisher, 1996

A Talent for Necessity, 1980

Elmer Lapp's Place, 1979

on The Soil and Health, 2006

Agriculture from the Roots Up, 2004

Part III: Food

mostly drawn from Berry's fiction writing

from That Distant Land

from Hannah Coulter

from Andy Catlett

from "Misery"

from The Memory of Old Jack

from Jayber Crow

from Hannah Coulter (again)

The Pleasures of Eating, 1989

So, would I recommend the book, and if so, to whom? Clearly I wouldn't recommend the book to anyone who is well familiar with Berry's work and who owns a considerable library of Berry's fiction and non-fiction. I would recommend it to anyone who hasn't read Berry, who knows him only by reputation, and who wants a quick introduction to his thoughts about sustainable agriculture and local food. For example, I could imagine the book as assigned reading in a college course on contemporary issues, especially environmental issues. But the reader should understand that tracking down the original source of some of the essays may be difficult should he or she become "hooked" like so many of us are, including evidently Michael Pollan, on Wendell Berry's prose and poetry. (Which brings up another interesting oversight; why wasn't some of Berry's poetry included?)

Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal

Salatin, Joel. Everything I Want to Do is Illegal. Polyface, Inc. Swoope, VA, 2007.

What a bracing breath of fresh air! I do not know where I first read about Joel Salatin and his "Farm of Many Faces," but whoever first recommended him did not do justice to Salatin's unique voice and perspective. I had devoured 100 pages--laughing and crying, sympathizing and shouting in anger--before I was rudely interrupted and had to set the book aside. Without the interruption, I am sure I would have finished all 326 pages (and perhaps even re-read it) in a single sitting.

So, what makes Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal: War Stories From the Local Food Front so different?

First, it is Salatin's unerring good sense. His BS detector is set on high alert and he's able to point out the obvious contradictions between the food safety laws as they are written and carried out and real food safety. Time after time, with Mark Twain (or Andy Griffith "Aw shucks" style) humor, Salatin eviscerates the bureaucratic opposition and shows how it just makes good sense to let small-time farmers process meat (and other foods) and sell locally--e.g., to sell raw milk, unwashed eggs, and cured bacon; to invite visitors (and youngsters and interns) for short and extended visits to the farm; to market and sell collaboratively (so that a farmer can sell what his neighbor has produced); build a house of less than 900 square feet; and the like. The problem is that each and every one of these actions is illegal.

Second, it is Salatin's experience. He is a farmer. And that experience shows with blood on every page and the scars to show for the bureaucratic battles. You trust a guy who has done battle with the food police this many times and won--or at least battled to a draw.

Get the book. It is a fabulous read. It needs to be on the shelf of everyone who is even thinking about getting into farming. Salatin will knock some sense into your head!

Gardening Economy and Non-Cooperation

A Gardening Economy: The Cost of Non-Cooperation

I’ve been reading a little too much of Mahatma Gandhi lately, especially his Freedom’s Battle: Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation, which is available on the Kindle for $.99 (free on the internet). It struck me as I read again Gandhi’s advocacy of “non-cooperation” as an alternative to surrender or complicity, that non-cooperation may be our best and only option against the multinational agricultural corporations, the behemoth colonial powers of our day. Agribusiness requires our cooperation to survive. ADM and the others require our cooperation to maintain their near monopoly status. Their power is truly dependent on our continuous cooperation with them in the purchase of processed foods.

And unless I’m very much mistaken, gardening is truly our most natural and most effective expedient for refusing to maintain their rule. We must simply refuse our cooperation; withdraw it. We can start by reducing or eliminating processed foods from our diet and buying whole foods from local farmers. Some fear that, if we were to succeed (and they very much doubt that we will), this would produce the total collapse of the farm economy. But as Gandhi predicted of Indian self-government, long before there could be a total collapse, we would have forged strong ties with local producers and robust local means of distribution. Others protest that this sort of non-cooperation is a negative path, that it will destroy the cheap food on which our high standard of living is based. But, as Gandhi pointed out, non-cooperation with the multinational corporation means greater cooperation among ourselves and “greater mutual dependence.”

So, what will non-cooperation cost me this year? Besides some time and labor, it has already cost $77.20. (Watch the garden budget this year to see what I purchase and what the garden yields are. We’ll weigh everything as we harvest and record the value of the produce by comparison to the cost of fruit and vegetables at the local Meier Supermarket.)

Here’s what we’ve bought so far: Goliath Hybrid Pepper Seed (pkt-30, $2.60), Big Beef Hybrid Tomato Seed (pkt-30, $2.10), Early Girl Hybrid Tomato Seed (pkt-30, $2.20), Besweet 2020 Edible Soybean Seed (pkt-2 oz., $1.95), Red Ace Hybrid Beet Seed (pkt-300, $1.90), Super Blend Hybrid Broccoli Seed (pkt-200, $1.80, 33% each of Liberty, Pirate, and Major), Alchiban Hybrid Eggplant Seed (pkt-30, $2.00), Sweet Basil Seed (pkt-100, $1.50, Italian Large Leaf Basil), Long Standing Cilantro or Coriander Seed (pkt-100, $1.50), Kossak Giant Hybrid Kohlrabi Seed (pkt-50, $2.25), Paris White Cos Lettuce Seed (pkt-5 grams, $1.55, Romaine Lettuce), Evergreen Bunching Scallions Seed (pkt-250, $1.55, White Bunching Onion), Hungarian Yellow Wax Pepper Seed (pkt-25, $1.55, Hot Banana Pepper), Bloomsdale Long Standing Spinach Seed (pkt-7 grams, $1.50), Dwarf American Hazelnut Plant (4 plants, $18.50), Sparkle Strawberry (25 plants, $8.75), Nugget Hops Plant (1 plant, $8.25), Thuricide (8 oz concentrate, $8.25, Bacillus thuringiensis var. kurstaki), Early Bird Garden Tomato Seed (pkt-25, $0.00), Early Bird Garden Pea Seed (pkt-1 oz, $0.00, medium-vined garden pea variety), Early Bird Garden Cucumber Seed (pkt-25, $0.00, Fancy Green Slicer), Early Bird Garden Bean (pkt-1 oz, $0.00), Early Bird Garden Sweet Corn (pkt-1 oz., $0.00, hybrid yellow sweet). The last few, the ones labeled “early bird,” are “experimental varieties” included in the R.H. Shumway’s shipment as a reward for ordering early and ordering more than a minimal number of items. This year I bought the whole lot from Shumway. I’ll report later how their seeds and plants performed. Shipping was $7.50.

A few of these items require explanation. First, the Thuricide. I hate to put any sort of pesticide on the garden, but Bt appears to be, by every account, organic and environmentally friendly.

It has a very narrow use–the destruction of cabbage moth caterpillars–and will be used by me only to take care of extreme cases, where total vegetable loss is a possibility. Think I’m kidding? Look at the photos below of my first attempt a few years back to grow broccoli. And our family loves broccoli!

Another oddity is the hops plant. With the hops I intend to make my own dried yeast for bread baking. And, of course, Hazelnuts (or Filberts) are about the only nuts that can be grown on a small suburban lot and still allow room for all the strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, gooseberries and a vegetable garden! So, stay tuned, we have a lot of growing to do on this non-cooperative micro-farm in 2008!

Tumbledown Farm

100 Mile Diet: Food for Thought

Tumbledown's summer reading list had a lot to do with eating. It began with Barbara Kingsolver's recounting of her family's year of eating locally (with help in the telling from her husband Steven L. Hopp and daughter Camille Kingsolver). The strength and also the weakness of the book was ease of reading. The access point for entry was the lowest common denominator of mass market appeal. But that also makes for good summer beach reading. (Not that Tumbledown went to the beach this summer, and had he gone, this book would have compounded his sense of guilt for having used the fuel and for having eaten his share of industrial fast food along the way.)

Kingsolver recounts what is becoming a popular and oft repeated experiment in eating (living, really), in which a person or couple or family decides to feed themselves food "from so close to home, we'd know the person who grew it." (p. 10) The recipes for that year-long experiment, many of which can be had for free at the Animal, Vegetable, Miracle web site, are worth the price of the book. (Also available at that site is an index of non-Kingsolver web sites and other online resources, many of which are also listed in the various chapters of the book.) Tumbledown's family especially appreciates the new "Friday night pizza" ritual that grew out of the chapter entitled "Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast." We are now imitating Kingsolver's example--and the fun of gathering the family around the table to put together our two 12" masterpieces of gustatory delight has become a weekly event likely to be repeated every week until the children leave the nest. The ingredients for our pizza toppings come fresh from the garden on the day we eat them, washed and chopped minutes before they hit the crust. The children see the journey from garden to mouth and participate fully along the way. Thanks to Kingsolver for the recipe and the suggestion that "family night" include food preparation and conversation about the sources of what we put in our mouths.

The final criticism, if indeed that is what it is, would be that sometimes the book comes across as "preachy." But that too is OK in a sermon, even one about the evils of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs, where animals are confined in feedlots), the fuel cost of transporting food across the nation and across the world, and the broken economics of farming.



If Kingsolver's book is preachy, Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, is pedantic ("teachy" in the monotone professorial sense) and inflammatory (referring in part to his attention-grabbing accusation that McDonald's McNuggets have as an ingredient tertiary butylhydroquinone (TBHQ), "a form of butane (i.e., lighter fluid)" (p. 187). Subtitled " A Natural History of Four Meals," the book is a Jeremiad (OK, he does sermonize) against monocrop corn and soybeans and (you guessed it) CAFOs. The four meals are 1) Industrial Food, 2) Pastoral Food: Whole Foods / Big Organic, 3) Pastoral Food: Small Organic, diversified and local, 4) Personal: Hunter / Gatherer. Many of the same concerns that animate Kingsolver's experiment also inform Pollan's work, which was published a year before Kingsolver's. And Pollan, for all his story-telling ability, also likes to pack the chapters with data and citations. Pollan's telling of the history of the organic movement and description of the differences between the new "industrial organic" and the more sustainable organic of smaller farms is a tribute to good research and writing. And the basic premise, the "omnivore's dilemma" about what to eat (because an omnivore cannot eat just the leaves of a eucalyptus) is robust enough to bear the explanatory weight of the book. Overall, very well done, despite some well-publicized controversy over some of the data. (But in a book that seeks to influence as well as inform, the overreaching of a datum or two is to be expected.)



Another book that partakes of what Pollan calls an "edible conceit" (an artificial set of rules for eating--a hyper-cultivation of a convention--for the sake of the art, in this case a book, and that moves well beyond what the author would naturally do), is the book Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally. It too tells the story of a year-long experiment in eating by one couple. Smith and MacKinnon's one "ironclad" rule was that "every product we bought had to come from within 100 miles." The point of the conceit, then, was "to explore, and explore deeply, the idea of local eating." (pp. 10-11) Unlike Kingsolver's and Pollan's books, which are experiments that feature the culture and foods of the Midwest and Southeast, Smith and MacKinnon's "local"-ity is foreign to Tumbledown. They live on the West Coast, the Pacific coast, west of the Cascades, in a land of mild winters and lots of rain. For that reason, the book was of interest conceptually, but hardly as informative for purposes of imitation. Still, it was an inspiration to read the story of this "conceit" and contemplate such a journey for ourselves. Just where would a family in Indianapolis draw the line on buying local food? In the flat Midwest corn belt, is local the Ohio border? (100 miles) Chicago? (200 miles) or Des Moines? (500 miles) ...or could it be that the circle around Indianapolis could be drawn more closely?

Why bother? That's the question asked once again toward the end of Plenty. The answer, in part, is the same in each of the above-mentioned books, because the average food item travels 1500 miles from farm to plate in North America. And, as Pollan says, along the way, it "has come to require a ramarkable amount of expert help" to determine where its origins are. "How did we ever get to a point," Pollan asks, "where we need investigative journalists to tell us where our food comes from...?" How indeed?



If you and your family are thinking of embarking on one of these "edible conceits," Tumbledown thinks you'll need a new cookbook for eating what's fresh and local when it is in season. (Don't look for fresh raspberries in Indianapolis in December!) The best one Tumbledown has seen is Simply in Season. It is a sequel to the much-loved More-with Less, and now comes with a study guide. (What's a conceit if you cannot study what you eat? ...that's the point, right?) The sections are arranged (you guessed it) by what is fresh in season (or, in winter, what is available because it has been canned, frozen, or otherwise locally procured and preserved).

Melamine Cuisine: If Pet Food be Poison, What of Human Food?

OK, you didn't hear it here first, but you knew Tumbledown couldn't let this topic go without comment, especially as the evidence for potential food contamination piled up. First, there was the epidemic of pet deaths. Then, on March 30, the FDA cleared the pet food companies of augmenting their pet food with rat poison (aminopterin), and charged them instead with using contaminated wheat flour (mistakenly identified as wheat gluten) to make their doggy biscuits. The flour (a.k.a. gluten) had been supplemented with a melamine additive, a "food supplement" if you will, by crooked Chinese providers who were trying to spike the protein and nitrogen content of their product. (See Brenda Goodman's March 31 NYTimes article, "Pet Food Contained Chemical Found in Plastic, F.D.A. Says." Cyanuric acid has also been identified as a possible culprit.) But pardon my ignorance, aren't "doggy bones," ...well, bones? Ok, maybe dogs like biscuits and donuts too. And don't dogs eat chopped meat? In Tumbledown's humble opinion (ITHO), the whole fiasco is the end result of seeing food--either for humans or for our pets--as "simply" a combination of the various chemicals known to be necessary for life. (The source of those chemicals? ...who really cares?) Of course, chemistry will always be important to farming and gardening, and to food production, preparation, and consumption, but food should always be more than the sum of its chemical parts. Cooking should always be more than mere chemistry. (Don't worry, Tumbledown does get the importance of soil chemistry for growing nutritious food.)

One result of this pet food scare has been an increase in home cooking for pets. So, riddle me this: if the food you are cooking for your favorite pet (or for yourself) comes from Brazil, or China, or California, how is that a whole lot better than buying the manufactured food? But forget the harm to Fido and Snowflake (16 deaths? 32? hundreds?) caused by the "manufacture" of their food, how about trying these newly fabricated tasty people-treats: Anyone hungry for Melamine-roasted Capon? or Chicken Breasts with Creamy Melamine Gravy? Not hungry for chicken? What about pork? I could recommend Ham Steak Melamine or Spicy Melamine Sausage or a nicely breaded Melamine Pork Tenderloin. Yummy! Prefer fish? What about Catfish with Melamine Sauce? or what about a good ole Southern-Style Melamine-encrusted Fish Fry? (See Sarah Abruzzese's New York Times article, April 25, 2007. "F.D.A. Says Livestock Were Fed Pet Food With Suspect Chemical," for a plausible summary of how the melamine-tainted pet food could have entered the human food chain, as the tainted pet food was treated in a "business as usual" fashion: they take "pet food that does not meet quality standards and reconstitute it into livestock feed." Now, that must be reassuring to anyone who was hoping that better [consolidated] government oversight and inspection might protect our food supply. According to a New York Times article by Barboza, the F.D.A. thinks that the levels of toxins in farm-fresh fish fed meal with melamine and other contaminants, "was probably too low to harm anyone who ate the fish." "Probably," now there's confidence!)

Melamine has been used in the manufacture of eating utensils and some fertilizers, without knowing or caring about its potential toxicity, so it shouldn't surprise us when it shows up in food. Tumbledown knows that the adage "you are what you eat" doesn't mean we'll all become melamine cereal bowls. (Remember those? Melmac, all the rage in the 50's and 60's; indestructible, until the microwave warped and burned and chipped them. They were hardly "microwave safe"! Tumbledown still remembers with pleasure and more than a little nostalgia those bowls filled with fresh peaches or strawberries and cream or homemade ice cream during the halcyon days of youth.) But maybe you'll forgive Tumbledown if he doesn't trust the green light now being offered by the food safety police. Is it really OK now to eat animals who have ingested melamine-laced feed? The assurances of the food protectors ring hollow. But (I know what you'll say), Tumbledown, they've been so right on everything else, you should probably just trust them on this one. (NOT!)

The F.D.A. assured the public quickly--too quickly?--that "they did not believe the contaminated wheat gluten had entered the human food supply," despite the fact that 13% of the U.S. supply of wheat gluten now comes (or did until the scare) from the country where the melamine-laced flour (alias, gluten) originated. Other food safety police hastened to add that melamine is not a "known toxin." (See Goodman.) Such assurances are belied by the limits of human knowledge, and the problem is not just human ignorance, but even moreso human greed and duplicity. The Chinese manufacturer knew that he was cheating, gaming the system at least, by adding melamine to gluten.

So, what is the solution? Tumbledown repeats: localized, diversified production of food. Grow your own, eat what is in season (or will store) in your locale, get to know and support a local farmer. Can a suburbanite on one acre support feed a whole family this way? Maybe not, but you would be surprised what can be grown and eaten from one acre without provoking a riot by the neighborhood association. (Maybe pork or mutton would be too much to ask!) Does it mean eating dandylion greens, or a fresh dandelion and chive salad in March and April in Indiana?

Maybe, but only if you really like dandelions better than melamine. And in late May or early June, there is already an abundance! Spinach, lettuce, radishes and rhubarb, onions and berries!

Oh, my, my, my! Fresh garden berries. Where are those "melamac" cereal bowls when you need them?

Tumbledown Farm

Too Dumb to Farm

Is Anyone Today Smart Enough to Farm?

Nobel economist Milton Friedman (1912-2006) famously declaimed about an ordinary #2 lead pencil: "Look at this lead pencil. There is not a single person in the world who could make this pencil." (The PBS tv Series, "Free to Choose" [1990, Vol 1 of 5, "The Power of the Market."], available today on YouTube, but who knows for how long. Tumbledown has not quite figured out the relationship of that story to the following: Leaonard E. Read, "I, Pencil: My Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read," December 1958.) Friedman could as easily have said that not a single person in the world today can farm. (Maybe that isn't true world wide, yet, but it is probably safe to say of the U.S.) The extensive, monocrop (or, to be generous, the two-crop rotation) agriculture of today, using genetically modified seed and industrial fertilizers, means that no one person could produce even a corn or soybean crop for two years running without the help of strangers thousands of miles away--and, of course, without the help of the oil-rich. The same can be said of animal raising. No single farmer keeps both boar and gilt, breeds boar to sow, cares for the pregnant pig until she delivers her litter of piglets, farrows, weans, and finishes the litter (much less butchering and preserving the hogs). And absolutely no one raises both crops and animals! That was Friedman's point, of course, that thousands of people across the world had to "cooperate"--but indirectly, with their interactions mediated by a market--to produce a pencil. Friedman celebrated the wondrous ability of the market to enable this faux cooperation (he says we might want to kill the person--of another religion, race, or ethnicity--with whom we cooperate to make a pencil, if we had to work directly with the person).

Tumbledown is not saying that the Nobel winner is wrong. (That would be dumb.) The market is indeed wondrous. But it isn't all good--nor the whole good, nor even the highest good. (See the critiques of Ray and Schaffer, Developing an Alternative to the Chicago School, Daryll E. Ray and Harwood Schaffer, UT, Ag Policy Analysis Center, Org. for Competitive Markets. Kansas City, MO, July 2003.) Markets also allow us to cooperate unwittingly in the creation of world-threatening warming, and to buy oil from the supporters of terrorists.

Just think about it: we can no longer even write--and writing is thinking--without globalization. No local community has the knowledge sufficient to produce it's own writing implements (quill and ink anyone?) much less its own food. Friedman was known as a champion of the individual's freedom to choose.

This is freedom? The dependence on a global market is truly freedom? We supposedly choose, when we are free to do so, what is in our best interest.

So, why will more than 50% of us "choose" to live in cities? According to Steven Johnson, we've gone from 3% of the population in cities (in 1880 at the dawn of the industrial age), to 50% (already, not waiting for 2007). "We are now a 'city planet,'" says Johnson, quoting Stewart Brand.

And, not to put too fine a point on it, why do we (dumb?) city slickers choose to eat fastfood?

And why has the Future Farmers of America become the FFA? (Times Article: Agricultural Mainstay Gets a New, Urban Face.) Because we are too dumb to choose farming. We prefer "agriscience," "biotechnology," and "turf grass management." Call us "farmers" and you may receive an old fashioned haymaker. Friedman was right that the economy is to blame. It is no coincidence that the "FFA" was first formed following the hand wringing of the 1920s to attract and keep farm boys on the farm by countering an inferiority complex. (Logsdon, "Our Hidden Wound," in Living at Nature's Pace, "I'm a hayseed, I'm a hayseed, and my ears are full of pigweed" or the struggle with the romantic opposite in Harvey Wiley's Lure of the Land.) Nor is it any wonder that the FFA name change followed immediately after a time of deep agricultural crisis. (The name changed in 1988; see this economic analysis of the period immediately prior: "Things got much worse when the dollar began to appreciate beginning in 1980. Exports fell in value by nearly one third by 1985, and with high interest rates, land prices could not be sustained. In the ensuing farm financial crisis, supply control interventions and farm program fiscal costs were driven to record levels." "Exchange rate effects on agricultural trade," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Aug 2002. by David Orden.)

Maybe no one today is smart enough to live in the country, or free enough, to farm.

But we cannot end this entry on such a sour note. Maybe some of us are beginning to choose well, to live smart--by choosing and buying locally produced food. The NY Times calls the farmers who produce this food "counterculture farmers." So be it. Tumbledown calls them the real farmers. The farmers who say we can too make this pencil. You bet we can grow our own peppers, Milton, without shipping them from South America.

We will learn the utility of making our own pencils, and choosing to grow our own food and fiber.

We city slickers will have brains enough to farm.

I just know we will, Milton. How's that for confidence?

Tumbledown Farm