If you can place Alice Waters – with the institutions and cities (of the East Bay) that she’s come to be associated with … then you can add Joel Salatin (southern Virginia) and Will Allen (Milwaukee) to that list.
Oh, and there’s some First named Michelle Obama is doing her darnedest to elevate food issues – food systems, food justice and food deserts – into the everyday vernacular, too.
Beyond our borders, you could consider the upstart Brit, Jamie Oliver, (dyslexic according to wikipedia) who has hustled from popular chef to cooking show personality – where he got his moniker of the Naked Chef, as he prefers to cook and introduce cooking to people by stressing that food is best when practically naked – into staunch foodist. Consider that food populist, or politically-active and determined proponent of good food.
Good food doesn’t mean tasty. Fast food has hijacked our taste buds into chemical opiates (hat tip, Supersized Spurlock)
So, who are Joel Salatin and Will Allen? They are permeating the corporate media and popular consciousness – just in these first five days of July:
• Salatin’s Polyface Farms was the rural Virginia location of a Sunday night story on ABC News [oddly, dated June 16 on the website] about Chipotle (yes, McDonalds-owned Chipotle) raising all of its pork and chicken and eggs (and “most” of its beef, according to the Chipotle founder/executive) in “happy” environs.
Salatin is a self-professed ‘grass farmer.’ I first read about wily Salatin and his Polyface Farms in Michael Pollen’s Omnivore’s Dilemma. Thanks to Pollen recounting experiences from Salatin’s Polyface Farms, I’ve added holons and raken to my vocabulary.
• Allen, meanwhile, first came onto my radar by being picked as a 2008 MacArthur genius awardee. But, he’s placing Milwaukee squarely on the map. Few people outside the real estate or retail sectors can tell you that “every sqare foot brings in $30.” On the 1st of July, he had this coverage in the ever-slimming NYTimes.
In this new frontier … there’s plenty of new language to learn: aquaponics, castings, vermicompost. There’s even a new type of black gold … that’s more basic than coffee, and smells much better than oil.
What I love about all of this is more than getting my hands dirty. Sure, weeding, gardening and watering take me back to my toddler days toiling on grass and dirt in Denver. But, the resurgence of small-scale farming is how it is returning humans into the natural order of things. By that, we are readjusting to being a small part of many ecosystems that we depend upon.
Furthermore, the responsibility of produce demands that we be producers. Consumption has its place, but we need more life in our relationship to the foodstuffs that sustains us.
That said, have you heard that Food Inc is coming to a theater near you?
P.S. I just ordered my first subscription to the Small Farmers Journal. Base in Sisters Oregon. [h/t, CJ]
