This past Friday, the Louisville fellows visited The Berry Center, and the major theme throughout our discussions there was that we are detached from our land and therefore detached from our food. The selections from Pollan, Schlosser, and McKibben verify this idea. While I am well aware that the fast food industry is expansive, the statistics presented by Schlosser are overwhelming: McDonald’s opens two thousand new restaurants every year; more people are familiar with the Golden Arches than the Christian cross; Americans consume three burgers and four French fry orders a week on average; etc. As Wendell Berry said, “eating is an agricultural act,” and every bite we take of our hamburger and fries is a vote for industrial agriculture. If people had a better sense of where their food comes from beyond the restaurant or supermarket and if they could somehow reconnect with the land and with their community, then perhaps we could slow this ever expanding fast food industry.
Though the uniformity of fast food chains appeases the omnivore’s dilemma, the hidden costs of the food system are enormous and opaque. Schlosser pointedly mentions that while value meals make people’s wallets happy, “the real price never appears on the menu.” Pollan suggests eating a thought-intensive meal (one that is very much the opposite of fast) in which you consider how and where your food was made in order to gauge the complexity of the food system and realize the “full karmic price of the meal.” As with nearly every product in the global market, the visible monetary price is only indicative of a fraction of the costs associated with production and gives no insight as to how the product was made. Americans pride ourselves in efficiency and often place too little emphasis on quality. Pollan suggests that there is a “fundamental tension between the logic of nature and the logic of human industry,” and that we must pursue methods that seem to be preindustrial but are actually postindustrial. Humans have tended to extract from nature rather than contribute to it. At our visit to Bernheim Arboretum two weeks ago, Claude Stevens shared that when we integrate our systems thinking with an ecological mindset, we can pursue regenerative design and regenerative farming – a method that seeks to work with nature rather than against it or simply amidst it. McKibben’s narrative about beekeeping is on the right track – he was invested in the process of making honey as part of the team and developed a beautiful appreciation for the bees’ work.
Kelsey, you make two points about our current food system that really resonated with me. You first acknowledge that we’re disconnected from our food, and that this is because we’re out of touch with where our food comes from. We can know that it comes from a grocery store or a restaurant, maybe even a farmer’s market, but that is not sufficient information for us to truly be aware of the origins of our food. Reconnecting with the land, be it through growing your own food or simply taking the time to learn more about sustainable agricultural practices from experts in the field, can help us to fill this knowledge gap.
Education is essential in that it helps establish a sense of urgency, but it is just piece of the puzzle. In order reconnect with our food, we need to make changes to our food system that reflect our understanding of where we as humans, or omnivores as Pollan would say, fall along the food chain. This relates to your second point that humans do more “taking” from the environment than “giving.” Regardless of whether or not it’s local, organic, etc., we tend to have this mentality that we are in some way entitled to receive “x” amount of food from the land we inhabit. But, if we’re really going to be connected our food, and our land for that matter, our food system needs to make room for a two-way street. Regenerative farming, as you mentioned, seems like a great way for us to build a more sustainable food system. Strategies like this will hopefully make us more aware of the natural processes that must be carefully supported and restored in order for us to begin to really enjoy the food on our plates.