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December 25, 2011
It might be time to finish out 2011 by cleaning up the blog a bit, correcting errors and passing along the random bit of mail. I’m not sure I can make a whole blog out of it, but here goes.
The big error in last week’s blog was the song lyric from “Christmas in Jail” which was both misquoted and mis-attributed. I’d like to say that Ray Benson called me personally in order to complain, and why shouldn’t I? I did remind readers that not everything you read in the Thornapple blog is strictly true.
As for mail, my dad e-mailed to remind me not to complain about traveling too much, as it’s always my own fault when I do, and then I’ve had a few of these viral links sent. The only one I’ll pass on was from a loyal reader who may prefer that others do not know he was Moo-ved by the U-Tube video at the following Link. I have the usual comments from robots, but the gems were already reported back at the end of September.
And I guess that’s about it for 2011.
Talk about going out with a whimper! But hey, it’s Christmas Day, and the stockings are hung by chimney with care. Santa Claus is back in town, and he ain’t got no sleigh with reindeer, ain’t got no pack on his back. This year he’s coming in a big black Cadillac.
Enjoy some good local food this holiday season. The blog will be back next year.
Paul B. Thompson is the W.K. Kellogg Professor of Agricultural, Food and Community Ethics at Michigan State University
December 18, 2011
Still looking for that perfect gift this Christmas? Every kid wants The Agrarian Vision: Sustainability and Environmental Ethics. Shop for it at Amazing dot com right cheah. Just imagine the joy on those cherubic faces next Sunday when they shred the wrapping paper from that package ‘neath the tree to discover their own personal copy of this scintillating, entertaining and (of course) edifying book. It’s the Kewpie doll, the Barbie, the Cabbage Patch Kid, the Pet Rock, the Tickle Me Elmo of the Oh Teens. I promise. And unlike Elmo, The Agrarian Vision does not require batteries! That is, unless you get the Kindle version, which is in fact available. For a limited time only, the author will be offering to personally autograph your copy at no additional charge (try that with a Kindle). Nothing will please your tots and toddlers (not to mention those from nine to ninety) than the gift that keeps on giving: a lifetime of personal enlightenment about the deep philosophical significance of the CSA way!
Well, maybe not. There was that bonehead Santa that brought my daughter a copy of E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web back when she was about seven or eight years old. I’ll never forget the disappointment on her face that Christmas morning. And “some pig” The Agrarian Vision ain’t. So here’s an idea: make a donation to the Thornapple CSA in your child’s name! There’s a link right on this very webpage where you can find the information you need. Just imagine their excitement when they learn that this important social institution in mid-Michigan has gotten the boost it needs, and that they are being personally commemorated by your gift. And just think about how much they will respect you for making a charitable gift to an organization that is not even a recognized charity, and that therefore lacks the attendant tax advantages. If you think the subtleties of tax policy are lost on the younger generation, well all I can say is “Don’t sell the children short, my friend.”
On the other hand, a charitable donation is a bit abstract. Even I admit that it takes up too little room under the tree. So maybe you should give your teenager his or her very own subscription to the Thornapple CSA. They will enjoy a good seven to eight months of healthy and delicious fresh fruits and vegetables. And in accordance with our philosophy (see The Agrarian Vision above) these little buds and bodices are grown without the use of synthetic fertilizers or pesticides. They aren’t technically organic, but that’s because the United States Department of Agriculture (in its infinite wisdom) requires expensive certification procedures for all fruits and vegetables that are represented as “organic”. And we’re just a poor Community Supported Agriculture, not for profit but too preoccupied with doing good works to have completed the forms for non-profit status with the Eye Are Ess, so we pinch our pennies and we don’t pay for organic certification. If this bothers you, see “charitable donation” in the above paragraph. Yes, nothing soothes the adolescent soul more than a big box of homegrown tomatoes! It’s the perfect gift for those of you considering the ubiquitous “gift card”.
Except that nothing happens until at least April, and not much of a serious nature until late May. And we can all recall how good we were at delayed gratification in our own adolescent years. So what’s left? Well, looking back to 2009’s Thornapple Blog, we might suggest egg nog. In the words of Jerry Jeff Walker (from his beloved holiday classic “Christmas in Jail”): “Egg nog? Egg nog! Yeah, I’ll have some egg nog.”
I just haven’t figured out how to make a buck on it.
Paul B. Thompson is the W.K. Kellogg Chair in Agricultural, Food and Community Ethics at Michigan State University
December 11, 2011
I had lunch last Tuesday at a place called Baan Thai. This is not the one in Waltham, Mass, or the fancy wine bar in San Francisco. It’s not the Baan Thai in Indiana, the Baan Thai in Newport, VT or the Baan Thai in Leavenworth, KS. I can’t speak for the others, but the Baan Thai on Broadway in southwest Portland is one of those shacky kind of places where you go up a flight of stairs and then you find yourself in what was once the living room or dining room of a house that’s been half-heartedly converted to commercial use. The tongue-and-groove on the walls has been painted pink and there are a few random posters of vaguely Asian locales to get you in mood. Lots of these places are pretty good, even when they are run by Phillipinos rather than Thai. The mere fact that there is a Thai restaurant in Leavenworth, KS is pretty clear evidence that the world has changed, but that’s not what I wanted to blog about.
What set me to thinking was the two guys sitting at opposite sides of the table across from me. These are two relatively big men dressed neatly but quite unobtrusively in dark trousers and still wearing the storm jackets that seem to be ubiquitous in Portland about this time of the year. It was pretty chilly in Portland on Tuesday, and the fog really penetrates the bones. But this is all atmospheric mumbo jumbo so far, because what’s notable about these guys is that they are not speaking a word to one another. Both of them have their heads bowed as if they are peering intently into their cupped hands resting on the table below. And I’m noticing that this intense silence is going on for a long time. Of course, I’m waiting on my order of Pad Kee Moa and maybe I’m just impatient, but I’m inclined to think that the meditative trance behavior I was observing continued for five or ten minutes. Maybe more.
It’s pretty rare to see people saying grace in a public restaurant these days, though there are parts of the lower Mid-West and South where family groups make a pretentious display of it. Two 30-ish males in a West Coast eatery is not typical, I assure you. But there are many things to recommend this activity, even if you are not religious in a conventional sense. It’s prudent to pause a bit before eating and put yourself in a more placid and receptive frame of mind. Helps the digestion. But there’s also an issue of moral character at stake. Recognizing that you are among the lucky ones every time you sit down to another meal… Taking note of the fact that someone has taken the time to prepare a plate of food for you, even if you do intend to pay them for it… Thinking for a moment that someone grew the rice, the soya, the cabbage, the chilies, that someone made the tofu and that countless others were part of the chain that got all these things down to Broadway on Dec. 6, 2011… Putting all this into a social context that celebrates the way that we depend upon the kindness of strangers…
And then there are all the ways in which natural piety involves acknowledging the place of humanity in a larger world. It’s good to be aware that in eating a meal, one is participating in a pretty fundamental dependence relationship. Without earth, sunshine and water, there would be no Pad Kee Moa. All the ingredients in my Pad Kee Moa are living organisms, and even if I happened to leave off the chicken or pork last Tuesday, there were animals—worms, field mice and voles—that perished when the soya was cultivated. Getting the stuff to Portland (not to mention getting me to Portland) also imposed a burden on living things. There is an Inuit saying sometimes attributed to the shaman Aua that goes like this:
The great peril of our existence lies in the fact that our diet consists entirely of souls.
That captures it, I think, and reminding oneself of that just before taking a meal should develop the natural piety that I am talking about. Just watching the two guys across from me has adjusted my own attitude, and when my Pad Kee Moa finally arrives, I’m more in the mood to relish it not only for its gustatory qualities, but in a spirit of thankfulness and humility. And as we sit in the hammock between Thanksgiving and Christmas feasting celebrations, when better to remind ourselves of our vulnerability and interconnectedness?
Warm thoughts swirling through my head as the heat from the chilies in the Pad Kee Moa warms my innards, I glance back to the table where the two gentlemen have barely moved. I notice a faint glow coming from the cupped hands of the man whose back is mostly turned toward me. A prayer candle. Now this is truly extreme!
But in fact, both of them were staring at smart phones.
Paul B. Thompson is the W.K. Kellogg Professor of Agricultural, Food and Community Ethics at Michigan State University
December 4, 2011
Not everything you read in the Thornapple Blog is strictly true.
I got bawled out this week for implying that the Thompson household does not know how to store pumpkins over the winter. Someone grabbed my collar and hoisted me down to the basement where there are tidy rows of cute little pie pumpkins all lined up, waiting for Christmas Day, I suppose. Meanwhile, as locals or readers of the New York Times know, we had a big snow in mid-Michigan this week, so the squirrels have really been enjoying the uncarved Jack o’ Lantern pumpkins that someone left out on the front porch. Just to be sure that I’m making full disclosure in this week’s edition of the blog, I should probably point out that the squirrely pumpkins aren’t actually on the front porch anymore. They are out back where the neighbors don’t have to look at their gnawed carcasses. And just in case one of my regular readers is wondering who it might have been who grabbed my collar or bawled me out, I point out again that not everything you read in the Thornapple Blog is strictly true.
Which presents a dilemma. Because as Cephalus once said down at the Piraeus, what is justice but to speak the truth and to pay your debts? And if I’m supposed to be a food ethicist, what am I if not just? And if not everything you read in the Thornapple Blog is strictly true, how can I represent myself as one who speaks the truth? Let’s not get into the paying your debts part here. I still owe Larry Huang the fifty bucks I borrowed back in 1973 to buy a guitar amplifier. Except that when I think back on it, there’s no way I could have been buying a guitar amplifier in 1973, so it must have been something else. Remember, not everything you read in the Thornapple Blog is strictly true.
Piraeus is “a name which roughly means ‘the place over the passage’,” according to Wikipedia, though if you are into Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance you may recall a more creative translation that might have been material to a popular ‘70s author’s failure to impress un un-named figure that many have presumed to be Leo Strauss back at the University of Chicago. Strauss had a theory about the great philosophers, holding that they wrote in an elaborate code in order to ensure that that the great unwashed would not be able to understand what they were talking about. Today we refer to “the great unwashed” as the other 99%, but if you aren’t sure what I’m talking about, don’t worry about it. Not everything you read in the Thornapple Blog is strictly true.
Owing to my acute intelligence and highly developed since of irony, I have myself developed a code that allows elite readers (some of whom may even be among the 99%) to decipher when they should take what is written here with a heavy dose of salt. The phrase “Give ‘im a dose ‘o salt & water” is often sung as a verse to the folk standard “What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor?” Few people know that I actually wrote this song back when I was the bass player for Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, though I cannot take credit for that particular verse. I was not, at that young age, the expert on food ethics (if we can presume salt and sobriety to have something to do with food ethics) that I am today. According to Billy J.’s website, he performed in New York City as recently as October 9, but as far as I know, he does not read the Thornapple Blog. Need I say that not everything you read in the Thornapple Blog is strictly true?
And speaking of Thanksgiving dinner, I also coined the use of the word “Turkey” in reference to people who are generally clueless or obtuse, as in “How do you keep a turkey in suspense?” My code, which owes nothing to turkeys like Cephalus or Leo Strauss, is an extremely subtle use of the tagging function that is built into WordPress. Some of my regular readers may have noticed that in addition to the subject matter tags like “politics” and “song lyrics”, there are (at this writing) four categories for entries in the Thornapple Blog. Some of them are marked “Serious” and others are marked “Funny”. Still others are marked “CSA Beeswax” and if I don’t check anything, they get labeled “uncategorized”. I leave to elite readers with a highly developed sense of irony (not to say sarcasm) to discern the meaning of these categories. As for the Monsanto thing (and for those of you who remember Lance Ritchlin and me entertaining gullible co-eds with tales about our days in the Dakotas): Not everything they say about me is strictly true.
Paul B. Thompson (Kellogg Professor at MSU) bends his elbow down at the Piraeus every Sunday. Join him some time.
November 27, 2011
It’s the first Sunday after Thanksgiving. Long-time readers of the Thornapple Blog may need to be reminded that the very first entry “snuck in” right after Thanksgiving two years ago. That was the “key blog” that announced how I would write once a week to supplement the share delivery that Thornapple CSA members were entitled to receive during the winter months. Do I need to point out for readers in warmer climes that we aren’t really harvesting all that much in Michigan here on the weekend of Thanksgiving? Do I need to explain why the Thanksgiving feast is organized around the slaughter of a large fowl that would, when the snows come, be especially vulnerable to the foxes and raccoons? Do I need to explain why this dish is accompanied by root crops—mashed potatoes, winter squash and candied yams? Or why dessert pies are made from other storable crops like pecans or pumpkins?
If you take a look at what the squirrels are doing to the pumpkins sitting on our front porch, you would question whether they are all that storable. But of course real farmers would not leave something as valuable as a pumpkin sitting out where the squirrels, racoons and remaining birds could get to it so easily. There’s quite a diversity among Thornapplists, some approximating the true folk knowledge needed to have pumpkin pie not only for Thanksgiving, but also for Christmas, and others more like the Thompsons. As Robert Young used to say, “I’m not really a doctor, but I play one on television.”
Which qualifies me to pontificate on all manner of issues associated with food and farming I suppose, at least as much as it qualified Dr. Welby to hawk health products. The original key blog announced that Aldo Leopold’s environmental philosophy would provide a framework for future entries. “It’s a nice little philosophical essay,” said Diane, “but it’s not very funny.” Harsh criticism, indeed.
So by the next week I was trying to interweave some background observations on getting the farm ready for winter with some Dadaist juxtaposition of quotations from Pliny the Elder and historical comments on St. Vitas dance and it’s possible linkage to ergot poisoning. I guess it was one of those things that you had to be there to see it. The week after that we were into “Take Out Season,” and the smile-a-little-bit but hardly-ever-slap-your-knees style of the Thornapple blog was full on. I still do those nice little philosophical essays now and then, but I try not to take myself too seriously.
A year ago I was questioning whether it was worth the effort it took to keep the Thornapple blog going. But due to the overwhelming response from my readers (well, one person did write), I’ve kept it going for another year. I’ve kept it on the food ethics/CSA way theme with just a couple of deviations, and I, at least, still think of it as working within that Aldo Leopold framework. If you’re wondering what that is, I’m providing a link right here: Original Thornapple Blog. I love it when real people post comments, but I appreciate the fact that it is an enormous pain to do that. I may or may not keep it going yet another year. Winter’s coming on again in Michigan, and folks do need something to tide them over ’til the sun shines again. Or, as Jerry Seinfeld might have said, “Yada yada.”
Which brings me to the song lyric for this anniversary entry. According to Wikipedia, the song “Ja-Da” was penned in 1918 by Missourian Bob Carleton and released on a piano roll by the Original New Orleans Jazz Band. The Original New Orleans Jazz Band featured a lead singer named Jimmy Durante, which establishes the analogy to George Michael and Wham! Michael went into the hospital suffering from pneumonia this week, and we all hope he gets better soon. But that’s not what I wanted to blog about.
Carleton’s lyrics went like this:
Ja-Da
Ja-Da
Ja-da, Ja-da jing jing jing.
(Repeat)
That’s a funny little bit of melody—it’s so soothing and appealing to me.
Ja-Da! Ja-Da! Ja-da ja-da jing jing jing.
Which is all well and good, but the connection to food ethics lies in the fact that the exact same chord sequence and melody is used in a blues standard that has the following food-related verse:
What’s that smells like fish pretty baby, I sure would like to know.
(Repeat)
That ain’t puddin’. That ain’t pie. That’s the kind a stuff that you got to buy!
So keep on truckin’ mama. Truck my blues away.
Now for some reason this is often given a lascivious connotation, but I believe that the original singers were probably referring to the fact that red-blooded (which is to say, hot-blooded) boys really were attracted to girls who had spent all day in the kitchen and really did smell like pudding or pie. They were suspicious of fancy types who wore perfume, which, very much like Mrs. Smith’s or Marie Callender’s, is just NOT part of the CSA way.
There’s just a chance that Carleton was borrowing, but it’s also possible that the blues singers were making a creative adaptation of Jimmy Durante. Assignment for the week: Is there an ethics question here?
Paul B. Thompson is the W.K. Kellogg Professor of Agricultural, Food and Community Ethics at Michigan State University
November 20, 2011
Greetings from BadhotelScheveningen! That’s actually the name of the place. “I kid you not!” as Jack Paar might have said. “I’m not making this up!” as Dave Berry might have said. “I am not a crook!” as Richard Nixon might have said. You get the picture.
What do you expect from a place that’s actually called Bad Hotel? Is this the next film in the series that brought us Bad Santa and Bad Teacher? That would be a hotel where everyone is vulgar and out for themselves. But since this is pretty much the reality at most hotels you might visit these days, it isn’t actually much of a premise for the next film starring Jason Sudeikis or some other punk I’ve never heard of. No, the pitch for “Bad Hotel” would probably go something like this: “Fawlty Towers meets The Office”. A klatch of dysfunctional losers occupy positions in the front office at the airport location of a chain hotel in some dismal Midwestern location like Omaha, Tulsa or Grand Rapids. I know, I know. Those of us here in Lansing think of Grand Rapids as the epitome of sophistication and cosmopolitan élan. But we’ve got to realize that the two-coasters who form the bulk of the film audience these days probably don’t see it that way.
At any rate, the head manager is some narcissistic fop who majored in hospitality studies at the local land-grant university (I spare myself and my employer no embarrassment at the Thornapple Blog), mainly because it was a great way to avoid interrupting video games or the occasional bout of heavy drinking to do something like actually crack a book. The special events director is actually competent and a subtly sexy and intelligent babe who read Rimbaud in the original French during college (not that our scripts will ever betray any hint of this), but she is continually stifled by the corporate structure and the unintended but devastatingly effective barriers to her advancement that are erected by the narcissistic fop manager. Then there are necessary losers we need to round the Bad Hotel scenario: vindictive petty bureaucrats, muscular, bright and generally disinterested security staff and a few well-meaning cultural stereotypes in the waitstaff or custodial service. It’s tough to resist those can’t quite understand the language mis-cues in a vehicle like this.
So now that I’ve given away another million-dollar idea in the Thornapple Blog (see “Fat Elvis” for the earlier instance), I’ll say that the Bad Hotel here in Scheveningen is actually nothing like this. Oh sure, we’re a block from the actual seaside, with at least two multi-story apartment buildings thoroughly obscuring any chance we might have of catching a glimpse of the ocean. And it is November, after all, and by noon we find that the bone-chilling fog that rolled in off the North Sea is only just now beginning to lift a little bit. Not that the sun is out, mind you, but the impenetrable steel gray cloud cover has actually risen to the point that I can see the top of the 11 story condo building that is the second of two between me and that ocean view that people would actually pay to come here and look at. But the hotel itself is okay. Nice little dining room with a street-side window where I sat for hours sipping bitter coffee and watching snugly dressed Dutch couples out walking their dogs.
Ah the bliss of being an internationally recognized food ethicist! Expense paid out-of-season travel to bad hotels at North Sea resorts that normally have only about six weeks when you could actually wear a bathing suit, in any case. Excuse me while I gloat.
I hope that volcano doesn’t crank up again. I’m looking forward to being home for Thanksgiving. Or as McGeorge Bundy might have said, “Mistakes were made.”
Paul B. Thompson is the W.K. Kellogg Professor of Agricultural, Food and Community Ethics at Michigan State University
November 13, 2011
It seems that the noted philosopher Paul Thompson has a new book out. It’s called Agro-Technology: A Philosophical Introduction. The title is just a wee bit misleading because the main focus of the book is a bit narrower. Thompson gives an extended defense of genetic engineering in developing new crops, and argues that planting genetically engineered crops is far superior to conventional agriculture.
The main thrust of the argument is that the two main achievements of plant genetic engineering—herbicide tolerant crops and pest resistant crops that produce their own version of the Bt toxin—have led to an overall reduction of chemical use and resulted in the substitution of less toxic chemicals when they are compared to the farming methods used by most farmers in the industrial world. They have also improved soil conservation due to the way that they permit no-till farming. They have done all this with no decline in yields. That is, farmers are producing as many bushels of corn and soybeans or bales of cotton per acre as they ever did.
Thompson is not averse to organic farming. It, too, results in reduced chemical use, but it doesn’t score the victories in soil conservation and he is skeptical that it can maintain adequate yields, especially in the developing world. In fact, he thinks it’s downright criminal that biotechnology is being kept out of Africa because African leaders have been made fearful of it my unscrupulous European representatives of NGOs. He also waxes eloquent over the products of genetic engineering that are just on the horizon.
As it happens, I agree with Thompson about most of this, though I have a bit of a “show me” attitude about the wonder products that are just around the bend. They’ve been coming any day now since sometime in the mid-1990s. Maybe. We’ll see. I also think that Thompson is a bit unfair to contemporary organic production, which is not really just any kind of production that eschews synthetic chemicals. It’s flatly irresponsible to say that poor African producers are using organic methods, yet I think he does come pretty darn close to saying just that.
Yet although I mostly agree with him, I would never have written a book like this, mainly because I think that the dichotomy between biotechnology and organics has been and continues to be one of the most unproductive ways of talking about what matters in agriculture today. It’s why I’ve worked up all the stuff about an agrarian vision that you read about in the Thronapple blog, and why I don’t find very many occasions to write about biotechnology here.
And then there’s also my sense that too many blogs like this one would just bore everyone to tears.
So I’ll just close by noting that the author of Agro-Technology is on the faculty of the University of Toronto, and that he served for a number of years on the Monsanto Company’s “Bioethics Advisory Board”. Neither is true of me.
Paul B. Thompson is the W.K. Kellogg Professor of Agricultural, Food and Community Ethics at Michigan State University
November 6, 2011
This week I’ll astound and amaze both of my regular readers (not to mention the random net surfer) with my amazing (not to say also astounding) powers of ethical analysis. About twice a year I get the random e-mail from some total stranger who describes some apparently outrageous circumstance having something to do with food or agriculture, and ending up with the question “Is that ethical?”
I’m usually unsure how to take this, because these random e-mails from strangers almost never describe the circumstance in question in anything that approximates genuine puzzlement. So why are they contacting me out of the blue? Is my role as a Big 10 university food ethicist simply to validate the common sense judgment of random websurfers?
Well, maybe that’s not such a bad role, afterall. But here’s my “Is that ethical” query for the week. I recently heard an ag economist talking about last summer’s outbreak of e-coli contamination in Oregon strawberries. Now, some of you might be asking “Is that ethical?” but according to my source the public health authorities determined that the e-coli came from deer. And we cannot actually hold the deer morally responsible for contaminating strawberries, so the answer to that question would be “It’s neither ethical nor un-ethical for a deer to contaminate strawberries with e-coli because deer are not moral agents.” But that’s not what I wanted to astound and amaze you with.
No, the ag economist went on to talk about how shocked people were when they found out that contaminated strawberries from this farm were being sold at a number of roadside farmstands and one or two farmers’ market stalls. People seemed to think the person wearing loose pants with bib and braces that they were handing their grubby moolah over to had personally supervised the entire life cycle of the berry in question. When they found out that some of these overall garbed yeomen cultivators schilling strawberries in farmstands had gotten them by trading with other overall garbed hucksters, er I mean tillers of the soil, they were outraged. Is that ethical?
There are a few circumstances where it clearly is not. Some farmer’s markets operate under pretty strict rules stipulating that only actual farmers can sell there, and that they must be selling things that they have personally grown on their own farms. If they are breaking market rules they are doing something unethical. However, some markets stipulate the first bit but not the second, which allows farmers to throw some cabbage or rutabagas from their neighbor’s farm in the back of the pick-up and sell that at the market, too. And those farmstands by the roadside do not operate with any rules at all, other that public health standards and laws that prevent them from out right lying to customers. Astounding as it may seem they could be reselling some of Bobby Driscoll’s amazing California strawberries they bought that morning at Wal-Mart. I met Bobby at an Ag. Food & Human Values meeting back in 1988 or ’89, though as far as I know he has nothing to do with Driscoll’s berries today. He was wearing blue jeans rather than overalls, but that’s another story entirely. My point was that these faux roadside berry drummers wouldn’t be vulnerable to complaint so long as they don’t tell you something different.
People might be shocked, shocked to find out that this kind of horsetrading is going on under their very noses at the local farmers’ market or the roadside farm stand, but it’s actually quite consistent with the whole spirit of local foods. However, things start to turn gray as the distance or the number of trades mounts. How ‘bout them apples that came from Uncle Chuck’s way up in Newaygo County, not to mention Uncle Chang’s from Jiansu province. Or the ones that came off Cousin Ronnie’s truck via her neighbor Lucinda who got them from an old school friend who come to think of it doesn’t actually have a farm, so it’s really no tellin’ where they came from. Is that ethical?
Well, maybe it is. It’s certainly legal, but it does put a little pressure on the old farmer to eater food chain we’ve grown so fond of here in CSA territory. So maybe it’s not. Guess you’ll just have to use your own judgment, and if you’re worried about this kind of thing, don’t feel ashamed to ask about it next time you buy a bag of fruit from someone wearing overalls. Astounding and amazing, ain’t it?
Paul B. Thompson holds the W.K. Kellogg Chair in Agricultural, Food and Community Ethics at Michigan State University
October 30, 2011
It was very nearly 15 years ago to the day that I was wandering around in a field near Tlachihualtepetl in Cholula, Puebla with Laura Westra. Tlachihualtepetl is a story in its own right, up there with the Nebra Sky Disc and an obscure reference well worth Googling for those of you who are casual surfers. But it’s less central to my theme this week than the simple fact that Laura and I were in Mexico just as the locals were ramping up for the Day of the Dead celebrations.
Laura Westra is a pretty famous Canadian environmental philosopher who has written on dozens of topics. Though it’s not so much what she’s known for, she attacks genetically engineered crops with an assertiveness that is remarkable, and she has also written that agriculture should be thought of as a buffer zone between wild nature and industrial areas. This latter point is my launching pad this week, because Laura and I were standing out in a field of cempasúchil flowers.
It was, in fact, a pretty stunning day. Bright blue skies and a sea of bright orange. The cempasúchil is apparently a marigold, but I tend to think of marigolds as petite little buds that we plant around the edges of the garden to keep away bugs. These bad boys are between 24” and 36” tall and the blossoms are ginormous. All of which leads Laura to make the innocent conversational remark “Isn’t it great to be out in wild nature?”
I could have responded with some bland and polite response like “It’s beautiful,” because it was. I still recall the day pretty vividly. But back in Puebla City we had been inspecting some of the memorial alters that had been built in tribute to the deceased. These things are pretty amazing, many occupying as much space as the typical farmers’ market stall and they are crammed full with photographs, sugar skulls, and mementos like favorite foods that recall the person being honored. And they are also covered with cempasúchil flowers. A single alter will have dozens, and there are hundreds and hundreds of these altars in Puebla alone.
And being the aggie freak that I am, I’m alert to the thought that when people need that many plants of a given kind all on a given day, they are very likely to be farming them. Indeed, that field out in the shadow of Tlachihualtepetl was full of plants that were all the same height, and all flowering at exactly the right time. Being the aggie freak that I am, it occurs to me that this is probably not an accident. So instead of simply saying “It’s beautiful,” my response to Laura’s happiness at being out in wild nature was: “Uh, actually this is a cultivated field.”
I don’t recall that Laura made any reply to this at all. I’ve occasionally told this story to make the point that even pretty famous environmental philosophers don’t necessarily know much about agriculture, and I do think that it’s a fair point. But it may not be fair to Laura, so when I tell this story to make that point, I usually leave her name out of it. A better point may simply be that one person’s cultivated field is another person’s wild nature. Laura was born and raised in Italy, where a walk in the country typically is a walk through farmers’ fields. On the one hand, she certainly would not have confused the typical Illinois soybean field for wild nature, and on the other hand, I had to agree that this particular field of cempasúchil flowers was a very nice place for a walk.
Is a day at Appleschram a day in wild nature? Americans are not very likely to put that adjective “wild” in there, but neither are we likely to call this “tame nature”. We’ve been socialized to think of wildness in terms of forests and mountains. But most of the Michigan “wild” is second growth, and its been pretty dramatically affected by the lumbering of the previous two centuries. Does the fact that it’s less managed than a typical farm field make it “wild”? Could a farm that scores well in our nature aesthetics test qualify for that status, too?
Hey! I’m just here to ask the questions. Maybe it’s up to the economists to answer them.
Paul B. Thompson holds the W.K. Kellogg Chair in Agricultural, Food and Community Ethics at Michigan State University
October 23, 2011
It’s been a good eight to ten weeks since we had anything to say about tomatoes in the Thornapple blog, and as both regular readers know, tomatoes are not only a personal obsession, they are the driving value behind the entire local food movement in the United States. I won’t speak for Europe or Japan, but here in America, resistance to the industrial food system is predicated 96.3% on tomatoes that have been developed to withstand a 30 mile impact, then be gassed with ethylene before they sit on grocery shelves for 14-17 years before actually being sliced into pale pink discs or wedges to accompany iceberg lettuce in what the industrial food system refers to euphemistically as a “salad”.
And unfortunately, I’m not making any of this up. The big revolution occurred in the 1970s when those pesky scientists at the University of California collaborated with companies developing mechanical tomato harvesters. The harvesters (see one here) roll through the field ripping the vines out of the ground. They blow the leafy bits one direction and hurl the tomatoes into a waiting truck. Hence the need for a) all the tomatoes to be ready for picking at one time and b) the ability to with stand the impact of getting hurled into a truck. Breeding a tomato that does that was paid for by your tax dollars at work.
Even after the input of pesky plant breeders, green tomatoes are still better for this, but goofy nerds that that U.S. consumers are, they won’t buy green tomatoes. Hence the need for ethylene, which causes them to redden up. Or at least the skins redden up. One difference between a Thornapple tomato and one that has survived a 30 mile impact at some time in it’s life cycle is that our tomatoes look just as good on the inside as they do on the outside.
That part about multi-year shelf-life, however, may not be strictly true.
But it seems that many Thornapplists are very much like ordinary U.S. goofy nerd Meijer shoppers who pass on the green tomatoes. At least I have heard that baskets of green tomatoes have been languishing at the weekly Thornapple CSA pick-up stations. Well phooey on you because all those green tomatoes that were picked in late-August early September to avoid the killing frost have now pretty much gassed themselves. They may not have the succulence of a vine-ripened tomato, but they are most certainly red, inside and out. Red inside and out except for the Black Krim, which are not quite as black as they would have been, but still pretty obviously a different kettle of fish entirely.
(Note Well: The metaphor in the above paragraph is not intended to imply that Thornapple tomatoes contain fish genes. That’s a different kettle of fish [which is to say a different blog topic] entirely. We’re not going there, but this parenthetical comment satisfies my contractual obligation to supply at least one obscure reference in every blog that sends people scrambling to Google in order to figure out what the heck Thompson is talking about.)
So I’ve gotten those last tomato and cottage cheese season-ending treats here in October (or at least I have done so when I’ve been able to plant my feet in Michigan for a day or two). I’m also told that people have inexplicably passed on the poblano peppers. Poblanos are the prince of peppers, folks. Wonderful and subtle, and not really all that hot. They are the only proper way to make a chili relleno. I lack the temerity to provide a recipe, because I haven’t actually made a chili relleno in a long, long time. But it ain’t that tough and the Internet is replete with advice. Back to Google, my foodie compatriots! Learn to enjoy the bounty while it lasts.
Herb Magidson and Carl Sigman wrote it and Guy Lombardo had the hit. And I’m repeating a thought from last February’s Warren Zevon tribute, in any case. But our own Jen Sygit does a bang up version. I don’t recall whether she does this verse, but I’m going to close with it, in any case.
You worry when the weather’s cold, You worry when it’s hot. You worry when you’re doing well, You worry when you’re doing not. It’s worry, worry all of the time, You don’t know how to laugh. They’ll think of something funny When they write your epitaph.
Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think. Enjoy yourself, while you’re still in the pink. The years go by, as quickly as wink. Enjoy yourself, Enjoy yourself It’s later than you think.
Paul B. Thompson is the W.K. Kellogg Professor of Agricultural, Food and Community Ethics at Michigan State University
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