Like the yuppies and dinks around us, we are centrally located between the farm fields of Virginia and the Farm Bill halls of power. We enjoy a Whole Foods and a year-round farmers market. But my interest in healthy food and how it is produced solidified during three years in Iowa City – one of the centers of Iowa’s local-food movement and adjacent to some massive corn fields. Now, I can’t claim to know many farmers -- though I did enjoy Galen’s lamb occasionally -- but I think processing the food movement (pun intended) while living in Iowa prompted some helpful questions about utopian farming and food systems. Also, my husband loves Oreos and being a devil’s advocate.There’s more to consider and write about on this topic: the responsibility of Christians to steward the earth – and feed the poor; the unintended elitism of much of the locavore/foodie movement; and society’s construction of food mores with a kind of religious fervor.
For now, consider this article recommended by Mark Bittman on “The Facts about Food and Farming.” Maybe we have room for trowels and tractors.
There is a new documentary called Food, Inc. you might want to check out. Carolyn McCulley blogged about it recently in the context of social justice, looking at both questionable practices that increase production and those that artificially lower the cost of food (i.e through subsidies) so the market gets skewed globally, affecting not wealthy but poor nations. Lots to think about. I enjoy food so much and I resent feeling conflicted about it but I want to learn what the REAL issues are, which I find hard to decipher amid the political agendas afoot sometimes.
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