Also, here’s the full playlist from the September 25 edition of The Midnight Special radio show.

Photo by dhamzza

My recent encounter in Oklahoma City with this “locally grown” jar of roasted bell peppers from Napa Valley caused me to revisit this fantastic article from last May, which explores the angles and issues with the “local” label. Mezzetta, Frito Lay, and others are making a case for “local” in relation to their processing plant and are clearly leaving the eater out of the equation. What merit does this have? Is this an improvement upon former business practices or is it merely a new marketing strategy for their status quo? When the labels we trust become diluted from government certification or opportunistic marketing gurus, they become, at best, nothing more than a game of semantics and at worst, completely meaningless.

From the article:

…the widening view of what it means to eat locally is similar to the changes the term organic went through as it grew from a countercultural ideal in the 1960s and 1970s to an industry with nearly $25 billion in sales last year. A related debate about how to define sustainable farming is now gathering force in government, agriculture and business.

It takes a community to sustain a small farm
“I used to think there were four distinct pieces to a local food system: production, processing, distribution, and retail. Now I realize there is a fifth: community. Without an involved community of customers who believe in what the local farmer, miller, distributor, and grocer is doing, none of them will last very long.”

It’s getting tougher to bring home the bacon
“The government is concerned that bacteria from a smuggled piece of meat will spread through the ecosystem, infecting livestock and hurting agricultural production…”

Why you should go see Fantastic Mr. Fox
I had no idea.

Cultivating Failure
A ferocious critique of edible schoolyards.
“It’s the state’s Department of Education that is to blame for allowing these gardens to hijack the curricula of so many schools. But although garden-based curricula are advanced as a means of redressing a wide spectrum of poverty’s ills, the animating spirit behind them is impossible to separate from the haute-bourgeois predilections of the Alice Waters fan club…”

And a delightful, smart, animated response to “Cultivating Failure.”

The industry blogs are even more fun, where bloggers like Yvonne Vizzier Thaxton of Poultry Perspectives argue semantics: in her view factory farms and family-owned farms are mutually exclusive. And the mere existence of factory farms is questionable. Oh, and this gem: “Poultry farmers are farmers and by nature these people love the environment otherwise, they could have a career in an office doing much less physically exhausting work.” (from “The message we need to shout,” 9/1/09; I’d link to it, but articles and blogs require a sign-in.)

Yesterday’s Meatingplace headlines were peculiar in that two stories were inconveniently interwoven.

The referenced author is Jonathan Safran Foer, whose new book is titled Eating Animals. He has an erroneously titled opinion piece here. I guess an honest, thorough title wouldn’t be as provocative. Do you think Foer’s critique of animal agriculture will be taken seriously? Is there room for another voice in this discussion?

Let us focus on some legitimate indoctrination:

“By the year 2000, the Centers for Disease Control estimated that one in five schools participating in the National School Lunch Program had brand-name fast foods in their lunchrooms.”

—School Lunch Politics by Susan Levine

More here.

Monsanto
Animal agriculture industry groups
National Chicken Council

I’ve been eating some great food—more on that later. And I got to see Food, Inc. in its limited release. Amazing. It covered a lot of ground— mainly reinforcing things I already new a bit about. I was most shocked by the footage on Monsanto’s investigative, intimidation, and legal activities. They are destroying our agrarian heritage, rural communities, relationships, livelihoods, etc. I was so disgusted. But the documentary did a good job of inspiring. I felt so pumped by the end of the movie. It helped that the theater was packed and people were just as moved as I was, judging by the sniffles I heard around me. And then… Eric Schlosser came out for a Q&A! He likened the sustainable food movement to the anti-tobacco movement: “The law changes once you reach a critical mass of public opinion,” he said. After the movie the cool guy hung out in front of the theater talking with a small crowd (including me). It was awesome!

I can’t wait for Food, Inc. to come to Oklahoma.