[lbo-talk] 100-mile diet - Sure it's self-involvement, but is it also bullshit?

[John Palmer]

You might be right, Wojtek, about the purely symbolic nature of the
100 mile diet but the desire to buy locally produced food is about a lot
more than improving the carbon footprint.  In the community I live
in 5 families are members of a local CSA (community supported
agriculture) consortium.  Members  subscribe (pay in advance) for a
growing season to a get a share of the produce from Farmer Frank's farm.
The total membership in this CSA is now about 300.  Each week we
get a bag full of locally grown fruits and vegetables and a newsletter
which has some recipes  to help us deal with the more exotic offerings.
Our farmer farms without pesticides; if we pay more we can get
eggs from pastured chickens, meat and cheese from pastured cows
and goats.  We are encouraged to visit the farms; last year we went
to one of the farms to pick apples late in the season.  Perhaps this is
just a "feel good" exercise in the larger scheme of things but the different
economic model does make it possible for the farmer to farm in a
way that he feels respects the land and the animals and it gives us city
folk a connection to our food which does, well, feel good.

Last Thursday our cohousing community in Tucson hosted a young couple
who started a ranch just south of Tucson.  They brought meat from their
ranch for a hambuger cookout.  They are concerned to raise their animals
on pasture and they find outlets for their meat (which is, of course, more
expensive than supermarket beef) in local farmer's markets and CSA
style subscription.  I am not a big hambuger eater but the one I ate was
delicious. 

I hope that some return to smaller scale farming is not ridiculous; 
industrial
scale agriculture is exploitive and sometimes (think hogs or chickens)
frightening to contemplate.  In the meantime farmer's markets and CSA's
do allow for an alternative to prosper; it is conceivable that the more
successful of these ventures might be models for the future of agriculture
(admittedly, I have an imagination).

John Palmer

Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> Boddi:
>
>
> And the idea that we are going to go back to small, multi-crop farms
> seems ridiculous when the trend has been the other way for centuries.
>
>
> [WS:] You are right on this, comrade, it is a bunch of nonsense from a
> rational point of view.  However, this is not about rationality but about
> feeling good about oneself.  Many people are genuinely concerned that the
> American life style is unsustainable and devastating for the environment,
> and even want to do something about.  
>
> The 100-mile diet is a craftily designed symbolic gesture that allows people
> to think that they are doing something without actually doing anything.  It
> has all the hallmarks of a "protest" movement - anti-corporate tone, "small
> is beautiful" feel, the emphasis of everyday ritual (like going to farmers'
> markets, health food stores, all the small talk surrounding it, etc.) - that
> appeal to an individual by creating an illusion that he/she is doing
> something to solve a social problem.  However, it does nothing drastic or
> controversial, it does not address the root causes of that problem (e.g.
> changing land use patterns, transportation, energy use, etc.)  In that
> respect, it is like alms giving in the middle ages - it made the giver feel
> good about himself thinking he would go to heaven, made the church rich by
> acting as alms giving intermediary, but otherwise it did not make a dint of
> a difference.
>
> Wojtek
>
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