A/V Fridays – The Case for Wonder Bread
Posted on June 5, 2009 by
We’ve come to romanticize the idea of going “back to the old ways,” of producing food. But the old ways never existed the way we seem to think they do. This talk is on the longer side, but I think it’s worth every minute. When the answers we’re working for aren’t the right answers, we put ourselves in a dangerous spot. We stop pursuing appropriate solutions.
Interesting presentation, but it seems she has constructed a straw man to defeat. Small scale, local production is not about grubbing in the earth with sticks. Small scale farmers use science and technology and her final comment about,”biological”farming suggests that what she is arguing against is organic food production. Her ideas about fish farming and food production greenhouses on rooftops fits directly with small scale and more localized food production so I am not sure I understand her primary message.
Farmers have struggled and been oppressed by systems set up to create classes of people, rulers, nobility, and those who crave wealth and power, who want to live off the labor of others and hoard. It is our societal structures that have screwed peasants and workers, not lack of robot weed pluckers.
I understand that the speaker cautions us that small scale production as a way of life wouldn’t work in our modern world of mass production. The point she didn’t dwell on, unfortunately, was food QUALITY.
People who long for “the old ways” of food production are actually longing for the “old qualities” of those foods, not necessarily the old methods. Mass for-profit food production has gotten us used to artificiality in color, texture and shape. We’ve gotten used to imitation cheeses and “summer sausages” that don’t have to be refrigerated. We even accept chemicals as food! No wonder we revere the artisan cheese and bread makers! These craftspersons are the only ones willing to use quality ingredients and to take the time required to create quality foods. Wonderbread can’t afford to take two days to make artisanal sourdough breads.
Currently, we have a industrial food production system that harms our health with fat/sodium/sugar/chemical-laden foodstuffs while simultaneously damaging the eco-system. If we could somehow come up with a system that produces large amounts of affordable, healthy foods reminiscent of long-ago craftsperson quality, while using environmentally friendly methods, we’d have the best of both worlds.
I must say, though, that in a society where pesticide companies are criticizing Michelle Obama for promoting organic gardeing, I’m not seeing this happening any day soon.