The Real World of Real Food

It didn't take long, but I miss farm work already. Unfortunately, I'll have limited opportunity to rekindle my relationship with growing organic food next season. Instead of straining in the fields, I'll be spending most of my time over the next year sedentary in--what I told myself I wanted at the end of the season--an office.

It won't be meaningless. Through Americorps, I'm serving with an organization called the Food and Health Network of South Central New York (FaHN), which is based forty-five minutes outside of Ithaca in the town of Whitney Point. The group is a collaboration of partner organizations that align with the mission of FaHN: basically to create food secure communities by increasing local food consumption. As the FaHN coordinator, I keep all of our partner organizations in-tune and on-track: basically lots of emailing, scheduling, website updating, newsletter writing, and report drafting. Staring at a computer screen (that dreaded glare) all day won't be as immediately rewarding as harvesting hundreds of pounds of food for a three-hundred-person CSA. But it will be a necessary first step to facing the realities of both adult life and the real food scene.

On Thursday, I attended my first conference: the New York State Agricultural Society annual forum. The moment I arrived, I wished I hadn't misread the conference schedule; I thought registration mingling was from 8:30 to only 9:00, but instead, it lasted a whole hour, ending at 9:30. I wandered into a room divided by lines of display tables where refreshments were being served. Lots of white men in suits. Some women, too. But lots of men. (Later in the day, I spotted two African Americans and one Indian woman—the conference definitely wasn’t celebrating diversity). I hightailed it to the refreshments table, ate my scone as slowly as possible, then weaved through the exhibits, looking interested enough to make it look like I belonged yet deter elicitation from the question-answerers stationed behind the foam board presentations. Most of the tables weren't relevant for me (they were targeting farmers or people who work directly with farmers). Everyone in the room seemed to know each other and be engaging in conversation. I finished the round in a mere ten minutes, having picked up only one (irrelevant) pamphlet from the Cornell Cheese Club table, where I'd sampled some cheddar. After returning to the refreshments table for some juice, I wasted the next hour with three more aimless circles around the room, struggling to think of some meaningful questions to ask someone, anyone.

At last, the sound of a cowbell herded everyone into the main presentation room dotted not with side-by-side chairs arranged in neat rows but with, uh-oh, round tables. I found an empty one at the end of the big room. The first person to sit with me--a woman who actually turned out to be someone I would have met at the end of the month--seemed like she was feeling similarly awkward (she's relatively new to the scene as well). After everyone found a seat, the long day began.

The first presentation addressed, somewhat surprisingly, improving the global (not regional or local) food system. I was immediately skeptical--how can we possibly tackle feeding the world's hungry before making our closest communities food secure? But these people are experts. I tried to keep an open mind, which was ultimately a task that proved difficult. The presenter spewed high-and-mighty geysers of data coupled with conclusions: to feed the growing population (9 billion people by 2050), we need to DOUBLE food production on a dying planet that will decreasingly offer viable farmland and reliable water sources—how will we do this? Surely a well-intentioned and, perhaps, necessary conversation. But I cringed when he said that "one of the greatest crimes against humanity" has been committed by European NGOs (non-governmental organizations) discouraging the cultivation of genetically modified organisms/crops (GMOs) in underdeveloped countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

To explain all of the arguments against GMOs is far too lengthy of a discussion to explore here (I suggest starting with the film Food Inc. and the book Soil Not Oil by Vandana Shiva). However, one of the greatest criticisms, in short, is that introducing GMOs, especially in underdeveloped countries, will effectively strip small farmers of their independence by making them rely on seeds that they must annually purchase every year from the GMO companies, in addition to purchasing all of the (environmentally destructive) fertilizers and pesticides that must be used to help that crop grow; GMOs will render the traditional practice of saving seeds from this year's crop to use for planting the following year's crop useless, increasing the amount of capital that farmers (who are already poor) need every year. All of this is promoted under the respectable guise of the probably impossible task of eliminating famine.

Surely, I wasn't the only person in the room aware (and supportive) of anti-GMO arguments. But during lunch, the GMO topic resurfaced, and I found myself in a minority of opinion. One woman, shaking her head with contempt, said, "Well of course the Europeans aren't going to support [GMOs]--they're not hungry!" While this may be true, this woman's assertion reflected a shallow and short-sighted view that has characterized the transformation of agriculture into a practice that is damaging on an environmental and humanitarian level. In an era of destruction and decline, we cannot afford reactionary decisions that fail to deeply assess in multiple contexts the pros and cons of implementing a new practice (what is the value of reducing famine with GMOs if only to further indenture a presently poor population?). Of course, I write much better than I speak, and I had difficulty shaping these thoughts and verbalizing articulate words before the conversation moved to a different topic. My grossly minor age and experience in comparison to those surrounding me didn't serve my confidence either.

A few more presentations focused more on the potential value of New York State agriculture and how the producers and consumers of this state might realize such value. I found this subject more promising. I didn't fail to notice, however, the absence in every presentation of the words "organic" or "holistic" or "sustainable". Not that agriculture should be discussed solely in these contexts. But surely these words deserve a place in the lexicon of 21st century agriculture. Instead, the "buy local" movement was subtly swept under the rug, regarded, by both a scholar and a farmer, as purely a niche market that has already been filled and will not further expand. Not particularly hopeful. Realistic, perhaps—who am I to counter the bottom-line claims of a long-time fruit farmer? But certainly not hopeful.

A bleak sky ushered me into the cold as I rushed out the doors of the Holiday Inn. I got into my car, praying the snow would wait until my hour-and-a-half drive was over. So much driving; I’d have to stop for gas again (the second time in one week!) on the way home. As I drove past the broken buildings and smoky factories of Syracuse, my mind sifted through the words of the day, exposing broken shells in place of tiny treasures. I had just listened to some of the biggest players in New York agriculture and not one of them discussed its potential role in reviving the depressed rural communities of the state by restoring food security. Everything comes down to economics, I kept telling myself, as I considered the implications of my own eye-opening post-graduate budgeting. Thoughts about the conference ebbed into thoughts about my service with FaHN. Tomorrow I would exercise my long commute to Whitney Point, sit in front of my computer, and set to fixing the very things that a room full of agriculture specialists said, in so many words, could not be fixed. Maybe this is a sign that I have not yet completely surrendered the romantic idealist from college. But I am working in an office.