Sleepwalking to the Fridge

Food is becoming more and more of a national issue. Many different organizations with many different agendas are talking food problems and solutions. Unfortunately for consumers of national news and views, food problems are performed and solutions are often accomplished on the local levels. Reported on the national level but worked out on the local, our food system takes on a view of unrecognizable relationships between businesses and consumers and unreliable agents of social and political change. With such a tradition of reporting, our communities cannot take action on their own behalf because there exist no infrastructure for local leadership and education, and because of a custom to national media streams to report on national stage actors, thereby omitting local solutions. Relying on that national discourse to explain an issue such as food policy is the onset of the alienation that ails us and perpetuates the community problem of ignorance. The solution to this problem is to begin forming community organizations tasked with diagnosing local problems and finding necessary solutions. Instead of a reactionary national press reporting on issues concerning local communities, and local communities scrambling to connect the dots, we need systems of education, reflection, and action that will empower local communities to reach their full potential. A quick suggestion: increase the funding to local public radio stations in order to improve the quality of local coverage.

On the front page of Time magazine this past week (Aug 31 2009 edition) is a cellophane package of meat with a warning to consumers reading, "Warning: This hamburger may be hazardous to your health. Why the American food system is bad for our bodies, our economy and our environment--and what some visionaries are trying to do about it." Bryan Walsh summarizes the scope of our current food crisis, putting in perspective the challenge ahead for our communities without directly addressing communities, as being politically, socially, and personally more costly than the price tag might let on. The article does not segment the problem, but grants our food system a seat at the head of the table with a great deal of analysis of the real cost of cheap food. Walsh even sidesteps the pitfall of ignoring the role of ordinary citizens writing, "Whether that happens will ultimately come down to all of us, since we have the chance to choose better food three times a day... But what we eat--how it's raised and how it gets to us--has consequences that can't be ignored any longer," (37). But, he fails to report on the underlying threat to consumers: disorganization.

The solution to the problem of poor food quality is bigger than changing the rationality for factory farming and industrial agriculture (although that is a piece). The solution to our problems of food, health care, environmental degradation, education, etc. is the resource the national press cannot help but forget about, the sleeping public. Mobilizing the local community into 'people's organizations' is the solution to a discourse dominated by narrow interests and attended to by a minority of foodies. Walsh plays directly into the recognition and dependence on a national leadership base that cannot know the intricacies of culture on the local level. They cannot know the reasons for the popularization of local customs supporting these destructive national forces of food-profiteering. Thus, the sleeping public must be awoken.

Some Americans are heeding such warnings and working to transform the way the country eats--ranchers and farmers who are raising sustainable food in ways that don't bankrupt the earth. Documentaries like the scathing Food Inc. and the work of investigative journalists like Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan are reprising Sinclair's work, awakening a sleeping public to the uncomfortable realities of how we eat (33)

A sleeping public. The public, our local communities, are the ultimate solution to our woes of uninformed choice. Through the linking of our shared narratives by sharing food, time, and fun we can empower eachother to value the action of upkeeping customs of positive community relations. Food is only the latest symptom of a larger problem of rampant consumerism, and the choices only begin with our food. As the article indicates, this issue extends into our health care, our environment, our jobs, and our politics. Thus the power we wield as communities must take center stage. The article goes on to read, "What we really need to do is something Americans have never done well, and that's to quit thinking big, (37)" But what we really need to do is start thinking organization. What we really need to start doing is thinking of the public's option to dialogue and understand the resources the public has.