New at Reason

June 1, 2007

Ronald Bailey spends a fictional (sort of) year on the farm with Barbara Kingsolver.

Comments

|6.1.07 @ 2:53PM|#

a 100 acre farm near the one in Meadowview, VA, on which I helped slaughter and butcher cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, and where we kept a root cellar filled with potatoes and turnips; 20 or so hives for honey; churned butter, canned cherries, tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, corn, blackberries, and nearly anything else fruit or vegetable that we could coax out of the soil. Beans were dried for winter storage strung on threads above my bed.

Just out of curiosity, was this a working farm or a hippie farm?

Good review, BTW.

|6.1.07 @ 3:02PM|#

Great piece Ron.

Disclosure: I also grew up on a dairy farm and left for "greener pastures".

|6.1.07 @ 3:06PM|#

With that level of productivity, even if they are smelly hippies, they're working harder than you did moving your little pig-like fingers to produce your post.

|6.1.07 @ 3:10PM|#

With that level of productivity, even if they are smelly hippies, they're working harder than you did moving your little pig-like fingers to produce your post.

Screw you. I wasn't trying to be a dick. As I said, I'm curious, given the braod range of things the farm produced.

|6.1.07 @ 3:17PM|#

It's almost impossible to get decent berries out here on the West Coast.

...even if you're willing to pay an arm and a leg at one of the upscale groceries, they always seem to be moldy and nasty by the time they get here.

And would it kill y'all to send us some white peaches every once in a while?

Xmas|6.1.07 @ 3:20PM|#

Ron, your article confirms my belief that the great tragedy of the modern world is our loss of connections with the great circle of life.

Growing up on a farm probably taught you more about the birds and the bees, literally and figuratively, and life and death than a dozen books could contain.

|6.1.07 @ 3:28PM|#

Obviously you don't have to try to be a dick in order to be one.

|6.1.07 @ 3:29PM|#

Oh hey, I was just talking about my 'you have to kill what you eat to be fully human' theory down on the PETA (can eat shit and die) thread.

|6.1.07 @ 3:30PM|#

Good review. I can't argue with Ron's opinion that it's a good thing we're not all tied to farming anymore.

I guess the one concern that wasn't addressed was the role of cheap energy in our current food system. What happens if/when the price of oil shoots through the roof and it's no longer easy to ship food across the country?

Ellie|6.1.07 @ 3:33PM|#

Hee, I just put that book on hold at the library. Good review.

I've lately become entranced with Mother Earth News and stories of homesteading, living off the grid, and homemade composting toilets. The life appeals to me. I see it as a delightful luxury of modern living. I mean, if I had to trade in NPR and the polio vaccine to get it? Nope.

While I think a lot of the parts of the recent granola movements fall into categories like "Nice hobby, just don't make me do it" or "Well-meaning, if a little misinformed," the whole locavore thing just bothers me. Nothing wrong with being aware of the carbon/pollution costs of food transport in general, or with encouraging people to buy local if it's the same thing. But the endless finger-wagging, the menu-limiting, the giving-up of coffee inevitably followed by the gnashing of teeth? Societies have been trading food with other societies probably since the dawn of time, or at least civilization. To act like it's suddenly a big horror is, quite frankly, idiotic.

I think it adds another bit of evidence to the notion that the enviromentalist movement is (in some circles) becoming incredibly religious. One atones for man's ecological sins through sacrifice and dietary restrictions. And as adhering to a vegetarian, organic, macrobiotic, etc diet becomes easier and cheaper thanks to increasing variety and availability in supermarkets, the hardcore self-flagellators start looking for an even more restrictive rule to base their lives around, to be "truly" in touch with the planet. And honestly, it's as bad to let them take the wheel as the most fundamentalist Puritan religious types, at least in terms of individual freedoms.

Plus, I hear Kingsolver disses vegans in the book. Poo on you, Barbara! PS, Pigs in Heaven was lame.

|6.1.07 @ 3:43PM|#

Kingsolver's farm is only possible because of the industrial revolution.

Prior to the IR, 40 Acres was the maximum tilled* plot that an entire family, working full time, could effectively manage themselves. Larger properties required "hired hands", who were (at best) casual laborer and (at worst) slaves.

*Herding operations - sheep, cattle, etc. - could be larger in area but the food production per acre is much lower.

|6.1.07 @ 3:45PM|#

"Well-heeled North American epicures are likely to gather around a table where whole continents collide discreetly on a white tablecloth: New Zealand lamb with Italian porcinis, Peruvian asparagus, and a hearty French Bordeaux," writes Kingsolver. "The date on the calendar is utterly irrelevant." She denounces this situation as "botanically outrageous." I think it's just plain wonderful. emphasis mine

Amen brother

Rhywun|6.1.07 @ 4:07PM|#

Wow. I always thought farm life would be hell and along comes Ron Bailey to vividly prove to me that yes, farm life is everlasting, gobstopping Hell on wheels. As for the "great circle of life" hoo-ey, pffft. You can have it. I suspect it's highly overrated anyway.

|6.1.07 @ 5:04PM|#

...giving-up of coffee

I hadn't thought of that.

Coffee beans only grow in the tropics, right?

I wonder how many 'localvores' are giving up the Java?

|6.1.07 @ 5:18PM|#

To pick up on what Ellie says, I've long maintained that some people are very picky about who they have sex with and some people are picky about what they eat. Some do both activities with abandon, but virtually nobody (sorry Ghandhi) practices extreme restraint in both.

You'd explode or something.

Ventifact|6.1.07 @ 5:38PM|#

You'd either explode or implode, depending on which deprivation got to you first...

|6.1.07 @ 5:41PM|#

I've lately become entranced with Mother Earth News and stories of homesteading, living off the grid, and homemade composting toilets.

Another good publication in this vein is "Backwoods Home" Magazine.
http://www.backwoodshome.com/

Plus, they are very lib-friendly and have lots of articles on canning.

|6.1.07 @ 5:42PM|#

Growing up on a farm sounds a lot better than growing up in the suburbs. But living your whole life there not so much.

|6.1.07 @ 6:02PM|#

Growing up on a farm sounds a lot better than growing up in the suburbs. But living your whole life there not so much.

I can confirm that. I grew up in a small town (population 600) in a rural area and now I live in the Chicago Suburbs.

I would have loved to have grown up in the suburbs.

|6.1.07 @ 7:52PM|#

I am a life long city dweller, and lost any romantic notions of farm life when I went to help out on my uncle's farm in Missouri on a couple of occasions. Cleaning out stables in the July heat tends to have that effect.

|6.1.07 @ 9:26PM|#

I grew up in the country, and now live in the city (Portland, OR). Downtown. The country is far preferable, even when you do shovel shit. The place is quiet and the air is clean, and there is not chaos and turmoil. I desperately miss the country but can't afford to live there. Cities suck. So do suburbs.

Franklin Harris|6.1.07 @ 10:09PM|#

I wonder how many 'localvores' are giving up the Java?

To say nothing of sushi, which is the one food most dependent on globalism.

Franklin Harris|6.1.07 @ 10:11PM|#

I spent my earliest years on a farm. Cows stink. Chickens stink. Fertilizer stinks. To put it bluntly, farms stink. My parents getting divorced and my mom moving us to the "city," which was and is more of a bedroom community for the real city 20 miles east, was the best thing ever.

Russell|6.2.07 @ 12:15AM|#

Thank goodness the lanolin was anthrax free- must have been the clean air

LarryA|6.2.07 @ 12:52PM|#

Kingsolver also worries about fashionable topic of "foodmiles." She hectors readers about the fact that the food on most Americans' plates travels an average of 1500 miles to get there. "Well-heeled North American epicures are likely to gather around a table where whole continents collide discreetly on a white tablecloth: New Zealand lamb with Italian porcinis, Peruvian asparagus, and a hearty French Bordeaux," writes Kingsolver. "The date on the calendar is utterly irrelevant." She denounces this situation as "botanically outrageous."

Yeah. Right up until a drought or some other disaster kills off all the locally-grown food. Self-sufficiency sounds romantic until an off-season hail kills off a crop or two and leaves a hole in your food supply, which translates to a hole in your belly.

The article also didn't mention that true subsistence farming was far more hazardous than almost any modern occupation. Lots of graves in those old cemeteries hold a teenager caught in a thresher, etc.

The steaks, chops, and roasts in our dining room deep chest freezer were often labeled with the names of the cows and pigs from which they came.

And here I thought Rule One was "Never name your food."

|6.2.07 @ 2:09PM|#

----------------------------------
Unfortunately, Kingsolver adopts absolutely every one the modern urban fables with regard to food production, starting with the claim that organic is more nutritious. There is very little scientific evidence for that claim. In addition, organic is not necessarily better for nature since yields are generally lower than conventional farming, which means that more land must be used to produce food.
----------------------------------
Calling organic food advocates' claims as to the health benefits of eating organic a myth is a bit unscientific, don't you think? (Especially, since you only cite a _lack_ of scientific evidence, not evidence to the contrary - like, e.g., large-scale population studies showing equivalent levels of health across organic- and non-organic-eating populations.) I suspect the lack of scientific evidence has more to do with what researchers are looking for - viz., negative effects of trace amounts of pesticides. What they don't look for are the positive effects of the greater _broad-spectrum_ mineral content of organic produce (more than just NPK). Plants can't manufacture minerals via photosynthesis; if it ain't in the soil, it ain't gonna be in the final product.

Bash the localvores all you want - you have sound economic arguments for doing so - but lay off the organic food issues until you're prepared to do a _lot_ of reading of studies by people who actually know what they're doing when researching the effects of natural remedies and organic food consumption - i.e., not most American-trained MDs (who weren't required to take a single course on nutrition or phytomedicine). Your tone probably puts off a lot of otherwise freedom-loving granola types, and for no good reason. BTW, I'm not a DO, a DC, an ND or a "hippie".

|6.2.07 @ 2:11PM|#

"Family farms are not declining because of some conspiracy by industrial ag giants. Actually, what happened is that farmers became so productive that we needed fewer of them. "

That's not the whole story. Bailey leaves out the effect of the death tax and inflation on a farmer's ability to leave his property to his family. Rising farm productivity is a big part of the consolidation of farming into big agriculture welfare queens like ADM and Cargill, but let's not forget the role that government has played in those changes.

-jcr

|6.3.07 @ 2:27AM|#

I'd like Ron a lot more if he'd bother to apologize or correct the misleading claims he makes:

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/05/who_put_out_the_contract_on_ra.php#more

fatisflavor|6.3.07 @ 3:19PM|#

I would tend to argue that farms are not losing ground due to excessive production, rather people just do not want to work that hard. I have been farming a small plot for about ten years on my own... no tractor etc... about two and a half acres...It is most un deniably the hardest most unbelievable way to make a buck. Save for maybe fishing. I never blame anyone for getting out from under the weight of farming.... It is the sort of thing that you need to love it to no end. Oncew the love is gone it is the definition of hell. Having had some seasons that were just plain excruciating I know that the love needs to be excessive... Having two bad years in a row or more could break just about anyone. I dont totally agree with mr bailey, but certainly if anyone he has every right to say those things that ring true to him. I hope I never get to that point in my career... But if I do I e=will be the first to step out 0f my farmers shoes... as it is I have a another twenty years of it... Because when I am 60, I want to still be able to walk upright and enjoy my life... plus it will be so nice to have a small 40x40 garden.

LarryA|6.3.07 @ 3:44PM|#

It is most un deniably the hardest most unbelievable way to make a buck.

Well, there is asphalt roofing.

fatisflavor|6.3.07 @ 10:21PM|#

clearly that is hard work..however mother nature can more often than not bitchslap you with reality in very short order... where with asphalt it would be a different set of circumstances....

|6.4.07 @ 9:39AM|#

Ron forgot to mention danger as an aspect of farming. If you don't use machinery (40 acres if you have a big, healthy family) and you don't keep animals other than poultry, yeah, it's fairly safe (except for bird flu.)

But if you keep cattle, you will likely end up minus a few joints, with the possibility of being stomped to death, over the years. Even if you keep sheep, expect back injuries (they don't shear themselves) and the occasional broken finger. Hogs ... will eat you if you don't pay attention to what you are doing when you feed them. One of our neighbors went that way.

There's also the usual dangers of being outside in all kinds of weather.

It's pretty obvious that more than 99 out 100 people prefer the city or suburb to the country. That may reduce slightly with the ability, via the internet, to live in the country and still not be cut off, but people aren't going to go back to subsistence farming in large numbers. I bet Kingsolver and crew didn't grind their own flour and bake their own bread, for instance.

|6.4.07 @ 4:26PM|#

"organic is not necessarily better for nature since yields are generally lower than conventional farming, which means that more land must be used to produce food."
----------------------------
This reasoning is deeply flawed. The environmental impact of agriculture is not a direct function of the number of acres farmed, it is a product of farming practices. A farmer who depends on petroleum drived fertilzers, toxins for pest management, genetically modified seeds, heavy irrigation, and external waste disposal will almost always create a greater enviornmental impact than a sustainable farmer, regardless of yield per acre.

Youthful anecdotes aside, Mr. Bailey's opinions would be far more valuable if he had bothered to educate himself about modern industrial agricultural and organic farming practices.

|6.5.07 @ 8:30AM|#

Morton hits the nail on the head. I would really like toknow how you get through to these right wing ideologues. Industrial agriculture also has produced such a surfeit of food that we have to figure out what we do with it. Fat Americans anyone? Produce dumped in Mexico? streams and rivers polluted with animal wastes? Dead soil? Transport costs in terms of energy, not just for gasoline but for refrigerated trucks, farmers in Mexico unable to survive at home, etc. etc.

The answer isn't ideological, it must be analytical. Some big farms where they are better than small, some small. Michael Pollan , by the way, doesn't advocate all-organic, but rather local.

|6.5.07 @ 1:58PM|#

I love it when people who don't know the first thing about farming (or any subject, for that matter) put the free-market spin on things.

Does he really believe that New Zealand Lamb producers are "most efficient" at raising sheep?

Has he explored the idea that monocropping necessitates pesticides and herbicides because of its scale, where locate producers rotate their smaller crops, thereby reducing the need for chemical solutions?

I guess he doesn't buy the notion of global warming either because monocropping, chemical fertilizer use/production, fertilizer shipping, long-distance meat/produce distribution all add to the CO2 problem, where locally produced goods necessarily reduce emissions.

Bailey's main gist seems to be -- farming is hard work, so no one should want to do it, therefore let's pan it. Why not support those who DO want to do it?

|6.6.07 @ 12:58AM|#

Yeah, whatever, but when the globally warmed up drought really sets an and your cites and suburbs are thirsy, not to mention your power plants, and when your oil's run out and your grocery store shelves are empty, don't think you can just turn up with your army to pinch my broccoli and drain my tank.
grrrrrrr

Mark Plus|6.6.07 @ 11:34AM|#

Libertarian writers like Ron give the impression that libertarians want to eat food contaminated with pesticide residues. And he has plenty of company. Every libertarian publication and website I know of has article after article in their archives about the wonders of pesticides and the irrationality of fearing them in the food supply. By implication, a libertarian who prefers to buy organic produce flirts with Luddism, Malthusianism, totalitarianism and mysticism.

|6.7.07 @ 4:28PM|#

I think Ron missed the whole point of this book which though very romantic, gives realistic ideas for how to live a greener and healthier existence. If you actually read the book, you will see that she often points out that no, not everyone should go out and buy a farm and grow their own food but there are obvious benefits to growing your own food which isn't very hard, even if you have only a back porch (as I do). A tomato that is coming off of my plant vine ripened with no pesticides is clearly going to be tastier and will have more nutrients that a tomato that was picked green in Mexico and ripened in a truck that had to drive several thousand miles to reach me. Also, the point he makes about helping out the farmers in other countries is utter crap. The farmers in these countries are rarely seeing any substantial financial return for their products sold and its the corporations that make the big bucks. Just do some research into NAFTA and how illegal immigration levels into the States have correlated. And keep in mind that in our obese society, it wouldn't hurt for you to put down that McD's cheeseburger and the super sized coke for once and actually show some restraint. Read her book, its actually very good, well written, very informative and beats the hell out of watching some mindless crap on the tv.

Gordon Hill|6.8.07 @ 11:01AM|#

Good review. Barbara means well, but she may have forgotten the distinction between fiction and non-fiction: solid research trumps opinion.

Still, it may not help to be more diet conscious, both for ourselves and our possessions, but it wouldn't hurt. . . ;-)

All the best to you.

Simon|6.8.07 @ 3:56PM|#

Do you really have a "science correspondent" who is not aware that the oil to make pesticides and to drive farm machinery is not going to be around forever?

dhex|6.12.07 @ 12:13PM|#

hay visitors from other places:

there's a reason you don't have organic food manufacturers putting "our food is more nutritious and delicious than factory farm brands!"

ahem.

one day, however, i would like to do a three way, double-blind taste test between regular farm beef, some organic grass fed beef and some cloned beef, just cause i'm curious. i've never really been able to taste much of a difference between organic (atavistic?) and inorganic (mechanical?) fruits and veggies, as freshness seems to be king, but others keep telling me there is a difference so i'd like to see what's what.

|6.13.07 @ 4:49PM|#

Awesome argument - Kingsolver loved growing much of her food on a small hobby farm, found it rewarding, and extols the virtues in a book. Bailey didn't like growing up on a farm so Kingsolver is a liar who elaborated her experience into fiction. I'm not sure what this brand of logic is called, but you should market it or something.

(Yes, I grew up in a small town and worked on farms. The work sucked, but most of the kids that came out of that town worked HARD and grew up with great values. I'm sure growing up playing video games and skateboarding in the suburbs provides the same work ethic and life experience, so let's just call a truce, eh?)