A Future Food System

In my lifetime, the Earth has undergone profound changes. Internet and communications technologies connect the world in profound ways. Capitalism has spread to every corner of the globe, and the debate about how the economy should be run is more or less moot. Media penetrates our existence, shapes our thoughts and actions, and reforms the world through the image and sound. China, India, and other parts of the once developing world now have middle classes clamoring for 401k packages, suburban neighborhoods, cars, and cash, and while the specifics differ, the modern project dominates throughout the globe and democracy is an expectation if not a reality. Growth, capital, urbanization, democratization, all processes intertwined with the unique state of human affairs at the dawn of the 21st century.

And, agriculture, as a way of life, fades to the backdrop where wage labor economies emerge, as they are globally. Still, human necessity dictates some form of agriculture to meet the basic needs of the Earth's seven billion odd people. The move from agrarian lifestyles to wage labor economies had mixed effects. While many entered into the market to produce food for export, they adopted the industrial model for agriculture, still far more were displaced by food production and landed in shanty towns, impoverished, skirting the growing urban areas across the globe. Now, many paint a picture of an idyllic agrarianism to replace the failed model of industrial agriculture, that model which displaced traditional farmers and fed the mass society model of development, a model since overtaken by the information society. This idyllic agrarianism is nothing more that a reactionary response to a crisis of food, couched in the romantic belief that small family farms surrounding small hamlets and villages were are more democratic and peaceful ideal. Regardless, no one lives in small hamlets and villages or these will slowly be displaces by the megalopolis of the future. The future food system must be urban, integrated in city planning and oriented towards urban-centered markets. From the agrarian romanticism, comes the notion of small holder production but under the auspices of a regional governance that protects the space of agriculture, to privilege those spaces as necessary, if not optimally profitable, land uses. Supported monetarily by a reformed subsidy system and protected by regional policies, cities that protect agriculture can truly be "foodtopias," without the unfortunate ideal of returning to the past. The food movement must move its narrative out of a romanticized past to engage concretely with the development of the future food system.

Racism and Corporate Greed, America's Original Sins

Of late, the most telling manifestation of white privilege has been the middle class white reaction to healthcare reform. Their belligerent tone and utter lack of legislative critique belies a deeper motivation, a motivation rooted in the right's overtly racist political strategy, the Southern Strategy, of the post Civil Rights era. More to the point, the angry white sentiment toward healthcare was captured by one of the mob's minions who exclaimed, "we're afraid of Obama (because) he's a socialist." Immediately I'm transported to 1981 when Republican operative Lee Atwater boldly and proudly asserted that racist language must be coded in the apolitical narrative of economics:

"You start out in 1954 by saying, "nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968, you can't say
"nigger" - that hurts you... So you say stuff like forced busing, states rights,
and all that stuff... and all these things you're talking about are totally economic
and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites." - Lee Atwater

In Inglewood, California, a mostly black and Hispanic crowd wait for hours for much needed healthcare, in a scene that could just as easily be from Zaire or El Salvador, while across the country middle class whites defend their privilege with racial slurs and taunts towards Obama. Make no mistake, these whites are defending the privilege of having overpriced health insurance, denying themselves a chance at more affordable healthcare and others a chance at coverage, period. In defending the system of healthcare as white privilege, the racism of the right only serves to further line the coffers of America's dukes and nobles, the corporate elite.

As such is the failing of the two-party system, the American system, which primarily, prevents any major political/economic/social changes from occurring. In the face of major change, however, enthroned corporations play the duped masses off one another inoculating the global corporate oligarchy from any direct challenge to its hegemony. The left would be better served to vote third party, right, or not vote at all - anything but Democrats. The American people are both apathetic and ignorant - one would think that 8 years of the Bush administration would shock people to life. But alas, it is going to take the Republicans causing a worldwide meltdown with their love of militarism, capitalism, and imperialism before Americans will be able to think further than their own skin color and in the collective interest. As it sits now, Republicans almost burn the barn and Democrats half-fix the inherited catastrophes. Let the Republicans go ahead and burn the barn to the ground, and then we can start with something that at least has the chance of not catching fire.

Soil and Community, The Roots of Justice

This summer I had the pleasure of growing a large garden with my Uncle, Carroll Andrews. We planted rattlesnake green beans, Clemson spineless okra, tabasco, jalapeno, cayenne, and banana peppers, early girl, bonnie's hybrid, and heirloom tomatoes, and marigolds for pest control. We broke the virgin soil with a roto-tiller and broke our backs trying to get the grass out of the soil. When we planted the seeds and seedlings we brought what was solely dirt and DNA into a garden, like a community the individual strengths of each plant and the gifts of the micro-organisms and nutrients in the soil came together as a diverse, functioning whole. A garden can't be seen as a bunch of individual plants producing individual crops. Indeed, viney plants like beans grow from multiple seeds into one or two plants and replace the nitrogen in the soil. The peppers and other strong smelling plants help keep out thieving critters, and flowers bring much needed pollinators to the garden community. The farmer, like the community organizer, nurtures the strengths of each individual plants and fosters an environment where fruits can be reaped.

But, we've lost this notion of community as diverse, vibrant and interconnecting organism that thrives off the strength and weaknesses of others in the community. Why has community come to mean "those like us" and not "those with us?" Community has lost much of its meaning because we have lost much of the commons. For a garden, the commons are the soil, a diverse, living rhizome from which all can draw to grow, change, and produce. Our communities have lost their vibrance because, like the industrial food system, the commons, the soil, has become privatized through private property and mined of its worth through the use of drugs and fertilizer, alcohol and pesticide. The soil and the community has lost its virility through violence. Private property has facilitated this by creating owners of the soil and giving them the rights to do with what they please, treating the fertile earth no better than a slave. So, these owners exploit the earth with fertilizer and pesticide.

Our communities, likewise, have become privatized instead of open and inviting. Closed communities of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class, and a million other things have become the owners of community, making community a thing instead of a process, a seed instead of a rhizome. To build communities and the good earth, we must foster diversity, inclusion, flexibility, and transformation. We must see community as an ongoing process that produces the fruits of mentally and physically healthy children, vibrant relationships, and positivity. We must start by building the commons, both the material and immaterial.

Coal Ash, Alabama's Constitution, and the Lingering Legacy of Jim Crow

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As America reads this front page New York Times story, they will be baffled by the seeming contradictions in the piece. A black commissioner singing the praises of a destructive development, a white southerner playing the role of environmentalist, and a poor Alabama county that seemingly betrays our most deeply held stereotypes. As one of my friends put it, "I don't know what to think." The story needs a bigger window.

In 1901, some disenchanted and angry Alabama fat cats got together to draft a constitution that would underpin Jim Crow segregation and voter disenfranchisement. They accomplished this by ensuring the centralization of power at the state capital and in incorporated cities. Rural areas, but mainly the Black Belt Region where many freedmen lived, would be controlled by the state legislation. They did this by denying any significant power to county commissions, precluding them from levying any taxes aside from sales tax. As history progressed, the other apartheid policies were defeated and removed from the books, but the Constitution remains to this day.

Fast forward to coal ash in 2009, county commissioners are faced with the choice, coal ash in landfills or nothing. Lacking the power to levy taxes on the highly profitable timber industry in Perry County, commissioners have little option but to take "development" in whatever form it comes. So, in the face of this context, the identities and strategies of the individuals and groups in this NY Times piece emerge; the seemingly distorted views of the actors in this political play are shaped by a powerful racism set in motion over a century ago, but still wielding its ugly power today. And make no mistake, this racism is not directed at one individual but at the entirety of the black population in Alabama, its power is evil and subversive, and it gives us a living glimpse into the violence of the Jim Crow South.