Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

That's a Lot of Bread

First posted in Blog and Mablog, 19th August, 2009.

As I continue to labor manfully away with my machete in the jungles of foodism, a former student has written me a thoughtful set of questions that I thought would be good to address here.

First, he agrees that idols need to be rejected, period.

So I agree with the necessity in honoring God as God and giving Him thanks in everything whether that be cooking a five course meal centered around the organic, free range chicken that was slaughtered just two days ago, and sold to me fresh by the man who killed it, or eating a delicious polish dog with deli mustard and a Sprite while browsing the cheap movies and books at Costco.

But having granted the problems of foodism, his question moves on to whether there is "an aesthetic/cultural element that should inform our food purchasing decisions."

Put another way, Should we as Christians, in the establishment of a new culture, a Christ-centered one, be proactive in finding ways that circumvent the current paradigm of highly industrialized and highly processed foods?

He grants that there is no sin per se in eating a Big-Mac, etc. but wonders if there was "simple Christian wisdom in the pre-modern way of doing things."

Should our desires for wholeness and beauty and gratitude toward both our Maker and His creation (i.e. toward one another) drive us away from these highly complicated, government dictated food systems? Should we not, in the main, be pursuing the type of food cultures (sans idolatry) found in the farmers markets, with their chickens that are treated like chickens, and the cattle given food they were created to eat, and vegetables grown in a way that is consistant with the way God created things to grow, (i.e. sunlight and water)?

These are all great questions, and I think they reveal precisely why Christians find the new food movement attractive in so many ways. In short, how could someone like Chesterton and not like farmers' markets?

I agree we should be "proactive in finding ways that circumvent the current paradigm." But I would argue that the foodist reaction to industrial farming is part of the current paradigm, part of what must be rejected. This reaction (that is part of the paradigm) is found not just in the idolatrous value they place on their practices, but also in the practices themselves.

I don't go into a debate between an industrial farmer and an organic farmer with the assumption that the organic farmer is right with regard to the substance of the dispute, though he may be unduly attached to that right. His attachments may have clouded his judgment, and not just his values. The same thing goes for the industrial farmer. I don't assume him to be in the right either.

In other words, I don't think we can just adopt the standards of the organic movement, while (non-idolatrously) keeping those standards in an appropriate place in the hierarchy of values. Idols do more than rearrange standards; they also generate standards. Thus I should always ask, "Is this right?" and not just "Is this too important?"

For example, "all natural" is now a term of praise, but it is a phrase that brings a set of standards along with it. Are those standards correct? Where did they come from? Why is natural good? Who says? Who is the keeper of the "natural" measuring stick, and how much did he pay for it? Is the government involved? And is natural an accurate claim, even assuming the standard to be correct? In other words, suppose all natural is swell -- printing all natural on the label doesn't make anything happen, other than clinching a sale to the gullible.

In the fifties, "enriched" was a term of praise. The manufacturer was promising you that they did not just bake the loaf of bread and put it a bag -- oh, no. They wanted to assure you that they, in a very scientific and modern way, had added a bunch of stuff. "Oh, goody," your great grandma thought. "They enriched it." And she took it home to feed to her chicks, who have somehow managed to live to the age of seventy-five anyway. But before we shake our heads over her gullibility, we have to realize that we are behaving no differently. Marching thoughtlessly counterclockwise doesn't have a whole lot over marching thoughtlessly, clockwise.

If an industrial farmer is spraying a pesticide that is a mix of three kinds of cynanide, and that stuff is still all over our food by the time it gets to my family's table, I should know more about this than that he is a deacon in his community church, and that his heart is in the right place. That's as may be, but the cynanide is in the wrong place. Flip it around -- the same thing goes for the organic farmer. I don't know that what he thinks is good for me is in fact good for me, and I need to do more than determine whether his methods are too important to him. I also need to know if his methods are any good.

Now here is the next thing. Once those questions are answered, and we have weeded out the all natural poseurs gooning around in their truck patches, we find that some organic farmers really do know their stuff, and their organic methods really are good, and they really do result in a superior product -- I get to eat something fresh and healthy, something that didn't spend three months on a truck.

But -- and this is a point I have made before -- that superior product is a luxury that wealthy people get to enjoy. I think they should enjoy it, and I don't have any beef against wealthy people enjoying superior food. I do have a beef against wealthy people pretending they are not wealthy, pretending their luxuries aren't luxuries. I do have a beef against upper middle class National Public Radio listeners strolling down to farmers' markets as though they were earthy peasants in touch with the rhythms of the earth. Why are they in touch with the rhythms of the earth? Well, because they are wealthy enough to pay three times more for corn on the cob than a guy who lives in a trailer on the edge of town, works at the sawmill, and buys his corn on the cob at Sam's Club, the Philistine!

I live in the Palouse, and I love it here. This is what it looked like a few months ago -- but it is all gold now that it is harvest. While some of my good friends are out there driving their monster industrial machines through the harvest (as they are doing right this minute), they will harvest enough in a brief time to feed a small Third World country through the winter. As they do, I can't think of anything to complain about. It may not result in a highest quality baggette ever, but it is better than starving.

Assume you can get one loaf of bread off of one square foot of land, which, estimating conservatively, an American farmer can now do. An acre of ground will get you 43,560 loaves. A six hundred acre farm (a small farm in these parts), will get you 26 million loaves of bread, with another 136,000 loaves thrown in for good measure. I have a hard time thinking of this with any response other than gratitude.

In sum, the Christ-centered aesthetic argument is a good one, as far as it goes. But we need to keep it in its place and recognize it for what it is -- a God-given luxury, and a true creational good. But like all creational goods, it frequently finds itself in tension with other creational goods. Quality of food is of course a good. But in a world where starvation exists, so is quantity.