If all politics is personal, as is widely believed, then ultimately there is not much more political than our food and the farms that produce it. Everyone must eat, so everyone has a vested interest in food.
Right now, in the early 21st century, food and farms is emerging as a cutting edge political movement. Thousands of college students are realizing the crucial importance of food and farms, and more are realizing it.
With food poisoning scares, the continuing onslaught of genetically modified food products being smuggled into our diets, and mounting evidence of the health and environmental consequences of large-scale chemically dependent factory farming, the list Reasons are growing for people to become active and take a direct part in ensuring the quality of food and the food supply.
According to a May 23 story in The New York Times, a new wave of students are heading to the farms this summer, seeking internships and social change. Interest in summer farm work among college students has never been higher.
According to the Times, the students come armed with little more than soft hands and copies of Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. They are well aware of the serious environmental problems caused by large-scale industrial farming; they want to help bring about change and to know that they are doing something to improve the world.
Meanwhile, the dietary forces driving people to recognize food and farms as a key political issue are growing in strength and credibility. According to stories in Time magazine and Mother Earth News this spring, we now have strong scientific evidence that factory farming is giving us less healthy food. Produce in the US not only tastes worse than it did in our grandparents’ days, but evidence shows they also contain fewer nutrients.
Both articles cite a February 2009 study titled “Decreased Nutrient Composition of Fruits and Vegetables” by Dr. Donald R. Davis published in the journal HortScience, 2009.
Davis reports that the average vegetable found in the supermarket today has 5% to 40% fewer minerals than those grown just 50 years ago.
Due to widely used chemical fertilizers and pesticides, modern crops are being harvested faster than ever. But quick and early harvests mean the produce has less time to absorb nutrients, either from synthesis or from the soil. Meanwhile, monoculture, another hallmark of the Big Ag industry, has also led to the depletion of soil minerals, which, in turn, affects the nutrient content of crops.
What can we do? Follow the examples of the new farmers of the 21st century They continue to respond in smart, creative and innovative ways in backyards, neighborhoods and with community gardens and farms across the country.
Changing economic conditions represent a third force that makes it likely that many more people will seek the practical and political paths that are being paved by the new agrarians. For example, a story from May 24 in The Hartford Current told how, in the face of drastic changes in the economy, local farmers have started offering CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) shares as a survival strategy to keep their farms alive.
CSA describes an emerging agrarian form that spread across the country in 1978 and is now well established in Connecticut. The number of CSA farms is barely keeping up with demand. As reported elsewhere, CSA farms have increased dramatically in recent years, with more than 13,000 now operating in the US according to a census conducted by the US Department of Agriculture.
We can expect to see more in the coming times as, out of necessity, food and farms move to the forefront of the public consciousness.