AN inspiring resurgence of farmers markets, “community-supported” farms, “organic” produce and interest in locally-produced food has taken place all across America.
The preference for regional food is so natural and so ancient that this trend of the last few decades is not at all surprising.
Many consumers have an innate distrust of factory or shipped food and like to have an actual relationship with the people who provide them with meat and vegetables — and also a relationship with the land nearby. Local food is fresher and healthier. It is beautiful in comparison to the shellacked, artificial-looking products in the supermarket.
But, as natural and exciting as this development is, especially for those of us who have always gone out of our way to buy local products, I sometimes have a sense of uneasiness when I walk through these new farmers markets. The idea will survive, but will these farms?
For the people most interested in local food also often happen to be the people least concerned about family breakdown and least interested in the cultural habitat that undergirds the family. To them, chickens must have an “organic” habitat,” but people? Well, not really. For instance, Alice Waters, the famous California chef and champion of “slow food” who turned local vegetables into culinary jewels and who greatly admired French food, which developed over centuries of Catholic civilization, lived what’s often euphemistically called a “bohemian” life. Her two-year-old daughter was present at her wedding; Waters and the father, Stephen Singer, later divorced. Waters had no more children. We know her daughter, Fanny, got gobs of attention, but she got no siblings and no stable home. Waters is a proponent of slow food, but not slow families — the basis of all successful agricultural communities and all cultures with any impressive culinary heritage. It is ironic when today’s metrosexual chefs rave about the culinary legacy of people they never identify as Catholics whose tables were influenced by the altar and a belief that God himself became food. Sad to say, but modern slow food has its basis in hedonism, not reverence.
And so many of these young and ambitious organic farmers seem to have few or no children. Agriculture over the long term depends on strong family ties. There will never be thriving LGBTQ farm communities. Farming entails not just a connection with the land, but a bond between the generations. It’s just so much darned work, farming is. In the Garden of Eden, apples dropped from the trees and heirloom tomatoes cost nothing. But in this fallen world, good food is costly, arduous and backbreaking to produce.
The work can be lonely and isolating. Furthermore, farming skills take many years to acquire. In stable farming communities, children start to learn the way of life and basic skills early.
These facts of farming will never change. When I shop at local Mennonite or Amish farm stands, I know these places will likely be in existence for many years to come. But when I shop at the trendy farmers market in a local suburb, as great as the products often are and as interesting and enthusiastic as the producers, I question how long many of these enterprises will last unless these people change their worldview.
Organic produce needs organic families.
Just as the open field is the natural setting for sheep or cattle, the secure, flourishing home is the natural setting for human beings, most especially the farmer.
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