Small Town Values

It’s long been conventional wisdom that one political party (rhymes with ublican) truly understands the “small town values” of Americans, while the elites in the other party, drunk on their chardonnay and lattes, are simply incapable of relating to the average, hard working family. This cynical and transparent (though rather useful) political maneuver has served the GOP very well, even as they have used the governing powers gained by this nonsense to systematically undermine the livelihoods of those very small town voters.

 

You’d think this long discredited trope would have faded from our discourse by now, but of course, you’d be wrong. The GOP has now dressed the meme of “small town values” up in bear skin and whale blubber and trotted it back out in front of the cameras, as if no one would notice. Thomas Frank, in today’s Wall Street Journal, calls bullshit on the charade:

 

Small town people, Mrs. Palin went on, are “the ones who do some of the hardest work in America, who grow our food and run our factories and fight our wars.” They are authentic; they are noble, and they are her own: “I grew up with those people.”…

 

Leave the fantasy land of convention rhetoric, and you will find that small-town America, this legendary place of honesty and sincerity and dignity, is not doing very well…

 

…For decades now we have been electing people like Sarah Palin who claimed to love and respect the folksy conservatism of small towns, and yet who have unfailingly enacted laws to aid the small town’s mortal enemies.

 

…they have permitted fantastic concentration in the various industries that buy the farmer’s crops. They have undone the New Deal system of agricultural price supports in favor of schemes called “Freedom to Farm” and loan deficiency payments — each reform apparently designed to secure just one thing out of small town America: cheap commodities for the big food processors. Richard Nixon’s Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz put the conservative attitude toward small farmers most bluntly back in the 1970s when he warned, “Get big or get out.”

 

In his excellent book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan goes into some depth about the legislative undermining of the New Deal agriculture supports and the consequent devastation that continues to burden farmers and farming communities across America.

 

So it shouldn’t be surprising that the National Farmer’s Union gives Barack Obama a 100% legislative rating on issues relating to small farm agriculture, while John McCain receives 0%.

 

That’s zero. Zip. No legislative help whatsoever, from Mr. “I chose a moose shooter as my soul mate”, regarding the values and interests of farming communities; otherwise known as small towns.

 

What is it going to take for people to vote for leaders and policies that exhibit and foster the very values that everyone seems to breathlessly champion, rather than simply voting for the most entertaining teevee personality?

 

Don’t answer that.

 

Barn Razing

What does it mean that barns are disappearing from the rural American landscape?

 

On the one hand, it’s likely a reflection of the rapid urbanization found not just in the U.S., but globally. But perhaps more insidiously, it’s a predictable result of the economics of the global, industrialized food chain.

 

The Hundlings watch, they say, as the biggest farmers secure more and more land, the youngest ones, like themselves, fail to afford any, and the locals go on fretting that everyone has moved away.

 

“They sit and complain there’s nobody in the small towns anymore, there’s nobody in our schools,” Mr. Hundling said. “And then they go and rent it to the guy that’s already farming 10,000 acres and lives 30 miles away, 40 miles away, 100 miles away.”

 

Those distant farmers, Mr. Hundling said, are unlikely to pack the local restaurant. Nor will they likely fill the school bus near Mrs. Fort’s house. Or slow the disappearance of Mr. Scott’s prized barns.

 

Save the barns. Eat local.

 

Radioactive Spinach

 

 

 

 

It’s a remarkable circumstance of our knee-jerk reliance on technology that this kind of thing seems like a solution.

 

The government will allow food producers to zap fresh spinach and iceberg lettuce with enough radiation to kill micro-organisms like E. coli and salmonella that for decades have caused widespread illness among consumers.

 

Obviously, the problem isn’t an advancing army of E. coli, but rather a food industry that is beyond broken.

 

“It’s a total cop-out,” said Patty Lovera, assistant director of Food and Water Watch. “They don’t have the resources, the authority or the political will to really protect consumers from unsafe food.”

 

But even given the self-inflicted “problem”, is irradiation a viable short term fix?

 

Critics say that not only does radiation make food less nutritious and potentially toxic but that the process also does not eliminate the risks of food-borne illnesses…. 

 

“The agency is choosing to have a high-tech expensive solution to a problem that needs a more thorough approach and one that really starts on the farm,” Ms. Smith DeWaal of the science center said. [Emphasis mine]

 

Farms, how quaint - do we still have those?

 

Not So Green Grass

 

 

 

Further to the post below, Elizabeth Kolbert’s piece in The New Yorker last month examines American’s long and entrenched addiction to lawns. Did you know lawns aren’t actually “natural”?:

 

…the lawn today is nearly ubiquitous. Its spread has given rise to an entire industry, or, really, complex of industries—Americans spend an estimated forty billion dollars each year on grass—and to the academic discipline of turf management…. The lawn has become so much a part of the suburban landscape that it is difficult to see it as something that had to be invented.

  

And this:

 

Mowing turfgrass quite literally cuts off the option of sexual reproduction. From the gardener’s perspective, the result is a denser, thicker mat of green. From the grasses’ point of view, the result is a perpetual state of vegetable adolescence. With every successive trim, the plants are forcibly rejuvenated. In his anti-lawn essay “Why Mow?,” Michael Pollan puts it this way: “Lawns are nature purged of sex and death. No wonder Americans like them so much.”  [Emphasis mine.]

 

Snap.

 

More Corn

Presently on my bedstand is Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilema. It’s a sobering read for anyone who’s ever given a lick of thought to where their food comes from. (Hint: I-n-d-u-s-t-r-y)

Corn, The Crop of a Nation

This image is from my parent’s property in rural Ohio. A neighbor farmer plants their field, alternating corn and soy beans. This year, it’s a bumper crop of corn, adding a few bushels to the vast amounts of the subsidized miracle grass that undergirds the food industry in this country. 

These stalks were likely planted using chemically engineered seed and plenty of nitrogen rich “fertilizer” and are destined for a can of soda near you.