How Many Logos Do You Know?
And what that means
Our American food system is fragile and unstable.
For many of you, that’s not breaking news.
In the past week alone, I’ve seen more articles than I can count giving some version of why and how the American or European food system is about to collapse.
Sadly, I have to agree.
While there are the obvious issues of driving farmers off the land, complex land ownership, overdevelopment, and the commodification of agricultural products, there are a few more subtle attacks on the simple, every day, unalarming ways in which our food system is sinking into the Mariana Trench never to return.
The average American knows more brand logos and modern digital icons than we do plants and fungi in our ecosystems. We recognize celebrities and characters in TV shows more than we recognize the animals living amongst us.
Most Americans can not identify the plants outside and around their own homes.1
It’s not an accident that we all know how to use email, can identify the icons on our computer screens, phones and every digital interface around us, yet most Americans don’t know the difference between rash-causing poison ivy and the healing broad plantain leaf.
Did you know that dandelions, petals to roots, are a healthy edible snack? Yes, and the petals from that cute yellow flower are delicious in salads, omelets, sandwiches and more!
Think about it for a minute.
We can no longer identify the plants and fungi around us that give us food and medicine, nor understand how they interact in our ecosystem to create and maintain a healthy balance.
Consider how many celebrity faces you can recognize (even through their dysmorphic cosmetic surgery distortions). What about characters in TV shows?
Now, think about how many birds native to your particular ecosystem you could identify and give someone two or three sentences about their role in the ecosystem?
Our brains are designed to learn and store this information. We’ve learned this knowledge and passed it down from generation to generation. But right now, we’re using that incredible function in our brains to store and recall brand logos, icons, functional characters, and celebrities we will never meet.
See, we’re all immersed so thoroughly in this cultural milieu that we take it for granted.
This is not an indictment. But it IS an invitation to observe and learn about your ecosystem—the basis of our food systems. It’s a wake-up call to recognize that we can and MUST use our incredible brains to observe and understand the world around us. (You instead of our?)
Thankfully, there are teachers doing just that. Judson Carroll, Backyard Berry and Linda Shanahan are teachers to follow and learn from about plants.
Besides the fact that ecosystem knowledge and memory is being replaced with constant logo drivel… there’s more that shows the demise of our food systems.
Farmers are under attack in small ways, not just the headline-y ways that we are all now, sadly, used to seeing.
Farmers everywhere – ya know, the ones who actually DO know plant and animal identification and pay attention to our ecosystem – are under attack for simply farming.
As my friend and colleague, Dana DiPrima of the For Farmers movement shared in her newsletter a few weeks back…. (quote shared with permission. Please visit her site.)
“I have been seeing more and more conflicts between small farms and non-farming neighbors in suburban and quasi-rural areas where non-farmers are moving in to get away from the bustle of city life.
Small farms are under attack for roosters that crow, for farm visitors that arrive to pick up produce from a farm stand, for sanctioned agritourism, and other regular farm activities.
These attacks come in all shapes and sizes: a petition, a tug on personal connections, and the pulling of political strings. An official complaint and endless hearings with the town zoning board. In some cases, violence and vandalism. They are happening across the country—near the seaside in NH, in CT, and on a farm in Kansas City.
The stress on farmers is real, as is the financial burden of constantly defending their right to farm.
The skinny is that while these new neighbors want to live more remotely and enjoy the beauty of the countryside, they do not want to deal with the realities of small farm life. Funny, right?
If you are lucky enough to live near a small farm, you might occasionally hear a hee-haw, a crowing rooster, or see a shiny sheep shelter where an uninterrupted meadow could be. However, you also reap the rewards of living in such proximity.
I can't say what the perfect solution is. It's a mindset shift. It's a compromise between what is real vs. what is fantasy. It's having a conversation, a farm visit, a shared meal to discuss common values, all of that, BEFORE filing a lawsuit or calling in a political favor.
It's a point worth thinking about. Small farms are an essential part of our communities, and we need them to thrive everywhere. They provide us with fresh, locally grown produce, a connection to nature, and a sense of community. Let's work together to ensure their survival.” (emphasis added)
Where is our shared reality? Where is the responsibility to steward land that we all share?
Again, this is an urgent call to be in “community.” It’s a recognition that none of us has all the answers and we must sit in conversation and explore what’s possible within a new cultural revolution.
Adam Kunzia is creating the space for that on Operation Ground Truth. Visit. Learn. Listen. Converse. We’re here for it. (And find your favorite voices in the “Town Square” here.)
But all of this conversation, knowledge and wisdom are only as good as we use them where we are.
The final straw, as we say, is this:
Americans are eager to leave America to go visit places with “better” food systems rather than stay here and build the one we want.
I can’t even tell you how many friends and acquaintances (and even internet strangers) I see who idealize the food system in other countries.
For example, how many Americans go to Europe and return, extolling the virtues and beauty of what they have there for a local, direct food system?
(Let me disclaim that I know very little about the European food system. This is not a policy piece on the European system. It’s social commentary on what filters back to me through friends, acquaintances and what I read. For this conversation, I am going to assume these observations are, at least mostly, factual.)
The other day, I was talking to one of my direct-market farming friends.
He asked me why I thought sales were down right now for direct-sale farms such as his. Was it a slump? Was it disinterest? What was it?
We talked about the pendulum swing COVID caused and how Americans went from cooking a lot at home to now traveling and eating out a lot.
The conversation meandered a little and I mentioned the disconnect between what people say they want, and what they actually do.
I observed that this is a stark and strong disconnect when it comes to local food. Many Americans say they want a robust local food system, but when it comes to actually making a commitment to getting good food, they are too busy traveling and prioritizing other things.
And, I told him, many people in my circles were traveling to Europe and going on and on about the food there and how they have access to good food when in Europe.
That’s when the farmer (originally from Europe himself) said that Americans admire the local food scene in Italy or France and so they go over there to experience it rather than stick around and create it here.
Boom.
It’s not odd how these truths drip out sometimes the way they do, in natural organic conversation.
So many farmers are able to get right to the truth of something because farmers are used to the truth of nature, of the weather that they must learn to live with, the truth of animals breeding, birthing, and dying.
It keeps them grounded in reality and truth.
And so these real, hard truths cut through the social hypocrisies of the people who go on and on about being able to eat wheat in Europe, but they can’t eat it here and yet they won’t and don’t take the time to find a clean, local source of organic wheat.
Or, they won’t pay the price it takes for the farmers to grow that wheat, dry the wheat and either mill it themselves, or have it sent off for milling.
Just a couple days ago, I saw a gorgeous picture from someone in Europe showcasing an old farming couple at a market displaying their handcrafted, curated dried meats, exquisite cheeses, and much more. Why are Americans so eager to worship and idealize other countries creating that kind of food system and so unwilling to participate in creating that here?
In other words, the structure of our systems has changed because of our choices.
But our choices matter in creating the structure we say we want more of, or we WILL continue down the path of food system destruction.
Change can feel overwhelming at times.
I get it. But keep taking small, consistent steps and we’ll all benefit from a stabilized food system.
Let’s at least get to know the edible plants outside and around our own homes…
It’s how we can reclaim and revitalize our own food systems where we are now as we continue to support and buy from small, local farms.
If you missed the podcast a couple week’s ago, I had a fantastic discussion with farmer Adam Kuznia from Farming Full Time about his “Operation Ground Truth” mission to get farmers’ voices heard more in the mainstream.
You can find that here.
Operation Ground Truth with Adam Kuznia
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