Vegetables Are People, Too

"Vegetables Are People, Too"
The nuance of this long snappy title for my 2014 Growing Season Calendar is being revealed as we speak. I see it in CSA efforts all over the world."Vegetables Are People, Too" is in fact a love story to CSA farming. Robyn Van En, the originator of this model of agriculture in America, translated a term from the Japanese model "teikei" as food with a face. Vegetables are people.

What started all the efforts to put a face to farming? It came partially from a rise in industrial farming and the opening of global trade that pressures companies to source from all over the world. Florida grocery stores now sell oranges from Canada. Illinois stores sell tomatoes from Mexico even in the summer.  Documentaries like Food Inc. and others have spiked a concern over GMOs and the conditions under which food is produced: pesticides, labor conditions, animal conditions, etc. They are legitimate concerns, so that's why people have started to care. Where is my food coming from?

The CSA experience/relationship puts people back into the picture of food production by building community. This is done through events on and off the farm, emails, notes, photos, updates. Some CSA members will even come out to put an hour or two into harvesting or weeding. Not required!

CSA puts people back into the much larger picture, too. It is a voice saying "I want to have a meaningful attachment to food again. Before I buy a vegetable, I want to know if it was grown with synthetic, persistent pesticides. I want to know if my food has been bioengineered in a lab. I want to know the farm laborers are not slaves. If there's a huge pile of manure from a factory farm next to my cabbage, I want to know that, too, because I'd probably not want to buy it then."

You can certainly go to the store and find cheaper produce. Plenty of multinational corporations will be happy to accommodate you. I go there in the winter on my way home from my off-farm job and I'm super hungry for a piece of cheese or something. Ideally, I'd have sourced that cheese from an ethically sound place, but sometimes you need a piece of cheese when you need a piece of cheese.

No one has to become a monk when they join a CSA farm, but you will naturally--by default--become more respectful and more connected to the whole picture which everyone--by default--is a part of anyway.  Farmers grow, you eat.