The Color of Food, Part II

“Why sell farming equipment to farmers?

I should cut out the middleman

and sell tractors directly to people dining in restaurants.” 

(Jarod Kintz, This Book is Not FOR SALE)

This week's writing is part II in a three-part series on food. Previously, we considered food from the perspective of world-class chefs - men and women whose passion for food finds expression in the preparation, presentation, and consumption of cuisine at the level of artistry. The very essence of this culinary world is the slowing down of time to draw the diner into full awareness of the richness of a dish's character. 

From the twelve-course meals of Chef Magnus Nilsson we now move back in time, from the table to the kitchen, from the grocer to the field. Today we explore the world of food producers. The title that immediately comes to mind is farmer, and the images conjured may include tractors and combines, boots and jean-jackets, cattle, sheep, horses, and endless acres of fields.  

“Why do farmers farm,

given their economic adversities

on top of the many frustrations

and difficulties normal to farming? 

And always the answer is:

"Love. They must do it for love." 

(Wendell Berry, Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food)

Those who are farmers comprise a diverse collection of food-growers. They include family farms, large corporations, micro-farms, and industrial farming. Other threads woven into the food tapestry are more subtle in hue: urban back-yard gardening, grass-roots movements in developing countries, and green house operations add texture to the food production landscape. Add to this market gardens, U-pick operations, and small-scale livestock and/or fruit and vegetable growers. Oh, and let us not forget the caretakers of the fruit of the gods - our local vintners. Through this wide and varied landscape one common thread weaves its way through all food production - food is life.

“There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm.

One is the danger of supposing

that breakfast comes from the grocery,

and the other that heat comes from the furnace.” 

(Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac)

There is something deeply soulful about growing food. On one level it is a necessity for the functioning of our

physical being. Somehow, somewhere food must grow, and we must consume it. Food is incarnational - it is about being en-fleshed. Deeper tones resonate within the soulfulness of food, however. Food is not simply consumed - it becomes us. I have read that some cannibal tribes believed that when a warrior consumed the flesh of their enemies they took their enemies powers into themselves. So too with food; we take into ourselves the constituent elements of what we eat, receiving the power of life, of renewal, of healing... or of self-destruction if what we ingest is unwholesome. 

While the Chef's Table reveals the intimate relationship of cooking and eating, it is in the growing of food wherein the chef's meal obtains its rich flavors. We are tied to the land, connected through blood and bone, carbon and water. Every time we inhale the savory aromas of, oh say a beef stew and biscuits for example, something ancient draws us back to the land through the fragrance of the meal. When we eat food that is highly processed the bouquet of the earth becomes very difficult to find; we become cut off from that which sustains us.

All who grow food, from a pot of herbs on the balcony to 100,000 acre grain farms  - all who grow food are invested in humanity's survival. Growing food is perhaps the most quintessentially human thing that we do. 

I leave the last word to Joel Salatin:

“A farm includes the passion of the farmer's heart,

the interest of the farm's customers,

the biological activity in the soil,

the pleasantness of the air about the farm

(Joel Salatin, Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front)

The color of food...

the heartbeat of the earth.

I eat

therefore

I

am

It is

that

simple

Plant

Tend

Pray

To Ponder Further:

- From the Bible: "Then God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food"; and it was so." (Genesis 1.29-30)

- From Sikhism: "This earth is a garden, the Lord its gardener, cherishing all, none neglected." (Adi Granth, Mahj Ashtpadi 1, M.3, p. 118)

- From the Unification Church: "God's hand has touched even every small blade of grass which grows in the field.... All creatures we see contain God's deep heart and tell the story of God's deep love." (Sun Myung Moon, 6-28-59)