Issue link: https://www.balharbourdigital.com/i/1347386
Fanny Singer: Mark, the last time I saw you was at my mother's restaurant, Chez Panisse, when you were living in California. Is that when you started working on Animal, Vegetable, Junk? Mark: I did start the book when I was out there. Just being there got me thinking about it. FS: It's such an exhaustive, vast, admittedly somewhat harrowing, but also slightly hopeful tome. MB: Slightly hopeful. FS: To have the history of humankind re-contextualized around food was compelling, especially inasmuch as it creates a framework for understanding how we've ended up in an industrialized system on the brink of climate collapse. What made you want to write this book? MB: When I was writing the Opinion column for The New York Times, between 2010 to 2015, it was hard to be nibbling at the edges of every one of these stories and never reall oin into the histor ecept rie. he columns were onl , words. ut wanted to tell this as a unified stor ecause people dont credit food as the driver of histor that it is. ltimatel, dont now whether its a success stor or a sad stor. eve otten to the point where the arth can support all of these people, which ou could arue is a success stor, thouh imperfect oviousl. ut theres also a wa in which its horrifin, as food is responsile for everthin from ender ineualit, to slavery, to climate change, etc. If there were justice we would have food security because there is enough food. FS: hat's a highly ualied statement MB: t too us a lot of mistaes to et here. ut now we now how to do it so the strule is not ow do we produce enouh food ut, ow do we do that with justice hen it ecomes a non-food uestion. t ecomes a uestion of how we want to oranie societ, around food and everthin else. here were several inspirations for this oo, ut amon them was aomi leins This Changes Everything, where she writes that if you want to address climate chane ou have to fi societ, and onl fiin societ can ou address climate chane. thin its euall true for food and climate. FS: A principle takeaway was that innovation and capitalism are the enemies of sustainability, and by "sustainability" I mean the survival of our species. You explore human motivations in your book but it's still tempting to ask the question "Why?" Why are we so hell-bent on achieving progress at the cost of our future? MB: thin instead of proress, the uestion is rowth. h is i rowth so important ut, m a little more optimistic than was when finished the oo. hats ecause ou can call thins proress or ou can call thins mistaesit almost doesnt matter. his is where we are. , ears ao, humans started ariculture, and ears ao, uropeans started conuerin the world, and ears ao, it was thouht that industrialiin everthin was the wa to o. ow, we can see clearl where the prolems and challenes lie. f we oranie societ in the riht wa, we can save ourselves. We can feed ourselves. We can stop taking more out of the planet than we put ac in. e can compensate for climate chane even. dont thin ou couldve said that fift, even ten, ears ao. FS: Can we actually get there given our deeply divided country? MB: Little by little, you convince the people who are the most convincile then worr aout the rest. dont thin we have a choice ut to wor towards that. hose of us who reconie it have to tal aout it. ts a pipe dream to sa the status uo can maintain ecause it cant. e now that chane is inevitale. f ou want to talk about better agriculture, you need to talk about land reform andabout getting land into the hands of people who want to farm it and grow good food. You need to talk about good food purchasing programs where the food we buy is local and organic and produced by workers who are treated fairly. FS: Your discussion of what governments are able to do on a localized level was encouraging—it feels very hard as an individual to affect substantive change. Take for instance, the case study you give of Belo Horizonte. MB: hat happened in rail was that a local, rassroots initiative in the countrs sith- largest city went national: a commitment to buying from small, local farms; encouraging the growth of organic food and farm-to-school production; farm-to-table, institutional restaurants with a sliding scale so that anyone could eat affordably. A right to affordable, nutritious food became national policy, which is not the case in the US. FS: You also talk about several inspiring domestic programs: the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, for instance. MB: etroit was one of the first places visited when started writin the pinion column. en ears later, it was the last place visited for the oo. he iest chane saw was how powerful the uran farmin movement had ecome. At first it was a little under the radar, but now there are urban farms everywhere. Urban farming is not the answer to all our problems, but it moves things in the right direction. As Will Allen eplained to me, its not onl aout farmin, its aout communit oraniin, showin the strength of people working together and showing people how food is really rown. he majorit of people dont now where food comes from FS: I'd love for you to speak to the difference between "sustainable" and "ecological." MB: ver word used proressive farmers and coos has een co-opted. he epitome was an ad I saw when I was watching football for "Michelob Organic Hard elter. thouht a, thats the last straw eople have fouht so hard for the word oranic to have meanin and crediilit, and now theres Michelo ranic ard elter ut thats one of the reasons favor the word aroecolo. irst of all, its hard to co-opt ecause its such a terrile word. ut reall it means a lend of agriculture and ecology, and is especially meaningful if you remember that ecology is the study of the oneness of nature, the oneness of things on this planet. ou ring to light several lesser-nown gures I new aout ivil ights activist Fannie Lou Hamer and her "pig and a garden" initiative, but I didn't know much about, say, George Washington Carver or Timothy Pigford, the people of color in this country who contributed to agriculture and science but were generally under-acknowledged. How did these people enter the narrative? MB: heir stories jumped out to me. Amon the most important were those of formerly enslaved people; enslaved people built a great deal of the wealth of this country and got very little to show for it. It was important to support and to highlight those storiesthe same is true for women. And its important to notice that leadership naturall came from those people. ven now, if were oin to have a sound future of food its not ecause wealth landowners decide it would e etter for all of us. ts ecause people who are not in power oranie and insist we do thins differentl. FS: It comes from people who have been historically disenfranchised, not just people of color or women, but also the small farmers in this country who, since the beginning of the arc of the history you trace, have been oppressed by subsidies, growth mandates and industrialization. MB: hats a reall ood point, and thin somethin that came out in the course of writing the book. We have this vision of America as a nation of farmers. ts true that there were alwas a lot of farmers in this country, but they were being done an injustice from the beginning. here was never the ind of support for small farmin that weve een lead to believe. Many of us think "Oh, in the '80s small family farms reall started to die. ell eah, thats true, ut it was the s. FS: Before we sign off, I need to hear a brief invective against the concept of "superfoods." MB: ell, theres no such thin FS: I love the moment in the book when you say, to paraphrase, otatoes are a superfood, goddamn it MB: hat stuff aout the potato was interestin riht t chaned civiliation. ts so nutritious that populations douled when the adopted potato eatin. ncredile. ou cant sa that aout blueberries. A beloved a nd be s t sel l i n g cook book aut hor a nd food jou r na l i s t, k now n to ma ny a s "T he M i n i ma l i s t," Ma rk Bi t t ma n pi voted f rom i n s t r uct i n g t he mecha n ic s of a reci pe to sh i n i n g l i g ht on t he mecha n i s m s t hat u nderl ie food product ion. T hat Bi t t ma n i s S pecia l Adv i sor on Food Pol icy w i t h i n Colu m bia's School of P u bl ic Hea lt h—where he teache s a nd hos t s t he lect u re ser ie s "Food, P u bl ic Hea lt h, a nd Socia l Ju s t ice"—i s con s i s tent w i t h t h i s recent cha pter. He m i g ht be someone we've i nv i ted i nto ou r k i tchen s v ia h i s awa rd-w i n n i n g a r t icle s a nd book s, but i n A n i ma l, Veget a ble, Ju n k he's fou nd h i s f i g ht. T h i s book i s not on ly u rgent, i t's i l lu m i nat i n g a nd i n s t r uct i ve; a nd, for a l l of u s who have ad m i red Bi t t ma n's w r i t i n g over h i s lon g ca reer, i t i s a plea s u re to be gu ided by h i s pra g mat ic, compa s s ionate voice. BAL HARBOUR 129