I have decided this week to do a post for Real Food Wednesday as a way to begin engaging with food bloggers that care about natural and sustainable food.  For all of us who care about food, the expansion of the public's awareness of food issues over the last few years has been a tremendous boon in getting more consumers to become knowledgeable about food production and more conscious food consumers.  The increase in farmers markets across the country over the last few years is a testament to this growing public consciousness.  Michael Pollan's work plays an imporatnt part in facilitating this expanding awareness.  He has not only investigated the intricacies of the industrial food system and its impact on our health; he has also simplified this information, making it accessible to a wider public, and provided us with a common sense language for making better food choices and more informed decisions about how we interact with the food system.  This week Oprah broadcast a show dedicated to the question of food, featuring Michael Pollan and the documentary Food Inc., which was just nominated for an Oscar.  Oprah's engagement with this problem will surely do much to further public awareness of food issues among her vast viewing audience.

Raj Patel, an intellectual and activist involved with the food justice movement and the author of Stuffed and Starved, has also been gaining some public attention for his new book The Value Of Nothing.  Patel appeared recently on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report and was also interviewed by Paula Crossfield, the managing editor of CivilEats, who regularly publishes in The Huffington Post.  His book, which I am currently reading, offers a critical history of our economic system, how it developed, the free-market ideology it was built upon, and how value is created within our contemporary market society.  In essence, Patel does for the market economy and market society what Michael Pollan does for the food system, revealing the corporation-centered nature of it and exposing the hidden long-term costs we pay for maintaining our current economic system.  Central to Patel's analysis is the notion of value. By both hiding and passing off the environmental, labor and resource costs of production onto consumers and communities, the corporations that dominate our economy are able to assign a cheap price to products, which distorts our awareness of the real costs of producing and consuming stuff.  In the same way that Michael Pollan argues that in the long term we pay for the cheap cost of industrial food and edible food-like substances with our health, Patel argues that we pay for the cheap cost of consumer goods with our health, environmental degradation, the destruction of our communities, growing poverty and inequality, and the erosion of true democracy.  There is perhaps no better example of this than the recent news that a group of Illinois residents who lost their legal efforts to prevent the construction of a CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation) in their community are now being sued by the corporation they opposed for over $300,000 in legal costs.  Our consumption of cheap industrial meat will certainly cost this community money, environmental degradation, and the loss of a democratic voice in shaping the space in which they live.  None of which will be evident when we go to the market and buy our pre-packaged cuts of cheap meat hundreds of miles away from these people.

Patel argues that the solution to this problem is citizenship.  More explicitly, it is actively recovering the right to participate in politics at an everyday level by struggling against, resisting, and challenging the corporate interests that dominate both the economy and politics.  It means overcoming what democracy has been reduced to, "a once-every-four-years chore," and reclaiming it as a right and responsibility by all to participate in the every day task of deliberative justice. Patel offers many examples for us to learn from, from the older Athenian-style democracy in which all citizens drew lots to see who would serve in the twelve groups of five hundred citizens that ruled the city, to the participatory budgeting process developed in the 1990s in Porto Alegre where a wide range of assemblies are formed in each of the city's districts that allow citizens to discuss and decide how budget money will be spent in their areas.  This form of democratic participation means more open dialog between members of local communities, and it means an everyday investment in the politics of governance at the local level.

So what does this mean for becoming a food citizen and not simply being a food consumer?  Jennifer Lynn Wilkins of Cornell University, in her 2004 Presidential Address to the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society in Hyde Park, New York, defined food citizenship as engaging in "behaviors that support, rather than threaten, the development of a democratic, socially and economically just, and environmentally sustainable food system."

Consumption is an important aspect of being a food citizen.  Lacking the land and time to grow enough food to be self-sufficient, most of us have no choice but to purchase most, if not all, of our food from grocery stores, farmers markets, food coops or farmers.  The recent shift to greater food awareness and more conscious food consumption and the promotion of buying from farmers markets or directly from farmers does much to make us better food consumers and get us on our way to being good food citizens. It helps us realize the importance of an uncontaminated environment as critical for healthy food production and human sustenance.  It puts us in direct contact with our food producers.  It enables us to ask critical questions about the quality of the food we consume and the way it is produced.  It teaches us to value the work of growing and producing food as a skill that is both physical and mental.  It teaches us to respect and value the people who provide us with food and food services. And, it teaches us to put a greater value on the food we consume than the price we pay for it.  Getting as close to the natural source of our food as possible, whether it is a farm, a farmer or a local baker, enables us to forge a closer social relationship with the environment, our food and our food producers. 

However, being a food citizen goes beyond conscientious consumption and forging social relationships. Being a food citizen is about taking action, and active democratic participation.  It is about building on the knowledge and relationships we gain by more actively engaging with our food producers and transforming this into the basis for political action.  This means moving the discussions with our food producers onto political terrain.  Ask your farmers or food providers about the challenges they face in producing and distributing their products.  Ask if there are local policies or national legislation that posses difficulties for them.  Ask them how they are engaged with other local farmers to transform food policy to benefit small and medium-sized producers, family farms and local businesses.  Ask them how you can help.  Perhaps you can call your representatives to support a piece of legislation that is critical for the survival of their business.  Perhaps you can attend a meeting where these issues are discussed.  Maybe there is a local food policy council you can join.  Maybe you can help create one.  Use the relationships and knowledge you have already developed about food to learn more and to engage in political actions that will improve the ability of local food producers to continue to provide you and your community with natural, healthy and sustainable products.  Stand with them to fight against policies that will ultimately infringe on your right to consume local and sustainable food.

Citizenship endows us with a responsibility to justice and democracy.  This means that as much as we work to inform ourselves about being better food consumers, as much as we begin to make conscious food choices to participate in local and sustainable food system, and as much as we begin to engage politically to develop and preserve that system, we must also demand and work to make local and sustainable food systems accessible to everyone in our community.  This means forging new kinds of social relationships and new kinds of knowledge.  We need to learn who is left out of the emerging sustainable food systems.  What part of our communities live without enough food?  What part of our communities live in food desserts?  What organizations are working to fill those needs?  What kinds of projects are they engaged in?  Do they need your help?  How can you get involved?  There is a burgeoning food justice movement in this country that is taking a wide variety of forms. Most of these projects are the result of grass-roots efforts centered in churches, public schools, farmers markets and neighborhoods.  Seek these out.  Learn about the dynamics of food injustice in your community from them.  Learn about what they are doing to transform their communities.  Learn how you can get involved and do so.  It could mean something as simple as volunteering for the local food bank.  It could mean teaching healthy cooking classes at a community center or church. It could mean working with a food policy council, your local farmer and food justice advocates to find ways to distribute local agricultural products at affordable prices to communities lacking access to fresh fruits and vegetables.  The options are as diverse as the communities in which we live and the problems that plague them.

Moving from informed and conscientious food consumers to good food citizens ultimately means taking the knowledge that we have gained through our closer interaction with the food system and acting critically to create a just food system for everyone.  It means moving beyond a consumer approach to politics, one on which we passively select our options from among a range of choices determined for us by others, and moving towards active democratic political participation in which we collectively shape the solutions and food systems we desire.

As for my recipe today, I have a soup by Dana Jacobi who writes about food for the American Institute for Cancer Research and is the author of several cookbooks.  Seven of her soup recipes appeared in this month's Tastes of Italia magazine, which is running a feature on "Super Soups." Dana's contributions all look so appetizing that I plan to make each and every one.  I couldn't resist starting with her Black-Eyed Pea Soup with Lemon and Sage.  Last week I made SmittenKitchen's Barley Risotto with Beans and Greens using black-eyed peas and collard greens, and I think this left me craving more of the earthy flavor of these beans.  I modified Dana's recipe by substituting vegetable broth for the beef broth she called for, and by adding Red Russian Kale to boost the soups vitamin content, which gets the soup a little closer to being a complete meal.

Black-Eyed Pea & Kale Soup with Lemon & Sage

3 tablespoons olive oil

4 garlic cloves, minced

1 small onion, diced

2 cups cooked black-eyed peas

5 cups vegetable broth

1 bay leaf

1/4 fresh sage leaves, chopped

salt & pepper to taste

4 cups kale, sliced into thin shreds

juice of one lemon

In a medium pot, heat the olive oil to medium heat.  Add the garlic and cook for a minute.  Add the onions and sauté for five minutes.  Add the black-eyed peas, vegetable broth, bay leaf, sage leaves, and salt and pepper.  Bring to a boil, reduce the heat so that the soup simmers, cover and cook for one hour.  Remove the bay leaf and stir in the chard.  Cook for 2-3 minutes until the chard turns bright green and begins to wilt a little.  Stir in the lemon juice.  Adjust the seasoning and serve.

Serves 4

Print Recipe Only