Advanced Storytelling

At noon on Monday, the Environmental Working Group launched a new farm subsidies database profiling the 358,070 people who've gotten over $34.75 billion in federal subsidies. Twenty-four hours later, the database was already getting 7,000 hits per hour on the new database. Two days later, the website still took five minutes to load. Why all the interest? Well, why did Microsoft's Paul Allen get $30,687 in farm subsidies between 2003-2005? Right here would be a great place for a pun about something smelling like manure, but I don't want to offend any cows, especially since they're organizing .

DairyQueen has a hilarious post on The Ethicurean about the latest E. coli outbreak, which I hadn't heard of. She picked up on one of the frames I discussed in my thesis, the modernization frame: Another day, another recall of ground beef possible tainted with E. coli 0157:H7, aka Revenge of the Industrial Food System. Actually, this is just an expanded recall, voluntary of course, because the USDA has no power to force the companies it regulates to recall their products. Kind of like being the parents of rebellious teenagers. You just hope you raised them right … so they don’t go out and kill people. In outbreaks like this the modernization frame--aka Revenge of the Industrial Food System--works against reform for two reasons. Either they're proof of the need for even more industrialization: As usual, this latest E. coli recall has brought out the proponents of irradiation. Those would be the parents that, having raised rotten teenagers, are fine with packing them off to adu...

I meant to post on this about two weeks ago, but I got really sick, and am only now getting my appetite back. The Columbia Journalism Review featured an essay a few weeks ago on the new food writing: In the past few years a raft of reporters and writers have stepped forward with him to answer those twinned queries in all their anthropologically thick complexity. Their work draws together issues of taste, ethics, and politics, bridging the gap between James Beard and Rachel Carson. Much of their writing has an activist tone: last September, The Nation brought together several environmentally conscious writers under the umbrella of a “Food Issue.” But mainstream newspapers, too, now know that their readers expect them to report on the political and ethical implications of food–and to track trends generated, in part, by the new food writers. I had a lot more notes on this, but that pretty much sums it up. If I have anything to say about it, this kind of writing will take over, but it...

Round One wasn't really a fight, but whatever. Caught your attention, right? Elyzabethe posted about Montgomery County's trans fat ban, which inspired my post last week on the Guerrilla Nutrition Labels, which inspired her response . Well, over on my new favorite website, Culinate, there is a review of a --I guess you could call it a debate--between food and agriculture writer Michael Pollen, and Whole Foods CEO John Mackey. Apparently, Mackey impressed the Berkeley crowd with his commitment to reforming the food system. I have no doubt he's genuine, either, but this article points out some of the facts he left out of his (seriously) PowerPoint presentation. What got me especially (no surprise to anyone who heard me ramble on about Spinach and e.coli last semester) was his classification of Earthbound Farm as a group of small organic farms banding together under one brand name, allowing him to say that 78% of Whole Foods produce comes from small farms. I call bull...

I went to a really fascinating presentation last Friday by the Beehive Design Collective . I was a little wary at first that it would be an all white, Latin American studies crowd, especially since in the ten minutes preceding the presentation I had to listen to some teenage self-described anarchists debate for ten minutes over whether police are just workers following orders, or if force against them is justified because they are the enforcement arm of the fascist state. I’m sorry: you do not qualify as an anarchist if you’re enrolled in a four-year liberal arts college. Luckily, the words ‘proletariat’ or ‘bourgeoisie’ did not make an appearance, otherwise I would have had to leave. But I digress. The Beehive describes their ‘visual lectures’ as giant comic book posters, but that doesn’t do them justice. Imagine the picture left blown up to about 6 feet wide by probably 25 feet tall, spanning 500 years, and you’ve got a rough idea. The symbolism and detail in their work reminded me o...

Author Michael Pollen had an excellent article in yesterday's New York Times Magazine, on why we should all be paying attention to the Farm Bill being reauthorized by Congress this year. Basically, he wrote the introduction to my thesis much more eloquently than I did. The whole article is worth reading, but these two paragraphs sum up the issue well: And then there are the eaters, people like you and me, increasingly concerned, if not restive, about the quality of the food on offer in America. A grass-roots social movement is gathering around food issues today, and while it is still somewhat inchoate, the manifestations are everywhere: in local efforts to get vending machines out of the schools and to improve school lunch; in local campaigns to fight feedlots and to force food companies to better the lives of animals in agriculture; in the spectacular growth of the market for organic food and the revival of local food systems. In great and growing numbers, people are voting with ...

I've been given the chance to write for Provisions Library 's blog Signalfire, on agriculture and food issues, my other passion in addition to framing. I thought for awhile I'd cross-post here as well. Provisions is a social change activism resource library located in DC. First post: Spring will have sprung any moment now, and with that the opening of local farmers markets. In addition to Eastern Market, Fresh Farm runs a number of markets around the city, and the Twin Springs Fruit Farm of Pennsylvania has stands at a number of markets in Bethesda, DC and Arlington. Wherever you live, Local Harvest keeps an extensive directory of farmers markets, local farms, and CSAs across the country.