Educasting Study Guide on Food, Sustainability, and Society

Study Guide Discussion Questions

Healing Harvest: Agricultural Innovators Plan Seeds of Renewal

Pre-Listening

Picture an American farm. What does it look like? What does it grow or raise? Who does the work and how is it done?

Where does the food you eat come from before you or your family buys it in a market? Trace the path of each serving of food on your dinner plate back to its source, stopping along the way to think through all the people who bring it to you, from those who stock it in the store and those who deliver it to them to those who grow it in the first place. How many people are involved in the process that brings food to your table? How does it make you feel to think about the food chain of human effort that enables you to pick up your fork and eat?

Which food production system is more energy-efficient in delivering food to your plate – a large farm that controls pests with pesticides and other chemicals and that maintains a network of packagers, distributors, and transporters in place and at the ready to ship food to market…or a small farm located close to where you live that uses non-chemical methods of pest control, uses little or no packaging, and has only the farmer’s truck to transport its produce?

If you prefer to eat locally produced food, which foods are you willing to forgo eating when they’re not locally available? Tomatoes? Bananas? Peppers? Watermelons? Is it important to you that food be raised largely or entirely in your own region? If so, why? If not, why not?

Interview One: Joel Salatin, owner and farmer of Poly Face Farm, located in Virginia

Discussion Questions:

Salatin talks about the system employed on his farm, which uses nature as the template for his growing methods. What techniques does he utilize and how do they mimic nature?

Salatin admits that organic, locally produced food produced by a small farmer is often too expensive for people on limited budgets to buy. But he maintains that his food is more nutritious than cheaper conventionally grown produce and therefore one can afford to eat less of it. Finally, he says that his “honest price” is higher because “society is not picking up the tab for [his] mistakes” in the form of taxpayer subsidies. [listening link on page 3 starting with “How do you enable people who don’t have a great deal of money” to “regulatory climate that keeps us from being able to do things in an efficient way”] Do you agree or disagree with his argument? How can nutritious, organic, locally grown food be made more affordable for people of limited means?

Salatin asserts that regulations governing the agricultural industry penalize small farms and act like a regressive tax that lands especially hard on low-income consumers. He says that subsidies and government regulation are “not about food safety, it’s about who will access the market.” [listening link on page 3 starting with “Sounds like a regressive tax” and ending with “to solve today’s food problems”] What are the impacts on both large corporate farms and small family farms of current agricultural regulations and subsidies? Who benefits and who loses?

Salatin says his business is expanding “by leaps and bounds.” What makes for his success when many other small farmers are struggling just to survive? What strategies can small farmers employ to compete successfully with agribusiness farms that enjoy major economies of scale?

The organic food movement began as a fringe phenomenon largely as an outgrowth of the environmental movement. Now it is being mainstreamed, with organic labels available in major supermarket chains and customers all over the cultural, political, and religious map. What produced this transformation and what will it mean for the organic food movement? How can its original standards and purposes be maintained as it enters the mainstream?

These days farmers markets draw an exceptional diversity of customers from all backgrounds and walks of life, making them the town squares of our time. What are the implications of this ability to bring together people of varied backgrounds and build community where previously there was none?

Interview Two: Walter Robb, president of the Whole Foods organic supermarket chain

Discussion Questions:

How might Whole Foods’ stated goal of boosting its sales from $5.6 billion per year in 2006 to $12 billion of food in 2010 affect the organic food market? How will it affect organic farmers and suppliers? How does this goal fit with those of food movement advocates who believe that food should not just be organic, but also locally produced on small farms? What, if anything, can or should Whole Foods do to increase the proportion of its food produced in the regions where its markets are located? How important is it to you that food be largely or entirely locally sourced?

With the food system in mind, answer Walter Robb’s rhetorical question, restated here: Is it possible for a large business to have a deeper purpose and actually have integrity with that purpose? If so, how? If not, why not?

Robb says Whole Foods seeks to unite its entrepreneurial approach with its corporate commitment to environmental and social responsibility by applying a set of priorities that put customers first, team members second, and stakeholders third. [listening link on bottom of page 6 and top of page 7 starting with “corporations can go awfully off track” to “we don’t manage the company for shareholder return, we manage it to fulfill the mission”] The dominant business model at the moment places stockholders first. How could Whole Foods’ philosophy affect the nature of food production and distribution in the United States? How could its approach to business impact how commerce is conducted in the food sector and beyond? What are the obstacles to staying true to this philosophy and how can they be overcome?

Interview Three: John Jeavons, leading advocate of bio-intensive farming techniques, author of “How to Grow More Vegetables than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land than You Can Imagine”

Discussion Questions

Jeavons asks how long we will be able to produce and purchase food with such dependence on petrochemicals as oil prices rise and climate change looms on the horizon. [listening link on bottom of page 7 starting with “first we should look at how many people are involved” and ending with “it takes 435 calories”] He draws connections between food and other natural resources, systems, and issues. In addition to soil, water and oil, what other resources, systems, or issues are affected by our current food system?

Think back for a moment to the interview with Whole Foods president Walter Robb when he said, “There’s a new generation of young people who I think have actually rediscovered the importance of mission and values, core values, and living from that place. And it offers great potential for the world and I think it falls to our generation to help support the passing of the baton there.” [middle of page 5] Keeping this statement in mind, think of Jeavons’ vision of more people getting involved in farming small plots of land and his concern “…that for about the last 20 years one of the things in schools has been a concern about computer literacy, but I’m really wondering, what about farming literacy?” [top of page 8] How can this emerging generation become more engaged in growing its own food, like an earlier generation that included many who went “back to the land”? What, if any, role is there for older generation that may be just as out of touch with the land?

Jeavons asserts that the way to change the world is to start in your own local backyard. He says that “the real transformation is going to be within each of us and we can live well, even better than we’re living now, on less.” What, if anything, would you be willing to give up to reduce our collective burden on the planet? What would have to change in our culture so that more people would be convinced that living on less could not only be better for the earth but more enjoyable for us? If you agree with this goal, what strategies would you employ to gain the support and engagement of others?

Interview Four: Joan Gussow, author and retired Professor of Nutrition at Columbia University

Discussion Questions:

Host Mark Sommer asks Gussow if the de-localizing of organic farming as organics move into the mainstream is causing organic farming to lose its integrity or whether it is a necessary compromise that enables more people to gain access to food that is healthier and more affordable. Gussow responds by addressing the importance of compromise. She cites the example of farmers growing raspberries year-round in cold climates through the use of greenhouses and says that “It’s not that we can’t do it, it’s that the will to do it is not there, and the economic systems are off so hard in the other direction.” [listening link on page 9 starting with “for those who have been advocating organics for many years” up to “that’s why we’re in the mess that we’re in”] How much compromise do you think can be made in the food movement before the first principles of the organic movement become meaningless? Consider the compromises and intersections between local/long distance shipping, small and mid-size farms/mega and factor farms, and organic/conventional farming methods.

Gussow cites the high proportion of resources, including food, which Americans import from other countries and the economic and environmental costs of those imports: “I don’t know if the world is going to allow us to continue to do that.” [listening link on page 10 starting with “I just believe we ought to be thoughtful about the implications of important” ending with “allowed to continue to use things the way we do” What do you think would change if the public and legislators conceived of food not just as a nutritional concern but as a national security issue? What relationship is there, if any, between food security and national security?

Interview Five: Mary Keehn, entrepreneurial owner of Cypress Grove Chevre, a gourmet goat cheese company in Northern California

The host introduces Mary Keehn as the owner of a small cheese factory that “ships fresh products to the best markets in the country and abroad.” After hearing throughout this program about the value of locally produced food, what is it about Keehn’s business that you think fits into the mold of the new agricultural entrepreneur, combining entrepreneurial skill with environmental and social responsibility?

Early on in her business, when Keehn was breeding goats for milk, she says that she was just breaking even and states that this “is pretty good in the agriculture endeavor in this country.” If just breaking even is considered good for this business, what does this imply about the state of American farming?

Concluding Discussion Questions

Answer these questions after listening to the program in full.

After listening to this program and answering the questions in this Study Guide, go back to your three First Reactions questions. Has your picture of farming changed? Do you have a better idea of where your food comes from and how you get it? Has your answer for the third question changed? Explain your reasoning.

How would society at large have to change to achieve the goals of these food visionaries? How would YOU have to change?

Would you ever consider starting your own food business? If so, what kind of crops would you grow or sell? If not, why not?

Some businesses, like Whole Foods, are adopting a triple bottom line approach. The triple bottom line means that a business must be economically viable, environmentally friendly, and fair to its workers. The food reform movement, however, holds itself accountable to an additional triple bottom line: local, organic, and small-scale. How practical is it to meet all these bottom lines at once? How would you go about trying to achieve them? Which in your view are most important and what balance would you strike among them?