Gleanings on gleaning

If I were a fundamentalist this could be an illustration for a lesson on original sin, but there is nothing original about confusing charitable activity with justice.

I've been struggling for two weeks with how to say that without sounding harsh, and maybe there is no way to do so.

It was a wonderful day of gleaning, though a bit hot by late morning. As part of a Slow Food Russian River initiative we gleaned a private small orchard in Sebastopol, and got 676 pounds of apples which eventually went to the Redwood Gospel Mission and a public school in north county.

The team I worked with were great - good conversation along with the sun and scent of an apple orchard and rewarding work - marred only by the chain saws across the farm track where Dutton were taking out another orchard to put in grapes.

But I think it was the conversation with some of the gleaning leaders in the county at the luncheon celebration afterward (great fresh local food eaten in the shade at Bayer Farm) that really made me pause.

I have had an idea for some time that we need to get young people involved in gleaning. I've been thinking particularly about high school students doing service learning. But it seems like the gleaning being done now is by people who already know the food system in order to supply charities with produce. I'd so like to see both a learning component, and an involvement of those who could benefit from more fresh, local produce, and often can't afford it, in the gleaning effort itself. If that means that volunteers who are experienced and trusted by growers to glean their fields and orchards need to companion others, well, that's fine. I wish I were sure they were willing to. But I am questioning whether gleaning which is done to redistribute surplus by those who don't need the gleaned produce is really gleaning as I understand it. And whether such gleaning efforts can really be called food justice actions.

Give a person an apple, or teach a person to pick an apple, or help low income people form an apple gleaning cooperative? which is the just thing to do?

Is it those Hebrew bible images of gleaning getting in the way? Perhaps I am a bit of a fundamentalist?

(Thanks to Michael Dimmock for the photo.)

There IS a Domestic Fair Trade Association

and you can see a list of its members here:
http://www.dftassociation.org/membership

Looks like this group came together less than two years ago. There's a detailed vision on the web site, too.

The Food Alliance includes the social justice dimensions of sustainability in its North American certification program.

http://foodalliance.org/

But it's got to be a challenge. The Local Fair Trade Network folded before I found them. They've left behind, though, a list of organizations with related causes. I tend to judge websites by their links, and this looks like quite a comprehensive list.

http://www.localfairtrade.org/

Rights? Justice? Anyone?

For almost two weeks now I have been puzzling about a conversation at this month's Food System Alliance meeting. We go over and over and our goals, potential projects and markers. Someone asked if we wanted to beef up (sorry about that - it had nothing to do with meat or not) our language on food access. Don't people have a right to food.

Our facilitator leaped in and noted that we should avoid rights language, as we would alienate much of the agriculture community, where there's a feeling that people must earn their food. In other words, the question of rights was off the table. Now her response may reflect actual experience, but I was still appalled. Apparently things I take for granted - like UN statements on human rights - are not common currency in this greenish blue county?

Later in the meeting there was a question from the facilitator - did we want to include any statements about justice issues, using the j word, in our work. Perhaps we could have a conversation about this later was the dull response from the group. So I've come up against a place where values I take for granted are basically not shared, or if shared not asserted and acted upon, by this group of which I am a part.

I'm still thinking about it. And I'm thinking particularly about how much the church capitulates to the kind of the thinking I experienced in the FSA. Reading our Episcopal Church 2009 report on domestic poverty (asked to do so as part of the initiative on domestic poverty by the North American Association for the Diaconate) I realized how reactive, condescending and incapable of systems thinking the church is. Not that a hidebound yet amorphous institution can think, but the collective work of the church doesn't reveal much evidence that the bureaucratic leaders can either.

Uncommon values - that's where I find myself. I hope the deacon community can do better.

a feel good story

I've felt negligent in not doing more baking on these cool evenings. There usually are plenty of summer days when being in my west facing kitchen late in the day is not pleasant, and turning on the oven is the last thing I want to do. Not so this year.

Just now when I got out the ingredients for some zucchini bread, I thought about a story I had missed and became aware of when I bought the new bag of flour on Wednesday. The checker at my market told me that Bob of Bob's Red Mill - yes, there really is a Bob, he's no Betty Crocker - gave his business to his employees in February.

At 81, Bob continues to be active in what started as a retirement project and is now a business distributing hundreds of projects around the world. But his workers share the ownership. Decent products and worker justice, instead of a buy out by a corporate food conglomerate.

You can read more about it here, find a store near you that carries Bob's, or order what they don't carry direct from the source. Recipes, too.

http://www.bobsredmill.com/press-releases.html

Justice at the Table

Justice at the Table – A New MSA Resource

Christine Sine has announced that a new Mustard Seed Associates resource Justice at the Table by Ricci Kilmer has become available.

This resource is a collection of personal reflections and practical ideas to help us redeem “food” in all its dimensions from its mundane place as an annoying chore to a spiritual practice essential to a life of faith. This resource is designed for busy people and includes a mini-booklet for jotting notes on the go.

Ricci continues to challenge me and many of us in MSA about the importance of considering the decisions we make about what we eat and how we think about our food. Take a look and see how you can continue to redeem your relationship with food for the kingdom of God.

http://godspace.wordpress.com/2010/06/22/justice-at-the-table-a-new-msa-resource/

Christine Sine is teaching me a lot about the spirituality of gardens and of creation.


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How many things wrong can you find in this picture?

Or

Another Sunday, another atrocious story on Weekend Edition.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105381728&ft=1&f=1006

This time the story is about dairy farming in Saudi Arabia.

My first question is: what are those folks doing drinking milk anyway? Aren't they low on the lactase scale? Surely there are food that are both more appropriate both to produce and to the local cultural diet than cow's milk.

Second question: While I guess I can understand why a Saudi royal would want something he saw in California, why twice as big? Think about the stench when driving certain highways in California - stench from dairy and beef feedlots. Now multiply that.

Third question: Do they recycle any of the waste water from this operation - or is it all so polluted with excrement that it would take too much time or room to do so. I'm thinking about all that water used to cool the cows in 120F heat.

Fourth question: Didn't anybody realize that this was the desert, and that aquifers run dry - and won't be replenished given the decreasing rainfall in the desert latitudes?

Fifth question: Have people no sense of justice, of the human right to food? The most appalling thing about this piece was the report that countries like Saudi Arabia, because they've decimated their own natural resources with inappropriate agriculture, are buying tracts of land in places like Ethiopia and Sudan - countries of deep-seated food insecurity. Is no intervention possible to stop this? Will those who have oil buy land, water and food - at the expense of the lives of those who don't?

Or is this just a more blatant form of normal corporate colonialism?

Grace and Justice

I've been noticing lately that when people say grace before a meal they often mention the hands that prepared it, but leave out the complex justice issues of the food system - like the workers that were exploited to get that food to your table. After talking a lot with Neil James, food scientist from Florida A & M, at our Committee on Science, Technology and Faith, I am more attuned than ever to the plight of the poor, and how the injustices in our food system contribute to it. Reading Raj Patel's Stuffed and Starved on the flight home only reinforced this. And besides, I felt guilty that I did not mark Cesar Chavez Day here in blogland a month ago.

What I am dwelling on right now is this insight from Patel - that we don't need cheaper food. Our government's desire to have cheaper food for the poor, together with vertically integrated agri-chemical companies, are the reason we are in this mess. We need to have a living wage for everyone, so all can afford healthful, local, fresh food.

One of the things that Neil brought to my attention was the issue of Kosher meat. Can it be Kosher if workers are exploited in its processing? What a classic prophetic case - ritual butchering means nothing if those who sell the beef are grinding down the poor. Seems like this issue was hot in the press last summer and I missed it.

Justice at the Table

I heard about this from Christine Sine (http://godspace.wordpress.com/)

Mustard Seed Associates:

February 7: Justice at the Table Workshop

Come to our second “The Revolution Starts at Home” event, Justice at the Table! We will explore together the intricate connections between our faith and the food we eat. We will challenge ourselves and each other to bring our eating and buying practices more in line with our beliefs and draft a “Justice at the Table Plan” to help us implement the changes we hope to make.

Registration is required. Register online at http://msainfo.org/

Event Details: * Date – February 7th, 2009 * Where – Mustard Seed House, 510 NE 81st Street Seattle, WA 98115 (upper floor, back entrance) * Time – 9am – 3pm * Food – Coffee, Tea, and a vegetarian lunch is included. Please bring any snack with you that you wish to share. * Children – Due to our limited space and small staff, we are unable to offer childcare at this event. You are welcome however to bring children 2 and under with you if you feel they’d do well in a room of chatting adults. * Cost – $40 individual/$35 groups of 2 or more (if cost is prohibitive please contact mail@msainfo.org for scholarship information)

Family Food Mission Plan: Family Food Covenant

Hosted by Mustard Seed Associates and The Mustard Seed House

Facilitated: Ricci Kilmer

http://msainfo.org/promo/justice-at-the-table-food-and-justice-workshop