Interview with Frances Moore Lappé
March 30, 2007
Frances Moore Lappé shot to fame in 1971 with her book Diet for a Small Planet. Her latest book is Democracy’s Edge, which completes a trilogy begun in 2002 with Hope’s Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet (co-written with her daughter Anna Lappé). In 1975, with Joseph Collins, Lappé co-founded the California-based Institute for Food and Development Policy (Food First). In 2001, Frances and Anna Lappé founded the Cambridge-based Small Planet Institute, a collaborative network for research and popular education to bring democracy to life. Frances is a resident of Belmont, MA.
CV: Does sustainable agriculture play a large part in your research on the economics of food, and if so, how?
FML: Very much! 37 years ago, when I began, my wake-up call was the realization that human beings are actually creating scarcity out of plenty! Today’s industrial, extractive food system generates both enormous waste and pollution. And it is heating the planet. Agriculture contributes over a fifth of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Livestock outstrip transport as a contributor to harm from greenhouse gas emissions. Starting with food we can see what is wrong with our world economic and political systems today.
I have just completed a chapter on world hunger for a sociology textbook to be published by Oxford University Press where I dispel the myth that sustainable production yields less food. In the research, I found new evidence for what I’d intuited and written about years ago: that working with nature we realize its abundance. In organic farming, carbon emissions per acre are from one-half to two-thirds less than industrial, chemical agriculture. And one recent interdisciplinary study from the University of Michigan concludes that if we converted the entire world’s agriculture to organic methods, output could increase by over 50 percent.
CV: Is it better to buy organic food that has come from long distances or should we buy conventional food grown by our local farmers?
FML: This is not an easy question at all. The problem of pesticides is not just for eaters and producers but is a broader ecological problem. I try to buy local organic food whenever I possibly can. From the point of view of fossil fuels heating the planet, it’s more important to buy local produce even if it’s not organic. From the point of view of helping the lives of farm workers and saving the environment from pesticide pollution, then buying organic has an extremely high value. Overall, we need to create a demand in the market for organic produce and local availability.
CV: In New England, most farmers use the Integrated Pest Management system, and a lot of people reject IPM out of hand because it is not organic. What are your feelings on this?
FML: If I had to buy either organic from the West Coast or IPM local I would definitely buy IPM local. The goal is to put greater and greater demand on pesticide reduction.
CV: Food in America is the cheapest in the world; what are the issues and costs that you see inherent in consumers always buying the cheapest food that they can find?
FML: That American food is the cheapest in the world is a myth. The reason our food appears cheap is that it does not include the true health and environmental costs of its production. We are paying roughly $20 billion in tax subsidies to commodity producers who are heavy users of chemicals.
I think that people forget how expensive processed food is per pound. Certainly junk food; certainly processed. Organic oatmeal is about 1/3 the cost of boxed cereals. I try to counter the whole notion that eating well is more expensive. If you shift your diet from a meat-centered one to a plant-centered one you can use this saved money to buy local organic produce. While produce at a farmers’ market may seem more expensive than produce bought at Costco, actual cost is not a simple calculation. Americans have always valued community and so when you shop at a farmers’ market instead of an anonymous giant supermarket you are strengthening the community; you cannot put a price tag on that because it cannot be denominated in dollars.
CV: Under the current rules of the World Trade Organization, it would seem almost impossible to have food democracy. Can the general public through their purchasing power indeed influence a change?
FLM: I agree with you on the obstacles. It will be very interesting to see what happens in Mali (West Africa), where they have just declared food sovereignty – a determination to be food self-sufficient and not dependent on the world market for basic foods. Let’s see if the WTO is going to try and block them. Hopefully with the upsurge in understanding of the importance of healthy food, the costs of long distance travel, and the urgency of global heating, people will recognize that food is different from other trade goods. There is a new book called Food is Different where the author, Peter Rossett, points out that food is not like any other commodity. To emphasize local provisioning is the only realistic long-term strategy, whether you are concerned about terrorism or about food quality or global heating. My hope is that there will be an awakening globally to buy local food as it is the only sane future for our planet. Then the WTO will have to change its approach that says that you cannot favor one type of producer over another.
CV: What can the average Belmont citizen can do to improve and sustain the world that we live in?
FML: It’s in the choices that we make, whether it’s eating low on the food chain or being more responsible in the way we live: reducing our own purchases, our own consumption, and our own carbon emissions. Those are all things that we as individuals can do. They are limited but they are extremely important.
The more we align our own life choices and values, the stronger and more effective we become as a people. We must change the logic of this one-rule economics — by that I mean the single driver of highest return to shareholders and executive ——that’s driving the concentration of power and destroying our planet; in order to do this, we have to join with others. This is why getting involved is very important. Everyone should look deeply inside themselves, listen to their own questions — that’s what changed my life forever -- and connect with other people, whether this is through purchasing a CSA, buying local produce or getting money out of our political system. The key is to connect with other people. Alone we cannot turn the spiral of destruction to the spiral of health; alone it will be very difficult for us to do the work that we need to do to get to the root of the problem.
CV: Are there any final comments that you would like to make to Belmont citizens that I have not addressed?
FML: We are all educators; we are all teachers; we all face the world and with every choice we make we send out direct ripples and someone else is watching us. If we are embodying the enjoyment we get from these choices, then we become more aligned with the flourishing of our planet and people will want to be part of that. It is about helping people see the underlying causes and living in the world in a way that other people will say “I want that” because it is really a rich life. Often people think that the only way to affect the world is by making conscious choices, as if our unconscious choices have no impact. But I want to remind people that all the choices we make have an impact. You don’t have a choice not to change the world; you can only choose how you will change the world. That is very empowering. Every choice we make ripples out, and we cannot avoid that even if we want to. It’s the nature of things.
The motto of our Institute sums up our learning for all the energized people we’re meeting all over the planet: Hope is not what we find it evidence. It is what we become in action.
Published in edibleBoston Summer 2007
http://www.smallplanet.org/
http://www.foodfirst.org/
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
A converstaion with Marian and Russ Morash
In spring of 2007 I caught up with Marian (or Chef Marian to her TV fans) and Russ Morash, creator of The Victory Garden on PBS, in their home in suburban Boston for a conversation about the pleasures of growing your own food.
CV: How much of your own food are you able to grow in season in Lexington and on how much land?
Russ: Our garden is 75 x 75 feet and, when it was producing at maximum capacity, we grew all our own vegetables.
Marian: At our garden in Nantucket we grow half of our vegetables for a family of eleven.
CV: Is your garden organic or do you use Integrated Pest Management methods?
Russ. Both! We believe that you have to know what the problem is in order to fight the problem. The Colorado potato beetle will affect potatoes if you don’t do something about it. So we treat that organically by using an organic biological agent to control the caterpillar that lays the eggs that causes the beetle to form and devastate the crop. It is rare that we would use any insecticide. When we had fruit trees we used a few hard pesticides because frankly we didn’t know how you could raise fruit without them, particularly if you wanted to grow perfect apples. Back then we rationalized that a perfect apple was an apple without worms now we would argue that a perfect apple is one raised without pesticides.
CV: Does fruit need to be perfect?
Russ: That’s my point exactly. We love bananas. They used to be heavily sprayed but today, once they are pollinated, each staulk is covered by a polythene bag which keeps the bugs from getting in. That’s a strategy that is used by the commercial grower but similar non lethal methods can be used in backyard gardens. For example, Chard or beets cannot be grown here without protection because the leaf miner will attack it and destroy the leaf and thus the potential to grow a good crop. But it is simple to grow the crops under floating row covers, thus keeping the fly from her destiny to lay eggs. Another strategy is to observe and eliminate bugs by hand picking them. The key to bug control is a clean garden: no weeds allowed lots of good compost, and high soil fertility. Healthy plants discourage the bugs.
CV: What does it mean to step out to your garden and pick something fresh for your dinner?
Marian. Well it is wonderful, but my husband is dangerous. He goes out into the garden and picks a lot. He comes in at 5:00 pm with 19 tomatoes, a basket of Swiss chard, , a half peck of new potatoes and 12 zucchinis and expects me to cook them all. He gets carried away.
Russ: The life of a hunter gather is not an easy one. At the moment I have some of the most glorious parsnips. Parsnips are one of the great triumphs over garden misery. They take a long time to get out of the soil. When you sow them, you really need to know where you planted them or they will fool you and come up weeks later.
They have to be grown lean; if they see any commercial fertilizer the roots will fork yet if you are looking for exhibition parsnips you are well advised to prepare the planting holes with buckets of priceless home made compost. They will love it.
Then you must be patient and let them grow throughout the summer and fall into the winter... They need a lot of cold weather to be truly sweet. They especially favor hard freezes which keep the sugars from changing to starch.
Marian: He brought some in two weeks ago and they were just like sugar. In the market when you buy them they are flavorless. A lot has to do with getting them from your garden; they have to winter over. It is a very good plant to grow.
Russ: We don’t long for them in July or September. We are perfectly happy to wait until April. This is key to the way we think gardening should be done: grow things in season and enjoy them in season.
CV: Do you cook meals on the spur of the moment based on what’s in the garden?
Marian: I certainly cook what’s in the garden but it’s not spur of the moment, because you know what is in your garden. I immediately think of a ratatouille in the summer time because the tomatoes, onions, bell peppers, and zucchini are all ready in the garden. The meals do develop from what’s in the garden at any given time.
Russ: Another big advantage is that you know where the product came from. Today more then ever when it’s not only a matter of how they were grown, but how they were harvested and transported, to say nothing of the cost of transporting them and the difficulty of the lives of the workers who pick them. It’s something that people need to be thinking about. The other reason you grow your own is for the taste. It is extraordinarily different. Marian: That is why a farmers’ market is so valuable. There, you are not getting produce trucked in from across the country. You are getting it from local growers. There is a 100% difference in taste from asparagus harvested from local gardens or getting some picked days or weeks earlier from hundreds of miles away. The same is true with strawberries and fresh-dug potatoes.
CV: Where can the novice gardener get help on how to start?
Russ: One of the reasons we started the Victory Garden TV show was because of this question. My father grew a bit in our victory garden during WWII. I got interested in growing vegetables early on but had no training. What little I learned was by trial and error. Because of my many failures growing the wrong things in the wrong soil and the wrong exposure, I wondered if it was possible to find a great gardener to teach us.
I went out and found books on the subject and then I found a wonderful gentleman in Concord, Jim Crockett, who was willing to join us in a television experiment to see if we could explain and demonstrate how to garden on TV. His mantra was “get the soil right and a lot of things will follow from having the soil right.” Good soil has no unpleasant odors but might have indispensable earth worms living in it and making it even better.
As a first-time gardener one would be well advised to avoid certain vegetables that everyone says are easy to grow but are not…Radishes come to mind.
Although they come up quickly they are soon ravished by the cabbot root maggot, a tough bug to control. Moreover, radishes mature quickly and then go quickly into bitter hot spheres that will disappoint you. I prefer to let the pros grow radishes although Lord only knows what’s on them. Until you’ve had some experience, I would recommend you avoid radishes, spinach, beets, or carrots although each is considered easy to grow.
Lettuce, on the other hand is very easy to grow and that which you raise will beat what you can buy in the store . So, it’s other good gardeners, books, the Internet, and even knowledgeable help at garden centers who can be helpful. Find yourself a mentor.
CV: What do you think of buying salad greens in plastic bags?
Marian: I will never buy them. The thing that bothers me is that folks take it for granted that the washed greens have been washed and they throw the leaves into a salad bowl and eat it. Now after this last spinach scare they are now saying wash it regardless.
Russ: I think there are things that they are doing with produce that is not in the best interest of those who wish to protect the food chain.
CV: And your final word?
Marian: Russell’s family started out in Belmont!
Russ: I have seen that meadow over by McLean hospital and if I didn’t have a garden, I would be growing my food there. Gardening is a terrific way to exercise. Down with dumb gardening and up with smart gardening is my final word!
--a shorter version of the interview was published in the Late Summer 2007, Belmont Farmers Market Roots and Sprouts magazine. http://www.belmontfarmersmarket.org/newsletters/2007/newsletter-2007-0809.pdf
CV: How much of your own food are you able to grow in season in Lexington and on how much land?
Russ: Our garden is 75 x 75 feet and, when it was producing at maximum capacity, we grew all our own vegetables.
Marian: At our garden in Nantucket we grow half of our vegetables for a family of eleven.
CV: Is your garden organic or do you use Integrated Pest Management methods?
Russ. Both! We believe that you have to know what the problem is in order to fight the problem. The Colorado potato beetle will affect potatoes if you don’t do something about it. So we treat that organically by using an organic biological agent to control the caterpillar that lays the eggs that causes the beetle to form and devastate the crop. It is rare that we would use any insecticide. When we had fruit trees we used a few hard pesticides because frankly we didn’t know how you could raise fruit without them, particularly if you wanted to grow perfect apples. Back then we rationalized that a perfect apple was an apple without worms now we would argue that a perfect apple is one raised without pesticides.
CV: Does fruit need to be perfect?
Russ: That’s my point exactly. We love bananas. They used to be heavily sprayed but today, once they are pollinated, each staulk is covered by a polythene bag which keeps the bugs from getting in. That’s a strategy that is used by the commercial grower but similar non lethal methods can be used in backyard gardens. For example, Chard or beets cannot be grown here without protection because the leaf miner will attack it and destroy the leaf and thus the potential to grow a good crop. But it is simple to grow the crops under floating row covers, thus keeping the fly from her destiny to lay eggs. Another strategy is to observe and eliminate bugs by hand picking them. The key to bug control is a clean garden: no weeds allowed lots of good compost, and high soil fertility. Healthy plants discourage the bugs.
CV: What does it mean to step out to your garden and pick something fresh for your dinner?
Marian. Well it is wonderful, but my husband is dangerous. He goes out into the garden and picks a lot. He comes in at 5:00 pm with 19 tomatoes, a basket of Swiss chard, , a half peck of new potatoes and 12 zucchinis and expects me to cook them all. He gets carried away.
Russ: The life of a hunter gather is not an easy one. At the moment I have some of the most glorious parsnips. Parsnips are one of the great triumphs over garden misery. They take a long time to get out of the soil. When you sow them, you really need to know where you planted them or they will fool you and come up weeks later.
They have to be grown lean; if they see any commercial fertilizer the roots will fork yet if you are looking for exhibition parsnips you are well advised to prepare the planting holes with buckets of priceless home made compost. They will love it.
Then you must be patient and let them grow throughout the summer and fall into the winter... They need a lot of cold weather to be truly sweet. They especially favor hard freezes which keep the sugars from changing to starch.
Marian: He brought some in two weeks ago and they were just like sugar. In the market when you buy them they are flavorless. A lot has to do with getting them from your garden; they have to winter over. It is a very good plant to grow.
Russ: We don’t long for them in July or September. We are perfectly happy to wait until April. This is key to the way we think gardening should be done: grow things in season and enjoy them in season.
CV: Do you cook meals on the spur of the moment based on what’s in the garden?
Marian: I certainly cook what’s in the garden but it’s not spur of the moment, because you know what is in your garden. I immediately think of a ratatouille in the summer time because the tomatoes, onions, bell peppers, and zucchini are all ready in the garden. The meals do develop from what’s in the garden at any given time.
Russ: Another big advantage is that you know where the product came from. Today more then ever when it’s not only a matter of how they were grown, but how they were harvested and transported, to say nothing of the cost of transporting them and the difficulty of the lives of the workers who pick them. It’s something that people need to be thinking about. The other reason you grow your own is for the taste. It is extraordinarily different. Marian: That is why a farmers’ market is so valuable. There, you are not getting produce trucked in from across the country. You are getting it from local growers. There is a 100% difference in taste from asparagus harvested from local gardens or getting some picked days or weeks earlier from hundreds of miles away. The same is true with strawberries and fresh-dug potatoes.
CV: Where can the novice gardener get help on how to start?
Russ: One of the reasons we started the Victory Garden TV show was because of this question. My father grew a bit in our victory garden during WWII. I got interested in growing vegetables early on but had no training. What little I learned was by trial and error. Because of my many failures growing the wrong things in the wrong soil and the wrong exposure, I wondered if it was possible to find a great gardener to teach us.
I went out and found books on the subject and then I found a wonderful gentleman in Concord, Jim Crockett, who was willing to join us in a television experiment to see if we could explain and demonstrate how to garden on TV. His mantra was “get the soil right and a lot of things will follow from having the soil right.” Good soil has no unpleasant odors but might have indispensable earth worms living in it and making it even better.
As a first-time gardener one would be well advised to avoid certain vegetables that everyone says are easy to grow but are not…Radishes come to mind.
Although they come up quickly they are soon ravished by the cabbot root maggot, a tough bug to control. Moreover, radishes mature quickly and then go quickly into bitter hot spheres that will disappoint you. I prefer to let the pros grow radishes although Lord only knows what’s on them. Until you’ve had some experience, I would recommend you avoid radishes, spinach, beets, or carrots although each is considered easy to grow.
Lettuce, on the other hand is very easy to grow and that which you raise will beat what you can buy in the store . So, it’s other good gardeners, books, the Internet, and even knowledgeable help at garden centers who can be helpful. Find yourself a mentor.
CV: What do you think of buying salad greens in plastic bags?
Marian: I will never buy them. The thing that bothers me is that folks take it for granted that the washed greens have been washed and they throw the leaves into a salad bowl and eat it. Now after this last spinach scare they are now saying wash it regardless.
Russ: I think there are things that they are doing with produce that is not in the best interest of those who wish to protect the food chain.
CV: And your final word?
Marian: Russell’s family started out in Belmont!
Russ: I have seen that meadow over by McLean hospital and if I didn’t have a garden, I would be growing my food there. Gardening is a terrific way to exercise. Down with dumb gardening and up with smart gardening is my final word!
--a shorter version of the interview was published in the Late Summer 2007, Belmont Farmers Market Roots and Sprouts magazine. http://www.belmontfarmersmarket.org/newsletters/2007/newsletter-2007-0809.pdf
Introduction
Hello to all the foodies in the world!
This blog is dedicated to growing, cooking and eating good, clean, healthy food. Ethical eating also involves caring for planet earth and ensuring the health and humane treatment of our livestock and those who care for them. It will cover all the folks in the supply chain from farm worker, artisan cheese maker, slaugher house worker, baker, and vendors of good foods. Thus, this blog will contain my writings, links to articles of interest, movie and book reviews, and restaurant reviews. I look forward to your comments.
Also please check out my other blog dedicated to living; primarily the arts and politics as they affect me individually. Check out my other blog
http://carlha-musingsonlife.blogspot.com/
This blog is dedicated to growing, cooking and eating good, clean, healthy food. Ethical eating also involves caring for planet earth and ensuring the health and humane treatment of our livestock and those who care for them. It will cover all the folks in the supply chain from farm worker, artisan cheese maker, slaugher house worker, baker, and vendors of good foods. Thus, this blog will contain my writings, links to articles of interest, movie and book reviews, and restaurant reviews. I look forward to your comments.
Also please check out my other blog dedicated to living; primarily the arts and politics as they affect me individually. Check out my other blog
http://carlha-musingsonlife.blogspot.com/
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