The Upchuck Rebellion

By Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown. Posted April 6, 2006.

Even though winter is just beginning to release its frigid grip on most of the land, I'm already thinking out of season, looking ahead to one special thing: fresh, ripe, right-out-of-the-soil, good-and-good-for-you summer tomatoes. Oh, I can taste them now! And eggplant, too. And peppers. And all kinds of other edible wonders.

I'm a food guy. I've got a small but richly composted garden plot in my backyard, I'm a regular at several farmers' markets, and I frequent a number of great restaurants here in Austin, Texas. I love poking around food stores of any variety, I like to browse through seed catalogs and cooking magazines, and I always try to sample the local specialties as I travel around the country. I enjoy friendships with quite a few chefs and restaurateurs, and I love visiting with farmers and food artisans who are doing creative things. Though it still pisses off the corporate establishment, I was once the agricultural commissioner of Texas.

I know firsthand about the phenomenal cornucopia of good, fresh, nutritious and delicious food that our country is capable of producing. That's why it knocks me whopperjawed to see the stuff that dominates too many American diets -- an array of industrialized, conglomeratized, globalized products that have lost any connection to our good earth. This stuff is saturated with fats, sugars, artificial flavorings, chemical additives, pesticide residues, bacterial contaminants, genetically altered organisms and who knows what else? Plus, the major factor driving prices is not the cost of any actual food that might still be in these products, but the cost of packaging, advertising and long-distance shipping.

What has caused us to stray so far from the farm, so far from the essential and wonderful sustenance provided by nature itself? The answer, of course, is that the brute force of corporate power has been applied both in politics and the marketplace to pervert our food economy. During the past half century, control over our nation's food policies has shifted from farmers and consumers to corporate lawyers, lobbyists and economists. These are people who could not run a watermelon stand if we gave them the melons and had the highway patrol flag down customers for them! Yet they're in charge, saddling us with a food system that enriches corporate middlemen while driving good farmers off the land, poisoning our productive soil and water supplies, and literally sickening those who consume these adulterated foodstuffs.

Revolt!

Do we have to swallow this? Of course not -- we're Americans, rebellious mavericks -- and the revolt is on! For the past few years, a grassroots movement has quietly but rapidly been spreading throughout the country. I call it The Upchuck Rebellion: a growing number of people fed up with the destructive power of industrialized food are declaring that they're not going to take it anymore.

More than declaring … they're taking action. Part of this effort is political, trying to get the industrializers and globalizers to clean up their act. At another level, however, America's food rebels are taking on the idea of industrialization itself by creating their own alternative food economies. These are based on local farmers, seasonal consumption, organic and sustainable production, local food processors and artisans, and local markets. The goals are (1) to build a system that delivers tastier, healthier food; (2) to keep a community's food dollars in the local economy; and (3) to treat food not as a corporate commodity, but as a centerpiece of our culture.

Naturally, the Powers That Be have howled in derision at these efforts, sneering that local farmers, consumers, entrepreneurs, chefs, marketers, gardeners, environmentalists, workers, churches, co-ops, community organizers and just plain citizens simply don't have the savvy to create and run any kind of significant food system. However, my friend John Dromgoole, who runs a successful natural gardening and composting center in Austin, has a snappy retort to these elites: "Those who say it can't be done should not interrupt those who are doing it."

This is a movement that has antecedents going back generations -- both J.H. Kellogg and C.W. Post, for example, were health-food visionaries more than a century ago (and both would be appalled by the products now bearing their names) -- but the modern-day movement is barely 20 years old. In this short time, however, these innovative doers have made astonishing gains. Just in terms of raw numbers, today's "Good Food" movement is impressive:

• Organic food topped $15 billion in sales in 2004 -- triple what they were only seven years earlier. Sales are increasing by roughly 20 percent a year (compared to only about 2 percent for all other foods) and are expected to reach $30 billion four years from now.
• Nearly two thirds of American shoppers bought some organic foods last year -- up from about half the year before. About 40 percent of consumers now say that they regularly buy some organic foods.
• There are now more than 8,000 organic farmers, with thousands more trying to make the transition from industrialized production to organic (a rigorous and costly process that should be assisted and funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which instead remains either indifferent or hostile).
• From white tablecloth restaurants to barbecue joints, chefs have been in the lead in introducing organic food to the public and in creating the fast-growing market for locally produced seasonal foods.
• The growth and popularity of farmers' markets has mushroomed in recent years, popping up in practically every city and most towns. Some 4,000 of these bustling, vibrant markets now exist, bringing local farmers and artisans together with customers at all economic levels. Likewise, the community-supported agriculture movement is fast spreading. These CSAs allow consumers to buy "shares" in the production of a local farm or group of farms, giving the farmers a defined and reliable cash market and the consumers a weekly share of the crops. In addition, the food co-op movement (once the rather funky domain of hippies) is thriving. About 300 of them are in cities across the country, doing some $750 million a year in business and providing local producers another way around the corporate distribution system.
• The demand for organic and locally produced food has become so mainstream that major supermarket chains and such national food wholesalers as SYSCO have had to alter their once-rigid procurement practices to make some of their purchases from organic and local producers.

Jim Hightower is the author of "Let's Stop Beating Around the Bush" (Viking Press). He publishes the monthly Hightower Lowdown; for more information about Jim, visit jimhightower.com.

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