Wendell Berry: “The Gift of Good Land”

“Speaking for myself, I acknowledge that the world, the weather, and the life cycle have caused me no end of trouble, and yet I look forward to putting in another forty or so years with them because they have also given me no end of pleasure and instruction.  They interest me.  I want to see them thrive on their own terms.”

David Abram, “Becoming Animal”

“The claim that we live “on earth’s surface” implies that those clouds overhead are not themselves earthly powers, that the invisible depth in which they swim is an emptiness, a void continuous with the space between the planets.  If we dwell “on the earth,” then those clouds are merely part of the flotsam and jetsam of space, with only a tenuous neighborly link to the surface on which we stand.

…Unless of course, the clouds themselves are a part of the turning earth.  In which case I am not really standing on the surface of this world, but am submerged within a transparent layer of this planet, an invisible stratum of the earth that extends far above those clouds….

Which indeed it is.  The air is not a random bunch of gases simply drawn to the earth by the earth’s gravity, but an elixir generated by the soils, the oceans, and the numberless organisms that inhabit this world, each creature exchanging certain ingredients for others as it inhales and exhales, drinking the sunlight with our leaves or filtering the water with our gills, all of us contributing to the composition of this phantasmagoric brew, circulating it steadily between us from its substance.  It is endemic to the earth as the sandstone beneath my boots.  Perhaps we should add the letter i to our planet’s name and call it “Eairth,” in order to remind ourselves that the “air” is entirely a part of the eairth, and the i, the I or self, is wholly immersed in that fluid element.

The gilt-edged clouds overhead are not plunging westward as the planet rolls beneath them because they themselves are a part of the rolling Eairth.  Creatures of the embracing air, of an invisible but nonetheless material layer of this planet, the clouds accompany the Eairth as it turns, their shapeshifting bodies drifting this way and that with the winds.  And we, imbibing and strolling through the same air, do not then live on the eairth but in it.  We are enfolded within it, permeated, carnally immersed in the depths of this breathing planet.”

Richard Manning: “Against The Grain”

“Archer Daniels Midland, conduit of food and images of food, with fifteen thousand owned railcars, two thousand barges, a hundred oceangoing vessels, and a leased network of five million trucks and five hundred thousand railcars moving wheat, corn and soybeans to 269 processing plants.  Woven amid the rails and pipes is an integral web of effectively owned and leased politicians and news organizations.

Archer Daniels is not alone in this picture; it is just the standard-bearer.  Still, the list of food processors is not terribly long.  Five companies – Cargill, Incorporated; Continental Grain Co. (recently renamed ContiGroup Companies); Louis Dreyfus; Andre & Cie; and the Bunge & Born Group – control about 75 percent of the corn market. Four companies – Archer Daniels; Cargill; Bunge ; and Continental Grain – control about 80 percent of soybean processing, both in the United States and globally.  A single co-op, Ag Processing Inc., accounts for another 5 to 10 percent in the United States.”

Tom Philpott: “It’s The McEconomy Stupid”

Well, I just discovered Tom Philpott blogging about food and politics over at Mother Jones.

It’s the McEconomy, Stupid — By Tom Philpott| Thu Jun. 9, 2011 10:40 AM PDT

I alluded to it in my intro post, but this is worth highlighting:

Up to 30,000 of the 54,000 jobs created in May were the result of a hiring spree by the hamburger chain, analysts at Morgan Stanley told Market Watch on Friday.

So hiring at McDonald’s accounted for about half of the nation’s job growth in May. What lessons can we draw from this? One, obviously, is that the economy is anemic and lurching toward a “double dip”—which isn’t some new dessert concoction at McDonald’s. While unemployment hovers at 9 percent, job creation has slowed to a trickle—and what jobs are on offer tend to be of the burger-flipping, minimum-wage variety.  As CBS Market Watch Washington Bureau Chief Steve Goldstein put it, “There’s a case to be made for the benefit of fast-food restaurant employment, but it’s obviously not the foundation for sustained economic growth.

The second lesson is that McDonald’s itself obviously sees opportunity in this crisis. It made 25,000-30,000 net hires in just one month. That’s a pretty big bet that its “dollar menus” and other cheap calorie blasts will remain popular among a cash-strapped populace having to work ever harder to stary in place. That’s good news for Mikky D’s shareholders—and bad news for public health in a nation besieged by chronic maladies caused by an excess of low-quality calories.