By Robert Turner
The phone call came from one of our low-level operatives.
“This is Jerry,” he said. “I’m standing in the frozen food section of Whole Foods.”
He was a food fighter, a member of the underground resistance and a vegetarian. For years he went to the farmers market, but on this day, he became a covert spy on an important reconnaissance mission to Whole Foods.
I received the frantic call from “Jerry the Inkman,” as we’ll call him, on a bright and warm Saturday morning. Jerry owns a small print shop in Asheville, a one-man operation, and he runs a couple of large-format digital printers. I used Jerry for road signs and posters, some more recently with subversive messages. He’s a good guy, normally very composed, mild-mannered, and low-key, but he sounded very upset when he called this day.
“Yes, Jerry. What’s up?” I replied.
“You’re not going to believe this,” Jerry exclaimed. “I just found a bag of sliced, frozen zucchini, and guess where it comes from. Turkey! Can you believe that? Turkey! Since when is Turkey known for growing zucchini, and how the heck can they grow it, cut it, package it, freeze it and ship it halfway around the world cheaper than we can grow it right here?”
“I don’t know Jerry,” I replied. “That sounds pretty crazy, but a lot of crazy stuff like that is going on.”
“It says ‘organic’ on the package,” he said, “and it’s here in Whole Foods, but how the heck can you trust that it really is organic anyway, I mean it’s so far away, and who’s watching? Isn’t Turkey an arid country in the first place?”
“Yeah, I’m not sure Jerry,” I answered. “I’ve never been to Turkey, but it probably has some climate variety and a diversity of growing regions, like most countries.”
“I guess I’m just really upset because zucchini is so easy to grow here,” said Jerry. “Why would we need to import it from Turkey of all places? I have some zucchini growing in my backyard right now, more than I can eat. It’s so easy to grow. It’ll take over if you let it.” He had a good point.
“Don’t get too upset about it, Jerry,” I said. “It’s messed up, I know, but I’m glad to see that you, at least, are paying attention. Most people are pretty clueless about how food comes to us. It just sort of magically shows up at the grocery store, and they have no idea where it comes from or how it got there. At least you’re reading labels, and that’s good.”
When you belong to a radical, local food movement, you begin to learn about the secret lives of others. I didn’t know that Jerry had a garden and grew his own vegetables. But I felt bad for him. I knew he was pretty upset about the whole thing, especially since it happened in a store that he believed in, that he trusted, a place that was part of his own personal value system. I think he felt a little betrayed by Whole Foods.
I suppose finding zucchini from Turkey was a big letdown for him and put him over the edge, so he called me. It brought home the fact that ‘organic’ says nothing about food miles or where a product might come from and the full climate and environmental impact from that. But it was also a glimpse behind the curtain at the powerful multinational food corporations that control the food system. And I knew Jerry was now a full-fledged member of our gang of revolutionary insurgents bent on disrupting the industrialized food system as we know it. He even grew his own food.
“Thanks for reporting in, Jerry,” I said. I wanted to say, just for fun, “Did anyone follow you?”
I didn’t; he was already upset enough, and the joke probably wouldn’t have registered. But from that day forward, I could count on Jerry to put our rush jobs for anti-establishment propaganda in front of other work; posters with radical messages like “Keep Farmers on the Land” and “Dig for Victory” and “Shop at the Farmers Market!” Real radical stuff. (You can view some of it at EatYourView.com/gallery.)
I must say that I was intrigued by the phone call, and later that day I stopped into Whole Foods to find this mysterious international package of zucchini.
It wasn’t hard to find, but what surprised me even more was a package lying right next to it. Frozen soybeans from China! Even I, a hardcore radical food fighter, was taken aback. Almost stunned by it. Here I was holding in my hand organic soybeans from China, and I said to myself, out loud, “You have got to be kidding me!”
A lady shopper nearby obviously heard me talking to this evil bag of frozen vegetables, and she did one of those wide turns with her cart to steer clear of this “weird-o” as she passed. I’m sure that kind of thing happens to you. It happens to me all the time.
I knew of course that we in America grow way too many soybeans. Take a road trip through the Midwest and all you see are endless fields of corn and soybeans for thousands of square miles. Like Jerry, I thought, how the heck can China grow, package, freeze and ship (on freezer containers) soybeans cheaper than we can produce them in the US? I am dumbfounded by the whole thing.
I called Jerry back from the store to report what I had found. We commiserated for a moment in disbelief. Then I purchased a package of each—the soybeans and the zucchini—to store in my freezer as proof and evidence of the absurdity of all things. They’re still there, taking up room in my freezer, and I’m not throwing them out and I’m not eating them.
This spring, join the movement and become a radical revolutionary. Plant a vegetable garden.
This article is based on an excerpt from Robert Turner’s book, Lewis Mumford and the Food Fighters: A Food Revolution in America. Turner is a writer focused on food and agriculture and a farmer in Arden. Learn more at EatYourView.com.
