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By Robert Turner<\/p>\n
The phone call came from one of our low-level operatives.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is Jerry,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m standing in the frozen food section of Whole Foods.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
I received the frantic call from \u201cJerry the Inkman,\u201d as we\u2019ll 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\u2019s a good guy, normally very composed, mild-mannered, and low-key, but he sounded very upset when he called this day.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, Jerry. What\u2019s up?\u201d I replied.<\/p>\n
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\u201cYou\u2019re not going to believe this,\u201d Jerry exclaimed. \u201cI 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?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know Jerry,\u201d I replied. \u201cThat sounds pretty crazy, but a lot of crazy stuff like that is going on.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt says \u2018organic\u2019 on the package,\u201d he said, \u201cand it\u2019s here in Whole Foods, but how the heck can you trust that it really is organic anyway, I mean it\u2019s so far away, and who\u2019s watching? Isn\u2019t Turkey an arid country in the first place?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I\u2019m not sure Jerry,\u201d I answered. \u201cI\u2019ve never been to Turkey, but it probably has some climate variety and a diversity of growing regions, like most countries.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess I\u2019m just really upset because zucchini is so easy to grow here,\u201d said Jerry. \u201cWhy 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\u2019s so easy to grow. It\u2019ll take over if you let it.\u201d He had a good point.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t get too upset about it, Jerry,\u201d I said. \u201cIt\u2019s messed up, I know, but I\u2019m 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\u2019re reading labels, and that\u2019s good.\u201d<\/p>\n
When you belong to a radical, local food movement, you begin to learn about the secret lives of others. I didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
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 \u2018organic\u2019 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThanks for reporting in, Jerry,\u201d I said. I wanted to say, just for fun, \u201cDid anyone follow you?\u201d<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t; he was already upset enough, and the joke probably wouldn\u2019t 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 \u201cKeep Farmers on the Land\u201d and \u201cDig for Victory\u201d and \u201cShop at the Farmers Market!\u201d Real radical stuff. (You can view some of it at EatYourView.com\/gallery.)<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t 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, \u201cYou have got to be kidding me!\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u201cweird-o\u201d as she passed. I\u2019m sure that kind of thing happens to you. It happens to me all the time.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2014the soybeans and the zucchini\u2014to store in my freezer as proof and evidence of the absurdity of all things. They\u2019re still there, taking up room in my freezer, and I\u2019m not throwing them out and I\u2019m not eating them.<\/p>\n
This spring, join the movement and become a radical revolutionary. Plant a vegetable garden.<\/p>\n