Green Sheet

Labor of Food

In eras gone by, during this time of the year, humans—like many other animals—would have stored away a winter's supply of food. As technology has changed labor practices, the days have passed when surviving the cold, harsh winter meant taking steps to smoke, freeze, can, and store large volumes of nourishment. Now, larger-than-ever supermarkets and even natural foods stores stock nearly every food and beverage imaginable. A meal in the U.S. now travels an average of 1,300 miles from the farm to the table. Do we consider how these changes in farming, storage, and transporting alter the "energy" of the food?

The new movie What the Bleep Do We Know!? asserts that the power of energy movement, including thoughts, can dramatically change the molecular structure of life. In a study highlighted in the movie, Dr. Masaru Emoto, a Japanese scientist, discovered that ordinary water crystals from the same source formed brilliant, colorful snowflake-like patterns based on receiving loving written and spoken words and music. On the other hand, the study found negative words and influences caused the water to form asymmetrical patterns with dull colors. If our thoughts and words can reshape the world we know, including water, then surely our labor practices in growing, storing, transporting, and preparing the food we consume most impact the food's energy, and consequently our own.

In his book, The Reinvention of Work, theologian Matthew Fox uses an example of a runner to illustrate the interconnectedness we have to all life through food.

A runner runs; she is breathing deeply. Where does her energy for this work come from? The food she has eaten is processed and recycled as proteins and carbohydrates that furnish the energy for the work of running. And the food comes from soil, which has been worked on interdependently by the sunshine and the rain and the worms and the nutrients of the soil.

To extend Fox's assertion even further, the soil and crops likely have been exposed to pesticides, herbicides, and other substances sprayed on them, and have been touched by farm machinery and farm laborers, many of whom are migrant workers. Gone are the days when most of us grow, harvest, and store our own foods. Smaller family farms are quickly disappearing as a food source. Now migrant farmworkers who largely originated from Mexico, now increasingly from Central America, travel to mega-farms and orchards throughout the U.S. to ensure much of the domestically grown food that comes to our tables is planted, tended, picked, and packed before being shipped to distributors and wholesalers, processing plants, and other locations that precede the food's arrival into local supermarkets.

In Ohio alone, more than 15,000 migrant farmworkers enter the state annually to work in the fields, enduring crowded housing conditions, injuries, and pain suffered by difficult and sometimes dangerous work and exposure to dozens of chemicals. These migrants often cannot access health care, medicine, or the rights of citizenship, and yet they are the ones who ensure we are fed.

Writer and farmer Wendell Berry wrote in an article in the April 2002 edition of The Progressive that the work of the farm is now being done through two kinds of oppression: one is by the always-struggling small farmer and the other by the many Mexican and Central American migrant laborers who live and work a half step, if that, above slavery. And Berry said, "...most people do not notice, or if they notice they do not care."

If every bite connects you not only to the genetics and nutrients contained within the food, but also to the chemicals sprayed on it and to everyone and everything that has touched it along the way, consider the changes that will occur within your being as you take the next bite. Does it cause you to want to redirect the power of your thinking regarding its origins?

Eric Davies provides organizational training and consulting, marketing, and writing support to organizations working for healthier communities. He is president of Earthtouch, a land preservation organization, and a member of Simply Living and 1000 Friends of Central Ohio.