I’m at the grocery store and I pick up a can of organic tomato paste. Tomatoes are the hardest thing for me to grow here on this windy, rainy island and I do enough for lots of sauce, salsa, canned whole and diced. But do you know how many tomatoes it takes to make a can of tomato paste?
A lot.
I feel myself zoom out of the aisle, the grocery store, the community, the country, the world -until I’m up overhead, looking over, looming to where it all began.
The farmer.
The person who worked on the genetics of the tomatoes, planted the seed, or the wheat, tended the chicken, wiped the teats of the cow or planted the raspberry canes.
Were they proud of the food they raised? Would they feed it to their kids? Are their children healthy? Did they have choices about how they raised their crops? Did they smell the dirt, deeply inhale at the richness? Did they calculate the mineral deficits on a spreadsheet? Or did the earth reek of despair- of a farmer in debt, who has no option to pivot. No option but to keep going. Did they eat a hurried lunch in the field during harvest? Did they have to learn a different language to ask their farm laborers to hurry please? Rain is coming. Did they feel good when they came to the store seeing where their food ended up?Did they recognize it? Does their family reap the rewards of a good harvest, as they hear the heavy sigh of relief when you finally take the dirty, dusty boots off at dark? Or do shareholders get a cheque ?
Do they CARE?
They are the one percent now. Farmers, with their beliefs and conviction about feeding the world good food. GOOD FOOD. And it’s a very different world from one hundred years ago when eighty percent of us lived on farms.
I’ve met serious farmers, funny farmers, first timers, homesteader turned farmers, old fart farmers, and farmers, ones who think actually they KNOW, it can’t be done on the computer. It must be done on the ground, where you can smell, feel, taste, hear, and see. I love all these farmers, I want to hear their stories, their tips, their superstitions, their theories. I want to isolate and examine the thing that makes this farmer tick. The things they wish they had of known. The things they would change.
It’s exhausting. I only go to the store for what I absolutely need. This three dimensional sight won’t go away, this need to know who grew, touched-who LOVED-my food. Beyond the label, beyond the IG profile, the fb giveaway, the food like substance their product has become? Who has loved my food?
Who is my farmer?
Love Jenn xx
