When I was growing up on Long Island in the 1960s, our cul-de-sac of new ranch houses was bounded at its end by a potato field. In fact, our small, middle-class neighborhood – about 40 miles from New York City – was surrounded by farms at that time. But that potato field got particular attention because once the farmer had finished driving his mechanical harvester through the field, we neighborhood children were allowed to come walk the furrows, gathering up the potatoes too small for the machine into paper bags. We’d take them home, and our mothers would cook them up for dinner. It is one of my strongest memories of the end-of-summer weeks just before the start of school.
Earlier this summer, a buddy of mine asked a group of people, “What are some of the daily ‘small’ ways that you notice classism?” I thought of that potato field, and my memories of that large, fascinating harvester and the fun we had roaming the field collecting the small, half-buried tubers for our dinner. And I thought about the fact that the farmer was not part of those memories. I do not know his name; what he looked like, whether he had a family; what else he grew on the farm, if anything; what it was like making living as a farmer in those days on Long Island; or anything else about his life. Nor do I know how it was that he invited us to come gather up the potatoes that the harvester left behind, or where he went when the farm became another housing subdivision shortly before I began junior high. (It was the last of the farms surrounding my neighborhood to “disappear.”) I just know that our parents allowed us to go play in the potato fields during those last weeks of summer.
This, I think, is one of the ways that classism daily shows up our lives in the U.S. Most of us go to the supermarket and buy our food, thinking little about the people who worked hard to grow that food and knowing even less about who they are, where they live or what their lives are like. If we are part of the growing number who frequent local farmers’ markets, we may know the faces, and maybe even the names, of the some of those farmers, but we likely still know little about the everyday reality of their lives. (One of the benefits of community supported agriculture – CSAs – and campaigns to “buy local” is that consumers may build at least some relationship with the people who grow their food. But that remains far from the norm.)
This “invisibility” is not because we are intentionally rude or unappreciative, or are “bad” people, but because we live in a time and place where most people in the U.S. are separated from the production of the food we eat, and we are encouraged not to notice. If I hadn’t begun growing large quantities of fruits and vegetables, I doubt I would have thought of that neighboring potato farmer in response to my friend’s question.
One result of this rigid separation is some silly ideas, like the columnist in the New York Times earlier this summer who wrote that he looked at the prices of the organic vegetables he was buying and imagined the “upstate farmer” driving around in a BMW. Unlikely. Most farmers I know work second, and sometimes third, jobs just to make a frugal living. Then there’s the romantic “Plan B” that the Times repeatedly cites: urban professionals fired from their corporate jobs who want to move to a “simpler” farming life in the country.
But on a more basic note, this separation also means many people can sit down to a meal without thinking about or appreciating the extremely difficult work, frequent worry, precarious finances, and often, lack of health insurance of those who grow our food. So this Labor Day (and beyond), I invite you to join me in noticing, appreciating and learning about the people who bring food to our tables.
Photo: Daniel Hittleman/drhPHOTO
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