What Is the Value of Artisanal Food

“We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of our time: How much is enough?”
Wendell Berry, The Reactor and the Garden. 1979

Please don’t be mislead into thinking that global warming is the most pressing ecological issue of our age. First of all, global warming is a projection, a guess at the future and thus left best within the care and credibility of astrologers. Global climate change however is a fact, and, having studied the discipline, not one we should welcome. Secondly, global climate change is a symptom and not a cause of our ecologic catastrophe.
What, then is the cause? The driver to desertification, rising sea levels, unprecedented species extinction rates, radically augmented atmospheric composition, contaminated surface and ground waters, crashing and mercury tainted fish stocks, epidemic cancer rates, rampant deforestation, and the overall decline in the capacity of self renewal (health) of our bios is: us. Not as a species inherently. But you and me. Us. Our consumption. I mean, if it ain’t mined, it’s grown. Right? And don’t blame the third world. That’s bullshit. I fault them for no more than their foolish willingness to adopt our consumerism so desperately, and with such glibness.
The main impetus for greed, destruction, the abortion of our progeny’s future is consumerism. It is THE environmental problem. And, it is entirely in our minds.
In this way, our environmental crisis is a spiritual problem requiring a change or heart more than anything else. To paraphrase my above quoted hero: The energy crisis in not due to a lack of fuel source, but due to a lack of moral fortitude, and a weakness of character.

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One of the great constraints on artisanship is the juxtaposition of quality and quantity. These two, in this case, are inversely related, and the artisan too must be concerned with ‘How much is enough?’ Industrial food, and the ‘food service industry’ is entirely unconcerned with such a balance despite what any advertisement may claim. The investors and complicitors of these businesses see only growth and make sacrificial worship to the mythical beast Infinite Growth.
An artisan business is not necessarily growth driven. It may grow, and have growth incentives, but in reality it is in fact driven by the deep personal need to create and make. The business must be productive enough to produce a fair living, yet without the limiting control of quality the food falls from artisanal grace. Moreover artisanal food should not be consumptive of people and places; it does not destroy them in the wake of its own ‘progress.’ Rather, in its use of materials and talents, it should create opportunities, apprenticeships, and markets for others to explore and occupy from year to year and generation to generation. Akin to a garden, artisanal food makes people and places productive in a wholesome and productive way that “speaks powerfully of the abundance of the world” and also demonstrates that abundance is limitless, given moderated and responsible use.

G’ amar Yom Tov. May you all have a powerful and meaningful season.