More on Less for More

I’ve been meditating on the the “Less for More” post (UPDATE: more extensive version of that post is here) that I linked to last nite, because it is so on point to a destructive idea I often encounter. Specifically, the idea that real food — ingredients grown sustainably by farmers who care about quality — is a manifestation of “elitism” or “luxury”. Because the single most potent weapon that is used by stasists and industrialists to keep us all eating fake food, is that real food is for the rich, and that cheap food is food for the working people.

When food is “cheap” or even “affordable” by today’s industrial standards, it means that costs were externalized somewhere along the line, typically through exploitation of workers, use of petroleum instead of ecological processes, and/or damage to the land and environment. Meaning, cheap food hurts working people and the environment we depend on, for the benefit of industry. That doesn’t seem like being very “of the people” to me.

At the Linkery we are constantly trying to bring ethical/delicious food into an accessible price range, but frankly the gap is too big to bridge well, because decades of subsidized petroluem-based farming and CAFO’s — and worker treatment particularly in almost every agricultural sector — have created a fiction that so much food (meat, fruit, vegetables, bread, coffee, chocolate) are cheap. Unfortunately, they’re not cheap, it’s just that our economy has gotten really good at externalizing their costs.

That’s why equating of cheap food as friendly to Joe Sixpack or the “common man” is so insidious — this food is the product of the very system that exploits the common man, gives us “Western diseases”, and fractures our communities. “More for Less” means less for all.

In contrast, so-called “expensive” food which many dismiss as “elitist” — food from small farms and artisans, and workers who are paid living wages — is a celebration of the power of individuals to live freely and in joyous communion with the land and each other. “Less for More” is the road to abundance in everything that matters.

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