Book Review
added 07/26/10
The Revolution Will Not be Microwaved: Inside America’s Underground Food Movements
by Sandor Ellix Katz. Paperback: 400 pages. Publisher: Chelsea Green (November 1, 2006)
Book Review by Mary Saucier Choate, Co-op Food and Nutrition Educator
When this book was recommended to me at the Co-op Expo this spring, I thought it sounded kind of strident, fringe-y, and probably wacky. What an amazing surprise awaited me! It was all of those things and much more. I have read few books that have similarly inspired in me entirely new ways of thinking and entirely new ideas to think about.
Sandor Ellix Katz has put together a remarkable trip through the world of “under the radar” food production and has documented the often misguided regulatory climates that force these producers underground. He calls the people he writes about food activists practicing “processed food civil disobedience.”
Readers of the Co-op News are already well aware of Katz’s motivation. As he explains in the introduction, local food dollars stay in the local economy, while corporate food dollars mostly support the processing and marketing of foods, with only a small fraction of the cost going to the growers. In addition, our penchant for cheap food supports labor practices that pay low wages to farm workers and ignores the true cost of food hidden in government subsidies and environmental pollution.
Katz’s fresh take on this is the hidden costs we don’t usually think about—the billions spent to keep international shipping lanes open, responses to global warming, and hurricane clean-up related to climate change. He points out how enormous U.S. farm subsidies and “free trade” double standards undermine local markets and opportunities for food self-sufficiency in less-developed countries. Katz acknowledges that global surpluses have a place in helping sustain parts of the world facing crop failures and droughts, but notes that using global, instead of local, sources as our main source of food destroys true food security.
In a section that caused me to rethink my understanding of best practices for food safety, Katz discusses the problem of applying corporate conglomerate-scale food safety regulations to small farm enterprises. Can you produce safe food in a non-commercial kitchen? Can you produce tainted food in a large commercial enterprise? The answer to both questions is “yes, of course.” It all comes down to practices and procedures, not specific commercial equipment or facilities.
These new approaches to thinking about food systems may resonate with people across the political spectrum. Anti-tax folks might feel motivated to oppose big subsidies and to support American-grown food. Libertarians can support less government interference and more reliance on individual producers and vigilant consumers to keep locally sourced, small-scale food safe. Locavores, environmentalists, and labor supporters can all get behind these same enterprises for their excellent reasons. It is through the plethora of ideas that Katz puts on the table that this exciting synchronicity is seen.
He gives examples of local food projects such as a mobile local food market on wheels with produce grown by local community groups, gardens reclaimed from empty lots providing fresh produce for soup kitchens and WIC programs, a farmer cooperative that markets to local school districts, and school gardening programs incorporated into curricula. And all this is just in Chapter One!
The remaining nine chapters almost encyclopedically delve into divergent topics around food.
Chapter Two reports on seed saving and the surprising legal issues that have arisen related to corporate ownership, genetic modification, and contamination.
Chapter Three looks at land use and labor struggles. In a more extreme earth-loving vein, he suggests actually tasting dirt to obtain a closer link to soil-based organisms (SBOs). He notes that the most expensive probiotics on the market are SBOs!
Chapter Four covers Slow Food activists and encourages small-scale, decentralized food production. Katz reveals his honesty by admitting that elder relatives have said they disdain going back to inescapable food preparation drudgery. Katz feels that shared preparation duties, rather than a single person responsible for all, is the solution to this.
In Chapter Five, Katz looks at “The Raw Underground.” Unfortunately, his main argument in support of keeping these foods available is weakened somewhat by his reliance on popular but inaccurate depictions of the benefits of raw foods. These items don’t require fake benefits to make the argument that they should be legally obtainable by those who wish to purchase them.
Chapter Six, “Food and Healing,” is one near to my heart as he argues for food vs. pills, whole foods being infinitely more complete, complex, and beneficial to health.
Chapter Seven reviews the war on plants, from invasive species to marijuana and cocaine. He argues for the medicinal and other benefits of using the whole of narcotic plants and not just the pharmaceutically isolated synthesized version.
Chapter Eight explores the range of choices from vegan eating to hunting and humane slaughter. It laments our loss of humane small-scale slaughtering skills and the current laws that make it nearly impossible to run a small local slaughterhouse effectively.
Chapter Nine reports on foragers and food recycling. Readers learn of dumpster diving, road kill preparation, wild food foraging (weeds, mushrooms, and insects), composting toilets, and worm bin coffee tables. Some of these ideas are far off the beaten path, but all are worth thinking about, such as how to keep good food out of the landfill and in the hands of hungry people (as the Co-op does with Willing Hands and recycling and composting programs).
Chapter Ten, “Water: The Source of All Life,” is another mind-opening chapter. It explains the lunacy of using the precious and rare resource of water to flush away waste, which is then treated with chemicals. In a country and a world where water tables and reservoir levels are ever lowering, composting toilets seem like a brilliant idea—no water use and waste eventually deteriorates to compost. This cannot be done overnight—we can’t retrofit every water-guzzling toilet—but more composting toilets means more water put to its proper use in the hydration of people, animals, and plant life. His promotions of rainwater collection and gray water reclamation are additional great ideas that deserve more attention.
The chapters end with an “Action And Information Resources” section listing books, periodicals, films, organizations, and other resources to delve into the topics more deeply. Where appropriate, some include recipes using foods mentioned in the chapter.
This is an important book for an overview of the wide-ranging ways in which citizens are taking personal control of their food environments. Some ideas are off-the-wall; others are brilliantly insightful and “inciteful.” The book leaves the reader hopeful as it clearly shows the myriad ways in which we can move towards a more sustainable world.
