We had a lively discussion with several participants - whom hopefully should add themselves. Mikel, Audrey, Paige, Anselm, Brandon, Rich Gibson, a fellow from Australia, and many more.
Because many of us have talked about this before (last year and online) we skipped much of the preamble. Some of the links I (Anselm) feel might help provide some context include,
Basically we're starting from an assumption that people need and would be happier and healthier if they understood their local food webs. It's a topic that has become a common theme in the west.
First we talked about local information and trying to crowd source some of this. Mikel was interested in particular in how a new generation of young urban farmers could be better connected to each other - using technology that they are perhaps more comfortable with than the traditional farmers all sitting around breakfast together at a rural pub;
What kinds of local information?
Coming out of this there is the question "Are farmers working in their own best interests"? and "Do farmers actually have any communication problems"?. We decided that farmers probably are not having huge communcation problems but rather that incentives are weirdly warped by oil and government.
The casual observation is that the current incentive system is perverse. Some have observed (Michael Pollan for example) that we have an industrial agricultural system that is largely made possible by oil and fertilizer. If left to its own devices much of the American heartland would actually be effectively sterile right now; we have destroyed the soil over the short term. The same can be said of salmon farming practices on the west coast. However this isn't really the focus of the discussion. However it does raise the question of shifting incentives.
The marketing and advertising industry around "foodology" or whatever we call the stuff we're eating these days was also cited briefly.
So - then - how does one do an end-run around the incentive system?
This actually ended up being quite a discussion focal point. Rich Gibson clearly pointed out that "local" is not necessarily better than other criteria. A fellow from Australia pointed out that New Zealand Lamb is much more efficient to produce there than in Australia. Anselm countered with a critique of a lack of process transparency - citing the "transparent abbotoir" idea from "The Omnivore's Dilemma". Rich pointed out that it's still possible to trust far away foods; even without a heavyweight formal certification process.
Strawberries were an exemplar of this. Anselm pointed out how his mom loves to buy the biggest reddest strawberries although they taste pretty bad compared to small wild strawberries. Mikel made the observation that in Sweden that wild strawberry patches are kept secret, like morels, because they are so prized. Paige talked about how we subscribe to an aesthetics of food; how pretty that food is - how one would want a pretty apple instead of a worm ridden one.
Some of the criteria for perhaps gauging food quality might then be:
Finally we talked about some of the solutions;