FOOD IS SACRED

Food is sacred. To nearly a billion Roman Catholics on this planet, a scrap of bread or wafer of wheat, when blessed by a priest, becomes the body of Christ.

To Hutterite colonies scattered over the Western Hemisphere’s plains, food is wholesome and homegrown, blessed by a simple prayer at each meal.

To a billion Chinese, it is mystical and healing. Chinese poets and scholars have praised it. Food defines China’s ancient culture, one that knew more than 300 edible plants 2,000 years ago.

From the days of Abraham, food has been the fatted calf, the overflowing cup of the hospitality of the Jewish people.

Everywhere humans gather, food is far more than just a commodity. It is life-giving sustenance that binds family, friendship, and faith.

We remember this as northern days shorten into the winter season of fasting and feasting, of Christmas and Hanukkah and Ramadan.

We must not forget this in a year of bizarre, Byzantine and political food fights. As the second millennium of our civilization ends, it is still as true as when agriculture first stirred Asian soil 5,000 to 10,000 years ago.

Too much power for food?

The world’s religions have feasts and symbolic foods. They do not raise all food itself to the level of God. On the contrary, Jews, Muslims and Hindus fast for spiritual purification. Pork is forbidden to Muslims and Jews, beef to Hindus.

Yet, ancient traditions and faiths are challenged by a global culture of consumerism and materialism. In that culture, food itself has taken on a power it may not be able to deliver. Blueberries will improve our memory – or was it strawberries? Tuna and salmon help our heart. Good food does extend and enhance life. It cannot bring immortality, however.

In a world richer than previous generations could imagine, food is now a political weapon, a target of extremist activists and a tool for corporate profits.

This is likely to fade with the wastefulness of our times.

Food is a commodity, to be sure. Grain sails the oceans in holds of ships. Meat and fruit jets to luxury markets. This commodity will grow more precious as another billion humans crowd into the planet’s cities and towns.

In our prosperous and industrialized world, the mystical qualities of food are sometimes forgotten. And we commit another modern folly, forgetting at times that, above all, food must taste good to those who eat it.

It is not a new lesson. The Mongols couldn’t make the Chinese eat cheese. Chinese immigrants to America could not sell delicacies like pigs heads and chicken feet. So they invented chop suey. In the twentieth century, a powerful and wealthy United States government couldn’t make African famine victims eat its donations of corn. It was the kind – yellow corn for animal feed instead of white corn.

And one of the most powerful food companies on earth, McDonald’s Corporation, couldn’t sell a lean, healthy hamburger in America. It was too dry.

I believe that all of these sacred, mystical and special qualities of food will continue for millennia to come.

When explorers trade a scrap of meat loaf for a bit of hummus on the deserts of Mars, it will be a mystical act of friendship. When fruit and pasta are stowed in pouches on ships bound for the moons of Jupiter and beyond, they will be even more sacred and precious.

All of this should make you proud, you who grow and produce food. You, who are stewards of land that yields such bounty, are a chosen people. Remember this calling when times are tough and crops are poor.

The world will be a far better place when it treats farmers everywhere with respect and a decent living.

Profound business decisions

But the world will also expect farmers to grow what it wants to eat. That fact doesn’t make annual planting decisions or long-term planning for farms and ranches easy. Can a wheat farm on the plains of Kansas connect with the crowded bazaar of Devon Avenue in Chicago? On that one street, Indian and Pakistani restaurants peacefully coexist, and Israeli food is sold across from an Islam cultural center. That one street is a universe of opportunity.

You do not sell iron ore. You raise food. If you know the desires, traditions and tastes of those who eat it, you may prosper. Your future crops may be found in women’s magazine recipes and newspaper restaurant reviews.

Remember – as you decide what seed to plant next year, or how you will raise and care for livestock, or even what farming system you will choose in the future – remember that food will always be sacred.

By Dan Looker available in http://www.agriculture.com/sfonline/. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.