life in a red state 207Why should this have been? How did the leafy, sidewalked blocks be-
hind the newspaper office confer on their residents a different sense of
self than did the homes couched among cow pastures and tobacco fi elds?
The townie shine would have dimmed quickly (I now realize) if the mer-
chants’ confident offspring were catapulted suddenly into Philadelphia or
Louisville. “Urban” is relative. But the bottom line is that it matters. The
antipathy in our culture between the urban and nonurban is so durable, it
has its own vocabulary: (A) city slicker, tenderfoot; (B) hick, redneck,
hayseed, bumpkin, rube, yokel, clodhopper, hoecake, hillbilly, Dogpatch,
Daisy Mae, farmer’s daughter, from the provinces, something out of De-
liverance. Maybe you see where I’m going with this. The list is lopsided. I
don’t think there’s much doubt, on either side, as to which class is win-
ning the culture wars.
Most rural people of my acquaintance would not gladly give up their
status. Like other minorities, we’ve managed to turn several of the afore-
mentioned slurs into celebrated cultural identifiers (for use by insiders
only). In my own life I’ve had ample opportunity to reinvent myself as a
city person—to pass, as it were—but I’ve remained tacitly rural- identifi ed
chemicals. In other words, they’re doing exactly what 80 percent of U.S. con-
sumers say we would prefer to support, while our tax dollars do the opposite.
Because of significant protest about this lack of support, Congress included
a tiny allotment for local foods in the most recent (2002) Farm Bill: some sup-
port for farmers’ markets, community food projects, and local foods in schools.
But the total of all these programs combined is less than one- half of one per-
cent of the Farm Bill budget, and none of it is for food itself, only the advertising
and administration of these programs. Consumers who care about food, health,
and the supply of cheap calories drowning our school lunch programs, for ex-
ample, might want to let their representatives know we’re looking for a dramati-
cally restructured Farm Bill. Until then, support for local and sustainable
agriculture will have to come directly from motivated customers.
For more information visit http://www.farmaid.org.STEVEN L. HOPP