1 Taking Stock
interrupting. Use your background and experience as a food insider,
he encouraged.
But I was reluctant. By the time our conversation ended, my mind
had already conceived my response. I would search the library and Inter-
net for any number of books to show why another one was not necessary.
Then I would show him a sampling of such books so I could move on
to another topic.
That other topic is still waiting. Writing this book from a lifetime
of food system experience has reinforced for me how heavily Ameri-
cans are vested in the third relationship to food without asking them-
selves why. From 90 percent of the labor force in 1 90 , farmers comprise
1. percent today. Because of specialized farming practices, even farmers
turn to supermarkets and restaurants, just like everyone else. For the
remaining 98. percent of the labor force and their families, food now
resides on the periphery of life. Cooking and food preparation are fall-
ing by the wayside. Today, more money is spent on food eaten outside
the home than within.
Most of us do not think about how, throughout 99.99 percent of the
time that humans have roamed this planet, food and scarcity always
went hand in hand. If the timeline of the human race were reduced
to a single day, the grand food bargain began less than five seconds
ago. Our current relationship with food is a historic anomaly. From this
perspective was born my fascination with the Bushman.
While his ancestors had survived for thousands of years by seeking
harmony with a hostile environment, the fate of recent generations was
different.^ When settlers moved in, the Bushmen’s relationship with food
was scuttled. Common rights to land were abrogated by those who now
asserted ownership. Slow-replenishing supplies of underground water
were pumped dry. As the fences went up, communities were rounded
up, relocated, and made dependent on others. His way of life, once in
line with the unpredictability of the Kalahari, would not prevail against
societies who embraced a different relationship with food.
We have fashioned a country where being surrounded by unending
food now seems normal. When we feel hungry, we open cupboards,
look in refrigerators, or stop at any number of nearby restaurants or