Food Politics
In the midst of our busy lives we often fail to just say thank you, but thanks is all I can say in response to the wonderful article in the new B&C by Robert Joustra and Alissa Wilkinson, “Making Peace at the Dinner Table” [May/June]. Thanks to CTI for their commitment to a publication like this. Thanks to John Wilson and the staff at B&C for exhibiting a breadth and depth of cultural awareness. And thanks in particular to these two writers for working hard to strike just the right notes. You navigated a difficult subject using a difficult writing format of alternating voices while engaging with a difficult author to treat with deference and criticism. I learned a lot from the article, and it is the type of article I could only find in B&C. Thanks!
Greg Metzger Rockville, MarylandAs I sat down with customary eager anticipation to read my latest issue of Books and Culture, I turned first to “Making Peace at the Dinner Table,” by Robert Joustra and Alissa Wilkinson. My own emotions veered quickly from the peaceful as I read Mr. Joustra’s commentary. I hurled the volume across the room, as well as one can manage to hurl such a slim bulletin. While Wilkinson offers us a fair-minded and nuanced, if ultimately disappointing, treatment of these books and the issues explored in them, Joustra gives us nothing but invective and snark. From him we get Michelle Obama’s “token locavore” garden, and from there the verbiage and tone spiral ever downward, culminating in “An overfed economy has the luxury of demanding local, high-quality, fresh produce, along with the labor and cost-intensive methods that sustain it. But the rest of our hungry planet begs us to be rid of such infantile nostalgia when we go abroad.”
Joustra accomplishes his evisceration of the local, organic, sustainable agriculture movement with a series of unsubstantiated and highly debatable allegations about the yields and benefits of the conventional agribusiness approach relative to organics. He is Norman Borlaug redux in Borlaug’s embittered later years.
The truth, as even a summary perusal of recent data will show, is that organics have been closing the gap in yield on conventional agriculture in recent years, producing yields that match or exceed those of conventional, and this with far fewer purchased inputs and far less damage to the land. “Sustainability” has become a buzzword in recent years, used to mean so many different things that it has been rendered nearly without meaning, but nevertheless I will employ it here, because it is key: The current conventional/agribusiness approach to agriculture is simply not sustainable for either the developed or the developing world. It uses up the earth, the air, and the water, relies completely on purchased inputs, and is far too costly for the pittance gain in yield it delivers.
I appreciate a spirited exchange of ideas, but Joustra’s bombast is more in keeping with talk radio or something on the Fox network than with your heretofore enlightened and enlightening review. Here’s hoping that I never see his name in these pages again, or—Christian charity, don’t desert me this Good Friday!—that he and his prose do some growing up in the intervening time.
John Strand Minneapolis, MinnesotaTo Plato or Not to Plato?
A few days ago I was fixing an omelette for my wife and me and accidently smacked my head on the stove hood. A lump quickly rose; I may have cursed under my breath. I remembered the rules of first aid: ice, which I immediately applied, and elevate, for which the article “To Plato or Not to Plato?” [Robert H. Gundry, March/April] served nicely (although at times I confess I had to reread to get it, and it made my head hurt). However, I did not forsake the kitchen, which brings me to my point.
Gundry asks if Hebrews’ warnings to sinners are compatible with assurance of salvation, what he calls a theologically psychological question. I’m no expert (although I guess I am), but the first problem seems to be our psychology, so bruised with fear, doubt, ambivalence, and trickery that surely it can’t be trusted with the question. Its woundedness can’t condemn us (nor its consolation save us) any more than bodily injury does. God has rescued and will ultimately repair both by faith in Christ, and this cannot be undone by our temporal failures at virtue or there is no such thing as faith because there has always been faith, as Kierkegaard said. In the meantime, Paul reminds us how sincere faith behaves: loving, doing good deeds, fellowshipping, praying confidently. In effect he says, put ice on it and keep on cooking.
Bruce Jespersen Calgary, AlbertaCopyright © 2011 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture magazine.Click here for reprint information on Books & Culture.
