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Community Gardens Don't Excuse What Kraft Did to American Food
Big Food won't be absolved by tossing a fraction of its fortunes toward urban plots.
A few weeks ago, a churchyard near my city apartment was converted into a garden. A group of local volunteers hammered together raised beds, trucked in new soil, and planted berries, tomatoes and greens with the hope of growing fresh food for a local soup kitchen.
It doesn't get much warmer and fuzzier than that, but I'm pretty repulsed by it.
As someone who advocates for a more localized food system where we can all have a stronger connection to what we're eating and to the backstory of how it was grown, you'd think I'd support this kind of project. And I would, were it not for the fact that it was built in partnership with Triscuit. Yes, the cracker company, which is owned by Kraft Foods, Inc., the world's second-largest food corporation.
This spring, to mark what is the start of the growing season for most of us, the marketing machine at Triscuit is breaking ground on more than 50 gardens like this in dozens of cities around the country. According to spokeswoman Allison Goldstein, that's because Triscuit believes in the simple joys of growing your own food in a local garden, "no matter where you live." Apparently, Triscuit also believes in emblazoning gardens with its logo and highlighting the joy it yields through organized press events.
It's hard to find something bad to say about any garden, and even harder to fault one that will feed hungry people. But it's just as difficult to reconcile what could and should be a genuine community initiative with sponsorship from a corporation with about $50 billion in annual sales.
For one thing, there's the irony. Food giants like Kraft are largely to blame for the woeful transformation of our food system over the last 50 years, and the lost connection my grandparents' generation had to what they ate and where it came from. By churning out Cheez Whiz, Cool Whip, Oreos and other highly processed foods, which require immense farms, Kraft and its ilk have allowed us to forget how to cook every day with fresh produce and bury the memory of what it means to grow our own food.
But now, through a confluence of contamination scares, Michael Pollan books, and the obesity crisis, thousands of Americans are questioning whether we should have forgotten how to cook just because we could heat up frozen dinners. We're taking our money out of the supermarket chains and back to local farmers and independent shops, like our grandparents used to do, and we're supporting a food system that's better for the planet, our economy and our health in the process. Clearly Kraft has taken note.
Perhaps Kraft officials think Big Food can be absolved by tossing a fraction of its fortunes towards urban plots that will, realistically, feed very few people. Maybe they hope that we'll forget the dozens of food recalls it's been subjected to over the last two years alone, and see this gesture as a step in the right direction--that Kraft is on our side.
I don't care how many seed packets Kraft stuffs into its Original and Reduced-Fat Triscuit boxes. I don't trust companies of this scale when they tell me they care about gardening or fresh food or my neighborhood, because everything that preserves their bottom line tells me the opposite.
But more importantly, I don't need the mammoth corporation that manufactures Velveeta to help me clear a bit of earth and prepare it for cultivation. None of us do. If we want to build community, change our food system or plant a garden, we don't have to look beyond our neighborhood and its collective resources to do that. And that's true, no matter where you live.
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13 Comments so far
Show AllKraft is... food like, Velveeeeta is cheese.Coool whypp, Oreeeos,Cheeeeze Whisss these are all in my mind closer to drugs than food ,on this point I agree with the author.
However if the Devil himself were to offer to plant and establish community gardens in my area,I would bite my tongue. Kristi maybe you should delay your criticism until the neighborhoods benefiting are firmly in control of the gardens.
I also think amerikas food devolution cannot be blamed on one corporate entity.We are as much to blame for our obsession with instant microwavable comfort crap.If people wouldn't buy , canned dehydrated potato bits,disguised as "chips"but pressed into a shape ideal for holding a massive dollop of dip......
peas on earth
" I don't trust companies of this scale when they tell me they care about gardening or fresh food or my neighborhood, because everything that preserves their bottom line tells me the opposite." -- Kristi Ceccarossi
Neither do I -- trust companies of this scale!
I strongly believe that growing our own food and/or supporting local food economies is the most powerful tool we have in the ongoing struggle to assert ourselves against corporate hegemony. To allow big food to financially underwrite urban localvore initiatives is self defeatist. I would further assert that Kraft is a chemical company not a food company. Keeping chemicals and negative big food karma out of our backyards and, if we can at all help it, our communities seems like the healthiest choice we can make.
"And I would, were it not for the fact that it was built in partnership with Triscuit. Yes, the cracker company, which is owned by Kraft Foods, Inc., the world's second-largest food corporation."
Thank you Kristi for providing us this article and a big thank you for solving this mystery of those sudden gardens. It is annoying how people preach "personal responsibility" but flip out when we point out to them that Big Food/Agri go out on a limb and trash our local efforts. I don't like to be a pessimist but we have to search deep for the truth even if it hurts. I know that some people would like to say "Oh please just shut up and ignore those road blocks and legal limits and grow your own food". Well sure I have grown my own food too but we have a right to point out the issues and roadblocks or none of these "urban gardening" efforts will sustain. Comparing urban gardening in the US to Europe, there they sustain because there was cooperation and sympathy in thinking collectively and working out the issues and the roadblocks. Here, we have cornfeds who are so individualist and faux "libertarian" by nature that if I were to present this article to the average ignorant, I would probably get a response such as "They made up and we should reward them by buying more of their products." Even among the ones who might not appreciate Kraft Foods, many of them still buy into the "free" market mantra and spout "Just go to another cheese company or whip your own cheese up. It's a free market !". Willy Lowman, the character in Arthur Miller's Death of A Salesman, asked, "How can you whip cheese?" You can't. Not real cheese. Not actual cheese. Not cheese that is actually cheese.
Putting it all in perspective, the efforts to privatize community organizing or for that matter any public service have been successful. The goal is big corporations try to wipe out the competition and cause trouble, invent a PR war to fool people into siding with them, and then when they know that they could face trouble they suddenly pretend to be "philanthropic" so that they can take control of community gardening, public schools, roads, or any public service. All they need is an ignorant public ready to believing that they're "turning a new leaf" to con them.
Our land trust just applied for grant money to start up a CSA from Constellation Energy, the people bringing us another reactor here on the Chesapeake. I would rather have this entire county (Calvert) go into Mcmansions than another reactor considering the half life of a Mcmansion (about 6 years.)
Bong Hits 4 Jesus Brigade
I disagree with this. I don't understand how we seek to drive social change through consumer choice and social movements, and yet, once big corporations respond to these market/societal forces and do enact some small measure of positive change, we get all upset.
Would it be ideal for nonprofits or local foundations to have purchased or donated the land and set up the infrastructure for these gardens? Absolutely. But a corporate sponsor doing it is better than having no community garden at all, and it frees up that local money for some other important project.
The truth is that community gardens are primarily intended for poor people living in stressed neighborhoods. These are people who already eat a diet that consists of fast and processed food and who are exposed to hours upon hours of televised commercial advertising each day. Put a few Triscuit adboards in some perspective. What's more important? The poor supplementing their diet with wholesome locally grown food, or sticking it to Kraft and refusing their donation?
Involved with many urban community gardens, you have a group of well-to-do, educated people who live in urban upscale apartments who simply don't have the land to plant a garden and want to partake in the joy of growing their own food. While this group often makes great food activists, and reliable volunteers who help care for and manage the garden, they often lose sight of why community gardens are created in the first place and their purist approach to politics and gardening leaves the poor behind. Whether it is refusing corporate sponsorship, or preferring everybody lose their plots to powdery mildew and late blight in the name of being Organic, they are oblivious to the effects of their uncompromising egos.
If their little plot in the community garden fails, they can still buy organic heirloom tomatoes at Whole Foods for $7 a pound. Not everybody has that luxury.
The rich do-gooders need to continue to develop their networks of responsible local food and local growers for themselves, but they really should stop imposing their unrealistic purist views on inner city poor who absolutely cannot financially afford to hold the same uncompromising standards.
A poor family putting a couple chopped-up locally grown bell peppers in a pot of Kraft macaroni and cheese instead of using chopped-up hot dogs has improved the quality of their meal. Rather than lecture them with a tirade on how Kraft is the devil, and that they should be eating a salad of arugula and watercress with organic goat cheese and pine nuts, perhaps we should celebrate their small step forward, and support them on their own personal journeys to eating healthier.
Agreed, Johnny. I would fully support (while noting the irony) a new Twinkies Community Exercise Center or an Old English 800 Ale alcoholism-treatment facility. I welcome any investment in our forsaken urban communities from any source.
I understand your view of Kraft (and ConAgra and Tyson and IBP) but I would encourage anyone to take ANYTHING of benefit to the population offered by any corporate demon. One does not forgive their predations in doing so.
Well-said, Kristi! Neither do I! It's like trusting Jack the Ripper to do your mother's heart bypass surgery claiming he wants to do GOOD work now. Yeah, right.
Just another example of corporate greenwashing of their despicable practices. And guess what--it works with a good portion of low-information consumers.
I think there is a slightly larger subversion to this as well.
Our local large health food store. A store that grew from a very small neighborhood cooperative stated in the 70s. Is suddenly covered in the odd logo "Buy Local,Buy Fresh" and all the previously organic only produce has been replaced with fully local and fully toxic local crap.
All the produce now has signs on it about how it was grown where kitty cats sit on porches and lazy hound doggys flop about and children smile.
These have replaced the old signs that said grown without herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers.
I knew it was part of some subversive feel good corporate crap.
The truth is this: to grow a garden big enough to produce enough food to feed a family of two still requires a lot of hard work, patience and skills. The vast majority of Americans are too ignorant and lazy to grow enough food to make a green salad once a day.
You got that right slim... I have been giving tomato and pepper plants away for the last month to friends with garden plots. Most of the people are actually amazed when I tell them I started the seeds myself outside in a cold frame. I mean if this is a surprise to most Americans, we are toast at worst and hapless corporate slaves at best. What ever happened to learning and curiosity in the former USA?
What ever happened to learning and curiosity in the former USA?
My opinion: sensationalized TV news. I say this because I was out of the USA between Oct 2001 and Feb 2003, and when I returned I could not believe what all of my friends and family believed about Saddam, WMD's, etc. concerning Iraq. I had been reading international news during that time and had totally different thoughts and beliefs about the situation and everything I believed ended up being the truth and all the crap everyone else believed was a lie. The strangest thing is this: to this day, I still have friends who believe all of that crap!