I write about food because I think it is a vital issue that has for decades been critically overlooked by the media–and thus the American public–leaving a vast backlog of interesting stories. And because I think food has the potential to unite us.

The beet beat

If you are a journalist looking for an untapped market welling with potential stories, there could not be a better time to write about food. This is because food is a subject that touches so many lives everyday, and there is so much we don’t yet know about our relationship to it. Sure the media is contracting and thus not willing to experiment much with bringing a reporter on a new beat. But if there is one thing editors understand, it’s a good story–and there has been a noticeable shift in coverage over the last three years, with major outlets now filing food stories regularly.

Within the food writing space there are so many specific beats one can cover–from immigration and issues facing food system laborers, to healthcare, food safety and the national obesity crisis, and to the role modern agriculture plays in climate change and environmental degradation. Food today is still most often covered from a business angle or a hedonist foodie angle. But while these stories do have their place, these reporters have the potential–and I would even say duty–to expose their audience to the larger issues.

Agriculture beat journalism has been in slow and steady decline for the past four decades, leaving a handful of pros (like Philip Brasher, Chris Clayton, Jerry Hagstrom and Charles Abbott, all of whom I read regularly) reporting on policy issues from Washington, DC. This is absolutely necessary work, but the audience for food stories is expanding and changing rapidly. Rather than being a mostly rural farm population, readers are eaters, mom and dads, policy wonks of all stripes–and they are shifting the focus of the beat. They want to understand the process by which food gets to their plate, who the farmers that are growing it are and why they make the decisions that they do, how food is regulated for safety, the effect regionalized food systems have on local economies and job creation, how agricultural land is being stewarded, and more.

Bringing it to the table

Traditional agriculture journalism and the bloggers and reporters covering this new food territory are not at odds with each other. In fact, much of my work on Civil Eats is bolstered by the reporting being done by those embedded in DC. And if I had to guess, agriculture journalists are interested in our coverage, too.

The same can be said about battles stoked between industrial and organic agriculture. The media love to pit two sides against each other to move papers. Of course, there are legitimate reasons that both feel frustrated and even threatened by each other, but at the end of the day there are no easy choices in farming. Getting caught up in the black and white debates when it comes to food is easy because we’ve been critically uninformed by the media on food issues for so long. But this is changing. And as it does, corporations will have to alter their practices, critical misuse of resources will have to be addressed, and better access to healthier food choices will become a priority.

In fact, it is when corporations intervene on the discussion between farmers and eaters that the truth gets muddied and lines get drawn in the sand. As Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.”

We must therefore bring farmers and eaters to tables all across the country and get them talking to each other. Journalism can be the facilitator for that conversation–as it delivers facts about what is out there, and what is working and what isn’t working, and lays them in the sunlight.

At the end of the day, reporting on food is all about what we get to eat, and that is an exciting prospect. It’s why I am so optimistic about the future of our food system–when you bring people together at one table and feed them well, there are always things that they can agree on.

Like one of the BBQ meals described in its pages, America Eats! by Pat Willard is tasty and completely satisfying.  It’s a timely book, too: not only because of the material’s origin as a New Deal project (which the nation’s current economic situation has all of us thinking and talking about), but because of the growing interest in American food culture and sustainable food systems. 

This book really represents two writing projects: It incorporates extensive pieces of regional manuscripts produced during 1930s by the Works Progress Administration with contemporary observations by Willard, who attempted to follow the footsteps of the original WPA authors to discover what remained of the food culture they described, or what corresponded in contemporary experience.

As such, the text weaves back and forth, past and present, an unknown WPA writer, then Willard’s contemporary account.  Pay close attention: you won’t want to miss a bite…er, word.  One minute I was reading a report from the WPA’s Oregon Office about wild hogs in cane-break, circa the Great Depression.  A paragraph later I was learning about modern residents of Oregon, the Erickson family, (who live south of Portland) and their wild fallow deer herd.

The original WPA America Eats! project was produced by unemployed writers during the Great Depression.  The goal was not to collect recipes, per se, but to understand food and eating as part of American social and cultural life, and to document the development of local cuisine and customs.  (There are some recipes in the book, but not all are precise and usable).

The stories written by WPA writers were slices of life: local events where food was served.  These included – but weren’t limited to – political, church and community events; religious revivals; teas; fairs; family reunions; rodeos; harvest festivals; national holidays; and memorials.  Likely due to their prevalence during the Depression, the food and cultural life of hobo encampments was even included on the list. WPA writers were generally unknown, but many became famous (including Eudora Welty, Ralph Ellison and Saul Bellow).

The original WPA project was incredibly ambitious, and was divided into five geographical regions.  Willard has provided a truly great service by producing this book, because the original America Eats! was never published.  With WWII looming, the program was eventually discontinued.  While the Library of Congress has some of the holdings, others are spread throughout the United States, and some of the original materials have been destroyed or lost altogether.  Willard’s work in highlighting the original project has brought to the fore important observations about American food culture that should inform our lives – and public policy – today.

This book celebrates American cuisine, and the diverse cultural and geographical elements that influenced it.  Willard argues that while America is a young cuisine in contrast to that of other nations, it suffers from no “poverty” of heritage. The accounts of social life (past and present), and the food presented at these occasions, clearly demonstrate that American cuisine developed – and continues to develop – as a result of what Willard terms “unprecedentedly varied cultural influences,” among other factors, including necessity and “contrasting agendas.”

You can read the first chapter of Willard’s book, free of charge, on Amazon.  (America Eats! was one of Amazon’s July picks). But you’ll want to buy the book or check it out of the library, because the rest of it is what I regard as required reading.  In particular, the last chapter is one every American interested in sustainable food systems and American food culture, including our federal policy makers, should read.

In it, Willard discusses the role of food in creating community, and how important regional cuisines and what she describes as “plain cooking” are to us.  Willard makes a strong argument that it’s not the taste of our food, but how we use it, which has been central to the development of our nation’s cuisine, and perhaps, our community life.  She also argues that we accept variations in our cuisine with more grace than others.  We’re willing to do it our way, and let others do it their way, too, when it comes to food.  Food has been an important point of assimilation in American life, and Willard describes the merging of immigrant and regional dishes in a way that should make anthropologists and sociologists take notice.

We each have our own food allegiances.  I was born in Pennsylvania to expatriate Southerners.  (And like Willard, while I can’t intellectually rationalize the ingredients of Pennsylvania Dutch scrapple, the mere thought of fried scrapple makes my mouth water).  The gatherings of my Southern relatives nearly always included gumbos (chicken and shrimp), ham, cornbread, grits casserole, Ambrosia salad, my grandmother’s Million Dollar fudge, trays of pralines, lemon meringue pie, and Jezebel jelly.  Oh, and bottles of Coca Cola pulled (at great risk) from the rusty old pop machine my great-grandfather kept in the barn behind his house.  I don’t eat most of these foods now (except corn bread, which we eat at least once a week).  But the memories of this food, a yard full of exotic relatives (none of whom I see any more), are some of the clearest, purest memories of my childhood.  We each have food memories like this.  Food shapes us, not only physically, but culturally.

We are beginning a new chapter in our national life, one that will feature some hard times and some hard choices.  We’ll be looking back to our past for clues, and Willard’s book provides some important ones.  These harder times, these changing times, conversely, will also provide more opportunities to strengthen our communities.  Despite the Great Depression, WPA writers found strong communities.  Willard found them, too.  Food will, and should, play a central role in this new period in American life.

There are many ways that we can interact with our food. We cook it, eat it, some of us garden or farm it, and perhaps we buy it at the market. In addition to all of those, some of us love to write about it.

Food writing takes many forms. Restaurant reviews have a certain celebratory style and language that has long been an established part of our cultural food fascination. On the other extreme, we have works like Fast Food Nation which explore some of the darker aspects of food production. In between these two are a million different voices and styles of prose and poetry relating to the food we eat.

For those of you in the Bay Area, the writing center 826 Valencia is holding a Food Writing seminar to explore how we write about food, and how you can get published, perhaps even paid, to do so.

I will be joining a diverse panel of authors and editors who will be present to discuss all the aspects of this growing field. Mollie Katzen, of The Moosewood Cookbook fame, will undoubtedly be a highlight for many. She will be joined by chef Scott Youkilis, editor of the journal Out of the Kitchen, Lessley Anderson, a senior editor at Chow.com, and Joe Jarrell, a writer for the SF Bay Guardian.

I caught up with Lessley, and asked her how she had become involved with the project. “I had volunteered with 826 Valencia in the past,” she said “and so was excited to be a part of the panel to support their work.”

The writing seminar is a fundraiser for the nonprofit 826 Valencia’s free tutoring and writing programs for 6 – 18 year olds. 826 National has branches in six other cities in addition to the original San Francisco location. The program is founded on the belief that “strong writing skills are fundamental to future success.”

With food writing specifically, it is clear that success in this particular field can be associated with a broad range of backgrounds. My original writing inspiration came from ecology and nature, as I attempted to emulate the likes of Barry Lopez and Annie Dillard. Lessley mentioned that she, too, did not start writing about food, but rather trained as a journalist and for a time was a crime writer.

But no matter where you begin, food writing is certain to nourish your mind and heart, but also your belly as you nibble away for inspiration while you write.

The Food Writing Seminar will be taking place Thursday, Nov 20 from 6 – 9pm at 826 Valencia, in San Francisco

Photo: asacart