Speaker 0:41

Hello everybody, and welcome back. You're listening to The Restaurant Guys, Mark and Francis, and today our guest is Ben Hewitt. Ben is a farmer from northern Vermont and a writer. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Wired, Men's Journal, Gourmet Magazine, and his most recent book is The Town That Saved Food: How a Working-Class Vermont Community Jump-Started Its Economy by Creating a Localized and, uh, Innovative Food System.

Speaker 3 1:04

Ben Hewitt, welcome to the show.

Speaker 4 1:06

Hey, thanks guys. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1:08

Ben, I, I love your book. It's, about this little town that, Are you from the town or you're from near that town?

Speaker 4 1:14

I live about eight miles to the east. So, The town of Hardwick that's the, the subject of the book is, in North Central Vermont, and I'm, I'm just to the east of that in the town of Cabot. And some of your listeners might be familiar with, uh, the Cabot's award-winning, uh, cheddar cheeses.

Speaker 1:28

Yeah, of course. Of course. How could we not be? Now, um, you're originally from up that way?

Speaker 4 1:35

Yeah, I was born in St. Albans, and just sort of geographically speaking, St. Albans is actually in Northwestern Vermont, and so I was, I was raised in that, that particular portion of Vermont is actually, um, very much a, a, uh, dairy farming, region. And so I was raised in sort of the midst of Vermont's dairy, industry.

Speaker 1:53

Well, and, and this area i- has suffered a, a great deal of late. Its economy is n- has not been thriving in the new century.

Speaker 4 2:01

Yeah. Well, b- I mean, in particular, you know, if, if we want to talk sort of specifically about Hardwick, you know, along with a lot of other sort of small, uh, rural communities in, in northern Vermont, it just, you know, there hasn't been, um, th- you know, there's not a large degree of industry or really any kind of sort of service economy, that might, you know, be in place of that industry. So they, you know, these towns, um, haven't done well. You know, Hardwick, in particular has, has historically for many years had a unemployment rate that's about forty percent higher than the state average and a median income that's about, um, twenty-five percent lower. and all of this has sort of come on the heels, um, y- you know, for Hardwick of a, a really booming, granite industry that faded, uh, pretty rapidly in the 1920s. And, you know, since then there's never really been, um, something to sort of come along and sort of put it back on its economic feet, so to speak.

Speaker 2:53

So we have this old community. It's, it's certainly a blue collar community. It's below the average income for northern Vermont and the rural, the rural farming community's not doing real well. Your book is a fascinating chronicle of, of how there's a new model of business there that, offers some economic hope to this town overall. Why don't you tell us about it?

Speaker 4 3:12

Yeah. So what, you know, I got intrigued and, and started looking into the story about, oh, I'd say about three years ago when I started to sort of notice, that, in Hardwick there was this incredible number of sort of small scale, forward-thinking agriculture ventures popping up and, to give you some more spec- specific examples, there was a, um, there's a, an organic, GMO free, seed company. There's, uh, a new restaurant and bar that's operating under a, a community-supported model whereby they actually sold shares, of the restaurant to members of the community and where they are, they're sourcing, at la-last count about eighty percent of their ingredients from within fifteen miles. There's an organic, tofu and soy milk, uh, production facility. you know, really that's just sort of the tip of the iceberg. There, there have been, um, I would say in the last five years or so, at least six or seven new ventures and, you know, we're talking about a town of, of thirty-two hundred. you know, in the broader region, just, you know, within a few miles of Hardwick, there's, there are a bunch of other businesses, including you might have heard of, uh, Jasper Hill Cheese and the, the Cellars at Jasper Hill.

Speaker 4:15

Yeah, we carry Jasper Hill Cheese in our restaurants, of course. Yeah, the Cross and Bliss and the Bailey Hazen have both been in our restaurant.

Speaker 4 4:19

Yeah, there you go. Right. So, so what I g- You know, one, one thing that really drew me just as sort of, a writer and a sort of a chronicler of, you know, the human condition and, and someone who just sort of loves, I guess, uh, contradictions and juxtapositions was the, the notion that this little town, which is really you know, hardscrabble seems to be the word that comes, you know, is associated most with Hardwick, and it's almost become a cliché. But, you know, this little hardscrabble town was sort of becoming, you know, the bastion for the, local food movement and sort of being held up as, exemplar of what a localized, food system might look like. And I, you know, I just sort of love that because I've always sort of perceived as a, as a working-class Vermonter myself, I've always sort of perceived this whole local food thing as being sort of an upscale concern. So I really appreciated that, that sort of juxtaposition.

Speaker 3 5:05

Well, I th-I think we here in this tri-state area, we, we kind of always think of Vermont as this granola crunching, area where people move to Be in this kind of a movement, l- just like you were talking about in Hardwick. But Hardwick really isn't or wasn't that kind of town to begin with,

Speaker 4 5:21

No, that's absolutely right. I mean, p- a lot of its reputation... Uh, now let me just say, like having grown up in northern Vermont, and most people who have, were raised in northern Vermont have always sort of been aware of Hardwick as a, as this sort of town whose reputation has preceded it. And, uh, by that I mean, it's a town with a lot of pretty bad and crude jokes at its expense. Um, and a l- I think a lot of that came, uh, out of this, booming, granite times when there was a tremendous, uh, amount of immigrant labor and there were, this was sort of a work hard sort of play hard type of town. And it's actually, the rumor was that i- in the early 1900s, there were more bars per capita in Hardwick than any town in North America. Um, and so it was a place of, you know, wild Saturday nights. you know, and just never really shed that reputation. And then of course, after the granite industry, um, went away, it sort of entered this period of sort of, I guess economic stagnation would be, uh, you know, probably the most appropriate term. I, I don't really wanna call it e- economically depressed because it's not really that different from, in some ways, from a lot of small, I think rural Vermont communities and probably, you know, some rural communities across the US. and it also is a community I think that it, in, in a lot of ways is really vibrant, so, so... And, and, and healthy. So it's really just, you know, when we look at some of these economic numbers where it is, where it sort of has traditionally fallen short. But, it is definitely a working class community and, it all through the sort of middle, um, 1900s, 1950, 1960, there was a lot of dairy farming going on. about the 1970s, Hardwick really got hit by the back to the land movement. it became a, a, a real sort of beacon to, folks who were sort of looking for a way out, and there was a real sudden and sort of strong influx of, back to the landers. And I think one of the things that has really sort of, um, I guess pun intended, you know, sowed the seeds for what, sown the seeds for what's going on now is, was this, this sort of influx of, of young, agriculturally minded folks who wanted to sort of seek a different direction than, you know, strictly dairy farming. and then there was the, you know, the Buffalo Mountain Co-op was founded in 1975, um, which actually now makes it one of the oldest operating food cooperatives, um, in the US. an interesting little anecdote that sort of really to me sums up a lot about what, what Hardwick's about, is that the, when the Buffalo Mountain Co-op opened, it was in the same building as a gun shop and a liquor store.

Speaker 7:38

Love it. Love

Speaker 4 7:40

it. Yeah, so you, you know, one-stop shopping Hardwick style. You can go get your tofu, your Jim Beam, and your .357 Magnum, you know?

Speaker 3 7:46

Tofu's never better than when you serve it on caribou, you know? It's like-

Speaker 4 7:50

Yeah, exactly. I mean, if you certainly, as far as I'm concerned, need some fat to go along with it, but yeah.

Speaker 7:54

So 30 years on, um, what is the w- what, what's the makeup of this food revolution that's going on there? Are, you know, they, these people I'm sure were viewed with somewhat, some degree of skepticism back in the '70s when they, you know, when these hippie back-to-the-landers came into this- Mm-hmm hardscrabble town of dairy farmers. W- what is it now? Are, are they the old-timers now, or is there still a new- newcomer/old-timer divide?

Speaker 4 8:18

Uh, that's really interesting. Uh, yeah, that's a great question. I mean, th- From what I observed, there is some divide. Um, there's-- I clearly see what's going on now as, being a, you know, a little bit of a different or I guess an evolved articulation of what we've thought of as agriculture, clearly in this country and I think even in Vermont to a certain extent. And, you know, I think Vermont has always been associated with, you know, very much with like dairy farming and maybe maple syrup production. and what we're seeing now, you know, I sort of call it the agri-preneurial revolution, and, and it's really a lot of young, mostly guys, in their, you know, in their thirties, very business savvy, very entrepreneurial minded, applying those talents to, to agriculture. And so you've got a lot of, value-added products, um, hence like, uh, Jasper Hill, um, hence the tofu. and you also have, a certain sort of mission-driven, ethos that, is seeking to sort of find, I'm not hugely fond of the word, of the term sustainable because I think it's been overused. But it's definitely seeking to find some, some solutions and some sort of systems, thinking approaches to making, uh, you know, our agriculture system something that can, stick around for a while. one example of that is, is perhaps what Jasper Hill is trying to do. And, and, um, they've put in this really, uh, I don't know how much you know about what they've got going on up there, but they've put in this incredibly impressive aging facility that, they're only making a small percentage of the cheese, um, themselves that they eventually hope to have in this facility. And their, and their hope is that they can convince some of these dairy farms up here that are struggling so, so profoundly right now to actually start making cheese themselves and then Jasper Hill can provide the sort of aging and, and marketing facilities and, savvy to, to put that out on the market.

Speaker 3 10:00

You, you know, my friends and I used to go up to Vermont every year, and one of the things that was always a highlight of the trip, we go up to, to either to ski or we would go up during the summertime and just, just kind of hang out in the woods and peace and quiet-- Well, in a house in the woods. Right. In the... We're, we're not big, big, uh, outdoorsman types. But, one of the k- the most fun parts of the trip would always be go to, to one of the towns and go to one of the cheese shops, uh, that featured all of the cool Vermont cheeses. There are so many really interesting Vermont cheeses up there and so many, so many of these great dairy farms that are still there. I, I think it would be awesome if Jasper Hill could, get them all to kind of come together in, in one place and, and really show off what they can do.

Speaker 4 10:43

Yeah, and I think, I mean, it's a model that works in other countries. I mean, that's something that happens, you know, it happens in France, it happens in, you know, it happens in other, you know, mostly European countries. you know, the problem in Vermont, I think, is you've got all of these, reticent, farmers who, who are not, that do not necessarily embrace, change and a, and a new way of doing things. So I think, if I read between the lines a little bit, I think it's been, a little bit slower going than they would like to convince some of these guys to come over to the cheese side of things. but that said, I, I know that they have been bringing in some, some new farmstead operations and, they're definitely hoping, I think, eventually they have the capacity to, to age something like two million pounds of cheese a year, which, which really puts them in, rarefied territory for that sort of level of, artisan cheese production.

Speaker 11:28

Well, you talk about a value-added product, and I think that's one of the things that, um, one, one of the things that's most interesting about this town is that there is all this cooperation among these many individual entrepreneurs. but I think one of the things you t- that small farmers increasingly find it hard to do, and it, no matter what sort of agricultural product they're trying to produce, is small farmers aren't very good ever at producing a commodity crop. You, I mean- Mm-hmm you can produce The cattle corn as cheaply as a big farm in the Midwest. You can't produce, uh, ground beef, low quality ground beef as cheaply as somebody else. But it's when you look to artisanal products and value-added products that I think that's where the, you know, the lowest common denominator doesn't hold, and a sense of individuality does add some value. And this comes back to a central theme of our whole show, which is that good taste is important and, and, and that having good taste and, and having a desire for Jasper Hill Farms cheese and liking Bailey Hazen Blue and, and realizing whether you saw it on the cheese board in one of our restaurants or your local gourmet cheese shop and saying, "Wow, that's amazing. I want to have that again." I think good taste is inextricably tied to, to what makes this engine go. I mean, do, do you think that's fair?

Speaker 4 12:47

Yeah, I think that's absolutely fair. I mean, you know, these guys are clearly producing, world-beating products. And, know, your point about the, the challenges facing, you know, small scale farmers who, you know, might try to compete on a commodity market. I mean, you know, clearly we have, you know, a larger, uh, nationalized or actually internationalized food system that really all but makes that impossible. it also sort of brings me to al-- one of the central theses in my book too, which was that, there's been so much talk about and, and media coverage on Hardwick, and how it's, it's-- they're developing this sort of, you know, healthy, localized food system. And I w-- I'm really struck, I guess, irony, um, is the right word, that in the fact that, you know, a lot of these products that are being produced here are, you know, sort of beyond the means, um, or at least perceived to be beyond the means of a local population where the median income is, is less than fifteen thousand bucks. I really spent a lot, spent a lot of time in the book sort of, you know, kicking that can around a little bit. You know, it's like, do we wanna look at-- do we look at these local food systems as are they economic drivers for their community? Or, you know, should this, should there be some sort of mandate to be producing, you know, a certain, percentage o-o-of the food as nourishment for the community? the tricky thing is, of course, is that, you know, with the-- we have a system right now that, that pits Uh, you know, the viability of the producer against the means of the consumer to afford it, on a small scale. And, you know, I sort of naively and presumptuously figured that, I would figure out exactly what, what that magic, what the magic bullet is, the silver bullet is, and of course, I never really got there. It's a very, very complex issue.

Speaker 14:21

I think that we haven't gotten there as a society as a whole and, and in this movement as a whole, and I think w- I wanna come back on the other side of the break and kick that can around a little bit more because it's, it's a pretty troubling paradigm. but I think, I think that the only way out is through. But we'll be back in, in just a moment and talk more with Ben Hewitt about his book, The Town That Saved Food: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food. You're listening to The Restaurant Guys And we're talking with Ben Hewitt about his book. Um, I misstated the book at the closing, at the out before. I said that it was, uh, The Town That Saved Food. Indeed, the name of the book is The Town That Food Saved, but that's a, a... I, I, I, I gotta keep myself from making that mistake every time I talk about the book, Ben.

Speaker 4 16:30

You know, when I heard you say that, I sort of had a, a chuckle to myself because, um, you're probably about the fifth or sixth person who's, flipped those w-those words around. And I, and I'm sort of r-realizing, and actually I, I mention this in the book really briefly, is in that I think, um, in some ways it's almost a more accurate title. Uh, you know, because when you think about what is going on with our industrialized agriculture system and, and really, the ways in which it's, you know, really, I, I believe, predatory on, you know, our environment, our communities, on just about every level I, I guess I feel like, I feel like, it's predatory. And, you know, you see, you know, what's going on in Hardwick and the, the potential I think it has and the, and the inspiration that it sort of seems to be, uh, you know, sowing around the country for, uh, f-for other communities, um, you can really start to, to see that it actually may be, the town that saved food. I mean, if we really, believe, and I, I do believe that we need to be moving very urgently, you know, toward these, these decentralized food systems, um, and if this is the town to sort of help show us how that might work, I think, actually you've got the better title.

Speaker 17:37

Well, you know, th-there's a lot of reason to talk about decentralized food systems. I mean, if you want to appeal to the alarmist in us, food security being one of them. I mean, it's the way we work is unsustainable in many ways, and we can talk about that in a moment, but that's something we've dealt with in this show before. But one of the interesting paradigms that no one has really solved yet is something that you touched on at the end of the last segment, when we have S-in some cases, poor farmers who work very hard to create food, for rich people to eat, while the poor farmer can't afford to eat in that strata of f-food that even they create, or the workers on the farm can't afford to eat that strata and may be eating, you know, Burger King and McDonald's, which is, nutritionally, not as dense as th- or as good for you as the kind of food we're talking about, you know, your average person can't afford to shop at Whole Foods, and Whole Foods is great. I can afford to shop at Whole Foods, and I do, and it's a great store. how do we resolve that paradigm you know, the obesity epidemic, the, the, uh, diabetes epidemic is most concentrated in our poorest communities that have the least, ability to take advantage of $20 a pound Jasper Hill Farms cheese?

Speaker 4 18:44

Yeah, that's way too hard a question. I'm not gonna be able to answer that. Um, you know, I mean, honestly, you know, I tell people straight up, I mean, if they're looking for a book that's got all sorts of, of neat little answers, uh, you know, this is not the book for them. I mean, this is really a book about questions. although I, believe that, we've gone so far in, you know, one particular direction that's not really working for, for really anyone but a handful of, uh, international conglomerates, I feel like the first step toward sort of turning that ship around is actually even figuring out what questions we need to ask, you know? And, and so I don't have a, you know, a neat, pat answer to that. I would like to just talk a little bit more about that very question. I mean, thank God we're finally starting to even ask that question, which is not something that's been part of our, you know, national dialogue until, you know, really quite recently. one of the things about this town that made me really intrigued is that, because of its, you know, relatively low, um, income, it really brings those issues into really sharp focus. it is this sort of whole issue of, how can we bring basic foods, to these communities, at a price they can afford. Because, you know, o-o-obviously there, there is room for those value-added products like twenty dollar per pound cheese or, you know, whatever, or artisan, uh, you know, tofu or whatever it is. But, clearly we need-- if we, if we want to talk about some level of affordability, we're probably talking about, you know, producing some more sort of basic products. And, there is no real easy, easy path to it. I mean, I think there are a number of ways to chip away at it. clearly on a, on a national level, we have an agricultural subsidy, um, system that, is working, against us, and so we might consider ways that we can subsidize, Pollan has suggested that, you know, perhaps food stamps should count double at farmers markets. I mean, that seems to me like a, like, you know, a pretty sane response rather, rather than, you know, paying farmers a

Speaker 20:33

dollar. and before our listeners on the right go a little off on, "There they go talking about subsidies again," what we're talking about is an unequal playing field because the corn and soybeans that go in to make the processed food, believe you me everybody, are subsidized and discriminated in favor of by the policy of the United States government. And the regulatory bodies are almost entirely captured by the, you know, handful of very large food companies that are as powerful as the very large oil companies. You just don't know their names, perhaps. Um.

Speaker 4 21:05

Yeah, I mean, you know, and, and what's amazing is to consider how quickly it's happened. I mean, you know, in, in nineteen hundred, I mean, Kraft Foods didn't, it wasn't even founded till nineteen oh three. And in, you know, in their first year of operation, Kraft Foods lost three thousand dollars and a horse. That's what they listed on their tax return as their losses, right? And now they're, I think, a forty billion dollar company. So-

Speaker 21:25

Forty billion with a B.

Speaker 4 21:27

With a B, yeah. Yeah. So, and, you know, Monsanto didn't exist in nineteen hundred. I mean, you know, all of these, all, all of the, the giants really of our food industry either were in their absolute infancy or simply didn't exist a hundred, you know, basically a hundred years ago.

Speaker 21:42

And

Speaker 4 21:42

again- So this has happened incredibly quickly. and you're absolutely right, it's a totally unlevel playing field, both in terms of actual cash subsidy handouts, but also in terms of, some of the, the techniques, and the growth, uh, inputs that the industrial food system uses to produce food. And, and by that I mean that, you know, none of this is possible without, huge inputs of cheap fossil fuel energy, um, which of course in and of itself is, is subsidized on many different levels.

Speaker 22:09

Just remember, just remember, and I wanna make this very, very clear for our listeners, the food-- the, the farm subsidies, we always hear about the farm bill and how we have to help the farmers, et cetera and so forth. The lion's share, above the ninetieth percentile of that farm subsidy goes to huge corporations that form commodity crops and grow things that you don't eat. and so when you're wondering how your hamburger got to be seventy-nine cents, well, it, it got there because these corporations take a huge amount of welfare, a huge amount of regulation, a huge am- huge amount of laws that allow them to externalize their costs. And the guy who grows tomatoes and potatoes and green beans at the green market, he's not getting those government subsidies. And in fact, and here's the great irony, do you know what the Department of Agriculture calls those crops? They're called specialty crops. Yeah, isn't that nice? Isn't that crazy? Isn't that nice? Yeah. they dress it up with a picture of a farm like, we're helping the farmers. You're not helping the farmers. You're helping Cargill, but you're not helping the farmers. The farmers, we should, we should switch it, and those big companies are producing this food that is causing health problems and land problems. If that stuff is profitable, then it shouldn't need our government money. There's no great value to the nation that comes from that. The value to the nation would be mid-sized farms growing specialty crops to feed us locally, and that's where... If, if, if the same level of farm subsidies were switched and we turn off the spigot to the hugest, richest companies in America and, and have that same level of, of, of spigot go to these small farmers, you would see a flowering across this nation of, of local sustainable farms, and it's just disgusting that it's not happening.

Speaker 4 23:45

Wow. Uh, that was, that was a, a wonderful little rant. And you know what I mean? It all sounds so common sense. It's like, why are, why are we not doing it? You know? It's like-

Speaker 23:52

Lobbyists.

Speaker 4 23:53

Who c- who can argue with that? And I do, you make a really good point, and, and one thing that I really wanna stress too is that none of what we're talking about here is an indictment of, you know, some very, very hardworking, you know, large scale farmers. I mean, my, my grandparents grew, um, hundreds of acres of corn, corn and soybeans in Iowa and, and I know how hard they worked and, they were clearly part of this, broader industrialized system we're talking about. So, you know, but they were just as much... And all of these farmers who are growing, you know, these hundred acres of, of corn and soybeans and sort of, you know, forced into this system are, are really just as much, I, I believe, you know, sort of victimized by the system as are these people in these communities who, can't get good nutriti- nutritional food for a decent price. Back to, you know, back to the cost issue a little bit. I mean, the ways I think to, to chip away at this, you know, are, one, you know, bringing this food as- Just shortening the supply chain, basically. I mean, anytime that you can go directly to a farmer and, and buy food directly to a farmer, either at a farmers market or maybe through a food cooperative, which is one s-small step removed, you're just, you're just taking, you know, m-numerous hands basically out of the pie who are, each want their little handful of coins. So, you know, that's certainly one way. I, I also think, you know, I, I love the, the notion that people in this, in this nation are getting inspired themselves to actually put their hands in the soil. I mean, what is it? I think gardening is up something like twenty percent in the last year, and we now are on our way to being a nation of gardeners. that's clearly a way to, turn a very inexpensive product, You know, you could, for twenty or thirty bucks worth of seeds, you can grow literally hundreds of dollars' worth of vegetables. And, you know, obviously that's not a solution for everybody. but it is a solution for a lot, a lot of people out there.

Speaker 3 25:38

And I-- One of the key points for me in reading the book, I'm sitting there and, I read this section of, in, in the 1800s, ninety percent of us lived on farms. Mm-hmm. And today, point seven percent of us live on farms. So one out-- We went from ninety out of a hundred to one out of a hundred and forty people living on farms.

Speaker 4 25:57

That's correct.

Speaker 3 25:58

That's a huge, huge difference. And, and maybe part of this problem is we need more people to be toiling in the soil, whether it's in their little garden or whether it's on their, their little one-acre farm or whether it's on their mid-scale family farm.

Speaker 4 26:11

I, a hundred percent agree with you. And, I think that people right now in this country are... I mean, you know, not everybody, but we don't need everybody to, to go there, look at the last USDA farm census. There was actually a growth in, in the number of farms in the US for, for the first time in I don't know how long. But, almost all of that growth was in small farms. And, you know, people are wanting to do this. They do want to do it. Um, they just want to know that if they are gonna make that leap, you know, there's going to be a market for them and there's gonna be some sort of level of viability there.

Speaker 3 26:45

The other thing about a lot of these family farms that I see is they're not all about just growing five hundred acres of corn. They're about growing different crops at different times of the year and having some animals on the property I'm seeing more and more of that in, in these smaller farms.

Speaker 4 27:04

Diversification.

Speaker 3 27:05

Diversification, exactly.

Speaker 4 27:06

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and you know, and I think there's an, a, growing awareness that... Look, when I describe our farm to people, the way I describe it is, it probably looks like a turn of the century Vermont hill farm, but not the most recent turn of the century, you know? I mean, and so if you look back, you know, a hundred years or, or so, all of these farms, were diversified farms. They had, some milk cows, they might have run some beef. They used the fertility that came out the back ends of those critters to, to compost that and put it on the vegetable garden. They might have grown enough extra in the vegetable garden to sell at a market. they, maybe they did some berries. I mean, the diversification I think is key on a number of fronts. One, it does allow you to create a, a cycle within your farm so that you, if you have the animals and you can capture that fertility and put it on your land, either to grow vegetables or a hay crop for your critters, you're then not dependent on inputs, you know, fer-fertility inputs, which is a huge issue. Um, it also means that you're, you're less beholden to one particular crop, you know, having a bad year. So, if you're growing corn and wheat and soy or whatever it is, and one of those crops is a failure, well, you're not, you're probably not gonna go under. Right. Whereas if you had all of your land sown to, to corn and you had a, you know, had a bad year, or the market bottoms out or whatever, you're really vulnerable.

Speaker 3 28:26

And to go back to that point we were making earlier about a lot of these products being outside the price range of, of the people who are producing them, you know, maybe one of the answers that, a lot more people are producing a lot more different things, and there's a barter system that can come into play there with, with some of these products for, for some of these poorer people.

Speaker 4 28:45

Yeah, I think that, you know, it will be interesting to see how that evolves in, in town here. I mean, there have been a lot of efforts. You know, one of the things that I wrote about a little bit in the book was this effort at, at High Mowing Seeds, where they, they harvest all the seeds out of these pumpkins and squash, but then, they just want the seed. And so the perfectly good sort of flesh of the vegetables is left to rot, or had traditionally been left to rot. And a, a couple years ago, they started sort of going through the field and actually, you know, pulling some of that out of the fields. what they've done is started a program called Pies for the People, whereby the, the local, um, agriculture college, cooks up those, ingredients that would otherwise have gone to waste, and has turned them into pies, which they distribute, during the holiday season to families in need. So that, that's just one small example of, I call it working the margins, you know. Here's something that would otherwise have sort of gone to waste, and you're turning it into, you know, a v- a highly nutritious foodstuff for the local citizenry. I don't wanna disparage these companies for, running with this value-added model. I mean, you know, they, do need to create some sort of financial viability and, you know, the jobs that they're bringing to the community are not, you know... Listen, this is important stuff. we need these jobs. so there's clearly, you know, a, a, a, I think a gray area here. I do think that we always wanna be looking at ways, if we wanna talk about, true, equality and, and access to, nutritious food, we do wanna really be looking hard at ways that we can bring this food back into our community.

Speaker 3 30:08

and Ben, I wanna thank you for naming our next pastry book is definitely gonna be called Pies for the People.

Speaker 30:13

Pies for

Speaker 3 30:13

the People. Thanks very much. Oh,

Speaker 4 30:15

yeah.

Speaker 30:15

by raising the issue earlier, and I th- I do think it's an important issue and an important question, of the fact that a lot of the organic food is out, and a lot of the food that we're talking about producing in a sustainable way, is not accessible to people who can't afford it. I don't, I don't view that as an indictment of these companies at all. I just think, I think the only way out is through, and the first thing we need to do is to create a sustainable business that can practice sustainable agriculture. Because if you practice sustainable agriculture for a number of years, and you can't make enough to pay the bills and bring jobs into the community and make a sustainable business, well, then y- you're nowhere. Then, then you've done nothing. Um- Yeah,

Speaker 4 30:48

it's not gonna do anybody any good if you, if you go out of business after a year.

Speaker 30:51

And but then I think what, what's happening in Harbrick and what you detail in your book is then people who have these, you know, businesses that are sustained on the, the high-end stuff are, are looking for ways to sort of democratize food in that town. And, and it is a concern and a goal, and you detail that in the book rather beautifully, and they haven't quite figured out how, out how to do it. which is another thing I think it's great that you are, asking questions that don't necessarily ha-- we don't have the answer yet. But they are looking to feed the town sustainably with the food. Yeah, and I, I think that's an admirable goal.

Speaker 4 31:23

Yeah, I Vermont has, always been, you know, an exporter of agricultural product, and I, I don't think that's going to change anytime soon. But, I do think, it behooves us to sort of begin to, I think we should be looking at the food we produce as a really, really valuable resource rather than, a commodity put out on the open market. And, what are the ways that we can sort of begin to husband this resource and, and, you know, not to be selfish, but, you know, come on, this is our, these are our communities. These are the people that we should be most concerned about and a-as it should be in every community across this country. And, you know, how can we keep more of that there while providing that same viability? And listen, as, you know, the consumers certainly bear some brunt of responsibility here because I think, you know, I talked earlier about, um, you know, I said that y-that people either can't afford or perceive they can't afford, this food. And I, and I do think that in some cases, it's a perception more than a reality.

Speaker 32:18

I also, I, I wanna point out one thing that you said That food can't be completely on the open market, and I'm gonna agree with you, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna put this out from time immemorial, from prehistory. One of the reasons that civilization happened of the responsibilities of any emperor, any king, any democracy, any commonwealth, was to stave off famine, okay? Right. And the open market does not stave off famine. Okay, so food it's a necessity. It's a right. You have a right to air, water, food, to live, okay? and there's not always gonna be enough if we don't act in concert together to make sure there's always gonna be enough, and the invisible hand of the market doesn't always work with agriculture. So- That's a myth. We've never in the world, in, in history, had an open market, except for, the Irish potato famine. That was an example of the open market working on food. from the country from which my ancestors hailed, uh, you know, a quarter of the population died of pestilence, uh- Right. Yeah ...while, while, while Ireland was a net exporter of food. That, my friends, is the free market with food. If you like the Irish potato famine, that's the free market with food.

Speaker 4 33:22

Right, and, you know, look at what's going on in this country right now. I mean, we waste the sum total of about 40% of our food goes in the trash, I'm not even talking about waste in terms of, like, we're not even composting it and turning it into some kind of fertility. We're, we're just trashing it, basically. And yet we have a record number of Americans on food stamps. you know, our systems are so, you know, sort of back-backwards and, and really working, uh, a-against the general populace. It's, it's really quite stunning to, you know, that it's evolved in this way. I mean, consider that, you know, just, just what you're talking about, in the 1800s, it was the US government that, actually provided seeds to all of its population, uh, because they wanted them to be able to grow some food,

Speaker 34:01

pr-promote the general weal-welfare is right up there with provide for the common defense, and it is what all societies have always done is first thing is make sure we're safe, and then make sure everybody gets enough to eat. That's, you know, that's, that's what com- that's what- It's basic human beings come together. It's basic. It's basic. And one other thing I wanna say because I know I'm gonna get millions of emails, um, uh, from my free market friends, and I b-believe in a free market in many things, in many environments, and in many ways I believe in a, in a, in a tempered free market. Um, but don't talk to me about how I'm against the free market and I wanna dismantle the American free market when it comes to food. There is no American free market when it comes to food. We regulate in favor of large corporations, and then we subsidize them with millions of dollars and mil- Billions of dollars. I'm sorry, billions of dollars e-every year, and then we regulate the rest of us in such a way that they're allowed to externalize their costs and, communalize their costs and socialize the costs while retaining all the profits. You know, the profits- Yeah are private sector, but the costs are, are, are socialized. So- I'm

Speaker 4 35:05

really struck by how it sounds exactly like what's going on with our financial system right now, you know?

Speaker 35:10

It, it is striking. and it's more important because w-you need food to live. You cut off the food... You know, you can... If you cut off the oil, we can still survive. If you cut off- That's right. If you control the oil, I c- I can still wiggle some, some private space for myself. If you control the food, I, I can't make it to, to next week.

Speaker 4 35:25

And but, you know, I think what's really amazing is that as a, as a population, how quickly we've sort of forgotten that. I mean, it's gotten, you know, it's gotten really so easy, um, and, you know, cheap. I'm gonna say cheap in quotation marks there because there are all these external costs that, you know, we're not considering. But, you know, we perceive it to be so cheap and so easy right now to feed ourselves, and that's really an incredibly recent phenomenon. I mean, that's, you know, this is, this is not, this is not something that is sort of, uh, you know, a situation that has endured for millennia. I mean, we're talking about really only over the last, you know, three-quarters of a century, or even less really, that it's, that it's just gotten this, this-

Speaker 3 36:03

You, you're really talking about one or two generations. Yeah.

Speaker 4 36:05

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, and I-- And we've already, you know, I think we've already come to this place where we all sort of believe that, you know, we, we've, we've forgotten that it m-- that might have once been another way, and we have, we have this sort of in, you know, abiding faith that this is the way it's always going to be. And-

Speaker 36:20

Well, even if- You

Speaker 4 36:21

know, I think that's, that's really dangerous.

Speaker 36:22

And even if you look at how corporations have, have, have co-opted the language. You go into the supermarket, and the conventionally grown vegetables are the vegetables with pesticides and, and herbicides and all sorts of-

Speaker 4 36:33

Right, that's

Speaker 36:34

conventional stuff in them and growth hormones. That's conventional.

Speaker 4 36:36

Right.

Speaker 36:36

And the special stuff is the tomato that was planted in the ground and grown by a guy without the use of chemicals. What?

Speaker 4 36:42

Yeah. Well, and you know, this is the very reason that I, in, in, in my own, you know, speech and, and my writings have almost entirely stopped using the word sustainable because, soon as I saw, not to pick on Monsanto, but what the hell? I mean, they kind of deserve it. You know, as soon as I saw them running a sustainability ad campaign, you know, I sort of realized that we've reached this point of near meaningless, um, you know, regarding th-this particular term and that, we just don't, as a culture, take the time to sit down, and maybe we just don't even know how to really think about these things you know, see through this sort of veil of, marketing speak and, this sort of new vernacular.

Speaker 3 37:18

Ben, I'm gonna just disagree with you slightly there. Go for it. I, I think the word sustainable is, is totally fine. I think it's being, it's been stolen and misused by a lot of people. what I wanna do is kinda take the word back.

Speaker 37:30

I'm, I'm willing to fight for sustainable

Speaker 3 37:32

because- I, I want, I want the word back. I want my word back.

Speaker 37:34

Sustainable. 'Cause, 'cause here, 'cause here's what happens. We, we come up with organic, then organic- Right standards get passed in the government, and then the corporations lobby to say, "Well, organic should have a little bit of chemicals in it," and, "Well, that chemical is good," and all of a sudden organic is meaningless. Well, you know, we can't keep inventing new words and letting-- then, and building up a market for these new words and then letting the corporations have them. Sustainable means it's sustainable, means it doesn't use a lot of fossil fuels, means you can do it for a thousand years, okay?

Speaker 4 38:00

Is that... And what is, you know, let me ask you then. how long can you do-- Do you have to be able to do something to make it sustainable? Is that, is that- I'll,

Speaker 38:05

I'll settle for five hundred year. I'll settle for five to six hundred years, and that, I will consider that sustainable. Was that

Speaker 4 38:11

word for you? Y-yeah, I think so, although my argument, a-a-and, you know, and here you get into e-even, even more, a more difficult conversation, but I'm not certain that there is a form of agriculture that is truly sustainable that is actually gonna feed six-point whatever billion people on this planet, you know?

Speaker 38:27

You know, you know what's funny? There have been some studies that have come out just recently that have talked about the density of food that comes out of large, high input agriculture farms. Right. It turns out, in the last couple of years, there are a bunch of studies that say midsize, organic, diversified farming is the most productive farming that we can have. Isn't that crazy?

Speaker 4 38:47

I believe that. I

Speaker 38:48

believe that, definitely. So, so... I hear all the time these big corporations talk about how, "Oh, we need genetically modified crops or we won't be able to feed anybody." I don't see these genetically modified crops feeding the world, and then from farmers that I talk to, their actual output yields in the field don't seem to be any higher to me. And Monsanto and all these big companies do not allow, by law, you may not study them, whether they actually deliver on their promises or not.

Speaker 4 39:13

Right.

Speaker 39:13

Yeah. So there's no way to verify what they do. What we know is that Roundup-ready crops- Make you buy more Roundup.

Speaker 4 39:21

That's exactly right. that's part and parcel of, the engineering of these particular crops, is that they're basically engineering them to require another product that they'll be happy to sell you.

Speaker 39:29

Well, and the other thing about genetically engineered crops, as long as we're onto that topic of things, is, for millennia, for, from the times humans first became farming communities, we plant, we grow, we save seeds. Uh, the government i-in America used to consolidate and supply seeds for our farmers, but you could save your own seeds and replant. Well, with genetically modified crops, you can't. You have to go back to Monsanto every year for all of eternity to buy its patented GMO seeds every year. And I,

Speaker 3 39:57

and I know that you mentioned the Terminator seed in the, in the book. You, you wanna just- Yeah talk about that for a second, Ben?

Speaker 4 40:03

Yeah, so the Terminator technology was the technology that, was developed by Monsanto and patented in the, I believe it was, uh, '99 or the late '90s. You know, here's the thing with seeds. Uh, when, when you sell seed, you're basically not only selling the... If you sell just a regular sort of open-pollinated, not modified seed, you're not just selling the seed, but you're selling the factory. Um, because that seed will then grow a plant that's gonna produce seed, which then you can save if you choose to grow your crop the next year. And this is the way it was done-

Speaker 3 40:32

Forever for,

Speaker 4 40:32

you know, what, 10,000 years or

Speaker 3 40:34

however long-

Speaker 4 40:34

Forever. We'll,

Speaker 3 40:34

we'll say f- we'll say forever.

Speaker 4 40:36

Yeah, basically forever. I mean, since, you know, since we started cultivating. what's happened now, of course, has been, this movement toward, you know, first you started having hybrid seeds, which you can save, um, but you're not always certain... Oh, and I'm not saying hybrids are bad. There's some very, very good things about hybrid seed. Um, and a hybrid seed is just a seed, it's been pollinated. usually it's, it's cross-pollinated with, with other varieties to create e-enduring traits, a positive traits of a particular crop. Um, but what happens when you save, hybrid seeds sometimes, you just don't know exactly what you're gonna end up with. You might end up with, I don't know, corn that's gonna grow, two-inch ears with pink kernels or something like that, you know? Right. Right. Um, and, and now what's happening is that, you know, Monsanto now has this technology, called Terminator technology, which is actually sterile seed. So it'll, it'll grow a plant, but that plant or that crop will not reproduce seed. It puts seed saving out of the picture. You, you just cannot do it. now, they have not yet implemented... There was such an outcry when they, took out the patent on this stuff and sort of then, you know, it, it came out that they had this technology, they have basically, stuck to a self-imposed vow on not to utilize the technology. Um, but that varies. they, they are also keeping their options open, let's put it that way. They have not said that they're, they will never use the technology, but for the time being, they, they are keeping it under wraps. it's really stunning the power that's been amassed and consolidated, and it's not just Monsanto. They certainly are the 800-pound gorilla, but, in the seed industry, I think it's the top three seed companies own 50% of the market. the consolidation is really tremendous. And, and Monsanto actually owns... Because now you can sell the genetics, uh, to another seed company, and Monsanto owns, by some estimates, as much as 90% of, the corn and soy genetics in the US seed market.

Speaker 42:21

All right, I'm frightened to death now. I hope you are as well. But if you wanna go to someplace that's doing positive things with food, you might wanna check out Hardwick, Vermont. Uh, the book is The Town That Saved Food: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food. Its author is Ben Hewitt, and you can find out more about it on restaurantguysradio.com. Ben, thanks for coming on the show today.

Speaker 3 42:39

Thanks, Ben.

Speaker 4 42:39

Hey, thank you. It's also, uh, it's The Town That Food Saved. You did it one more time.

Speaker 42:43

I know. I just can't stop it. So it's gonna help everybody remember it when they go, "We'll get it right on the website, I promise." No problem. We'll be back in, we'll be back in just a moment. You're listening to The Restaurant Guys sorry I got a little riled up there, Marc. I feel like I, uh...

Speaker 3 42:56

It's basically that, that's the topic that really gets you, gets

Speaker 42:59

you fired up. I need a, I need a Xanax. That's what- I hope I got, I hope I got some of you out there in listener land tied up. You know what I ha- I found an int- interesting statistic, but I was gonna keep him on the show forever, and we've ran out of time, so. there's a crazy juxtaposition when you talk about a crazy government policy, and let's, again, remember, there is no free market when it comes to food. We're just debating the terms of the non-free market. And since we don't have a free market, why not make it a fair market, okay? With some competition for small people and a diversified

Speaker 3 43:27

market. Because the small, because the small farmers don't have the same kind of lobbyists that the large have.

Speaker 43:29

That, that's exactly right. But if you wanna look at the craziness of our food sy- I thought that Michael Pollan's make food stamps count for double at, at farm stands. Yeah,

Speaker 3 43:37

that's a great... That, that'd

Speaker 43:38

be awesome. I mean, that's tremendous. Well, you know, here's a statistic. and this is, sort of makes sense if you think about the correlation of obesity and poverty. Our poorest neighborhoods are the places where you're least likely to able, to get organic or even whole foods. Like, you know- Mm-hmm ...who is it they said, uh- An apple. An apple, right. Th- s- things that don't have an ingredients list, things that are ingredients. You know, apples, oranges, bananas, pears, um, and good food. Those are called food deserts, But you have a lot of cheap processed food there. So in our poorest places, we have the highest incidence of consumption of fast food and the most processed food, which is where we have the fattest people, the highest incidence of obesity, the highest incidence of morbidly obese people, the highest incidence of diabety diabetes and obesity-related diseases. These are also the neighborhoods that have the highest, concentration of people on food stamps. Isn't that crazy? We're, we're subsidizing people in just all the wrong ways, you know? Right.

Speaker 3 44:40

And it's- The last, the last thing we wanna do, if, if somebody told you you're gonna subsidize somebody so they can go to McDonald's

Speaker 44:47

Right.

Speaker 3 44:47

I, I, I mean, that's... You, you just- Well, and, and

Speaker 44:49

food stamps don't subsidize McDonald's, but they subsidize- I understand people who-

Speaker 3 44:52

I, I understand.

Speaker 44:53

it's crazy.

Speaker 3 44:53

But, if somebody told you these are the choices that, are available to, I don't even wanna say that they're making. Mm-hmm. Sure. That are available to the people that, you're subsidizing as you, as you pay your taxes and, and, and work for a living. Right, and then you subsidize

Speaker 45:05

their healthcare. You subsidize their healthcare with diabetes.

Speaker 3 45:07

Y- there's no ch- there's no chance that you wouldn't be outraged.

Speaker 45:11

it's just, it's a crazy situation, and when people say, "Oh, well, you know, food would be more expensive." You know what? Certain types of food will inevitably be more ex- expensive if we take away the government subsidies that make it cheaper, and we raise it in a more sustainable way. But you know what? Beef is one of those things that's gonna get somewhat more expensive. who knows? The price of beef could be two or three times more expensive than, you know, your inexpensive McDonald's beef. But you know what? Fortunately, there's an obesity epidemic where, you know, we eat two or three times as much beef as we possibly should. So eat less but better, and eat more vegetables. I mean, we just came back from Italy, and all the plates had a, some meat in the center and surrounded by greens and vegetables, and they're healthier than we are.

Speaker 3 45:52

And

Speaker 45:53

it was spectacular. And it was spectacular. Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed the hour listening to The Restaurant Guys as much as we have. I am Francis Schaaf.

Speaker 3 45:59

And I'm Mark Roscoe.

Speaker 45:59

We are the Restaurant Guys on restaurantguysradio.com.