Are we eating our way to the apocalypse?
This past week the Ron Robinson Theater screened the short documentary “Lessons From Bluffton.” The event was put on by the Sowing Prosperity Institute, which focuses on bringing about prosperity in the state of Arkansas by creating “awareness on topics like food, health, agriculture, small business, and community.” This includes promoting self-sustaining farming methods and encouraging diets based on fewer processed foods. Sowing Prosperity puts out a magazine and has a podcast, hosted by small-business owner Logan Duvall, covering these concerns and providing recipes, articles focusing on farming methods, and giving a space for local businesses to tell their stories.
It’s ironic that as I’m writing this column, I’m sitting on my couch and eating a fried bologna sandwich. The bologna was bought from the shelves of Walmart and produced by Oscar Mayer. According to its ingredients list, it contains chicken, pork, corn syrup, sodium phosphates, potassium chloride, an ingredient just listed as “flavor,” and a bunch of other science-y sounding elements. Now that I’ve seen “Lessons From Bluffton,” though, I might start rethinking what foods I consume and my shopping habits in general.
I was invited to this event by filmmaker Patrick Green, who shot and edited the short film. In the lobby of the theater, there were several booths set up from the Arkansas Department of Agriculture, Greenway, and a company that I’m very familiar with, Squizito Tasting Room, which manufactures specialty oils and vinegar. I highly recommend the leek-infused olive oil, especially if you’re running low on onions and want that onion-y flavor. After perusing the booths and collecting a variety of literature and stickers, I took my seat in the theater.
The film opens up with Duvall, who narrates the documentary, talking about how corporate farms and “Big Ag” have taken their toll on small-town America. He specifically cites his hometown of Atkins, where the once prosperous Atkins Pickle Co. resided before closing down in 2002. The film then goes on to the small farming community of Bluffton, Ga. — one of the rare spots in the rural South that hasn’t been ravaged by “Big Ag.” In Bluffton we meet farmer and cattleman Will Harris, who owns and operates White Oak Pastures.
Harris is quite the character, an older farmer with acres upon acres of ducks, pigs and cows all living harmoniously on an open range. He has his own set of philosophies
about agriculture and argues that the current farming methods across the country aren’t necessarily the best and do more harm to their ecosystems than good. Early in the film he explains how modern farms are run like factories; they operate in a way that yields the most profits for their respectful companies. Harris argues that the current day assembly line approach to farming doesn’t work, because farming and nature aren’t linear, they’re cyclical. Harris puts his theories to work as he claims his farm produces a net zero waste. When a cow is slaughtered for its meat, Harris tans out its hide. He takes leftover bits and dries them out to make chew toys for dogs, and tallow candles and lotions with the leftover animal fat.
After the first few minutes of the documentary, I was a bit worried that the whole movie was going to be a giant advertisement for White Oak, but then the film really focuses on just how much better a regenerative farm like White Oak is for the environment. The most affecting scene in the film is when a farmer compares the runoff water of White Oak’s corn field against the runoff from the neighboring traditionally corporate-run farm — and the difference was night and day. White Oak’s water was cleaner with a lot less erosion happening. The other farm, well, their runoff was a bright reddish brown color. Five days worth of rain had eaten its way through the topsoil of their cornfield and had washed who knows what kinds of pesticides and chemicals into the stream.
As much as I loved the environmentally friendly aspects of the film, I felt like the documentary was too short and didn’t fully explore some of the other major aspects of this type of farming. The main downside to this regenerative technique is obviously the cost. Harris claims that, “You got a country that is just hopelessly addicted to obscenely cheap food.” But the film never delves into why society has evolved to shop at Walmart to buy prepackaged bologna. I’d assume that a lot of it has to do with socioeconomic factors. Some people just can’t afford $8 a pound for ground beef. I wanted to see solutions into how we could approach these cultural problems to help sustain this grassroots effort into better farming practices.
I also wasn’t completely sold on the second part of the event.
Podcaster Lisa Fischer and bodybuilder and Keto Savage life coach Robert Sikes were guest speakers after the film. They both talked about shopping locally and cutting out the processed junk foods that you eat, and that you should lean into a proteinheavy carnivorous diet. At one point Fischer joked that you “shouldn’t listen to what the government tells you” as she pointed out FDA regulations, and Sikes kept saying that naturally raised food was better for you, but he never explained why. It’s almost like they were both preaching to the choir, and not attempting to sell people with facts and data about how this lifestyle benefits you.
I’m not a nutritionist, but I do know that this bologna sandwich, that has now dribbled ketchup and mayo all over the front of my shirt, is not good for me. I know that the way it was made is not good for the environment. And I know that “flavor” is something that I probably shouldn’t be eating. Hopefully we get further lessons from Bluffton and a more in-depth look at how we are eating ourselves into agricultural disaster, and how we as a society can change for the better.