URBAN LEGEND
By Steven Biggs
Contributing Editor, Country Guide Magazine
February 2010
WE MEET IN TORONTO’S GAY VILLAGE. It’s a buzzing strip of Victorian houses and low-rise buildings packed with shops, cafés, restaurants and clubs. Street signs sport the same rainbow flag that flies over Toronto’s Pride Parade, and the “village” has a spirited feel that would probably do the rest of the city some good.
Not a fan of large coffee shop chains, Margaret Webb has picked a smaller espresso joint for our meeting.
It’s taken us a couple weeks to arrange getting together because she’s taken time out from her writing to speak to a 4-H group, appear at the Stratford Chef School on a food-writing panel, and prep for an appearance on AgVision TV — which happens tomorrow.
That Webb is gay doesn’t come up until we’re done our coffee, an hour and a half later. I hadn’t intended to mention it, but Webb does, saying, “I was really nervous about how they might perceive me,” as she talks about travelling across the country to meet farmers with her partner Nancy.
Reflecting for a moment, she adds, “I’ve never been so warmly received in my life — and I’m really grateful for that.”
A simple preconception — that she might be spurned in rural communities — nearly held her back from making the tour and trying to connect with farmers.
It hits us both. Time and again, this idea of preconceptions getting in the way of consumers talking to farmers and of farmers talking to consumers drops square on the table in front of us.
Farmer’s daughter
Webb is a journalist, poet, playwright, fiction writer — and a farmer’s daughter. “I’ve driven the tractor. I’ve driven the sprayer. I’ve planted genetically modified corn and soybeans. I know the system,” she says as we discuss her experience on the family farm — now part of her brother’s larger farm — near Barrie, Ont.
In her 2008 book, Apples To Oysters: A Food Lover’s Tour of
Canadian Farms, Webb writes about growing up on the farm, saying,
“I learned to handle sprays (the fine-print instructions told us to wear
masks and gloves, though we never did). I learned to drive machinery and
work hydraulics… My brother and I talked about market
prices, yields, and input costs….”
She still talks farming with her brother Graham. Yet in a recent Toronto Star article entitled, Where They Grow Our Junk Food, Webb uses the term “Doritos economics” as she describes corn and soybean farming. Not sure whether she had stirred the pot too much, Webb says she asked her brother whether it was over the top: “No, it made them think,” he told her, recounting the reaction he observed.
While conscious of stirring the pot, Webb is certainly not shy. She likes to engage readers, and in the process, her writing goes in unexpected directions. In her book, Webb visits a Nova Scotia oyster farm. As she explains that oysters are eaten alive, she says, “Yes, the plump rise of flesh meets its death in your mouth.”
With a combination of sex, food, and farming, she seems to have a lot of fun writing. Still on the theme of oysters, she says, “Not surprisingly, the lusty little molluscs have only a few lonely cells dangling in place of a brain. Yet, they possess prodigious sex glands that swell during spawning to obliterate all other organs.”
Her trip to a flax producer in Saskatchewan goes beyond straight farming and includes a survey that asks residents of a seniors’ home how flax helps with regularity. “Canada has become a constipation nation,” she trumpets early on in the chapter, pointing to low-fibre processed foods.
With degrees from the University of Toronto and Concordia University, Webb has been mainly an urban dweller since leaving the farm. She has held editorial positions at several magazines, and after winning a 1999 Walt Disney Studios Screenwriting Fellowship, she spent time apprenticing in Los Angeles. She currently teaches magazine writing at Ryerson University, is working on a screenplay, and works as a freelance writer.
Farm writer in the city
It occurred to me that in writing about Webb for a farm magazine, I might get some dirty looks in farm circles. After all, Webb is still very much an urbanite, and she’s a big proponent of local and organic food systems. But then I think about her point about preconceptions.
I wondered too, if I’d meet with a haughty food writer or a standoffish contrarian. But Webb is very frank and quite personable. She’s even apologetic that the café she chose is too loud.
She’s pleased that I’ve taken an interest in her ideas, saying, “I
found it interesting
because when I wrote a good-news book about farming and agriculture… it
did generate a fair amount of publicity in the mainstream press, but I
was really quite
shocked and disappointed that the farm press didn’t respond to that
book.” She sits up straight, adding earnestly, “It’s a hopeful message
in my book.”
Webb wonders whether the initial lack of farm media attention stems from her focus on alternative and local agriculture. Her book was about people operating outside of what she calls “energy-dependent conventional agriculture,” and despite being a good-news story, her subjects farm on the fringes. But along with the good news, she tells the bad, saying, “Canadian farmers are suffering through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Shockingly, few of us know that crisis even exists.”
I check in with her following her stint on AgVision TV, which is filmed the day after our meeting. “I expected a rough ride, but I also expected objective journalism, which was probably too much to expect from a show sponsored by Syngenta,” she says, obviously put off by the experience.
Webb isn’t apologetic if her Crisis on the Farm series in the Toronto Star sounds alarmist. She believes there are major hurdles to overcome in the agrifood system. When I ask whether the series has generated more response from the farm media than her book, she nods, saying “Oh, absolutely.”
That response is no surprise. The corn and soybean article, entitled Where They Grow Our Junk Food, looks at commodity-based agriculture, its relation to processed foods, and how it affects the environment. This is the kind of stuff that might make even the most thoughtful steward of the land a little bit uneasy.
On line after line, most farmers want to object, saying the story is selective, or misleading, or biased.
Yet whether the specific facts are as black and white as Webb says, or whether they’re in context or out of it, the big story behind her reporting is just how widespread her audience is, and how her insights are backed up by people with impressive credentials.
“Unfortunately, there is a real disconnect between agriculture, food and health,” Webb quotes the University of Toronto’s David Jenkins — one of the top nutritional researchers in Canada — in her Toronto Star junk-agriculture piece. “We’ve compartmentalized too long.”
If Webb isn’t always completely right, maybe she isn’t always completely wrong either.
In another article, Webb tells readers, “If you’re eating organic
turkey this weekend, savour it, because by next Thanksgiving it may be
easier to buy crack cocaine in Ontario than a drug-free bird.” In this
piece, she looks at bureaucracy that leaves organic turkey
farmers in limbo: Canadian Food Inspection Agency rules mandate organic
turkeys be raised outdoors — while Turkey Farmers of Ontario requires
quota holders to confine all turkeys indoors.
You don’t understand!
“The urban-rural divide is a real problem,” says Webb as we discuss
urban-rural relations. Part of the blame, she thinks, lies with
urbanites. “I think people in the city have always been concerned about
food — but haven’t made the connection between
food and farming,” she explains. That doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a
lack of interest, she adds, saying, “Urban folks are having food
meetings all over the city… and trying to learn about the food system
and farming.”
But if urban consumers are starting to think more about food, that might be part of the disconnect. Nodding, Webb says, “When they find out (how food is raised), they have a lot of issues.”
“Having issues” is a two-way street. Webb recounts meeting a group of
beef farmers concerned about the possible collapse of their industry.
Webb brought up the urban interest in organic, but they had issues with
that. So she brought up the urban interest in local, and a local
certification program, but they had issues with that too. In
frustration,
she asked them, “What do you want? Do you want just to keep doing what
you’re doing and then consumers say, yeah, that’s OK?”
There are some subjects she really wants to help urban audiences
understand. Webb tackles the concept of rural depopulation in her book.
“Consider the statistics this way: there were once 120 or so farmers’
daughters for Ian to meet and now there are practically none,” she
writes. The cultural implications of agricultural change, she says, get
short shrift in the media — even if they’re culturally devastating. Her
approach to shopping takes into account these sorts of cultural
considerations: She has often heard people ask why they should buy
organic food if there is no difference in nutritional content (she
thinks there is). Her response is to ask, “What about the farmers
though?”
as she explains that she sees organic as a way for consumers to support
farmers —
and rural economies.
“Right now I feel that farmers are working for big food and big
agriculture because that’s who’s supporting them,” she laments, adding,
“Eaters have neglected farming, farms, and farmers for too long — but
now we’re waking up and we’re realizing wow, our food system is in
trouble. Farming is in trouble.” She adds, “We need to support them
(farmers) economically.”
Support systems
The economic support she proposes is not a sector bailout. “Commodity
agriculture
is impoverishing farmers,” she says, adding, “Globalization has boxed
agriculture
into a no-win situation.” Farmers serving local markets — and the urban
demand for organic food — she says, are less likely to be stung by
currency and market volatility. “Even if I didn’t believe in it
philosophically, morally, environmentally, and health-wise — from
economics alone, it (organics) makes sense,” she adds.
Webb nods in agreement when I point to no-till technology as a progressive development in conventional agriculture. “It’s not like I’m against technology,” she says, adding, “In the last 30 years, it seems that farmers’ knowledge no longer counts. It’s all about the scientific knowledge that happens in the lab and then gets foisted upon farmers.”
Leading change
If her views make some in farming circles uncomfortable, Webb can live
with that. “We’re eaters and citizens — and citizens should have more
control over the food system,” she says. Webb feels well placed to tell
urbanites about farming, while also bringing farmers an urban
perspective, saying, “I’ve seen the local food movement
build. I see the gaps in the knowledge — but also the incredible
knowledge.”
Webb plans to continue the farming theme in her writing, explaining that someone has to ask the right questions for the public and for farmers. “I think we’re at a very pivotal time in agriculture,” she says. “That’s what motivates me to keep working in this area.”
Webb points out that building a better understanding of the food system doesn’t have to be restricted to any one media sector. She’d love to see food magazines, for example, help readers connect the dots. Too often, she observes, food is treated as a family dinner or restaurant review, and not connected to the rural economy or the environmental ramifications of production.
The way from here
Webb isn’t deterred by a bit of controversy, admitting that the organic system she touts carries a lot of baggage. But she sees in it a couple things that she thinks gives farmers an edge: first, there is a certification process, which, she says, levels the playing field for farmers — and also allows consumers to know what they’re getting. And she also likes the exclusion of GMOs. Maybe organic is the right name; maybe not. Either way, she says, “Invite the people into the room. Let’s have an argument about how those regulations should change.”
In her book, Webb describes the awkwardness when farmer Ian Smith’s
mother said, “I hope you don’t mind me asking, but are you married?”
Webb didn’t mind. The interest in her status was more than she’s had
from most journalists. “No media has touched on it,” she says, referring
to her sexual orientation. Funny thing is, one book agent wouldn’t
represent her book, saying such openly gay content (Webb includes her
partner) might be acceptable for a Toronto audience, but not the rest of
Canada. Webb laughs, saying based on the warm feedback from across the
country, that agent was dead wrong. Sounds to me like we’ve talking
about preconceptions again.
SIDEBAR: Webb meets the OFA
The week after our interview, I accompany Webb to a talk she gives at the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA ) annual convention. The OFA , is looking for urban input as it pushes for a national food policy.
Trying to find the right entrance at the hotel complex, Webb says, “Let’s look for the trucks,” then, seeing some, parks her WordPerfect-blue Mini beside a huge Ford F150.
After congratulating OFA president Bette Jean Crews for a “kick-ass”
press release on food policy, Webb talks about the urban-rural
disconnect, about farmers with tractors protesting at the provincial
legislature, a media that reported on the tractors — yet not
what was behind them being there. Then, to explain to the audience how
she thinks urban consumers perceive farms, she broadly divides farmers
into four groups, starting with large corporate farms, and finishing
with small, organic farms — for which she says urbanites have the most
affinity.
Talk done, the audience gives polite — not thunderous — applause and
questions begin. With a couple of light questions to start things off,
it’s not clear whether Webb has caused much debate. But the last couple
of questioners say up front that they’re ready to rant. And they do.
They don’t like what Webb had to say — and one accuses Webb of making a
presentation that is polarizing, an accusation that generates a loud
applause
from some audience members. Later, Canadian Federation of Agriculture (CFA
) vice-president Laurent Pellerin is equally hostile, saying, “I hate
that,” as he talks about the idea of looking at small farms versus large
farms.
Later, when delegates take the microphone to give input towards food policy proposals, there is some echoing of points Webb made. And I overhear someone apologizing to her for the angry rants, saying, “I’m sorry, I know people shoot the messenger.” By the time we leave, I’ve seen her chatting with a few farmers who have approached her.
As we drive past the entrance, a couple of delegates who are out for a smoke look away until we’ve passed, prompting her to say, “Some people are so mad at me they don’t want to look at me.”
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