Can Explosive Diarrhea Transform Our Food System?

One of my favorite road trip stops is Fiddleheads Food Co-op in New London, Connecticut. It’s almost all organic. Easy on and off Route 95. And it has a clean bathroom where everyone can wash their hands. (You don’t have to be a member to shop there.)

Fortunately, as of this moment, I haven’t experienced it. But thousands of people have (fortunately, no one has died yet). The Cyclospora parasite is just the latest foodborne illness to impact Americans. But this time, all the government agencies that would normally help to track and solve the mystery have been gutted in a political episode of explosive diarrhea. And no amount of donations to corrupt politicians will make it go away (I’m looking at you, Taylor Farms). It’s the inevitable result of the quest for massive scale for massive profits with the least amount of regulations. This is not new, but I won’t bore you with the history of food contamination and regulation. Or the negative effects of consolidation, which are enormous. Nature is, once again, bonking us on top of the head to get our attention as a reminder to do better.

Inherent in the concept of Regeneration, as my father wrote about 40 years ago, is the necessity of disturbance in order to regrow stronger and better. “You simply have to realize,” he wrote in an as yet unpublished manuscript, “that the perfectly-managed natural world in which we all live includes hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes, lightning, tidal waves and glaciers. And that Nature’s perfect system of resource management occurs as a result of these destructive forces, not in spite of them.” But after those disturbances occur, we have the opportunity to strengthen and improve our systems. I look at what is happening in the world today as a massive, nature-driven disturbance to force us to evolve and course correct. Cyclospora is trying to tell us something!

What does course correction look like? It’s already happening in many places and just needs to keep spreading (like good bacteria).

1. Find local sources of food. Farms, market gardeners, butchers, processors, farmers markets, organic food stores, home gardens…all are essential to creating a resilient food system. (Avoid those pre-bagged lettuce mixes that have travelled across the country.)

2. Support high-integrity food companies for those things that you can’t find locally. For example, coffee, citrus, olive oils, and bananas don’t grow in Pennsylvania. This is why we need to be able to find great companies that we trust to provide us those things. One of my favorite examples of a high-integrity company is Lundberg Family Farms. They are one of the original organic rice companies and have only improved over time even as they have grown larger. They show what is possible when people care.

3. Find TRUE farm-to-table restaurants. Honestly, I have narrowed my dining out options to a very select few places that I TRUST. Most of whom have gardens or farms that I can see and buy from directly. Which means I mostly cook at home, eating from my own garden.

4. TRUST…who can we trust anymore? I do NOT trust anything labeled regenerative unless it is also Regenerative Organic. I just interviewed Patrick Holden from the UK for my book, and he says in England they are now distinguishing between Regen-Chem vs. Regen-Organic. That sounds about right. He said even the romanticized Gabe Brown uses Glyphosate “when necessary.” Um, no. I also trust the USDA Certified Organic label, even though there are lots of people trying to make you doubt it (from both within and outside the movement).

5. Inform ourselves by any means necessary. We are all now information scavengers, trying to pick out the truth from all the rotting garbage of fake news, AI slop, and “sinfluencers” who are just trying to milk your attention for money or sell you a powder you don’t need. If you want a super funny view of the cyclospora troubles, listen to Josh Johnson’s take on the Taylor Farms, Taco Bell and Your Tummy…

6. Be GOOD NEIGHBORS. Is it any wonder that we have a diarrhea problem after our Government has shat on all our neighbors? Is the cyclospora coming from Mexican lettuce? Maybe this is the new revenge? Or is it coming from California, where migrant workers don’t have adequate toilets and sanitation? Or is it coming from inside the White House, where all the fake gold decorations can’t hide the stench of the President’s diaper changes? We may never know. That’s why we need our neighbors. And we need to be good neighbors.

7. SUPPORT the organizations that are building the new food system. There are so many great organizations. The Organic Farmers Association, for example. Or your local state organic farmer association, like the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, which, by the way, has the best fair, the Common Ground Country Fair, which happens at the end of September. If you sign up to be a volunteer, you get a cool free T-shirt and communal meal tickets. You can also support the Rodale Institute, which I am the Co-Chair of. We have just launched a massive campaign to raise money to transform the food system. As we like to say…THE FUTURE IS ORGANIC.

   
   I have lots more to say about transforming the food system, because that’s what ultimately my book is about. But for now, stay safe. Eat local and from your garden.