THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE MICROWAVED
by Claudette Vaughan

Life is full for activist and author Sandor Katz. He's been zooming around America and Australia sharing fermentation skills and talking with people about our insane food system and grassroots movements to reclaim our food. He is the author of the wildly popular Wild Fermentation and The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved. We caught up with him to talk about alternative food cultures as he was spreading his missionary work on fermentation fervor and on how to support one another in the process. 

Why is eating well an act of civil disobedience? 

Increasingly the food available through the dominant mainstream food system is neither healthy nor nutritious. For example, the U.S. just approved the routine irradiation of lettuce and other greens. And increasingly we see authorities making small-scale informal food production illegal or impractical. For food that is safe, nutritious, and produced in ways that improve the soil rather than deplete and pollute it, we need to resist the further concentration of food production. We need to participate in the devolution of agriculture and food production and the reintegration of these things into the fabric of our communities.  

How large is the consumer movement against commercial food? 

The movement for local food grown without synthetic chemicals is on the rise everywhere, as far as I can tell. But this movement must be more than a consumer movement. We have to liberate ourselves from the confining and infantilizing role of consumer. Those of us wishing to have better food choices have to participate in creating them. Sustainability requires participation. 

What is the trade-off if we settle for convenience over knowledge of where the food is grown, how the food is grown,  and whether it's good for us or not? 

When we consistently eat food that is detrimental to our health, we suffer. Over generations, we degenerate.  We have a strong survival stake in the agenda of good food grown in sustainable ways. We must reclaim food from the corporate giants; with our food comes not only health and well-being, but power and dignity. 

Are our body and souls at the mercy of the agribusiness businessmen, commodity traders and adversity executives, if indeed we are what we eat?

Yes. We must reclaim food production, transformation, and distribution as community-based activities. 

Grassroot activists challenge the way we all think about food. How much are they are threat to the Big Food Industry? 

We must create better food choices. We have no choice. Big Food will implode as a result of its inherent unsustainability. 

How do you find your way out of the corporate food maze and take direct responsibility for your own health and nutrition? 

Use whole foods and seek sources where you can buy them directly from farmers and other producers. This removes you from corporate food altogether and has the potential to empower you through the process of learning about where your food comes from and how it is produced. We do not need to be experts in nutrition to eat well and stay healthy. 

What did you find while you were travelling around Australia and the US talking about fermentation? 

Well, I have observed and learned many different things. I have seen inspirational movements and projects everywhere which boil down to people trying to create better food choices for themselves and their communities. Food is an issue that transcends every ideological divide. We all have to eat, and many different kinds of people are waking up to the necessity of reclaiming food. Specifically in regards to fermentation, one of the themes I have encountered everywhere I've gone is that there exists a huge cultural fear around any aging of food outside of refrigeration. We are culturally indoctrinated to believe that we cannot eat safely without energy-intensive food cooling systems, and furthermore that aging food outside of refrigeration requires technical expertise and controlled conditions. Fermentation actually consists of ancient rituals that generalists have been performing forever and that create food safety. 

Talk about your books Wild Fermentation and The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved. 

Wild Fermentation is a book primarily about fermentation: what it is, how it changes

foods, why it is important, and mostly how you can do it using simple techniques at home. The how-to chapters divide into vegetable ferments, bean ferments, dairy ferments and vegan alternatives, bread and pancakes, fermented grain porridges and beverages, wines, beers, and vinegars.

The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved continues where Wild Fermentation ends and addresses social and political fermentation in the realm of food. It is the story of food activists, activist projects, and social movements with overlapping (though not unified) agendas around the theme of reclaiming food. 

More information about both books, including full table of contents and excerpts, can be found on my website www.wildfermentation.com. You can also order books through my website. To Australia and most locations outside of the U.S., the price including shipping is US $33 for Wild Fermentation and US $29 for The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved.

What is the Underground Movement you speak of? 

Underground food movements are grassroots efforts to create better food choices outside of the dominant corporate model. They encompass efforts ranging from farmers saving seed rather than buying genetically-modified or hybridized seeds, to the informal trade in homegrown and homemade foods. Many laws supposedly in place to protect our safety actually normalize mass-production and have the result of diminishing the possibility of small-scale production, or driving it underground. We must support and expand underground markets in which resistance to the dominant corporate food system takes place. 

What's your view on buying from supermarkets? 

It's hard to resist convenience sometimes. And I try not to judge the decisions people make. But fresh food you grow yourself, or that you buy directly from growers who care, always tastes better than what you can buy in the supermarket. Buying from local growers also supports local economy and infrastructure, creates a smaller carbon footprint, and many other good things. 

How would you build a broad movement to build alternatives to the dominant food system would include passionate advocates for the slow food movement, veganism, whole and traditional raw foods?  

As you point out, there are multiple movements voicing eloquent critiques of the dominant food systems from various different perspectives. Food reflects virtually every huge political question: climate change and carbon footprint; control of land and water resources; chemical safety and toxicity; pollution; biodiversity and species extinctions; the ownership of genetic resources; cultural survival versus assimilation and homogenization; labor and the paths of migration; human rights and animal rights; every kind of justice. We need the food-focused social movements to keep thinking of themselves in broader and broader terms. You mention Slow Food. That's a movement that has been broadened to encompass an extraordinary, wide-ranging critique. Building meaningful social movements takes more than an eloquent critique, of course, and we have much work to do to broaden participation. But I'm encouraged, both by growing participation in various movements to reclaim food, and by the huge amounts of cross-fertilization I see among these movements and their overlapping participants. 

Can one legislate in the areas of policy and regulation to challenge the fast-food industry for farm worker rights, fair trade, severe pesticide limits, meaningful veganic and organic standards etc? 

Yes, much can be accomplished through the arenas of policy and regulation. Governments and other bureaucratic entities exercise enormous power over the food production and distribution, and changes in policy, regulation, and standards can have enormous repercussions. I am grateful for the activists and advocates doing work in the realm of public policy and regulatory standards, and I encourage everyone to educate themselves and become citizen participants in the regulatory arena. And I also feel that we all need to become part of the solution by creating better food choices for ourselves, our families, and our communities. Sustainability is participation. 

How do you view the forces of globalisation and those controlling the world wide food industry? 

Globalization, and mass production, always benefit the large economic actors, the people and institutions with concentrated resources. Community-based food production is the only true form of economic security. I am not opposed to all international trade. I think eating foreign foods is exciting and stimulating, and can broaden our horizons, which is good. The problem is when everything we eat travels thousands of miles and nothing, or just one commodity crop, comes from nearby. Imports are more appropriately special treats, not the fare of daily life. 

You have said that the globalised corporate food follows a long andlargely inscrutable chain of transactions, most of which is invisible tothe consumer.  

Yes, when you grow food or buy it directly from its producers, you know a lot about it, or can easily find out if you are at all curious. When you go to the supermarket and buy fruit or vegetables, usually you do not even know what continent it came from, never mind how it was grown or transported. Processed foods with many different ingredients embody even more complicated hidden tales. It is empowering to understand where your food comes from, and even more so to have some role in its creation. 

How is the Slow Food Movement a Movement for cultural survival? 

Slow Food started in Italy as a protest against fast food, but it has evolved into a much broader movement championing traditional foods, biodiversity, traditional food production, and the rights of farmers and food producers. Food production, and the different ways that it manifested historically in different ecological niches, is at the core of distinct cultures and cultural practices. Globalized corporate food destroys and homogenizes culture. Cultural survival everywhere depends upon the revival of community-based food production. 

Irradiation has been embraced by global food traders because it facilitates long-distance transport of their products. As more and more foods are routinely irradiated what is the message going out when we continue in the so-called first world to have miniscule food security legislation in place? 

Irradiation is a sterilization method developed by the U.S. Department of Energy as a productive use for radioactive waste. Irradiation is typically used in cases where food safety systems have failed, meaning that scale has resulted in food contamination problems. Unfortunately, irradiation destroys enzymes and some vitamins, resulting in nutritionally-diminished food that is less digestible. The solution is to scale down agricultural production so food can be produced safely, not to solve the problems of technology with further technology that inevitably spawns its own set of problems. We do not need irradiation for food to be safe and healthy.