Hybrid Markets

A neighbor in the consulting business and I had coffee last week to talk about being consultants. She's an expert "silo buster," and marketing and communications professional. Generally, she works with nonprofit organizations that want staff in different departments to work together toward a common goal.

Over the course of our hour and a half chat, we were both wondering how writing about food, history, politics/policy and design and illustrating could fit into a single business plan, executed by a single person. What do I put on a business card? This seemed like a good exercise, so I sketched a possible logo with a fenestrated pumpkin and mocked up a card in Photoshop. That evening, I drew a corn skyscraper (included here). The corn is better; I'm redrawing the pumpkin.

Hybridizing skills and experience is easier said than done. I have renewed respect for professionals who change careers, especially those who have established clear professional identities in their initial chosen field. I am meeting more and more "transitional professionals" around my age who, for one good reason or another, thought it was time to do something else. Leaving an established career for the unknown requires professionalization and routinization of new work, even at its sketchiest and most embryonic.

The alternative is professional chaos and too-frequent dog walking.

Thanks to my demanding friends for pushing the hybrid illustration/writing efforts. More to come...

Meat Matters: Will 'Country of Origin' Labeling Support Sustainability Ethics?

Photo: Basque berets on local foie gras in St. Jean de Luz, France. No need for "country of origin" labels here.

I got my first taste of national food politics a few weeks after I began work grassroots-lobbying for historic preservation in September of 2004. The issue was mandatory labeling for meats' "country of origin."

This two-hour-long hearing considered cows that grazed along the Canadian border. Were they Canadian cows or US cows? If they were born in Canada but processed in the US, did they maintain original residency status as an all beef hot dog?

With the power of hindsight, I should have wondered why a resource committee was considering the issue at all. Typically, I got to hear about wild fires, problems with the National Park Service, or disaster relief in general committee hearings before someone (if anyone) got to historic preservation issues.

Meat matters are generally covered by the agriculture committees. I later learned that some issues overlap with many different committees' jurisdictions and get bumped around before they eventually settle into law (or not). Generally, these are exceptionally important and/or complex topics, requiring insight from varied fields and perspectives.

In 2004, I wasn't paying attention to food policy. Nor was I thinking actively about how this overlapped with policies governing historic places and cultural landscapes. I was focused on issues with a clear, direct relationship to historic preservation programs. I generally did not take extensive notes on other interesting but memorable items like prairie dog vacuums or national meat policy.

As a paid preservation lobbyist representing an organization and its grassroots interests, my attention to the enormous Farm Bill was highly focused. I followed preservation-specific programs covered by bill -- like a historic barn preservation program and conservation easements for unique land (including historic farms). The opportunities for preservation within the Farm Bill didn't go unnoticed at the time -- colleagues at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Society for Historical Archaeology and the American Cultural Resources Association all pursued preservation angles within the bill.

Now, I'm considering the inverse. How do basic food policies, like clear food labeling, support sustainable farming and historic resource management?

Location, location, location

Providing all consumers with clear choices related to place and production helps make sustainability ethics more mainstream. Debates about labeling processed meat continued throughout the second half of the Bush Administration and reflected a significant shift in consumer demand for information about food. Before September 30, 2008, meat processed in the US was considered a US product regardless of where the animal came from. Not including this level of information seems dated already.

As of now, some meats receive passport-level documentation. Because livestock production has become very specialized, animals may spend time at many different farms and countries on their way to the slaughterhouse. Some farms now specialize in breeding and raising to a certain age, then pass the animal onto another farm specializing in maturation. Other farms focus on fattening. Processing might happen somewhere else. All of this might be included on Congressionally-mandated labels if these stages take place in different countries.

At WholeFoods (aka Whole Paycheck) and other upscale grocery stores, the labels are less of an issue. Even before the legislation, origins (national, regional, and local) provided effective branding for meat, fish and produce in stores with mission statements. But what about other grocery stores? The labels may be a step toward more specific origination information for the general public, and quite possibly, help create greater demand for local products from major mainstream outlets.