Sir Tadema's "Women of Amphissa"
"Euphrosyne with Grapes"Dinner Changes the World
History is a conjugation of the verb ‘to eat.’ Anonymous
Food has never been so cheap as it is today. In percentage of income spent and in the number of hours of labor required to eat, contemporary Americans are more distanced from hunger than any people who ever lived. But before the middle of the 20th century, history had been fairly described as “a conjugation of the verb ‘to eat.’” Up till then the notable developments of civilization had been primarily motivated by the desire to eat, or to eat better. And the greatest of all civilizations fed itself to death, in a lesson eerily conjugate with contemporary Iowa.
The Roman Empire was built by small family farmers. Before the first century B.C., the Roman state restricted ownership of land to small parcels. Because only land owners could serve in the military, this proud yeomanry filled Rome’s armies. As the empire grew the state began subsidizing imported grains from slave labor colonies. This reduced the market price of domestic grain below the cost of its production. It ruined Italian farmers and ended the great institution of small family farms. If this doesn’t sound familiar yet, just wait.
A few rich families bought the land of the dispossessed soldier-farmers who fled to the “bread and circus” welfare state of Rome itself. The large farms were more productive because the rich owned state-of-the-art plows and slaves. Yet it still became more profitable to trade imported commodity contracts than to actually produce food. Domestic farm land was converted to pasture for the more lucrative livestock trade which was fueled by gourmet excesses of the new upper class. The state had to further subsidize grain imports to feed the growing masses of dispossessed farmer-soldiers.
Scipio Africanus, conqueror of Carthage, was the greatest philosopher-statesman and soldier of pre-Christian Rome. He surrounded himself with the greatest thinkers of the empire’s golden age. They created what historians dubbed “the conscience of Rome.” Scipio’s daughter Cornelia became the greatest salon-keeper of classical times. She raised two sons as a widow, after turning down the king of Egypt preferring to remain simply the daughter of Scipio and the mother of Tiberius and Caius Gracchus.
When Tiberius saw that Italian farms were worked by slaves, he feared for the future of the state. After he was elected Tribune, he enacted land reforms limiting the size of holdings, returning small plots to the citizenry and winning the love of the masses. Conservatives labeled him a tyrant and murdered him. His little brother was later murdered and the charismatic Cornelia was forbidden to wear mourning, lest she inspire an uprising. One hundred and fifty years later, Jesus of Nazareth made speeches that were nearly identical to Tiberius Gracchus’ more eloquent writings about connecting to the land.
Today Iowa looks a lot like Rome of the Gracchi but without the eloquent statesmen. Built by a community of proud citizen farmers, Iowa has become an urban-suburban state surrounded by large agricultural tracts that are owned mostly by non-farmers. Without subsidies the land would be worthless because food can be raised cheaper elsewhere. Without imports the population would starve - because the richest agricultural land in the world lacks the diversity to feed its own farmers, let alone its urbanites anymore.
Politicians pay lip service to the romance of the small farm and the independent farmer. Then they go out to dinner with the fat cats from Tyson. Even the agriculture related literature of our era has forgotten the Gracchi, turning instead to the wimpy King Lear (A Thousand Acres) and Don Quixote (The Straight Story) for analogies. The only history lesson that has been absorbed is that you can get killed trying to deal with the problem of unsustainable agriculture.
Without even knowing it, we change our world with the decisions we make about what we eat. American slavery was an economic by-product of food lust. Human labor was the only commodity West Africa had to trade in an insatiable cyclical appetite for salt, corn, rice, sugar, rum and tobacco. After slavery ended, 19th century America grew rich and powerful because Europeans got hooked on our wheat - a crop modified in America to compensate for the sudden end of slave labor.
We even change the world with decisions about what we feed to the food we eat. In the early 20th century Iowa grew rich after the discovery that corn could be fed to cattle, without killing them before they were ready for market. By the late 20th century, hog lot confinements fouled Iowa - because the average consumer wouldn’t pay a little extra for the superior taste of pork raised without pig abuse.
It’s less obvious now, but history remains a conjugation of the verb “to eat.” The next Gracchus could be a new kind of gourmet, able to inspire people to buy foods that don’t defile their lives, their land and their sense of honor.
History is a conjugation of the verb ‘to eat.’ Anonymous
Food has never been so cheap as it is today. In percentage of income spent and in the number of hours of labor required to eat, contemporary Americans are more distanced from hunger than any people who ever lived. But before the middle of the 20th century, history had been fairly described as “a conjugation of the verb ‘to eat.’” Up till then the notable developments of civilization had been primarily motivated by the desire to eat, or to eat better. And the greatest of all civilizations fed itself to death, in a lesson eerily conjugate with contemporary Iowa.
The Roman Empire was built by small family farmers. Before the first century B.C., the Roman state restricted ownership of land to small parcels. Because only land owners could serve in the military, this proud yeomanry filled Rome’s armies. As the empire grew the state began subsidizing imported grains from slave labor colonies. This reduced the market price of domestic grain below the cost of its production. It ruined Italian farmers and ended the great institution of small family farms. If this doesn’t sound familiar yet, just wait.
A few rich families bought the land of the dispossessed soldier-farmers who fled to the “bread and circus” welfare state of Rome itself. The large farms were more productive because the rich owned state-of-the-art plows and slaves. Yet it still became more profitable to trade imported commodity contracts than to actually produce food. Domestic farm land was converted to pasture for the more lucrative livestock trade which was fueled by gourmet excesses of the new upper class. The state had to further subsidize grain imports to feed the growing masses of dispossessed farmer-soldiers.
Scipio Africanus, conqueror of Carthage, was the greatest philosopher-statesman and soldier of pre-Christian Rome. He surrounded himself with the greatest thinkers of the empire’s golden age. They created what historians dubbed “the conscience of Rome.” Scipio’s daughter Cornelia became the greatest salon-keeper of classical times. She raised two sons as a widow, after turning down the king of Egypt preferring to remain simply the daughter of Scipio and the mother of Tiberius and Caius Gracchus.
When Tiberius saw that Italian farms were worked by slaves, he feared for the future of the state. After he was elected Tribune, he enacted land reforms limiting the size of holdings, returning small plots to the citizenry and winning the love of the masses. Conservatives labeled him a tyrant and murdered him. His little brother was later murdered and the charismatic Cornelia was forbidden to wear mourning, lest she inspire an uprising. One hundred and fifty years later, Jesus of Nazareth made speeches that were nearly identical to Tiberius Gracchus’ more eloquent writings about connecting to the land.
Today Iowa looks a lot like Rome of the Gracchi but without the eloquent statesmen. Built by a community of proud citizen farmers, Iowa has become an urban-suburban state surrounded by large agricultural tracts that are owned mostly by non-farmers. Without subsidies the land would be worthless because food can be raised cheaper elsewhere. Without imports the population would starve - because the richest agricultural land in the world lacks the diversity to feed its own farmers, let alone its urbanites anymore.
Politicians pay lip service to the romance of the small farm and the independent farmer. Then they go out to dinner with the fat cats from Tyson. Even the agriculture related literature of our era has forgotten the Gracchi, turning instead to the wimpy King Lear (A Thousand Acres) and Don Quixote (The Straight Story) for analogies. The only history lesson that has been absorbed is that you can get killed trying to deal with the problem of unsustainable agriculture.
Without even knowing it, we change our world with the decisions we make about what we eat. American slavery was an economic by-product of food lust. Human labor was the only commodity West Africa had to trade in an insatiable cyclical appetite for salt, corn, rice, sugar, rum and tobacco. After slavery ended, 19th century America grew rich and powerful because Europeans got hooked on our wheat - a crop modified in America to compensate for the sudden end of slave labor.
We even change the world with decisions about what we feed to the food we eat. In the early 20th century Iowa grew rich after the discovery that corn could be fed to cattle, without killing them before they were ready for market. By the late 20th century, hog lot confinements fouled Iowa - because the average consumer wouldn’t pay a little extra for the superior taste of pork raised without pig abuse.
It’s less obvious now, but history remains a conjugation of the verb “to eat.” The next Gracchus could be a new kind of gourmet, able to inspire people to buy foods that don’t defile their lives, their land and their sense of honor.
