Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Barbara Kingsolver

This is the book that brought the local food diet into the public spotlight.

It is a memoir of a family who moves from Tucson to Appalachia, from a city life where even the water is brought in from somewhere else to a rural one where most of their food comes from their own land and labor. Fortunately for us, at least one member of that family is a talented writer.

Barbara Kingsolver has a way with words. She seems to always find just the right phrase, the right analogy. She is smooth. The reader makes a transition from anecdote to documentary, to commentary and on to another anecdote without feeling preached to or losing the feeling that they are being entertained. I keep thinking, “Why can’t I write like that?”

She is also sentimental. Her family’s life on the farm seems idyllic. Her tenderness often had me chuckling with tears in my eyes.

This book is motivating. Before I finished, I’d made up my mind to try to be more like them, at least in some ways. I already grow most of our own vegetables and shop where I can identify the origin of the rest of the produce we buy. But, I’d like to eat less food that comes from a box or a can. I’d like to gather more wild foods and preserve them for use through the winter. I’d like to buy Minnesota or Wisconsin apples and dry them or make applesauce, rather than eat apples from the west coast (which keep better) in the off-season. I’m no longer content buying organic malted barley for ale making that starts out in Wisconsin, gets shipped to California, and then back to me in Minnesota. I’m going to find a way to eliminate the California connection.

I don’t plan to follow Kingsolver in her transition from vegetarian to omnivore, however. Her family had been vegetarian for humanitarian reasons. They had decided if the only meat they could find was from factory farms and feedlots, they wouldn’t eat meat at all. I commend them for that. I became a vegetarian for exactly those reasons when I was a teenager. It only lasted a few years for me, too.

Kingsolver’s arguments for a return to meat eating were unconvincing. Sure, anyone who has tended a garden will admit that lives are sacrificed for a vegetarian’s benefit. Even if you decide to take your losses and let the Colorado beetles have your potato plants, you can’t avoid the occasional worm that gets sliced by the hoe. That was one of my arguments, too, for a return to the meat that I craved in my youth.

Some of her arguments reminded me of an old lumberjack that I cared for in the nursing home. He told me that he would like to give up chewing Copenhagen, but there are a lot of poor people working for the United States Tobacco Company who would lose their jobs if everyone quit. The lumberjack and I both knew he was bullshitting. Kingsolver is serious. Somehow, I can’t imagine the world being overrun by beggar cows and pigs if we gradually stopped eating them.

She has a valid argument that human life would be impossible without meat consumption in many environments. The Inuit of the far north and Nepali communities at high elevations rely on animals to garner what nutrition they can from the stark landscape and concentrate it for human consumption. I don’t live there. I appreciate the luxury of living in a temperate climate where vegetarianism is possible.

However, Kingsolver doesn’t dwell on the fact that owning as much land as they do is also a luxury that few can afford. She doesn’t mention the fact that many experts agree animal husbandry and meat consumption is the greatest factor in global warming. Raising your own animals the way she does is much closer to carbon neutral than feed lots, but again, that luxury is not afforded to us all. All meat eaters cannot raise their own livestock and are not able to form a relationship with a farmer so they can be assured they are getting totally grass-fed beef and free range chickens.

A tighter argument could be made for harvesting wild game that, due to land use patterns, is destroying its own habitat and eliminating other native species in the bargain. Harvesting deer can be beneficial to the environment in many ways, provided you don’t use an SUV and an ATV and you don’t travel thousands of miles per year in that quest.

My reasons for vegetarianism, today, are based on health concerns, although I enjoy not having to be concerned with the environmental and ethical considerations of meat consumption. Kingsolver is either unaware or has chosen to ignore the health hazards of her diet. She should read The China Study.

Another reader remarked with admiration about how small this family’s carbon footprint must be. Perhaps he hadn’t yet read the chapter about driving their hybrid car to Canada or the one about their trip to Italy. If that is a sample of their annual travel budget, they are indulging in luxuries we can’t all afford, financially or environmentally.

Nobody expects us to reduce our carbon footprints to that of Somalian peasants while living in middle class America. Making the necessary changes so that human life can persist on this planet can hopefully take place in an incremental fashion. Kingsolver is helping to lead the way. Matching the accomplishments of this family will provide personal challenges for most of us. In the spirit of American competitiveness, let’s not use her shortcomings as justification for permitting extravagance in our lives, though. Let’s see if we can surpass her example of living in tune with nature.

This is a thoroughly engaging and enjoyable book. Her story about the mating habits of turkeys (or lack thereof) is a hilarious and poignant illustration of how our food industry has distorted even the most basic natural functions. I heartily recommend Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.