Friday’s Food on Fire conference at New College felt like an industry party for young, urban intellectual do-gooders. As a well-intentioned supermarket shopper who unfortunately can’t afford organic produce, I felt crass, corrupt, and out of place.
“Biofuels, Global Warming and Food Security,” read the conference poster’s earnest marquee, stationed against a tabletop gallery of photos by a miniature collective of Equity Studies students. Comfortably dressed 20-somethings with flawless complexions hobnobbed over their latest urban farming exploits while I nervously topped my travel mug with complimentary coffee and attempted to shove a half-muffin into my face. Naturally, it was at that exact moment that I heard my name called.
My dear friend Liz, a woman wholeheartedly impassioned by food sustainability and the joy of feeding, had shown up out of genuine interest (and not just journalistic curiosity). She did not look pleased.
“Are you writing about this?” she asked me. I told her I was, but that I was also curious.
She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Somewhere in your article, you might want to make a wisecrack about how most of the people running this thing are big, fancy academic men, when women are usually the ones doing the work in the kitchen.” Whether or not my friend’s observation is a provable statistic, her remark brought up an important point: meals embody nourishment, associated with caretakers—frequently women—and the home. This conference, from what I observed, seemed to largely gloss over this fundamental point.
I’m probably being curmudgeonly, but an air of intellectual cronyism seemed to permeate the discussions I attended, rendering them nearly inaccessible. While one might expect this at a university-sponsored conference, for a genuinely curious spectator with no background in food activism, it was thoroughly uninviting. And Liz—my hands-on-experienced, farm shareholding, self-taught chef extraordinaire ally—seemed a bit perturbed.
“You know, ideally I would like to work in ‘The Movement,’” she said, punctuating her last two words with the auditory equivalent of scare quotes. “But I wish the discussions here had more practical applications. None of this stuff applies to me getting involved. Or getting a job. There are no jobs. Forget it, you better get in with the right people right away and volunteer for like three years, or you’re screwed.”
Liz’s frustration struck a chord with me, the outsider convinced that, at any second, someone at the conference would figure out I was a meat-eating hack and kick me to the curb. I might like to get involved with “The Movement,” but I’m not convinced that “The Movement” would be too thrilled to get involved with me.
