What 1946 Hath Wrought

"The world today looks to the American farmer—To all the American People—for the very means of life. It is a challenge and an opportunity that we shall not shirk."
-Foods 1946

On a recent foraging tour in my new favorite junk shop, Puntaverde Brooklyn's own The Thing (they have a popular myspace page, natch), I came across this irresistible bit of history:



It's a 1946 edition food processing securities brochure, courtesy of Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Beane. It's essentially profiles and financial information on the major food processing companies of the day: Archer-Daniels Midland, Wesson Oil, Sunshine Biscuits, General Foods, John Morrell & Company, Pillsbury Mills, Inc., and dozens more.

Though that initially might sound as exciting as a sink full of dirty dishes, I can assure you — treasures await.

I picked it up thinking I'd have some fun clip art for the site. There was no way I could resist the proud visage of the post-war American farmer gazing on the face of global famine... and global opportunity. But let me just step aside and let Foods 1946 speak for itself:

"For thousands of years food was raised and eaten in the same community. Famines forced some migration and spices from the East permitted some improvement in food preservation, but generally, our ancestors spent most of their time seeking something to eat and if they did not find it they starved. Food was coarse and plain, there was seldom an abundance and when there was, very little could be kept.

In the past fifty years there has been a world revolution in food."

Indeed!

So this week, I'll guide you through the wonderful world of 1946. We might just discover revealing things about the present. It's a crazy thought. But one never knows...

Tune in tomorrow. Same bat time, same bat channel.

The Leftover Lovers

The Gleaners, by Jean François Millet 1814-1875

In my youth, I was a drainpipe spelunker, a dumpster diver and a wild berry forager. "DISCARDED" loomed large in my early memories, stamped across the worn covers of my storybooks in a black serifed font.

I turned over piles of rotting leaves looking for morels, climbed trees to cut down the oyster mushrooms, sorted out asparagus stalks from the field grasses, plucked prairie turnips from the soil. I bought my housecat gently used, found my job on Craig's List and furnished my Brooklyn apartment with castoffs and curb produce.

Maybe that's why gleaning holds such appeal for me. Having recently watched the French film Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse (The Gleaners and I), an exploration of those who live off the discard pile, I discovered I'm not alone in loving the leftovers.

Not only is there a rich cultural history woven into the forgotten harvest, there's legal and biblical justification as well.

As Leviticus 19:9-10 instructs its devotees,

"When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all
the way to the edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your
harvest. You shall not pick your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen
fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the
stranger."

Allowing a harvest of castoffs makes sense morally and logically, but as Agnès Varda reveals in her film, many of the stoppages in modern gleaning come down to a lack of information and distribution.

Taking advantage of their established connections, the folks at America's Second Harvest and New York's CityHarvest effectively work as modern gleaners. Their gleaning armies organize daily gathering expeditions and distribution runs in an attempt to fill up America's empty bellies with the mountains of food that would otherwise rot in dumpsters.

For those of us hungrier in spirit than body, there's something primally satisfying in doing one's own hunting and gleaning. Out on the Left Bank, similar ideas brew: fallenfruit.org is an organization founded by three CalArts professors after they discovered a forgotten Los Angeles city law that designates as public property any fruit that hangs over sidewalks.

Their website promotes access to the city's free produce via Fruit Alerts and Fruit Maps. New Yorkers can check the Department of Sanitation's collection schedules for nights to rummage in the dark or the free section on Craig's List for an array of pickings.