Raj Patel

Raj Patel’s first book, Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System, can be read as a ten-chapter exegesis on the ills of global capitalism, as manifested by its gut-wrenching stranglehold over people’s access to food and other basic necessities.  At one point in the book, Patel notes in a manner typical of his deeply intelligent yet accessible prose style, that “Unless you’re a corporate food executive, the [food] system isn’t working for you.”

Yet, in February 2010, Stuffed and Starved touched down on the New York Times’ non-fiction best-seller list.  For the past few years, Patel has also been much in-demand as a public speaker, making presentations before hundreds of people who crowd university lecture halls and community auditoriums at nearly every stop.

The success of Patel’s work is a reflection of his rare combination of dazzling intellect and irrepressible charm.  The British-born American academic, journalist, activist, and writer has a knack for endearing himself even to stodgy members of the middle- and upper-middle-class, at the same time that he is stripping away some of their most cherished illusions about the probity of the world in which they dwell.  Even though he speaks freely of the necessity for doing away with hallowed institutions such as free markets and private property altogether, and hits even closer to home for when he criticizes the elitism inherent to many strands of the “food localization” movement, his presentations are so commanding as to frequently generate standing ovations.

One such instance took place last month in Caspar, where roughly 200 people attended Patel’s presentation at the Caspar Community Center on the topic of “Food Sovereignty In Northern California” – part of a conference sponsored by the Mendocino Institute entitled “An Eco-Communitarian Future for Menodcino County?”  “That’s one of the most energetic people we’ve had through here in a long time,” one attendee was heard to remark at the talk’s conclusion.

In Stuffed and Starved, Patel guides readers through the many-headed hydra of the global food system – supermarkets, food processors, seed sellers, agrochemical manufacturers – and their impact on both the ecology and the everyday lives of people throughout the globe.  The title is based on what Patel points out is that system’s most glaring contradiction: There are more people starving in the world than ever before: roughly one billion.  Yet, there are also more people overweight – also roughly a billion.

This observation, it should be noted, immediately provides an opening for overstuffed consumers in the countries like the United States to find common cause with the exploited economic underclasses of the Global South on whose economic immiseration the food system is based, and vice versa.

As Patel notes, those who actually control the food that ends up on people’s plates are making a killing off that misery.  Retailers reaped over $3.5 trillion in 2004.  Agrochemical corporations sold $25 trillion of produce.  Patel insists throughout that there be a full social accounting for the true costs of the food systems.  When taking into account the ecological cost of producing a single McDonald’s hamburger, for instance, the actual total tots up to $200 – hardly a commodity that really ought to be included in a “value meal.”

The vast dark side this system casts is perhaps best seen via the rash of farmer suicides that have occurred in the wake of neo-liberal globalization’s spread.  Having attempted in vain to provide for themselves and their families in the context of a global market in food that systematically deprives them of the ability to do either, hundreds of thousands have taken their lives, with an overwhelming number of such deaths happening in India – 182,936 between 1997 and 2007 alone. Millions-strong movements have arisen throughout the Global South to confront the systemic injustices from which these tragedies have stemmed.

In addition to his work as a writer and speaker, Patel is much in demand as an academic and consultant to social movements.  He lives in Oakland and is a visiting scholar at the UC Berkeley Center for African Studies.  He has recently published a second book entitled The Value of Nothing, which  critically examines the role of free markets in determining what society values, while pointing the way to alternatives.

The morning after Patel’s talk in Caspar, he boarded a plane to South Africa, where he is working with and studying land reform movements, including the Shack Dwellers Movement — the largest organization of the militant poor in post-Apartheid South Africa.  He spoke with me within a few days of his return.

Parrish: Would you please begin by describing what “food sovereignty” means and how it is distinct from a concept more commonly employed here in northern California, “food localization”?

Patel: Food localization is pretty straightforward.  The idea is to have our food sainted by the land that is near us; for instance, beets hewn just around the corner from where we live.  It is compatible with a kind of parochialism that doesn’t necessarily care about the labor that has gone into the production of the food, that doesn’t really care about the distribution of land, or about the fact that some people will get to eat the food whereas some people will be denied it.  And that parochialism can, and often does, extend into the home.  So, thinking about gender, for example, is something that doesn’t necessarily cross the minds of people who are interested in the local food movement. Yet, if we’re interested in combating hunger in the US or anywhere else, it’s important to observe that 60 percent of people going hungry in the world today are women or girls.  Therefore, if we’re serious about combating hunger, tackling issues around gender matter a great deal.

Food sovereignty is about a very different kind of vision for social change.  It involves politically owning and seizing power over the food system.  It’s about bringing democracy to the food system, if you like.  It doesn’t expressly demand that the food be produced locally.  What it does demand is that control over the food system be exercised locally.  And that, to me, is tremendously interesting and important.  Interestingly, the slogan that comes with food sovereignty, courtesy of the farmer organization La Via Campesina, is “Food Sovereignty is About an End to All Forms of Violence Against Women.”  As an organizing principle, that idea opens the door to thinking about what the preconditions for genuine democracy are, as well as the preconditions for a sustainable food system.  By opening those doors, thinking very explicitly about the violence against women that is part of capitalism, food sovereignty becomes a very potent way of thinking about the food system, a very potent way of opening the door to a radical transformation, not only concerning the possibility of ownership, but also control of land, access to technology, access to water, access to resources, and access to government.

Food sovereignty also casts a different geography.  It’s not just about this particular area.  It’s about how various geographies overlap with each other, about the different communities of which we’re a part.  It isn’t just about a sensibility where we say to ourselves “We’re in our own little world, and as long as we stick to making Mendocino a picture-perfect world, well, we’re alright, Jack.”  In fact, Mendocino is part of the United States, and the United States is responsible for all kinds of problems elsewhere in the world.  Insofar as we are part of that broader polity, we have a duty to make our government behave.

So, we can’t retreat into a parochial vision of Sainted Kale.  We have to be cognizant of our responsibilities as Americans in terms of a broader geo-politics.  That’s about accepting responsibility instead of trying to wriggle our way out of it.

Parrish: How might the Slow Food movement, which most people view as being embodied by trendy upscale institutions like Chez Panisse in Berkeley, link up with the sort of radical food politics you’re describing?

Patel: Slow Food certainly has a reputation of being sort of a circle-jerk of olive oil fanciers.  It carries the burden of being a middle-class supper club where people sit around and quaff, and where people don’t necessarily give a shit about people who are unable to eat.  I think that’s unfortunate, because in the DNA of the Slow Food Movement are some fairly radical politics, which have been smothered in many ways by the way in which Slow Food has been transplanted here from overseas.

Slow Food was originally founded in Italy by people to the left of the Italian Communist Party.  That’s worth bearing in mind, because being to the left of the Italian Communist Party isn’t the type of thing that people would normally associate with Slow Foods.  But it’s interesting that these are people who came to the issue of food in a way that people like Alice Waters [of Chez Panisse] would relate to, which is to recognize that food is pleasure, and that our approach should not be to deny pleasure if we’re interested in social change, but rather to democratize it.  I think that’s really important, because if you’ve come across Alice Waters’ work or if you’ve been to Chez Panisse, the thing that’s undeniable about all of it is that it’s intensely pleasurable and joyful.  It’s about food not as some rarified experience, but about the down and dirty fun of it all.

What the original pioneers of the Slow Food movement were trying to point out is that pleasure should be democratized.  But a prerequisite for equal access to pleasure is that everyone needs time and money.  So, what the people who originated Slow Foods did is to organize agricultural workers to increase their wages.  After all, agricultural workers are the poorest paid people — particularly in Mendocino, but elsewhere as well.  Then they went on to organize two hours for lunch breaks so the workers could actually take time to enjoy their food.  That sort of notion, I think, is very, very exciting.

So, there is stuff within Chez Panisse and slow foods that is radically important.  And it links to the American anarchist Emma Goldman’s idea that “I don’t want to be part of your revolution if I can’t dance.”  Actually, pleasure is an intensely important part of social change.  So, I think there’s a lot within these traditions that has been identified as sort of bourgeoisie, that doesn’t have to be bourgeoisie.  It’s something that people who are interested in [radical chance] can actually recuperate.

Parrish: You worked briefly for the World Bank and volunteered at the World Trade Organization.  How did those experiences inform the work you’re engaged in now?

Patel: The reason I ended up getting a check from the World Bank – actually, I think my total earnings were about $2,000, or something similarly modest – is that I was offered the chance of getting unfettered access to its gray literature and confidential archives as part of a project to review the Bank’s own analysis of poverty.  So, this was what consultants had come back with from their reports in the field.  We started reading these reports, decoding them, and seeing the process whereby their substance was morphed from a very critical study of the way the World Bank and its consultants represented poor people, into this celebration of how the World Bank is best friends with the poor!

That, in and of itself, was tremendously important, I think, in showing the discursive politics that are necessary for the World Bank to do what it does.  Clearly, nobody likes going to bed thinking of him- or herself as evil.  Every criminal, Wall Street banker, Enron executive, and so on, has a way in which they can soothe themselves to sleep at night, such as the belief that they’re doing good by winnowing out the weak from the strong.  With the World Bank, that self-soothing process comes by way of representing itself as a friend, rather than an enemy, of the poor and of democracy.

Whatever that self-serving narrative is, it’s one that needs challenging.  Having been a part of the construction of this narrative and seeing how it works, it became all the more important for me to go forth and point out exactly what is wrong with it.  It wasn’t a case of, all of a sudden, the clouds parted and I realized the error of my ways.  In fact, I had always been very skeptical about the World Bank.  But I thought it was important to look inside, which is also why I volunteered at the World Trade Organization.

Yet, at the same time as I was volunteering with the WTO, I was sharing the kinds of experiences I just described to you with People’s Global Action, which is a rattle-bag dissident organization in Europe that was having a camp right there on the World Trade Organization headquarters [in Geneva, Switzerland].  So, I think it’s all well and good to go inside these organization and say, ‘Well, now I know how it works.’  But I think part of holding one’s self to account for that experience is then to share exactly how it is that the discursive process happens within those organizations and so forth.

Parrish: You’ve been close to grassroots food movements for many years now, including having traveled around the world giving talks before large audiences.  I’d like to focus for the purposes of this question on the US.  Having seen so many hubs of activity geared toward food sovereignty or food justice, while also having worked as part of kindred organizations such as La Via Campesina, what sort of changes have you observed in these movements over recent years?

Patel: Well, I worked at Food First from 2002-2004, so I got to have a look around and be involved in some of the stuff happening around food and trade justice back then.  It seems to me that there is far more energy around food and food systems in the US than there ever used to be, and there’s a lot more potential than there ever was.  It’s not as if people are just now realizing that there’s a deficit in food justice, because that’s been going on for a while.  The People’s Grocery [in Oakland], for instance, has been around for ages, and people have been organizing around this general theme for a very long time.

In fact, I’m just finishing some work on the Black Panther Party and their work around food justice [in the late-1960s and early-1970s].  Their work resonates through to right now because they were a group concerned with making sure constituents were fed.  But they also regarded food not as a hand-out, but as an integral part of organizing for social change.  “Survival Pending Revolution” was their motto.  So, we do ourselves a disservice if we imagine the current food movement is the first time anyone in the US has ever thought about these issues.

That said, there has been over the past 10 years a growth in the number of people who are thinking about this sort of thing.  I don’t think it’s just because I’m talking a lot more than I used to.  One need only looks at membership levels, for example, in organizations like Slow Foods.   More than that, a lot of young people who are involved in these movements are engaged in a range of social movement politics, and they’re concerned about more than nice olive oil.  They’re curious about, and want to know how to work with, other folks [who are part of other political tendencies].  And that’s exciting!

There’s a Stuart Hall line about how we need to get engaged in politics without guarantees.  There’s no secret recipe that ensures that hunger will soon be ended in the United States, if only we follow a set plan. On the other hand, I think there’s a stronger chance that hunger will be ended in the US given that there’s a mounting body of people who are starting to organize and articulate their political demands around hunger.

Parrish: What do you attribute the growing interest in the food movement to?

Patel: We hear a lot about a generation-wide trend of people wanting to be engaged in concrete things, rather than sort of “the old party politics.”  If the old party politics is Democrat vs. Republican, I can see why anyone would rather want to do something concrete rather than engage in the futile act of distinguishing what is Republican from what is Democrat – they being more or less one and the same.  And there is something practical about getting involved in food justice in terms of being able to grow something and see something happen right before your eyes.  For the impatient, and for those who are frustrated with party politics, there’s something very important about that.

But I also think this is one of the directions in which constructive social change moved after 9/11.  Of course, 9/11 in itself doesn’t mean anything for social change.  The repression that followed the terrorist attacks and the criminalization of street protests, however, and the great difficulty that attended criticizing the state because “if you weren’t with us, you were against us” – it’s easy to forget how hard it was to be contrarian in the years immediately after 9/11.  So, one of the ways in which concrete, viable alternatives to corporate globalization were being developed was by way of increased effort toward, not a frontal attack on the state, but rather fomenting community organizing and developing alternatives.  Also, a very pressing need for a renewed food politics emerged after 9/11 because of the recession that followed it.

So, I think there are a number of reasons the food movement has developed.  It represents a complex articulation of the politics around poverty, the environment, and corporate globalization.  It has to do with political organizing, the prevailing political climate, and the substance of food itself — which is amenable to joy.  The different paths that people have taken mean we’re left with  a strange assembly of motivations for heading in the same direction, and that’s why more than ever, now is a good time to be rallying behind the politics that we need to pull us into the future.

Parrish: Toward the end of the talk you gave in Caspar, a lady in the audience told you something to the effect that you have no idea how hard it is in Mendocino County to achieve the fundamental changes you’re pointing to, given the current stature of cannabis and wine-grapes, which use up most of the potentially food-bearing land and which collectively result in the lion’s share of economic activity.  Given that a lot of people who will read this edition of the Anderson Valley Advertiser doubtless share that same sentiment about what they regard as the impossibility of actually realizing food sovereignty, I’m wondering if you would care to restate more or less what you said?

Patel: One sells one’s self short if one’s imagination is limited to the way things are at the moment.  We make ourselves smaller people, we cripple ourselves intentionally, by positing that the way the world is now is the way it always must be.

For instance, when one looks at the patterns of water usage now, it’s reasonable to conclude that fifty years from now, Los Angeles won’t be viable.  People are like, “No, that could never be!” But then you point that, actually, 100 years ago, Los Angeles wasn’t there either.  All of a sudden, that helps throw into relief the way in which we’re fastened to our world.  The time horizons people operate in are often so constrained, narrow, and unimaginative that it’s impossible for us to think out way out of the present.  And, by caving into the notion that the way it is now is the way it always will be, and therefore that it cannot be challenged, we give up on ourselves.  We give up on our future.  It sells us short and does us a grave disservice.  Moreover, it cheapens us.

So, in the case of Mendocino, sure, it must feel like where you live is destined forever to be the home of hemp and vine.  But it doesn’t have to be that way.  Part of the work of social change is to breach the constraints around our imagination to get to that future.

If I recall correctly, I answered the lady’s question by talking about bananas.  I talked about a world in which people in the Caribbean no longer grow bananas for the benefit of the wealthy.  The question I often get asked when I posit that scenario is, “Well, what would they do?” Well, they would figure it out! They’re smart enough to do that!

And yet, somehow, when we cast ourselves into the position of thinking about what would we do if we suddenly didn’t have vines and marijuana to grow here, imagining that we would sort of sit around on our asses with flies buzzing above our heads until someone told us what to do, is preposterous.  We don’t allow ourselves to think of ourselves as powerful enough to project ourselves into that future.  It seems desperate and unfortunate that we can’t.  Clearly (laughs), it has happened before that we have been imaginative, and I imagine that it will happen again.

Parrish: Food sovereignty is not something that’s going to arrive tomorrow, and the gap between where we will need to go to achieve it compared with where we are now is fairly great.  Yet, there are countless specific projects that can, and in some case already do, move us in that direction.

Patel: It’s important to look at food sovereignty not as an end-point.  We won’t wake up one morning with the choir playing and the planes flying across the sky with a banner saying, “Food Sovereignty Is Here!” Food sovereignty is really about praxis.  It’s an attitude toward a struggle for more power over the food system.  In the same way as if one thinks of capitalism both as a project and a process, the resistance to it through demanding control back from capitalism — for demanding community control rather than corporate control, for demanding a full accounting for the damage done by those in power — that’s something that’s not so much an end-point as a daily struggle.

There are loaded things one can imagine happening along the way.  Making sure that everyone is fed is a part of that struggle. But it also involves political organizing, and I think again that the Black Panthers are very important here.  They serve as a useful example of thinking about what we want, exercising our imagination so that we can make demands, knowing who it is that we’re asking to change, and understand who it is that stands in the way.

That’s why I think that woman’s question was so interesting.  [Food sovereignty] is about engaging in the act of willing utopias, one way or another.  Things like food policy councils can offer a space for a community to do that.  Getting engaged in these food policy councils with the goal of ending hunger forever in a community is vital.  That’s part of the solution.  I don’t think there is a magic bullet, of course, and everyone who says if you just do this one thing, everything is going to be great – that’s nonsensical.

There are countless things to be done, whether it’s engaging in a food policy council, or in action research in your locale to determine things like, How many people are going hungry? What do they think is necessary to fix hunger now? It depends on one’s community.  If you’re engaged in a church,  that may be a place to start.  If you’re engaged in a group of researchers at a university, then action research might be the way to go.  One can imagine any number of paths out of the current situation, and the one you elect depends on where you find yourself.

Parrish: You’ve mentioned the Black Panthers a few times, and you also mentioned in your talk in Caspar that at one time they were feeding more people than the State of California.

Patel: There was a time, owing to the Breakfast for Children program, where the Black Panthers were feeding more people than the government of the State of California were feeding.  And this was no small embarrassment to the government of California.  What is interesting is that the Black Panthers were revolutionaries who understood that there was an emergency happening among their constituents, which they needed to meet in a dignified way, while at the same time providing a mechanism through which people might transcend the conditions that create such emergencies in the first place.  You can’t just build a revolution by demanding that people sort of go out and take on the police.  It involves articulations about demand and imagination – precisely the kind of thing we were talking about earlier on.  Food was a weapon in that war.  And the organizing to provide that food was also a weapon in that war.

Parrish: I recently read a study by an economic development consulting firm describing how housing prices in Northern California’s four-county Wine Country Region rose nearly 40 percent faster on a proportionate basis than in California as a whole during the housing boom.  The price of housing in this area rose proportionately faster, even, than in the San Francisco Bay Area proper, which was a leading epicenter of the bubble.

Meanwhile, the economic underclass here consists, for instance, of agricultural fieldworkers, most of whom migrated to the US quite recently.  Many of them perhaps came from family farms in Mexico, where people lost their land following the North American Free Trade Agreement’s (NAFTA) passage.  In many cases, these are people with deep knowledge of farming.

Yet, the lives of that underclass are virtually invisible to the wave of relatively wealthy landowners who have settled in this area in recent years, many of whom have an expressed interest in greater local food cultivation.  How would you say these dynamics bear on the prospects for the unfolding of food sovereignty here in Mendocino County?

Patel: Well, I think you’ve nailed it.  The idea of food sovereignty is about everybody having democratic access to, and control of, the food system.  That access is blind to citizenship.  Working within the organizing that’s already happening within migrants groups to support their demands and to support their democratic control over the work they do, and the food system in which they’re a part, is vital.  That can mean things like setting up sanctuary cities and ID schemes to support the workers and the viability of communities of people without papers.

It also extends far beyond that, into thinking about the fact that the people who own the vineyards are not out there, backs hunched over, growing the grapes themselves.  They know better than anyone that their livelihoods depend on undocumented migrant labor.  It’s an awkward conversation to have – and it’s a conversation that obviously needs to happen in a number of languages – but if we’re serious about food sovereignty, it’s absolutely unavoidable.

Parrish: Many people reading this are very much insulated from the context of, say La Via Campesina, as well as from the movements you work with in South Africa, for example, which consist largely of peasant farmers struggling for land reform.  How might middle-class people here in northern California, some of whom are genuinely interested in food justice, think about applying lessons from those movements to our own context?

Patel: I think that brings us back to the beginning of this conversation.  It is easy merely to retreat into this parochialism around food.  But, as I said, as Americans we have a burden of responsibility that’s higher than almost anywhere else, because our government has been doing so much more shit than anyone else.  In addition to engaging in these difficult conversations around, say, migrant labor in Northern California, we need to be thinking about what our government is doing overseas, whether that’s pushing an unsustainable climate change agenda or the World Bank’s engaging in policies that are deeply undemocratic and run contrary to the wishes of people in the countries where this Bank operates, with our government’s license.

That’s a lot of work to do, but it is better that we are informed and acknowledge our government’s involvement than to remain ignorant and pretend like everything’s just fine.  If we are serious about democracy and about reclaiming our food system, that’s the work ahead.  We could just sort of clamp our ears and retreat into our own little dream world, and if you want to do that, that’s fine.  But at least acknowledge that what you’re doing is retreating from democracy and from the responsibilities of freedom.  Understand that what you’re doing is actually the opposite of the rhetoric with which you might trumpet your local food movement.

There’s also something very empowering about challenging some of these things.  It’s about the possibility of connecting with people around the world, connecting with struggles and with other cultures.  It’s about the vision that many of those people have and can inspire us with.  So, we’re seeing all this stuff happen in North Africa and West Asia whereby people are taking control of their lives.  More than one commentator has pointed out that that’s really what democracy looks like, and we would do well in the US to take a leaf from the book of the protesters who, although their eyes are wide open about what the consequences might be, are nonetheless challenging power – because it is an affront to their dignity not to.

We sell our dignity so cheap.  In exchange for the local kale, we’re happy to let a number of things slip.  Again, that runs contrary to everything the spirit of the west was meant to be about, or says that it’s about.  In particular, the vision that Mendocino has about itself is about a certain collective mode of resistance.  It seems like there’s a lot we can reclaim, and connecting with those struggles around the world is a way of doing that.

Yes, it’s hard.  I’m just back from southern Africa.  One of the groups I met with there was the Shack Dwellers Movement which, in many ways, has been going since before the end of Apartheid.  In its current incarnation, it’s been going for five years.  I’ve been tremendously inspired by the ways they’ve stuck to their guns; it’s a hugely powerful organization.  Despite overwhelming odds, they’re fighting back.  I’m made stronger in my resolve by what they’re doing.  There’s everything to gain by this sort of movement, as well as an internationalism where you can be inspired by other people.

Parrish: You discussed the impact of the wider political climate on the modes of politics that people collectively engage in, as well as the links between the alter-globalization movement – often associated with the 1999 Seattle protest against the World Trade Organization – and food justice work.  Do you seen any prospect for efforts toward food sovereignty in the United States to contribute to a renewal of resistance politics in this country?

Patel: Alter-globalization activists have contributed not only to the food justice movement by the analysis that they bring, but also through the development of concrete alternatives.  It’s one thing to say Another World is Possible [a slogan commonly associated with alter-globalization], it’s another thing to demonstrate it.  A lot of my friends who are involved in contrarian politics are actually engaged in some very interesting efforts to build those alternatives.  And whether it’s the emergence of food policy councils or agro-ecological experiments, those ways of farming and distributing food are very exciting because they point the way toward a way in which a radical politics is necessary not only to produce more food, but to make sure it’s adequately distributed.

Certainly, the ideas around the commons, for example, which obviously predate anything the alter-globalization movement has done, are very exciting.  We can look at the ways they crop up, say, in the Oakland Food Policy Council’s policy document, and of other efforts to chart out ways in which public land might be transformed into the commons.  Those ideas resurface, and I think the idea of the alter-globalization movement is still very palpable in the way in which we’re moving into the future.

For more information on Raj Patel, visit his web site at www.rajpatel.org .

Vina Concha y Toro S.A., Latin America’s leading wine producer, is the buyer of a landmark winery operation that has languished locally in recent years. The Chilean company exports wines to 135 countries around the globe, with sales approaching nearly 30 million cases.

The Fetzer Vineyards sale is the latest chapter in a winery saga that began in 1968 with the Fetzer family, who built the Mendocino County winery into one of the nation’s most successful. Family members in 1992 sold the local winery to Brown Forman Corp., the Kentucky-based liquor conglomerate.

But Brown Forman’s interest in Fetzer dimmed in recent years, accompanied by a series of layoffs, the sale of the landmark Valley Oaks food and wine center in Hopland, and a shift in grape buying to the cheaper Central Coast region. Valley Oaks has since reopened under new ownership, and is now called “Campovida.”

Tuesday’s announcement was hailed by local wine industry leaders, including John Fetzer, the former CEO of the Hopland winery.

“I’m excited about the possibilities,” said Fetzer, who now bottles premium wine under his own Saracina label.

John Fetzer said new ownership by a global wine producer could signal a new era for the Mendocino wine industry. “This could take the county industry to the next level,” he said.

Fetzer Vineyards in 2010 had net sales of about $156 million, according to current owner Brown Forman. It employs about 240 people, with the key facilities located in Hopland.

The Louisville-based distiller bought Fetzer in 1992 from the Fetzer family, who had built the local winery from ground up beginning in 1968 into one of the nation’s most successful.

The deal includes Fetzer’s state-of-the-art production facilities and headquarters in Hopland, a nationally recognized complex for its environmental practices. Also part of the sale is Bonterra, the largest producer of wines made from organically grown grapes, and other brands including Jekel, Little Black Dress, Five Rivers, and Bel Arbor. A wine production facility and vineyards in Paso Robles on the Central Coast are also part of the agreement.

Brown Forman announced in December that it was exploring the Fetzer sale.

Brown Forman CEO Paul Varga said in a statement Tuesday that the company wanted to redirect “our resources to those opportunities around the world which offer stronger growth and higher returns on invested capital.”

The Fetzer sale is expected to be completed by April, said Varga.

Kasmier would likely be the first American to make wine using indigenous Georgian grapes. In fact, these varieties may never have been grown in the New World. They include such unknowns as Rkatsiteli, Saperavi, Khikhvi, Kisi, Kakhuri Mtsvivani and Bideshuri – and in a market dominated by Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and other superstars, where would these Georgian obscurities have found elbow room, let alone a fan base?

The first time I made my very own homemade apple pie, I was ecstatic. There is nothing as satisfying as making you own pie crust and filling it with crisp apples. — Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, cookbook writer

We can be assured that all is right in our world and that some things go unchanged when the Pie Bake takes place at the Fair’s Kitchen in Boonville. On Saturday, August 28th, much later than ever before because that was the only time Pat Hulbert could schedule the kitchen, the Pie Bake took place. The Pie Bake this year was the 47th Pie Bake since the tradition started in 1963. Apple pies are baked for sale at the Philo and Boonville Methodist Churches’ booth, The Kountry Kitchen, at the Mendocino County Fair and Apple Show held this year on September 17th, 18th, and 19th.

That’s because the Berkeley-based Bison, like scores of other craft breweries in the United States, has been hit by a poorly written California initiative approved in late 2008 by the state Board of Equalization that called for an extra tax on in-state sales of flavored malt beverages like Mike’s Hard Lemonade and Smirnoff Ice — low-priced drinks appealing to teenagers for their soda-like qualities but fortified with distilled spirits. Often called “cheerleader beer” or “alcopops,” these drinks were the target of the initiative’s authors, who brought down the hammer by requiring that they be labeled “distilled spirits” and be subject to associated liquor taxes. This, so believed the Board, would help keep alcopops out of the price range of children and alcohol abusers.

But the law’s fine print has unintentionally subjected a style of beer aged in bourbon, brandy, rye and rum barrels to the same tax. Such beers, now gaining popularity, are favored for their potent flavors of coconut, vanilla and butter, but they may also absorb a stiff shot of alcohol from the booze-saturated wood. Some barrel-aged beers can gain as much as two percentage points of alcohol by volume during this time period, far exceeding the half-percent ABV increase that the Board of Equalization agreed upon as the fortification limit before a beverage must be classified — and taxed — as a distilled spirit.

Del Grande believes the tax initiative was authored poorly, if not maliciously.

“The people writing these regulations just don’t understand anything technically about what we’re doing in our breweries,” says Del Grande. “We’re still going to say on the bottle how much alcohol is in the beer. We’re not trying to sneak anything by. It’s not even about the alcohol. It’s about the flavor we get from the wood.”

Breweries like Drake’s, Anchor, Magnolia, Deschutes, Rogue, Lagunitas and El Toro have all worked with spirits barrels. Black Diamond Brewing Company in Concord has a particularly active program, with 22 brandy and bourbon barrels currently filled with beer. Brewmaster Derek Smith says he understands the state’s concerns over alcohol abuse and cheap beverages like alcopops. Barrel-aged beers, however, are about more than alcohol, says Smith.

“Gaining flavors from barrels is a true art form, whereas alcopops are just a way to put alcohol into a sweet drink, and they’re aimed at a young crowd. Barrel-aged beers are for specialty high-end retailers.”

The craft beer industry saw the problem coming two years ago, says Tom McCormick, executive director of the California Craft Brewers Association. McCormick attended a public hearing in 2008 at which he unsuccessfully urged the Board of Equalization’s members to amend the wording of the proposed tax law and avoid an inadvertent hit to the beer industry. The Board listened but made no such amendment, according to a spokesperson.

“Now we’re just getting caught in the net,” says McCormick. “(The law’s proponents) were going after cheap high alcohol drinks that people drink out of a paper bag, not craft beer.”

Brewers point out that the law’s fine print works in ironic ways; while many non-barreled beers are yeast fermented to levels of 15 percent alcohol and more without raising authorities’ eyebrows, even relatively low-strength beers lightly affected by distilled spirits are now subject to a state tax.

“I can make a 13- or 14-percent (ABV) beer with no problem, but if I put a 10-percent beer in a barrel and it gains a half-percent alcohol then it’s a distilled spirit and I have to pay a tax,” says brewmaster Steve Altimari at Valley Brewing Company in Stockton. Altimari purchased a half-dozen used Heaven Hill bourbon barrels from Kentucky several years ago. He has released several barrel-aged stouts since, and now, to avoid paying the alcopop tax, Altimari slightly dilutes his barrel-aged beers with weaker ales — a common method among brewers leery of paying the tax. Altimari has also rinsed out new barrels with water to remove any lingering pools of whiskey, though he says, “I’d love to soak up my beer with bourbon if I could.”

Other beer-makers have submitted and paid the tax. North Coast Brewing Company’s Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout measures 9% ABV in conventional form, but a special bourbon barrel-aged version first produced several years ago has measured up to 11%. When the alcopop tax took effect almost 18 months ago, the Fort Bragg brewery made no objections.

“We just went ahead and paid the distilled spirit tax because we’re good citizens,” says Mark Ruedrich, North Coast’s president and brewmaster. “These beers aren’t a big enough part of our business to make it worth our time to complain.”

The standard beer tax in California runs 20 cents per gallon sold within the state, but distilled spirits are taxed at a rate of $3.30 per gallon. Barrel-aged beers are expensive to begin with, and the tax further boosts the cost; a 16.9-ounce bottle of North Coast’s bourbon barrel stout, for example, retails at approximately $20.

The Marin Institute, an anti-alcohol abuse organization in San Rafael, is one of several groups that initially petitioned the state to tax alcopops as distilled spirits. The organization’s research and policy director Michele Simon stresses that the target of her organization’s efforts were alcoholic “soft” drinks aimed at children. Yet brewers that object to the alcopop tax aren’t getting any sympathy.

“It’s typical of people to whine about new regulations causing them problems,” says Simon. “We’re busy trying to keep alcohol out of the hands of minors, and it’s up to them to figure out how to reformulate their recipes.”

But that’s exactly what the alcopop producers themselves have done, according to the Board of Equalization’s spokesperson Anita Gore. She says that, after the tax was approved, major alcopop producers crafted new product formulas, dodged the tax and are still releasing sweet, soda-like drinks with as much alcohol as the average pale ale. Mike’s Hard Lemonade Company, one of the nation’s biggest alcopop producers — has reported to the state that 27 flavors of its leading product line no longer meet the definition of a “distilled spirit.” Diageo-Guinness USA Inc. has reported that 14 flavors of Smirnoff Ice drinks do not fit the bill. Anheuser-Busch has reported that seven Bacardi brand beverages formerly fortified with liquor no longer are.

The change of recipe for alcopop makers was a simple switch, according to Del Grande, who says he learned details through conversations with an alcopop producer. He says that, prior to 2008, alcopop manufacturers often began with a flavorless beer-derived base of roughly 2% ABV and subsequently fortified it to about 5% using neutral grain alcohol. After the Board of Equalization defined such drinks as distilled spirits, producers simply reversed the process; Del Grande says they now start with a clear malt beverage base — by definition a beer — of about 8% ABV and blend down the strength with syrups, flavorings and water. They add no distilled spirits, and the final product is a traditional alcopop, still as sweet as ever, still readily available today and free of the new liquor tax.

“They just skirted the law and these alcopops are still out there,” says Del Grande.

In the coming year, Black Diamond’s Derek Smith has plans to release multiple batches of bourbon and brandy barrel beers. He doesn’t, however, plan to pay the state a dime in alcopop taxes. Like Altimari and others, he will simply blend down his barrel-aged beers to keep them out of the distilled spirit tax bracket. It’s probably the easiest legal fix there is. The required paperwork, Smith says, is a different story.

“Since the law passed it’s now up to us to submit these reports proving that every single new beer we make isn’t fortified with other alcohols. I’m not a big fan of alcopops myself, and I understand what they’re trying to achieve, but it’s become a pain in the ass.”

Normally, I’m not one for quaintness. And I especially bridle at the idea that the way to resurrect America’s abandoned downtowns is to rebuild them in the image of the past — as if cutesy storefronts, Victorian architectural detailing and million-dollar sidewalk widening projects can replace a local economy built on something besides retirement accounts and a historic pot bubble.

And yes, Fort Bragg Bakery is cute to the point of quaint, with food that borders on overpriced (a $10 salad that skimps on toppings and no table service?). But the Kump’s vision isn’t just to be a charming, old-fashioned bakery serving flaky pastries and overpriced lattes to out-of-towners and window shoppers. The Kumps aim to do something else. They hope to build a commercially viable wholesale bakery — to not only hock their wares from their own storefront, but to distribute bread to restaurants throughout the region. They aim to be an industry, in other words, and to produce their breads on scale.

Think of Thanksgiving Coffee or North Coast Brewery. This bakery has that kind of potential and that can only be good for Fort Bragg.

The oven is nice too.

***

Enjoy our free stories? Subscribe to theAVA.com for just $25 a year and get access to the entire site.

From Ireland, with love.

I spent most mornings of my childhood standing, with legs splayed like a saw horse, above an old gas floor grate furnace in my dad’s house on the Mendocino Coast. I love that heater. There was a time when nearly every pair of my shoes had grid lines melted into their souls from moments I lingered too long, hoping it would drive the fog from my bones. But this winter—the first I’ve spent in my childhood home since I left a decade ago for college and beyond—we’ve turned on the gas heater only a handful of times.

That’s because the house (which we’re watching after, while my dad and his girlfriend are off on Caribbean sailing adventures) has a life-changing new addition: a massive, cast iron Waterford Stanley wood stove. Made in Ireland, bought used from Craigslist, it’s a beautiful machine—one that’s transformed not only the way we heat this drafty old house, but the way we cook.

Each morning, we light a fire first thing, then feed it throughout the day. Because cast iron retains heat so well, a relatively small, slow burning fire keeps the kitchen and living room warm for hours. Meanwhile, we can use the stove’s range to make our morning coffee, fry grilled cheese sandwiches, simmer homemade chicken soup or anything else we cook over the course of the day. The Waterford even has an oven, which I’ll admit I find a bit finicky for cooking that requires exact and consistent heat, but which I love for roasting vegetables or warming already-baked bread.

But burning wood, like everything else we do, has environmental consequences. This recent story on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer show got me thinking about the climate impact of wood stoves. It’s a worthwhile listen for anyone who uses firewood to heat their homes or cook their food.

–

Half of the world’s population still burn wood, dung, coal, or other solid fuels for cooking, which leads to environmental and health hazards around the world. So how do you build cheap, durable, clean-burning stoves for three billion people? The New Yorker staff writer Burkhard Bilger reports on the quest for a stove that can save the world.

–

Here’s a link to the original Bilger story in the New Yorker:

“Hearth Surgery,” The New Yorker, 12/21/09

According to a recent report by the Marin Insti­tute, a California-based alcohol industry watchdog, a rush of buyouts and mergers in the last years of the Bush Administration has left two overseas giants in control of 80 percent of American beer consumption.

The AV Grange Mart is a winter farmers’ market that began last year to fill the gap when the Boonville Farmers’ Market is not in operation.  It is a combined project of the AV Grange and the AV Foodshed Group.  It is a chance for anyone to sell their product as long as it is homegrown or handmade.

Last year we had a variety of products from produce, eggs, goat cheese, fish and bakery to herbal skin care, herbal health care and crafts.  Most vendors are from the valley, but some come from inland, as well as the coast.  The stall fees of 7.5% of gross sales go to the Anderson Valley Grange for the use of the facility.

One thing that makes it difficult for some people to remember is that it is on Sundays instead of Saturdays, like Boonville market.  As a reminder, there is a round Grange Mart sign now hanging under the AV Grange sign.  The time is one hour later than last year – 1 pm to 3pm.

The Grange Mart should be bigger and better in its second year.  Hope to see you there – Sundays 1 – 3 at the Philo Grange.  For more info you can call 895-2949.

The Zeni Ranch’s 100-year-old dry-farmed chest­nut trees are a testament to the sustainability of tree crops. Pick your own freshly fallen chestnuts off the ground. De-burring the chestnuts on the ground is easier with good boots, and gloves also help. To take some chestnuts home with you, the price per pound is $2.50 if you gather them or $3.50 from their stockpile.

The schedule:

10:30am-3:30pm. Chestnut gathering and tasting chestnuts roasted over an open fire

12:30-2pm. Potluck, music, show and tell of local self-sufficiency

2-3pm. Doug Mosel will share his experience with growing grain locally and grain co-ops

Please bring:

• Potluck dish made with as many locally-grown ingredients as possible (re-heating oven available)

• Plate, utensils, cup, and napkin

• Homemade wines are welcome for a taste off.

• Fruit, nut, or vegetable harvests to show and tell. There will be demonstration tables set up.

• Labeled de-leafed cuttings of hard-to-root plants like mulberry, apricot, prune, European plum, cherry, or other plants/cuttings to share. This is the best sea­son to start cuttings with minimal equipment.

The Zeni Ranch is at mile marker 15.6 on Fish Rock Road (County Highway 122). From Coast Highway 1, junction of Fish Rock (5 miles north of Gualala), go 15.5 miles east. From Highway 128 and Fish Rock Road the junction is at marker 36.56, about 7.7 miles east of the Highway 256/128 junction, or 4.7 miles west of Yorkville, then drive 13 miles on Fish Rock Road to marker 15.6. Using odometer and mile markers, it’s an easy and enjoyable slow drive through a most beautiful and very remote part of the county.

For more information call: Mark Albert 462-7843, Barbara/Rob Goodell 895-3897, Jane Zeni 895-2309, or Linda Zeni 884-4208.

Mark your calendars for the 2010 Winter Abun­dance scion and seed exchange at Anderson Valley High School domes on Saturday, January 30, 2010. To be added to our mailing list, please call Mark Albert to give him your email (preferably) or your mailing address.

Don’t forget about all the rest you get to enjoy if you come out to the Market: crab cakes, onions, Bill’s famous salad mix, beautiful Yukon potatoes from Brock Farms, kale, did I say onions?, herbs, peppers, pumpkins, and if we don’t have a good freeze there will still be tomatoes and purple tomatillos.

Special news at the Boonville Farmers Market: Hal­loween is on a Saturday this year and falls on the last Market of the year at the Boonville Hotel. (There will be a Market at the Philo Grant on Sundays from 12-2 throughout the winter.) Historically, there is a costume parade and a jack-o-lantern contest AND a potluck afterwards. We are keeping with tradition this year and hoping to see you all there wearing your costumes, carrying your carved jack-o-lanterns and filling your bellies with wonderful home-cooked local food. Michael and Leslie Hubbert will be there to lead the parade.

Hmmm. I wonder what costume I will put together? Batman? Sea monster? Captain Rainbow? I think it should be some Boonville celebrity. You’ll just have to come to the Market and see.

Happy harvesting — and eating and sharing.

PS. I almost forgot. The subsidized program though the Boonville Community Supported Agricul­ture ran out of money this year and we had to put it on hold. We have recently received a generous dona­tion that will reinstate the program. So all of you who have used the program and all of you who feel a need for some financial assistance and want fresh local healthy food, come to the Market and sign up to receive your Market bucks.

— Taunia Green

Actually there were no throngs. The people perusing from one vendor to the next were no thicker than the steelhead are in the Navarro, these days. Vicki Brock is reporting that sales are down, and Pam Laird did not sell out of the heirloom tomatoes that had been so long awaited. Perhaps this is due to the economic downturn which some economists hope is behind us now, a mere adjustment, a correction, and when consumers get back on their feet they will be turning out in droves, er, throngs, to purchase heirloom tomatoes at several bucks a pound.

If you believed the conversations taking place under the shade of the almonds, though, the “Cash for Clunkers” deal may not pull us up by our own bootstraps, and this recession is barely beginning, in which case the hot items in the future might be turnips and cabbages. Perhaps a different crowd will be turning out, and the Farmers Market may resemble the ones you might run across in “undeveloped” countries, where live chickens are for sale, clucking in their baskets. Day laborers will mill about, hoping some farmer has rocks to pluck from a field in exchange for a square meal. Bands like the Ukaholics will still be performing with their low overhead, and you will probably see craftsmen like David Lipkind and Paul Schulman who set up shop in Boonville on the third Saturday of every month to sharpen your knives, scissors, shears, and garden tools. Their machines were whirring as the Ukaholics strummed and increasingly frugal shoppers hunted for locally grown bargains.