Faith and food

By Tyler Tankersley

A friend recently gave me the gift of a pound of coffee beans. This is a sure-fire way to win my exception, but this bag of beans was especially meaningful. They were beans brewed in Guatamala, and attached to the bag was a picture of the farmer who brewed my coffee beans. His name was Estuardo and his family has been in the coffee business for generations. The bag also contained information on how Estuardo and his family had been compensated fairly for their labor and that they would continue to receive profit from the sale of the beans. As I brewed that bag of beans and drank those smooth cups of coffee, I found myself often thinking of Estuardo.

We do not often think about where our food comes from. We go to the grocery store and we buy processed food that is so far removed from any real ingredients that we could never find out the human stories that brought it to our shelves. We buy our meat saran-wrapped in cellophane packages designed to lull us into forgetting that these used to be part of an animal. Most of us are so far removed from an agrarian way of living that we cannot remember the last time we allowed grass to tickle our bare feet.

In recent times, there is an effort to try to regain some of the connection that we once had with our food. Farmers markets around the country are experiencing a rapidly increasing rate of communal engagement because more and more people are willing to spend a little more money to buy food that is locally sourced (plus: I could eat my weight in the donuts at Cape's farmers market!).

We should always be wary of the holier-than-thou mentality that can accompany such choices, but I see something so beautiful about this trend in trying to reconnect with our food sources. For many people there is only one criteria on whether or not they should purchase a food product: the almighty dollar. For some, that criteria is necessary because of their strapped budget, for others it's simply thriftiness. However, I do not think a product's price should be the only measure of its value. For example: Estuardo's coffee beans cost much more than a canister of Folger's.

Every dollar we spend is a vote in an economic election; we are telling companies and industries what sort of products we desire as consumers. If more people start buying locally sourced products and food that is ethically grown, we will send a message about our values. Perhaps we can all invest more in local restaurants. Maybe churches should increase their hospitality budget and buy fair-trade coffee instead of just getting what is inexpensive. For people of Christian faith, we also have to remember that Jesus tells us that we are to conduct ourselves in a neighborly way toward all people, which means that we must be willing to consider how our spending habits affect our sisters and brothers in our communities and around the world. As the writer Wendell Berry puts it: "Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you."