Farm Co-op Inspires Author
Lappe Has Seen New Ideas Work
The Capital Times (Madison, WI)
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
By Judith Davidoff
Frances Moore Lappe, author of the groundbreaking best-seller, "Diet for a Small Planet," met a handful of Viroqua farmers in the 1980s who were starting a worker-owned organic farm.
At the time, Lappe didn't give the new venture much of a chance.
"I was influenced by the dominant culture, and I thought of it as marginal," Lappe said in a phone interview Monday from Boston, where she lives.
The organic farming cooperative not only grew into an enormously successful operation but it did so while staying true to its democratic values, Lappe said.
The lesson, says the longtime food and democracy activist, is that "we can let go of all the isms' and trust that we can create economies that reflect our values."
Such undertakings are at the heart of Lappe's new book, "Democracy's Edge: Choosing to Save our Country by Bringing Democracy to Life." She will discuss the book in a public talk Wednesday evening at the Pres House, 731 State St.
In the book, Lappe seeks to show that in myriad spheres, from farming to journalism, Americans are engaged in political problem-solving outside of the ballot box.
"It's trying to free us from the idea that democracy is just about government or just about voting," Lappe said.
She said the book suggests that for democracy to work, it needs to be a way of life.
"We need to extend democracy to all institutions in order to save basic liberties," Lappe said.
Fitting this model, says Lappe, are a home health care agency in New York that was started by welfare recipients about 20 years ago and a plant nursery in Waterloo founded by migrant farm workers.
Wisconsin gets other mentions in the book.
Lappe interviews Madison area farmers Barb and David Perkins, who participate in the Community Supported Agriculture movement in which consumers buy a share in a farm's future harvest in exchange for fresh deliveries of produce through the growing season.
"There's no other way to get into farming," David Perkins says in the book.
Lappe notes there are now 1,000 CSAs nationwide, with 16 in the Madison area.
Lappe said CSAs are a powerful example of how people can "embed economic life in community values."
Since 1971's "Diet for a Small Planet," which warned against the dangers of a meat-based diet and the associated environmental hazards, Lappe has written or co-authored 15 books.
John Stauber, executive director of the Madison-based Center for Media and Democracy, compared "Diet for a Small Planet" to Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" and Aldo Leopold's "Sand Country Almanac" -- "books that really made a difference in the lives of millions of people."
Stauber said Lappe "totally walks the talk. She's as much a hard-working and dedicated activist as she was some 30 years ago."
While acknowledging such social ills as factory farming and media conglomeration, Lappe says she is neither a pessimist nor optimist when it comes to the capacity for change.
"I'm a possibilist," she said.
Lappe said it's easy to get discouraged when faced with large-scale systemic problems. Because the future can't be predicted, however, Lappe advises that people do what they can, even if it is in small, incremental steps.
"It's not possible to know what's possible and that's our freedom," she says. "We can do that which is closest to our own passion. We can go toward that which gives us joy without thinking, Oh, my god, we're never going to succeed.'"
"Democracy's Edge" is available in Madison at Rainbow Bookstore, A Room of One's Own, Borders West, Barnes & Noble West and the University Book Store on State Street.
