I believe I was destined to be an Iowa farmer.

I wasn’t always one. I left the small Midwestern town I grew up in and moved to metropolitan NYC, worked in business, and expanded my palette with yuppie gourmet food. I was set up on a blind date with my future husband, another Midwesterner, and then three kids came. The more my husband and I learned about food, the more we asked questions about the environment, and what was healthy.  We went over the edge. We decided we wanted to grow our own food. We packed up and moved to Iowa, near extended family, and started converting land to organic certification in 1999.
           
I believe that my daughter and two sons should eat nothing but safe food. After I had kids, I became uncomfortable buying food at the supermarket with ingredients that I couldn’t recognize or pronounce. I still wasn’t satisfied. I am concerned about the lack of independent food choices in the USA, especially in meat, so I created a coalition of small family farms that would voluntarily offer transparency and traceability systems.  Even if food legislation is mired by lobbyists in Congress, I didn’t see anything would prevent the farmers from voluntarily offering higher standards, and creating pathways direct to consumers.

I believe I am an idealist. It’s my parents’ fault. They kept asking, “If all the other kids jump off a cliff, would you?” Their attempts at keeping me from teenage peer pressure have translated into a lifetime of examining my choices and trying to live consciously.  I am passionately committed to forwarding a domestic fair trade standard for the USA.  Transparency, traceability, fairness and quality are at the heart of regional food systems, the Slow Food association, and the Fair Trade movement.

I am horrified that the current US food policy facilitates an orderly evacuation and dismembering of rural America and local food systems. The rising popularity of organics is not a panacea. More and more consumers are looking to organics, but the amount of US acres converting to organic production is stagnating. Meanwhile, processing companies turn to overseas suppliers, rather than domestic family farmers, for organic ingredients. 

I believe the reason I am upset isn’t because I am a farmer, but rather because I hope to be a grandma someday. My concerns for future generations are about domestic food security, and how we will improve the drinking water quality, national shorelines, and safeguard our citizens from exposure to chemicals. What about the original impetus of the American environmental movement-- to protect the land and animals we live with, to be good stewards of our own nation, where we are only temporarily stewards for the next generation of citizens?

I believe my role as a mom is the most important job I will ever have. My children are growing up on a wide-open prairie in a tight-knit community, where they do chores like feeding the chickens and gathering eggs—which is not always an easy task since one headstrong hen insists on laying her eggs in the doghouse. I am so pleased to be raising kids who think spinach is a treat and squabble over who will get the biggest brussel sprout. I believe my parents were right, that we don’t have to jump off the cliff, and that is why I work hard to help create an alternate food paradigm. While there are large geographical distances between the consumer and the farm, I feel the connection with people around the nation who want to eat well, and welcome you to communicate with me at my blog, located on a tab at www.wholesomeharvest.com.

Eat Well. Save The Earth. And The Small Farms On It.
The Wholesome Harvest Organic Meat website is www.wholesomeharvest.com.

Wende Elliott
Iowa Farmer and Founder/President of Wholesome Harvest Organic Meats
Iowa

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