It is arguably the plant that made the West. Pioneers brought wheat in practically every wagon on the Oregon Trail. It fed farm families in the Willamette Valley and miners in the John Day and California gold-rush towns. It was currency and foreign exchange.
East Africa’s farms feed millions, but production is likely to fall if temperatures rise and droughts become more common.
As Albala explained to us, Americans have grown increasingly reliant on convenience foods over the past century. “The proliferation of convenience foods,” he worries, “has left an entire hapless generation bereft of basic cooking skill sets.” Most of my friends stuff their cupboards with top ramen, cake mixes, and granola bars. Indeed, we don’t know how to cook. How will we learn?
When California-based Amy’s Kitchen opened a plant in Southern Oregon in 2006, the Oregon Department of Agriculture called it “a large feather in Oregon’s organic cap.” The nation’s largest producer of organic frozen foods, from complete meals to pizza, now employs about 700 full-time workers in White City. Its success is a sign that, over the last decade, organics have morphed from counterculture to mainstream.
The mixed messages blare at every grocery checkout: supermodels smiling seductively from magazines that push chocolate-cake recipes and weight-loss tips on the same page. No wonder millions of American females struggle with food and body image, laments OSU Professor Melinda Manore.