Apocalypse, No: Farm freebies don't foretell doomby Daniel ClarkObviously, we're headed into challenging economic times, but can thingsreally be as bad as the Associated Press describes them? A November 23rdAP article about a Colorado farm was so bleak that it read like aSteinbeck novel, except that it was more coherently written, and slightlyshorter.The owners of the farm had opened it up to the public for the annualgleaning, the gathering of crops that had been left behind in the fieldsafter the harvest. To their amazement, many times more people took them upon their offer of free potatoes, carrots and leeks than they'd expected.According to the story, 40,000 people descended on the farm, apparentlyillustrating a nation on the brink of famine.That perception is predicated on the fact that this particular farm hadnever before experienced the post-apocalyptic scene described in thearticle. There's no reason it should have, though, since this was thefirst time its owners had opened the gleaning up to the public. If they'ddone so a couple years ago, when the economy was booming, they would havebeen stampeded all the same.What the story really tells us is that there's a segment of our societythat can't stand to miss out on anything they don't have to pay for. Whenthey refer to America as the Land of the Free, they interpret it as in"free continental breakfast." You're familiar with these people if youever attend major league baseball games, because they're the ones who onlygo when bobbleheads are being given away, and then attack each other likepiranhas when the mascots throw tee-shirts into the stands.An insatiable hankering for freebies does not directly correlate withneed, as was illustrated by Gore 2000 campaign mascot Winifred Skinner,who had supposedly been forced to pick aluminum cans out of her neighbors'trash in order to buy medicine. It turned out that Skinner owned aWinnebago, a poodle, and a United Auto Workers' pension. She only rummagedthrough her neighbors' garbage because she wanted to, not because she hadto in order to survive.The same is surely true of most of the Colorado vegetable pickers, whomthe AP would have us believe are barely sustaining a hand-to-mouthexistence. The story quotes one of the pickers explaining, "Everybody isso depressed about the economy." One of the farm owners agrees, saying,"People obviously need food."Of course needy people exist, but that's why the farm had been invitingchurch groups to help glean the crops for years. A church is capable ofdistributing large quantities of vegetables through food banks and soupkitchens, where enough different kinds of food are available to produceentire meals, instead of simply burying the needy under a mountain ofspuds.If you were desperate to feed yourself and your family, filling enormousbags with potatoes, carrots and leeks would not be the most efficient wayto go about it. However much of those things you managed to consume beforethey spoiled might not even be worth the amount of gas you'd burn whiledriving to the farm and back. The only way it really makes sense to putthe time and effort into it is if you are going to give or sell most ofthe food to others.To assume that the people hauling away the huge sacks of produce are doingso for their own consumption is to perceive them as living at a Dickensianlevel of poverty. One imagines them subsisting for weeks on baked carrots,carrot soup, carrot pie, carrot pudding, and any other revolting thing youcan think of to do with the things.We know, of course, that this wouldn't be necessary, with all theassistance that's available to the poor in this country, both from privatecharities and from government. By omitting that factor, the story depictsAmerica as a place where the average citizen's life is hanging by athread. It's as if he's the protagonist in a sequel to D.O.A., who mustconsume a bushel of leeks within 24 hours, or else succumb to luminouspoisoning.The focus of this story, if it wouldn't have strayed too far outside themedia template, should have been the generosity of the successfulcapitalists who own the farm. That may not be as interesting, or aspleasing to the editors, as a depiction of life in America as a chaoticnightmare, but at least it would have had the advantage of being true.-- Daniel Clark is a Staff Writer for the New Media Alliance. The NewMedia Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers,journalists and grass-roots media outlets.