Nicholas Boke is a freelance writer and international educational consultant.
CHESTER-It all started when a community-action organization emailed concerns in advance of the Liberty Food Fest, which took place at the Bellows Falls Opera House in mid-December.
Several of the speakers had reputations as anti-vaxxers and adherents of conspiracy theories like climate change being a hoax, critical race theory posing a threat to our children, and the value of drinking raw milk. The fact that a significant number of the speakers played significant roles in various libertarian organizations didn't ease the concerns.
An article about last year's food event in Idavox, "Grooming Hippies to be Fascists: Libertystock and the Crunchie to Far Right Pipeline in Vermont," heightened the concerns.
So I began studying the histories of as many of the speakers as I could, checking out the credibility of Idavox, and so on. The Food Fest's website's promise to "Get new ideas to grow your farm or food business" seemed likely to be a libertarian attack on just about anything regarding government.
I reached out to Food Fest organizer Graham Meriwether and explained that I was a journalist who had concerns about the event, giving him some of my evidence.
He was incensed. The "Grooming Hippies" article was junk, the speakers came from a variety of political viewpoints, and, mainly, "I'm trying to get this thing organized, and I don't have time for this [...]. It's entirely about food [...]. Everybody is focused on food."
He seemed sincere. Maybe John Klar, well-known for his anti–critical race theory and anti-"climate alarmism," and Joel Salatin, who bills himself "a Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer," would just talk about growing and marketing food.
What to do? I bought a ticket for Friday, the first of the event's two days.
* * *
While the Opera House wasn't full, there were probably 60-plus attendees, well over twice the number who'd shown up last year. Old and young, individuals and families, everybody dressed for the cold weather.
I wondered about the title of the first session, "The Importance of Loyalty," in which Salatin and Chelsea Green Publishing Co-founder Margo Baldwin told us about how they reached the points in their lives that they had reached. Salatin talked about his (and his father's) interest in organic farming, and Baldwin spoke of her focus on publishing good books.
Only toward the end did they shift to politics, both attacking how the "cancel culture" had invaded their personal and professional lives.
They wrapped up. The audience applauded energetically. Meriwether thanked them profusely, then said, "We want to focus on farming. I get calls from farming organizations asking what my attitude is on Israel. I say, 'I'm interested in farming.'"
But this was just the beginning.
Klar spent most of his "In Pursuit of Hay" session lamenting the loss of small farms due in part to federal and state regulations and to the toxins and ultra-processed food Americans eat these days. The talk - as frequently as Klar cutely discussed driving his broken-down truck full of hay and the place of sheep in his life - was mainly about politics.
As was Salatin's "Messaging for Food Freedom." Same things about ultra-processing, onerous regulations, and Americans' giving in to the idea that "the only way we can live safely is by regulation."
Enough. I'd spent the first three of the day's eight hours and heard nothing but politics. I'd heard nothing about "new ideas to grow your farm or food business."
I left. I figured that some of the sessions would actually deal with food, but the fact that the first day began as it did told the big story.
* * *
Friends who stuck it out said that as the program went on there was, indeed, a bit more about farming and food. West Townshend farmer Leigh Merinoff talked about her program to interest kids in farming. Native American activist, economist, and author Winona LaDuke talked about potatoes and corn. Several people discussed growing hemp. There was a session about baking bread and another about running a food truck.
But there wasn't, my friends told me, much that was just about food. The Liberty Food Fest was pretty much a bait-and-switch.
I wouldn't have minded if the Fest had been billed as "A Libertarian Take on Food and Farming," or even "Politics and Food and Farming." Libertarians, who seem to run awfully close to extreme right-wingers these days, have the American right to speak freely and publicly about their beliefs.
But don't advertise the event with a colorful picture of kids and snowmen frolicking amid snowflakes on the website.
Don't bill it as a way to market your produce.
Don't pretend it's something that it's not.
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