Palmettovore? Heard it before.

A little bit of inside baseball here, but also possibly zeitgeist-indicative. A recent visit to the GSP Whole Foods overlapped with a Peach Party, sponsored by the South Carolina Department of Agriculture, as part of a larger Palmettovore program. As the site explains "a Palmettovore is a person who attempts to eat only produce and products grown and processed in South Carolina." It's nice to see that the idea of eating things grown near you has spread to benighted places like SC, and only a few years after Alice Waters came up with the idea.

What makes this interesting is that at least in SC terms, SC Commissioner of Agriculture straight-up ganked this idea from his opponent in the last election, the aforementioned Emile DeFelice, who made "put your state on your plate" his campaign slogan. As one is wont to say when somebody bites someone's style, "Scooby-Do." (See first 30 seconds of below mp3.) On the positive side, it's nice to see Hugh Weathers, a self-described "committed conservative leader," who came to his office from the agribusiness side of things, embracing eating locally as consistent with the role of a state agricultural commission.*

M.C. Battle (Busy Bee vs. Lil Rodney Cee with DJ Grand Wizard Theodore)

*During the Weathers/DeFelice contest in 2006, a Weathers supporter explained to me that DeFelice was a decent fellow, but the problem with him was that he was an "organic farmer," which he used as if it were a synonym for "devil-worshipping commie pederast."

Comments

[Jay]

Without knowing a lick about Hugh Weathers, I'd bet he's never grown anything as delicious as Emile's pork. But I suppose enjoying the taste of food is only of interest to us organic types.

[The Gurgling Cod]

You must be some kind of Satanic socialistic sex pervert. Volume is what matters in agriculture.

[Jay]

Butz sex: fencerow to fencerow.