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PART I
THE LOCAL FOOD MOVEMENT
In early November, long after its last leaves have fallen, the persimmon tree down the road from our farm begins to fruit. Its orange globes hang from naked branches, looking like overly enthusiastic Christmas ornaments come a month early.
We pay our neighbor a dollar for each one we pick, and she always tells us itās a good deal. Maybe so. I just like stopping every few days, surveying the fruit, and choosing which ones to pick on the way home. The firm ones get grilled and added to salad. The ones that get really ripe, with their insides turned to jelly, are eaten with a spoon. For our family, persimmons mean a tree on Middle Two Rock Road.
We canāt have that same intimate relationship with everything we eat, because our food mostly comes from somewhere else, and itās grown and prepared by people weāll never meet. Most of us will never pull a carrot from the ground, milk a cow, slaughter a pig, or gather eggs from our own hens. Those days of rugged self-sufficiency are gone and arenāt likely to return. Yet people are increasingly aware that their hyper-accelerated, super-improved lives are missing something. Theyāre rethinking not only what they eat, but where it comes from. This crusade has a name: the LOCAL FOOD MOVEMENT.
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FOOD MILES
One evening I find myself dining in Harrisonburg, a well-heeled Virginia town an hour west of Washington, D.C. The dinner guests include a few local winemakers and a food policy wonk who patrols Capitol Hill. He talks about food-related legislative challengesāGMO labeling issues, oversight of factory farms, school lunch vouchersāthen veers into a colorfully detailed anecdote about the lengths discerning Washington shoppers must go to find good food inside the Beltway. He uses the term food miles to describe the great distances he drives each week just to buy groceries. The man is intriguing and well-spoken, but his definition of food miles is backward. FOOD MILES are not determined by how far you drive to get your food; instead, they are the energy and effort required to bring everything you eat to your door. The milk. The bread. The mustard. The oatmeal. The sugar. The potatoes. All of it comes from somewhere; that distance is called food miles.
If a Washington, D.C.ābased food policy advocate doesnāt understand the definition of food miles, what hope do we have for fixing our food system? After all, we canāt expect people to live more sustainably if they donāt know the most basic principles that define the conversation.
Weāre the first generation forced to confront a fundamental truth: We live in a world of finite resources. Changing how we consume these precious resourcesāsafeguarding them for future generationsāwill require not only changing our behavior, but even learning a new language. We need new words to explain the predicament weāre in and what weāre going to do about it. Scientists talk about PEAK OIL and PEAK WATER, conditions that signal a point where our consumption will outstrip the availability of remaining resources. Economic collapse is their dire prediction. They could be right, but scare tactics wonāt bring about a shift in consciousness. People run from bad news, not toward it. The answer is to build consensus on a foundation of innovative ideas and solutions. Find out what works, then let solutions spread.
It all begins with words. By learning the words of this new languageāthe lexiconāyou can start the conversation, even embrace ideas that had previously seemed foreign or irrelevant to your daily life. If you start by learning what the term food miles means, for example, the transformation begins. These words are building blocks, which is ironic considering that once you understand the principle of food miles, you inevitably see flaws in the concept it represents. Itās attention-grabbing and visual, but ultimately imprecise. You may begin to prioritize local purchases over those from far away, which is good . . . for starters, but the principle of food miles is merely a point of departure. It forces you to think about your connection to the soil and to local economies. Itās a lesson more useful in theoryāas a teaching toolāthan in practice.
Take the tale of two satsuma oranges. Those at your local farmersā market come from twenty miles down the road, whereas your local supermarket has them delivered by a tractor-trailer from five hundred miles away. That delivery brings enough satsumas for a hundred stores. Simple mathematics tells you that less fuel is used to deliver supermarket satsumas. At least youāve met the farmer at your local farmersā market. Plus, heās organic. Except the satsumas at the supermarket are certified organic, too. Right, but those satsumas arenāt local. You donāt know anything about them. So is it a question of relationships and trust, or a question of scale or the optimum allocation of resources? The satsuma you buy often explains the personal values that drive your purchasing decisions. Do you want food thatās local, organic, or just cheap?
One important consideration when buying locally grown produce is this: Fresh produce is high in phytonutrients, naturally occurring chemicals that provide a variety of health benefits. The longer produce sits in a truck, the more phytonutrients it loses. For example, spinach loses more than 50 percent of its vitamin C one day after harvest. So if we want healthful food, doesnāt freshness trump everything?
These are complex questions, but thereās beauty inherent in this complexity. The more questions this new knowledge forces us to ask, the more we start understanding that every purchase we make is a vote to support one system over another. Do you believe in a global food supply chain or do you want a more local, fresh alternative that supports our neighbors and their sustainable farming practices, keeps our waterways clean, and our soil healthy?
Itās not simply about choosing one satsuma over another. Itās about knowing the tale each satsuma represents.
Until a few years ago I wouldnāt say I was a particularly enlightened consumer. I bought things because they tasted good, because they were on sale, or because I knew what to do with them in the kitchen. I understood a little bit about nutrition. I knew fruits and vegetables were boring but good for me. Soda was full of high-fructose corn syrup, which sounded ominous though its supposed dangers eluded me. I knew potato chips contained an artery-clogging dose of partially hydrogenated oil and that eating steak every day would give me a heart attack. I knew white bread was packed with empty calories and carbohydrates designed to make me fat. Even with that meager food knowledge, I still didnāt change what I ate, and I certainly never stopped to think about who made my food. How could I? I spent most of my life living in urban areas. My daily life featured an endless panorama of glass and steel high-rises, billboards, parking structures, stoplights, crosswalks, cars and more cars. I never thought about where my food came from or who made it. And I certainly didnāt know any farmersāI couldnāt even find a farm on the map. I was utterly disconnected from who made my food and how it ended up in my grocery store. The fact was, I simply didnāt care.
When Iād meet one of those Know-It-All Do-Good Lifestyle Fascists, with their clever slogans designed to shame me into turning off lights when I left the room or recycling plastic bags or turning the water off when brushing my teeth or only eating organic or not wearing leather belts or not buying slave-trade coffee, Iād sigh, smile knowingly, then calmly dismiss them as elitist. They were simply out of touch. Only wealthy people have the luxury of recasting the world to fit their own values, Iād say to myself. Food is just something you eat.
What changed for me? I learned to cook and, as a result, I became aware that a dish is composed of many individual ingredients, each with its own story, like that of a cage-free ...
