Real People Eat Local

The local/organic food movement now lies at a critical juncture that will determine whether our food system takes a permanent turn for the better or reaches only a small segment of the population. 

And yet, we can't take it for granted that that the momentum will continue. After all, sustainable and organic food may be on the rise, but "certified organic" food and beverage sales still only represents about 4% of overall food and beverage sales. Directly marketed "farm-to-consumer" foods also only account for a small portion of the overall food-supply chain. And it's still hard to spot a vegetable garden when driving down the road of many rural and semi-suburban areas throughout the U.S.  While people could easily and legally garden and maybe even raise a few chickens, hogs or goats in these parts, it's just not that popular. 

Also, there has been momentum before, but it slowed, if not crawled to a stop. Way back in the 1970s, books on health food, organic gardening and nutrition lay on my mother's kitchen counter, while my father pored over ones on solar-powered homes and energy-efficient construction. But the energy-conscious and health-food trends of that era seem to have been suspended in time for a couple of decades during the 80s and 90s. When Anna Lappe released her book Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen (co-authored with Bryant Terry) in 2006 that picked up where her mother, Francis Moore Lappe, left off with Diet for a Small Planet published in 1971, I didn't know whether to celebrate or cry: The subject matter was brilliant, but I marveled that the national discussion hadn't moved further down the road during a whole generation. After all, the "new" food movement isn't that new, and many of its seminal people were active in the 60s and 70s: Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962; Alice Waters established her restaurant Chez Panisse in San Francisco in 1971; the Moosewood Restaurant in Ithaca, NY, was established in 1973; Wes Jackson founded The Land Institute in 1976; Doris Janzen Longacre's More-with-Less Cookbook was published in 1976; Wendell Berry published The Unsettling of America in 1977.  

Where did that momentum go? Perhaps these ag and nutrition issues slipped our collective mind, as people put the difficult times of the 60s and 70s - including the upheavals of the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War and the oil crisis - behind them. Or maybe the people behind the social revolutions of the 60s had settled down as they aged and simply backed off. Perhaps we all became distracted by a profusion of exotic and international foods that exploded onto the nouvelle cuisine scene amid the boom times of the early 1980s. Perhaps there was a natural ennui after so much upheaval. Whatever the causes, something shifted in the national psyche, economy and/or body politic during the 80s and 90s, so the food movement seems to have disappeared for 20 years. One wonders if we'll suffer another blackout on food matters during the 2010s and 2020s, so our children will have to start from scratch in the 2030s.

I used to think we needed some kind of charismatic leader to keep the momentum going. I thought that person could raise the profile of these food/ag issues enough so that, eventually, typical people looking for a special dinner wouldn't necessarily head to the steak house or the all-you-can-eat buffet. In my dreams, no one wanted to shop at big box food stores anymore, and school administrators  -  at the very least - rejected vending machines full of junk food.

But after actively covering local and organic food/agriculture issues since at least 2003 (including writing this newsletter for four years and working for Edible Chesapeake for around three), I have a different take now. I realized something after seeking out local food in DC, Maryland, Virginia, New York, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Quebec, Germany, and more: Having a guru to follow can be good, but it isn't enough.  A celebrity chef can attract some people to the farmers market or get better food into a few schools. A farming expert or a food czar can surely convert some farmers and eaters to more homemade higher-quality food grown with fewer pesticides. But a local-food wizard, point man, angel or whatever you want to call him or her still isn't enough - if the food movement is going to expand beyond a certain segment of society. To really make it, regular folks need to be "in."

And to get everybody on board, we need you, each other, all the real people who like to eat and cook, share a meal and talk to their coworkers and neighbors. Wendell Berry famously said that "eating is an agricultural act." Eating is also a public relations act: Not only does where you shop and how you eat matter. But eating local food with people you know in various contexts can get the message through much deeper and further than any talking head - and without the political baggage that so often sabotages any effort to spread an idea. Serving locally produced food at a family reunion, school potluck or community event -  where people just know each other, and aren't as likely to label and stereotype local food supporters as foodies or left-wingers (greens) or right-wingers (libertarians) or whatever - can spark a change in our food system. Some people will respond to soft peddling, while others will need a hard sell. But if we are to see real change in the food system, the local/organic food movement needs all kinds of people - lots of them. The more we as "real people" can get through to all the other real people, the more likely it is for the food revolution to stand a chance.