Back to the garden

David Bollier posted a thoughtful piece, Why the Hype About Local Food May Be More than Just a Trend, at OnTheCommons recently about the movement to encourage eating more locally produced food. In his piece, he cites a recent New York Times article about how some rich folks, wanting to eat local but not wanting to deal with gardening, are hiring gardeners to come to their homes and grow for them. And he discusses the slow food movement, which began in Italy and which has spread to the U.S. that is all about staying connected to our food sources, knowing where our food comes from and how it is grown, and preparing it thoughtfully.

I spent a week in the Pacific Northwest not long ago and had the good fortune of eating at Café Flora, where local food practices are in heavy rotation. Our waitress explained that the restaurant, which has been around since 1991, only recently started making a profit because from its inception they have stuck to their guns re: serving local food. (They were able to stay in business because the owners are independently wealthy and wanted to serve food less as a business endeavor and more as a Buddhist-motivated endeavor.) The café is connected to many local farms, buying up good portions of their harvests, simultaneously supporting the farms and ensuring restaurant clientele that they aren’t just eating good, they’re doing good.

The food was fantastic — I had the Yakima Valley Polenta with Dykstra Farm bing cherries soaked in port sauce with local snap peas and Walla Walla onions. One of my dinner companions had the daily market special: Alm Hill Garden Heirloom tomatoes and Sweet Corn Risotto featuring locally grown rainbow chard, butter turnips and arugula. It was so beautiful I insisted on a pre-eat photo shoot. Inspired and motivated, I bought the café’s cookbook and made one of those vacation vows: from now on I will only use whole foods grown within ten miles of my house, preferably picked from my own garden.

Okay, okay, so that’s unrealistic. But I appreciated the nudge I got from my eating experience, a reminder that, you know, we really can do better, all of us, in choosing foods that are better for us and, in their growth and delivery, better for the planet.

As Bollier says:

I am convinced that local food is going to become a steady, long-term growth market. For its taste, cost and eco-friendliness, local food has already become a symbol of social virtue. People are starting to realize that it is not so good for the planet to haul meat from New Zealand, wheat from South Dakota and fruit from Caifornia. Social demand and sheer economics are starting to buoy local growers, and supermarkets are looking for new ways to call attention to their local produce. The trend lines are clear.

The spending of local money for local produce is surely a virtuous cycle for local economies. It is also likely to promote greater personal connections among people locally, stronger commitments to one’s local community, and a more stable and diverse local economy.

I heartily concur. And I think further proof that a lot of us want to do better lies in the fact that books by Michael Pollan — who tells us all about our food sources, sometimes revealing what we’d rather not hear — are selling like (organic) hotcakes. Barbara Kingsolver also made a splash in her book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, detailing how she and her family vowed to spend a year eating only food that either they had grown or that was grown in their community.

There will continue to be challenges moving in the greener direction. In Julie’s post, It’s Not Easy Being Green, she mentioned how it’s hard to deal with lots of little vendors. And it’s also hard, sometimes, getting customers on board with prices that might be a little higher and a menu that changes due to the seasonal nature of what is available. But we’re going to keep pushing in the direction of good, green practices. And I’m going to keep using this as an excuse — you know, research — to hit up awesome restaurants that have been down the path before us.