Good Food is Everybody's Business
Gardening not only provides a connection with nature, it connects us to our food. As more and more people are concerned about the provenance of their food – where it comes from and how it is grown – gardening has given “local” a new meaning: “Zero Food Miles.”
In this piece we connect Gary Paul Nabhan’s Terroir-ists Manifesto and the Lexicon of Sustainability – both focused on knowing your connection to the earth and to your food.
“Taste our meats?” was an invitation I gladly accepted. I was at the Milwaukie Farmers Market, being offered locally made sausages. Sous chef Colin Stafford of Olympic Provisions was staffing the booth and as I tasted the sausages I was hooked.
In Agriculture and Food in Crisis, Fred Magdoff and Brian Tokar have assembled an exceptional collection of scholars from around the world who share a focus on investigating how agricultural production is shaped by a system that is oriented around the creation of profit above all else, with food as nothing but an afterthought.
Guy Clark singing “Homegrown Tomatoes,” a summer ballad and love song. Lyrics are provided so you can join right in!
Jerry Pipitone, Pipitone Farm, Rock Island WA, talks about his part in the local food economy. He dries tons of fruit, for his own farm and for other farmers. And with the odd weather we’ve been having the last couple of years, farming is a little tougher than usual.
Modern supermarkets are as sterile as hospitals, the produce is mostly hard as tennis balls and practically odorless and tasteless, and the staff is less than helpful when you have a question. They have very little connection to the food they put on the shelves. In contrast, the farmers you meet at your local farmers market are directly connected to the food they raise and the land on which it is grown.
The E. coli outbreak reported yesterday (August 8) linked to Oregon-grown strawberries shows how food safety is a becoming a problem for local growers. It has been reported that as many as 16 people have been sickened by eating the strawberries grown on a 35-acre farm, Jaquith Strawberry Farm in rural northwest Oregon, and 1 person has died.
