Animal, Vegetable, Miracle_ A Year of Food Life - Barbara Kingsolver [78]
Marketing jingles from every angle lure patrons to turn our backs on our locally owned stores, restaurants, and farms. And nobody considers that unpatriotic. This appears to aggravate Tod Murphy. “We have the illusion of consumer freedom, but we’ve sacrificed our community life for the pleasure of purchasing lots of cheap stuff. Making and moving all that stuff can be so destructive: child labor in foreign lands, acid rain in the Northeast, depleted farmland, communities where the big economic engine is crystal meth. We often have the form of liberty, but not the substance.”
Speaking Up
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The increased availability of local food in any area is a direct function of the demand from local consumers. Most of us are not accustomed to asking about food origins, but it’s easy enough to do.
First: in grocery stores, when the cashier asks if you found everything you were looking for, you could say, “Not really, I was looking for local produce.” The smaller the store, the more open a grocer may be to your request. Food co-ops should be especially receptive. Restaurants may also be flexible about food purchasing, and your exchanges with the waitstaff or owner can easily include questions about which entrees or wines are from local sources. Restaurateurs do understand that local food is the freshest available, and they’re powerful participants in the growing demand for local foods. You can do a little homework in advance about what’s likely to be available in your region.
Local and regional policymakers need to hear our wishes. Many forums are appropriate for promoting local food: town and city hall meetings, school board meetings, even state commissioner meetings. It makes sense to speak up about any venue where food is served, or where leaders have some control over food acquisition, including churches, social clubs, and day-care centers. Federal legislators also need to hear about local food issues. Most state governments consider farming-related legislation almost weekly. You can learn online about what issues are being considered, to register your support for laws that help local farms. In different parts of the country the specifics change, but the motives don’t. As more people ask, our options will grow.
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STEVEN L. HOPP
It does not seem exactly radical to want to turn this tide, starting with lunch from the neighborhood. Nor is it an all-or-nothing proposition. “If every restaurant got just ten percent of its food from local farmers,” Tod boldly proposed, “the infrastructure of corporate food would collapse.”
Ten percent seemed like a small pebble to aim at Goliath’s pate. Lily picked up her spoon and dipped into Rock Bottom Farm’s maple ice cream. We could hear the crash of corporate collapse with every bite. Tough work, but somebody’s got to do it.
11 • SLOW FOOD NATIONS
Late June
North of the border, in Petite Italie, where everyone speaks French, it can be hard to remember where you are exactly. This was Montreal, outermost point on our elliptical vacation. Our Canadian relatives gamely asked what we wanted to see in their city, and we answered: Food! We wondered what was available locally here at the threshold (to our southerly way of thinking) of the frozen tundra. We lit out for Chinatown and Little Italy. Here, as in the United States, the best shot at finding locally based cuisine seems to involve seeking out the people who recently moved here from someplace else.
We passed a few restaurants that advertised “Canadian food” along with the principal ethnic fare. Our hosts explained this meant something like “American” food, more an absence than a presence of specific character: not Chinese, not Italian. Is it true that “American food” means “nothing?” I pondered this as we walked down a street of Chinese shops where butchers