Across the country, interest in eating locally produced food has grown sustainably over the past few years. I personally have been looking for ways to eat less processed industrial food and more natural, local foods. On Saturday I went out in the middle of a blizzard to the Eat Local Exhibition in Shawnee, Kansas. I went looking to take my step towards better eating and ended up taking a step towards quiet revolution. See the start of a my food revolution below the break.
I went to the Expo originally looking to join a CSA. For those who don't know, a CSA is Community Supported Agriculture. Members of a CSA buy a "share" in a farm. They either pay at the beginning of a growing season or on a regular basis. In return, members receive fresh produce, eggs, and/or meat regularly from the farm. What a CSA delivers depends on the season, the location of the farm, and the farmers. Some CSAs are for locally raised and butchered meat, some provide an option for eggs or farm fresh dairy, and some also include other products such as jams and bread. Another key distinction between CSAs is the point of delivery. Some CSAs have the subscribers drive to the farm to take delivery of their share for the week (or month, etc.) while some have a centralized pick-up location, often a parking lot in a shopping center. A few CSAs and organizations provide home delivery. With so many options, it can be hard to pick the right CSA.
For those who think that a CSA might too much for them, you may have already engaged in a farm to table transaction and not realized it. When you shop at a farmers' market or patronize a road side stand, you're eliminating all of corporate agriculture to buy directly from the producer. Just as when you handed your money to a farmer for produce at a market, a CSA directly benefits a farm in your area, bypassing corporations. A key difference is that with a CSA, for the most part, you can not control what produce is delivered. You receive what is in season and what is freshest. After generations of Americans buying whatever they want whenever they want at their local supermarket, the idea of eating only what is fresh and locally available may seem radical but is not the most radical idea in food today.
I had the opportunity to meet a lot of great people at the event, many of whom I hope to profile in the coming weeks. None of them seemed radical or revolutionary, and yet that's what they were doing. Not the large families, promoting their farms, not the growers explaining to novices how to plant vegetables, and not the vendors with their wholesome wares would seem like radicals. Yet each of them was a food soldier in the revolution to take back food from corporate interests and return it to a relationship between the people who grow our food and us. They spoke of common themes, wanting a closer connection to their food, wanting to know that their food is safe and nutritious, wanting to do their part for the Earth. Among the most radical and the most innocuous of these were promoting a radically different model from American industrial agriculture. They were encouraging visitors to grow their own food.
For thousands of years, people have grown their own food, tended their own crops, and raised their own livestock. But in a few short generations, we have totally divorced our ourselves from the land which sustains us. According to one source who worked on it, the Kansas City, Missouri School District Economics curriculum was at one point going to call for students to take a field trip to a supermarket "to see where food comes from." When asked why they wouldn't instead go to a farm, an official indicated that for their children, food came from a supermarket, and that was that. Please consider that, teaching our children that food magically comes from a supermarket, and ignoring the millions of people and billions of dollars behind our foodstuffs. This sort of thinking is why local food and self-sufficiency is such a radical idea.
The Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture was in the middle of the room, with a large tower of plants, ready to be taken home and planted. No matter where you were in the room, you could not help but notice their plants, calling out to be taken home, to be nurtured, and whispering of harvests to come. I have always wanted to grow my own food. To raise a plant, nurture it, care for it, and see it grow into full bloom, ready to be taken to the table. I could not resist the chance to tend a piece of earth and have it yield the bounty of nature, just as my ancestors have for generations. Despite the blizzard outside, I bought three plants that day and brought them home. They sit now in my Kitchen, waiting to be planted, waiting for their chance. I have never considered myself to be radical, but I am now doing something very radical, growing my own food. I went to the expo looking for better produce, and came back with the seedlings of revolution.
