History and the Connection to our Community
|
Tweet this story! Support our efforts for a sustainable world.
|
|
In a recent article posted on Forbes.com, Gary Paul Nabhan, editor of Renewing America’s Food Traditions, argued that local foods are good for more than just flavor and texture. When we buy local and seasonal food, “We’re getting history and the connection to our homeland.”
From the article:
A farmer’s market or green market can be an ideal place to make such a connection, and these have popped up at a steady clip in recent years. One estimate provided by Packaged Facts, a division of the consumer research company Market Research Group, shows a 40% increase in farmer’s markets between 2002 and 2006. At last count in 2006, there were 4,385 in the United States. Staffed with the farmers who tend and harvest the crops, they provide customers an opportunity to learn more about the food’s origins and how it was grown.
For the uninitiated, however, the farmer’s market can be intimidating. It shouldn’t be.
“While there is a fun, theatrical aspect [to farmer’s markets], consumers don’t have anything to be afraid of,” says Erika Lesser, executive director of Slow Food USA, a nonprofit educational organization. “No one’s going to throw a tomato at you and expect you to buy it.”
We’re a supermarket culture. We’ve grown so accustomed to a deep disconnect between producer and purveyor in our transactions that when we come face-to-face with folks selling goods that they themselves produced, we expect a sales pitch or awkward, forced, situation. This is an unfortunate symptom of our automated culture.
It used to be that shopping involved visits to the butcher, the baker, and the farmer at the dairy farm. Now we get annoyed when the roaming attendant at GloboFood’s self-checkout terminals tries to butt into our transaction. A return to buying local food, as Gary Paul Nabhan, points out not only reconnects us to Stuffed Moose Heart and other local traditional favorites, but it renews (and sustains) our local community itself.
The article above also references the Local Harvest directory of Farmers’ Markets, CSAs, and Organic Food. Check it out at localharvest.org.
