Warning: Barbara Kingsolver's nonfiction book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life" (HarperCollins, 2007, $26.95), co-written by her husband and one of her daughters, may inspire you to run screaming out of Kroger and into your closest farmer's market.
In the face of the growing local foods movement, Kingsolver and her family launch the ultimate experiment: Could they feed themselves for an entire year on what they could harvest on their small Virginia farm, supplemented by what others produced others within a close range of their home?
Kingsolver's local food manifesto is timely as organic food becomes an increasingly controversial choice. Large food conglomerates are buying out organic brands. Hain Food Group, for example, owns such brands as Health Valley, Celestial Seasonings, Bearitos and Garden of Eatin'. And who are some of the principal investors in Hain Food Group? ExxonMobil (gasoline, oil spills and global warming); Philip Morris (tobacco); Monsanto (genetically modified foods and hormones); and Lockheed Martin (weapons of mass destruction). What does this mean?
Clearly, as large corporations continue to take control of the organic industry, ethical and safety standards are falling. Free range, for example, does not necessarily mean that the chickens or cows are spending much, if any, of their time in bucolic bliss. And from an environmental perspective, an organic artichoke from California might avoid pollution through pesticides, but it uses a great deal of fossil fuel pollution to arrive at your front door. As Kingsolver's husband, Stephen Hopp, points out, "Americans put almost as much fossil fuel into our refrigerators as our cars."
But that isn't the only thing we should be worried about. For example, Kingsolver points out that only six corporations control 98 percent of seed sales around the world. Some of these companies genetically modify their seeds so that you must buy their expensive fertilizers to make the seeds germinate. These companies also promote growing limited varieties of plants, which is troubling from a biodiversity standpoint.
"In Peru, the original home of potatoes, Andean farmers once grew some four thousand potato varieties, each with its own name, flavor and use, ranging in size from tiny to gigantic and covering the color spectrum from indigo-purple to red, orange, yellow, and white," Kingsolver writes. Yesterday at Kroger, I'm pretty sure I only saw about three different kinds. This kind of uniformity leaves a farmer's whole crop vulnerable to being wiped out by insects or disease.
Taste is also an issue. The tomatoes you find in the supermarket are bred for disease resistance, durability during long-distance travel and uniform appearance rather than flavor. So as corporations take over the seed market, we all suffer.
After a disturbing peek into the dark side of America's food industry, Kingsolver sees consumption of local food as the solution to many of our society's ills. Basically, she concludes that eating locally (and responsibly) grown, heirloom produce and meats improves family relationships, general health and nutrition, gastronomic taste, local economies, environmental quality, and food and energy security.
But although Kingsolver, her husband and her two daughters gamely raise, harvest and preserve much of their own food supply on their farm, it is not practical for many American families to grow more than a few tomato plants on the back patio or some herbs on the windowsill. Fortunately, here in Jackson, there are several farmers markets where you can find your fresh, local, in-season produce to eat or preserve, including the largest one on High Street near the fairgrounds, the original one on the corner of Woodrow Wilson and West, and the Saturday morning Belhaven Market on Fortification Street.
For products that can't be produced locally, such as coffee, tea and chocolate, Kingsolver encourages us to choose fair trade and organic products that promote sound agricultural practices worldwide.
Or experiment with making your own staples. Kingsolver writes that cheese making, for example, is easy and fun. "The whole process—from cold milk to a beautifully braided, impress-your-guests mozzarella on the plate—takes less than an hour," she writes.
Hard cheeses take longer, but they are still very approachable with some milk, pre-packaged bacterial cultures and a cheese thermometer.
Enjoy Kingsolver's garden, her travels, her recipes, her experiments with raising poultry and making cheese, and her unexpected rationale for eating meat. Kingsolver admits that it is virtually impossible to be a local food purist, but even a few small changes in your family's pantry (and on your bookshelf) can make a big difference in the health, security and environmental quality of American life. If you only have time to pick up one book this spring, this should be it.
Previous Commentsshow
What's this?More like this story
More stories by this author
Support our reporting -- Follow the MFP.
Comments
Use the comment form below to begin a discussion about this content.