Seeking Deep Sustainability with Local Food

These thoughts began in late July. I was in a “Trump-slump” you might say—healthcare, immigration, racism, environmental issues all showing further signs of an unraveling of core values of civility, caring, and responsibility. Worst-case climate scenarios were being actively debated (more on that another time). How did we get into this mess? More importantly, how do we get out?

I believe that we can get out of this slump, that we can restore these core values, and that local food is just one tool—but a very powerful and nurturing tool—for addressing many root causes of these current issues.

Caring: Perhaps the most important underlying cause of unsustainability is simply a lack of sufficient caring for other than ourselves—other people, other beings, the world around us. Sharing food is one of the most fundamental human acts of compassion and an enduring symbol of caring for other people. The more we practice this by first being willing to see that others are hungry, sharing—especially food we have grown locally, and then working toward food security for all people, the more we will reinforce this core value and extend it to areas other than food.

Bringing Culture Back into the Food System: Michael Pollan, Gary Nabhan, Winona LaDuke, and many others have underscored for me the importance of culture in diets, in growing food, and in our basic relationships to food. Cultural tendencies—for food and otherwise—can obviously be good or bad; not all norms from the past are good by any means. But if we critically choose and embrace those cultural tendencies that we know are good for us, it can add a richness to dietary guidelines that transcends lists of ingredients, vitamins, and minerals. For example, following Pollan’s admonition, “Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food,” could completely transform—and perhaps simplify—your next trip to the supermarket. Supporting and honoring culturally appropriate foods of Native Americans and other cultural groups taps into nutritional wisdom acquired over centuries.

Confronting Fast-Food Values: Alice Waters has made the most wonderful comparison between fast-food values and slow-food values—that we are choosing between not only foods but values when we eat. My take on this is that we have the opportunity—three times a day—to confront our human tendencies for too much convenience, immediacy, cheapness, and consumerism (all of which I am painfully aware of in myself). Left unchecked, these tendencies hurt not only our health, but the health and well being of others and our future. Growing our food, seeking real food from nearby farmers, taking time to cook, and eating a bit slower and more deliberately surely run counter to our modern lifestyle and tendencies, but embody the slow-food values that can transform our lives and the world beyond the dinner plate.

Growing Food—An Overwhelmingly Practical Solution: Bringing attention to critical problems without suggesting solutions is pointless. Solutions abound, but one of our favorite “whole solutions” can give people something practical, nurturing, economical, rewarding, instructive, lifestyle-enhancing, and therapeutic to dig into, so to speak. Nearly everyone can grow at least a small amount of food, from a container tomato on the doorstep or sprouts on a sunny windowsill to a backyard garden or community garden plot. Next best, you can get to know and support one or more local growers—and visit their farms and ranches. Getting involved in growing food, one way or another, helps us make better food choices, be more supportive of local farmers and ranchers, and be more aware of the interconnections between food production and nature. Finally, growing food keeps us actively engaged in helping solve several of the more perplexing social, economic, and environmental problems our society faces.

Connecting Food Systems and Ecosystems: We at HCFS use the landscape-level concept of the foodshed to make this connection. Envisioning our local foodsheds as encompassing our food producing ecosystems and the surrounding more natural ecosystems forces us to see their mutual dependence—one can’t be healthy without the other. A local food system—all that is done to bring us local food—is healthy only when the foodshed is healthy. I see this as a test of our wisdom, of our ability to see the connection between our food choices, our agriculture, and the integrity of the natural world. I feel blessed to live in Southwest Colorado with plenty of wild areas surrounding a patchwork of gardens, farms, and ranches—a great place to observe, preserve, and restore healthy connections between agricultural and surrounding ecosystems.

Exploring Carrying Capacity or “Foodability”: If the people of an area wish to be more self-reliant for food, the question arises of how many people can the local area support in terms of food. Questions abound: How self-reliant can we be—or want to be? With what desired quality of life? How much natural area do we want preserved? How do we separate the footprint for food from that for all else we require—or desire? Then, what about land suitability, water, climate, diets, and market forces—and the fact that all of these are changing! The asking of these questions may be as instructive as finding an elusive “answer.” Again, in Southwest Colorado, we have much open land, a modest population overall, and people who care deeply about food and about our natural landscapes. The questions may be somewhat different elsewhere, but wherever you live and eat, exploring “foodability” can help guide the preservation, appropriate use, and stewardship of our land and our environment—and to find our “place in nature.”

Ultimately, our quest for localizing food can help us find our place in nature which in turn should inform our efforts toward overall sustainability into the future.