Become a Local Food Activist

By Charlie Jackson (Originally printed in the October/November 2002 New Life Journal)

We live in an increasingly complex world in which change is a constant. It is often hard to know how to respond to distant and complicated events. Our food, for example, comes to the region from an average of 1500 miles away. We never get to meet the farmer, see the land being farmed, or have any control over the process of how our food is grown. In western North Carolina we are rapidly losing our agriculture base and we should be concerned. With the loss of local agriculture we lose any control we might have over the way our food is grown, the quality of our food, or the environmental and social impacts of food production.

In the years following World War II the United States implemented farm policies that relied on industrial models, with heavy chemical inputs, with emphasis being on producing "cheap food." These policies led to the rapid concentration of farms - from 7 million farms 70 years ago to only 2 million today, even though the general population doubled in that time. And although these policies have resulted in cheaper food at the checkout line, as Andrew Kimbrell notes in The Fatal Harvest Reader, prices fail to address the "staggering externalized costs of our food." Our food system is heavily subsidized by direct government payments to agribusiness, our food system incurs environmental clean-up costs that are absorbed at public expense, and our health is diminished, to mention just a few of the costs of industrial agriculture.

Because of loss of local food production in the southern Appalachians, our food travels long distances over many days to reach the dinner table, resulting in nutritional and flavor loss. And distance also leads to colossal wastes of energy that can only be sustained by government subsidies and cheap-oil dominated foreign policy. As the Worldwatch Institute reports "in the United States, refrigerating, transporting, and storing food uses eight times as much energy as is provided by the food itself."

So who loses in this industrial food system? The environment loses because of the massive chemical inputs, wasteful resource use, and concentrated animal wastes. And since 1960 we have lost half of our topsoil and continue to lose topsoil 17 times faster than it is replaced. Farmers lose because industrial farming only pays the farmer 7 cents of the food dollar, the majority going to processors, marketers, and input suppliers. The result of this has been a dramatic concentration of farmland and the loss of family farms. In western North Carolina we have lost over 70% of our farmland in the last 50 years. The consumer loses because the food we are eating is now developed and grown for transportation and shelf life rather than for nutrition or taste, we lose control of how food is grown because we no longer know our farmers, and we are losing our countryside of forests and farms.

So, what can we do and how can we become local food activists? The solution is as wonderful as it is obvious. Eat locally grown food! In a world where it is increasingly hard to have an impact, we can take direct action by supporting local farms. As Wendell Berry has noted "eating is an agricultural act." In our area we are still blessed with the heritage and presence of many family farms. They are eager to continue farming and producing the freshest and best tasting food available anywhere. Many of these farms will only survive if we support them by buying locally grown food. By buying locally grown food we support our neighbors, our community, our environment, and an Appalachian way of life.

Being a local food activist is not without challenges. The local food activist will be expected to find sources of locally grown food, meet and develop relationships with local farmers, and to eat the freshest and best tasting food available. Fortunately, there is a source for locating locally grown food. The Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project (ASAP) compiles listings from throughout western North Carolina of farms, u-picks, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), tailgate markets, restaurants, grocers, bed and breakfasts, and bakers and caterers that sell locally grown food. The Local Food Guide is on-line at www.BuyAppalachian.org and the printed Guide is available at local businesses that support local agriculture.

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