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  • From: Don Bowen <don.bowen AT earthlink.net>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Are you a locavore?
  • Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2007 12:00:54 -0700

At 4/28/2007, you wrote:

True enough, but we don't have to go back nearly that far to draw a line
where eating far distant foods was a luxury and and option and not an necessity.
That is, here abouts in the 50's and 60's far flung foods, mainly out of
season foods, were available, but they were a rare treat.

Many people fail to realize just how recent much of what we take for granted was not available. I grew up in the 50s on a farm. We ate what the farm produced when in season, canned and froze what we could. There were no fresh vegetables flown in from Chile in the winter, if there were they were much too expensive. There were canneries, diaries, bakeries all within that 100 mile circle and this was in the rural midwest. But cheap oil and the Interstate system made long distance transportation of the cheapest commodities possible. Then businesses realized that it was cheaper to buy up the competition than enter a new market then they realized that one huge plant was cheaper per item to operate than several smaller so started closing plants. Now look where we are.



Don Bowen Awl Knotted Up KI6DIU
http://www.braingarage.com
My travel journal
http://www.braingarage.com/Dons/Travels/journal/Journal.html

I am omnivagant.
From genegerue AT ruralize.com Sun Apr 29 10:16:39 2007
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From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 07:16:37 -0700
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Subject: Re: [Homestead] Are you a locavore?
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On Apr 28, 2007, at 7:10 AM, Clansgian AT wmconnect.com wrote:

[James, I found this post in my spam filter file. Probably, I suspect, because you changed your e-mail address. Don't know about the rest of this tribe, but this spam filter is smarter than I am in that it rejects all strangers.]

. . . Somone (may or may not have observed) "100 years ago everyone was a locavore." . . . . True enough, but we don't have to go back nearly that far to draw a line where eating far distant foods was a luxury and and option and not an necessity. . . .Sometime between then and now all the food for the common masses moved farther and farther away. Now there are no bakeries, no slaughter houses, almost no dairies, and eggs come from several hundred miles away. Heck, even our cornbread and beans are from more than 100 miles away. . . . I would suggest a view of our eating history not just as local diet vs imported diet as much as when we became utterly dependent on the imported diet.

Seems to me that for nearly everyone food purchase decisions are purely economic, e.g., if I can pay the price I will continue to eat wild Alaskan salmon and drink Colorado beer and Columbian coffee, knowing full well that environmental degradation results from the energy used to bring those items to me. The health and pleasure benefits outweigh my concern for Gaia. Today.

Food production facilities are run not on what is good for the planet, but what is good for the bottom line. Local slaughterhouses, dairies, bakeries, processing plants, and restaurants cannot exist but for elite and discrete consumer groups. In few areas of the country--California, Florida--is food production parallel to consumer demands. Chez Panisse, the Berkeley restaurant founded and run by Alice Waters, is an example. Here are some telling quotes from the CP web site:

"The menu changes every night, designed to be appropriate to the season and composed to show off the finest ingredients obtainable including meat, fish, and poultry. . . .

"Alice and Chez Panisse have become convinced that the best-tasting food is organically grown and harvested in ways that are ecologically sound, by people who are taking care of the land for future generations. The quest for such ingredients has largely determined the restaurant's cuisine. Chez Panisse has tried for years to make diners here partake of the immediacy and excitement of vegetables just out of the garden, fruit right off the branch, and fish straight out of the sea. In doing so, Chez Panisse has stitched together a patchwork of over sixty nearby suppliers, whose concerns, like the restaurant's, are environmental harmony and optimal flavor."

A glance at the menu--http://www.chezpanisse.com/pgcafemenu.html-- tells us that dinner for two, even without wine, will cost about a hundred dollars.





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