Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

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Gary Nabhan is also author of several books including Coming Home to Eat:
The Sensual Pleasures and Global Politics of Local Foods.
http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Home-Eat-Pleasures-Politics/dp/0393020177
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 Deepening Our Sense of What Is Local and Regional Food
http://www.garynabhan.com/press/gpn000016.html
By: Gary Paul Nabhan, RAFT founder

Now that Time magazine has done a cover feature article on the local foods
movement and a book on the same topic by bestselling author Barbara
Kingsolver and her family is poised to climb up the New York Times top-ten
non-fiction list, we might want to ask what actually is it that we want to
promote by using phrases like “ Buy Fresh, Buy Local”.   I can assure
you that there will be increasing criticism of the so-called local food
movement, building on the Hudson Institute's feeble attempt to discredit it
last fall in a variety of newspapers, with added absurdities being
published in The Economist.

On the other hand, a reputable ethicist, Peter Singer, fears in his
co-authored book The Way We Eat that 1) an emphasis on purchasing foods
locally in U.S. communities will disadvantage needy producers in foreign
countries-- as if India's producers of Basmati rice actually gain much of
the retail dollar spent on their rice in the U.S .--- or 2) the unethically
raised beef or chicken will suddenly take over farmers markets and CSAs
---as if Conagra and Tyson execs will soon be hanging out in overalls
selling antibiotic-laced breast meat on  Saturdays at their local farmers
markets.  I can predict, however, that more substantive critiques will
arise, and I, for one, welcome them. It is time that we deepen our sense of
what we mean by local and regional , offer others better reasons as to why
these concerns matter, and steadfastly resist any pressure to endorse
simplistic formulas such as a 100-mile diet or an in-state diet.

            Here are some ways we can deepen what we promote by the terms
local and regional:

1. Local means from a farm, ranch or fishing boat that is locally-owned and
operated, using the management skills and the labor of local community
members. A farm that is owned all or in part by an extra-local corporation,
and which uses migrant workers who live outside the community does not
benefit its community economically or culturally as much as it should.

2. A regional food is one that has been tied to the traditions of a
particular landscape or seascape and its cultures for decades if not for
centuries. If the same mix of mesclun greens is grown in greenhouses across
the country and sold in every farmers market from Maine to New Mexico, it
is more like a franchised product (from a seed company) than it is a local
or regional food. Yes it may be produced five miles from your home and
thereby reduce food miles, but its seeds are not saved and adapted to local
or regional conditions, they are bought from afar every year.

3. The miles a food travels (“food miles ”) must be placed in the size
and volume of the mode of transport, its source of fuel, and its frequency
of travel. Using biodiesel in a larger truck may be more efficient, and
leave less of a carbon footprint than using leaded gas in an old clunker.
One in every five kilocalories in the American food production and delivery
system now underwrites transportation, as well as packaging and cooling
while in transit, so this will be an increasingly important issue to solve
by using alternative fuels, cost-efficient volumes, and ensuring that
vehicles holding their full capacity in both directions, perhaps by
carrying compost back to farms where the vegetables originated.

4. On farm energy and water use matter. If a farm near Tucson Arizona is
irrigated from a canal that transports Colorado River water hundreds of
miles (and at high ecological cost to wild riverine species), or if it uses
fossil groundwater set down during the Pleistocene pumped by fossil fuel
set down in Iran during the Pennsylvanian era, what is to be gained by
promoting its food?

5. Other on-farm inputs matter just as much.  Where are the sources of hay
for livestock, compost for garden crops or nitrogen for field crops? They
should be locally if not regionally-sourced.  Why call lamb
locally-produced in Idaho when its flock has wintered part of the year in
California and its hay comes in from southern Colorado?

6. Fair-trade with other cultures, localities and regions is fair game.
Circumvent they globalized economy for the items you truly need from other
regions by establishing fair-trade exchanges. It is not that we don't care
about farmers and ranchers elsewhere, we simply don't wish to see middlemen
gaining more of each consumer dollar than the producers do. Producers
inevitably plow money back into their communities and lands, intermediaries
seldom do.

7. Invest in the foods unique to your region that cannot or should not be
grown anywhere else. The attached RAFT map reminds us of ancient food
traditions based on climate, soil and culture, involving both native and
immigrant foods that have adapted and been integrated into particular
places. Because the U.S. currently lacks the geographic indicators such as
denominations of origin that reinforce the links between place, culture and
genetics of a particular food,  these place-based foods are truly
threatened by globalization. Invest in them and their original stewards.