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Locavore Mania
- or everything old is new again...
baltimore eats - September, 2008
by John Shields
A movement is sweeping America with a fervor akin to a spiritual revival. It's not about New Deal politics or a "Take Back the Night" neighborhood efforts. It's all about LOCAL FOOD.
Around the country farmers' markets are springing up quicker than Starbucks, touting the miracle of growing food close to the communities that will consume it. Non-profits are being formed daily to promote local foods for classrooms, community supported agriculture, food as economic development, and food as an educational component for the classroom.
Web sites galore herald a new era of food production with links to other groups and chat rooms that morph into networking groups. Locavores in carrot and zucchini costumes are now the new Shriners of community parades. It is a new world of food - Rejoice.
I totally believe in these efforts, and in actuality, I am a member of quite a few of these local food organizations. It is vitally important to reinvigorate and reanimate our local food economies. However, after reading more articles and visiting more web sites than I could possibly count, I am reminded of the simplicity of food. I fear that we are turning something as miraculous, yet simple, as a tiny seed, growing into a flowering aromatic plant whose fruits and leaves can nourish us, into merely the newest consumer trend.
Flipping from the New York Times best-seller list, to the pages of Harpers magazine I can't help but see that we are beginning to think of our food as some sort of rock star commodity-the latest glamorous thing for the privileged elite to obsess over. I fear that in doing so, we diminish the true nature of food and totally miss the most important points.
The food that we eat, has for countless generations, been grown locally, and anything other would amount to an anomaly. For our ancestors, growing and eating in any other manner would have been unimaginable. It's only the so-called "progress" of the twentieth century that has turned food on its head.
Now the obvious has become a new revelation. Our many Locavore spokespeople have become like prophets, eating locally grown arugula and crying out in the desert about this new way of growing and nurturing our bodies. But I think we delude ourselves. This manner of gaining sustenance is very, very old. It is what has always been, and whether the gigantic food corporations like it or not, we will return to it. We will have to.
Here in Baltimore, our network of municipal markets began in the 1700's. The produce, dairy, meats, seafood, fruits, cheeses and bakery goods sold in these markets came solely from the surrounding fields, forests, waters, gardens and ovens.
Without being aware of it, we may often drive past the ghosts of the great North Avenue Market, or the inner-city's Belair Market. Although seriously degraded from their once grand status, some of our original markets are still in operation too, like the Hollins Market, Broadway Market, Lexington Market, and Cross Street Market.
At their inception, our municipal markets were genuine farmers' markets, open aired and street-side, just as our new markets are today. As time went on, the city covered most of the markets to protect the vendors and their products from the elements and to insure that food would be available all year round, every day.
These markets were like the town squares of old. Many of my relatives had stalls and sold their goods at the markets for generations. This was their business-farming and selling their wares at the market. They developed relationships over the years and their customers became their friends-even sometimes their family, since romance will bloom wherever friendship is strong and real. The food at the market was grown, raised or caught within 50-60 miles of the city and it was eaten in the city. It was and is that simple.
As something we were apt to call "progress" raised its ugly head in the mid to late 20th century, the markets gradually grew passe-just a grubby, old-fashioned thing that could be happily relegated to the dust bin. Because we now had pre-packaged and processed food and a "modern" lifestyle.
No more vegetables that might still be dusted with the soil that gave them life-Oh no! Dirty! We became a modern civilization-and today, sadly, most of our City Markets have become reduced to little more than Fast Food Malls.
In a very short time, virtually the blink of an eye in the course of human history, this manner of eating-or maybe I should just call it consuming-has left us choking in a plague of health, environmental, and economic ills.
Whether they realize it or not, today's Locavore groups are merely calling us out from the hideouts of our pantries, where all the freeze-dried, dehydrated, ready to microwave packets are stacked up above the recycling bins overflowing with take-out cartons.
We really do know how to eat. We really do know how to grow. We have simply grown complacent and lazy.
So let's be aware that we are not creating anything new here. We're simply dusting ourselves off, and coming out of the darkness of our recent delusions, and beginning to see the light. We must not fool ourselves that we are creating a new, exclusive, elite, educated or informed way of eating and growing. We need only look to the past to see our future.
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