Think globally, eat locally: Eating our way to environmental protection

by Donna La Pre, Summer 2002

The first year my husband and I moved to Rappahannock, in 1997, I was stunned to find just how little food was available that was raised locally in an environmentally responsible way. With the high proportion of land to resident, it seemed ridiculous to drive 40 miles away to shop and find anything near the quality and selection of food we were able to buy in New York City, from local farmers!

While waiting for my garden to produce, we fortuitously found the Abels' wonderful asparagus, and the (sadly) last-ever pickings of Miriam Harris's strawberries. We also discovered the wonderful goat cheeses from Rucker Farm.

Now, five years later, things have improved in the availability of locally and organically grown food. Waterpenny Farm, in Sperryville, has a summer farm stand and a subscription program for receiving produce weekly. Grass-fed meats are also delivered there monthly from Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia. Epicurious Cow in Ben Venue and Sunnyside Market in Washington are offering some local organic meats and produce. In nearby Warrenton, the farmer's market has expanded. However, with all the improvements in the local food scene, it could get better still.

Why is growing and eating local, organically produced foods important? Eating and everything connected with growing, processing, selling, and distributing food confers an enormous weight—beneficial or negative—upon local and global environments. Each mouthful of food we ingest is a link to the world and to the environment in which it was grown. Food should enrich us and nurture us, as well as every natural element and living creature associated with that food.

Furthermore, food brings us home—to our tables, gardens, farms, and communities. When we eat food grown locally, we spend more time where we live. Needing food to survive, we invest more to protect local food supplies and the health of the land that gives these gifts. We are ever reminded of the special habitat we live in.

By not growing and consuming food locally in an environmentally responsible way, we're also supporting a food system that perpetuates environmental problems such as toxic chemicals, nutrient runoff, soil erosion, genetically engineered foods, ill-treated and diseased livestock, and disappearance of wild and rural places.

On-site farm practices of chemical applications and poor land use are only some of the negative impacts of our prevailing food system: the profligate dependence on petroleum-based products that prop up the food industry are more insidious because they are less connected in consumers' minds to the cost of food to land, people, and animals. Plastic packaging, herbicides, and pesticides are all derived from oil. Oil is used to power farm equipment and transport the food.

Most supermarket food is grown by machine on mega-farms and travels an average of 1,500 miles, and the U.S. is the largest supplier in the global food and agricultural supply business. It should therefore be no surprise where the major portion of our oil supply is going and why we are ever jockeying for more control of the world's oil sources. All the while, the image of our farms and food is touted as wholesome, cheap, and convenient. In reality, this system impoverishes land, natural abundance, health and cultural creativity and puts more dollars in the pockets of chemical corporations, shipping agents, and advertising executives than in the pockets of farmers.

All of these issues can appear overwhelming and somehow too far away to change. A system that is disconnected from nature and humanity engenders feelings of disconnection and disempowerment, yet it is truly within everyone's reach to do something about it. One thing we can do is to support local farmers who raise food in a healthy, environmentally responsible way, and to encourage more of the same. I'd like to see Rappahannock have a local farmer's market, locally produced organic grains and more unsprayed fruit—even an organic bakery and cafe.

Those of us who have land can also grow at least some if not most of our own produce. It's easy enough to learn to do. Practicing gardeners could organize to exchange seeds, plants, and information. Madison County has a terrific organic cooperative program, through which locally grown, organic, and unsprayed food bought in bulk from local growers is sold to members and distributed by volunteers—couldn't we initiate something similar in Rappahannock?

The truth is, as more people seek out and ask for food grown in a healthy, ecologically sound manner, the more available it will become. Big change occurs by making small changes. While it may take more effort, and in some cases more money, to eat and farm responsibly, consider the support of health and life, reaching far beyond your own, this effort would bestow. Think about the real price of not doing so, considering all the hidden costs in conventional food-raising.

Realizing the connections food has to us and the natural world, through blood and cell, senses and soil, water and kinship—this is the first step to becoming true stewards of our environment.