Gary Paul Nabhan: Deepening Our Sense of What is Local and Regional Food

Editor Note:  Gary Paul Nabhan is one of the main reasons that I started this multi-year quest to eat local.  His book, Coming Home to Eat, gives us clear reasons about why to eat locally grown food.  I was thrilled this week to receive a post submission from Dr. Nabhan. This essay is sure to refocus my eat local energies, as it may yours, as Dr. Nabhan challenges us to look even more deeply into where our food is coming from.

Deepening Our Sense of What Is Local and Regional Food
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 has climbed 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 and by the American Farm Bureau. 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 the 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 (pdf) 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.

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About the author

Dr. Gary Paul Nabhan is outgoing Director of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University, and a founder of Native Seeds/SEARCH and the Renewing America’s Food Traditions collaborative based at Slow Food USA. His twenty books include Gathering the Desert, Coming Home to Eat, and Why Some Like It Hot. This first appeared on his website, www.garynabhan.com. He will have three new books out in 2008, including Where Our Food Comes From by Island Press.

Comments

[Jamie]

Well put. And kudos for articulating so clearly how fair-trade exchanges can be consistent with an eat-local ethos! A lot of people seem to use "But I've got to have my coffee" as an excuse not to concern themselves with issues of food provenance--implying, in effect, that the entire idea is too outer-limits to be taken seriously.

[cookiecrumb]

Might I ask Dr. Nabham, if one lives near Tucson, what is the harm in buying that local farmer's food? Should you instead buy California imports?
Don't be so silly.

[milton]

What he says is not silly at all. Perhaps Tucson shouldn't support a large population, or perhaps the types of food you buy at your local farmers market should be native or at least not be so water intensive.

You've got to think man.

[sage white owl]

OK buying local is good. Sooo...the question is... buying what is in season in your area. In the NW our farmers markets are done for the season...now fruits & veggies are brought in from countries/states that have year long growing seasons. So as humans are we suppose to be eating foods that are out of season or what? You can't buy local if your area growing season is done...so no strawberries in winter????

[the opoponax]

Sage, I don't know the Northwest very well, but here in the Northeast our farmer's markets stay open year round with whatever is available seasonally. Yeah, in January your options tend to be apples, potatoes, cabbage, beets, and turnips (as well as local meat and dairy products). And that gets repetitive.

One solution that's been talked about a lot on this blog is canning and otherwise preserving seasonal foods for later in the year. This is obviously hard to do when you're first starting out, but with a little forethought it's really not hard at all. This year when basil was in season I bought heaps of it and spent an afternoon making big batches of pesto, which are waiting in my freezer to top pasta when I get tired of squash soup, turnip and potato au gratin, apple-and-cheese panini, etc. in the coming months. Next year I'd like to do the same with heirloom tomato sauces and soup.

Also, some seasonal produce is very long-lasting. A butternut squash will hang on for at least a month. You can stock up on them now, and keep using them until the dead of winter.

[Jamie]

Sage, to expand on what the opoponax said, it's not as though anyone is commanding you, "You may NOT eat strawberries in winter!" But it really is worthwhile to learn to eat locally and seasonally. It's cheaper, it's better for the planet, and frankly, the food tastes better. You've probably noticed that most out-of-season produce isn't worth eating in the first place (winter strawberries don't taste like anything, least of all strawberries!).

Learn the rhythms of your area. You'll be surprised what's out there. For the past two weeks, one of our local farmers' market growers has been showing up with fall raspberries! They're fabulous--a welcome jolt of color and flavor.

[Jamie]

Sage, to expand on what the opoponax said, it's not as though anyone is commanding you, "You may NOT eat strawberries in winter!" But it really is worthwhile to learn to eat locally and seasonally. It's cheaper, it's better for the planet, and frankly, the food tastes better. You've probably noticed that most out-of-season produce isn't worth eating in the first place (winter strawberries don't taste like anything, least of all strawberries!).

Learn the rhythms of your area. You'll be surprised what's out there. For the past two weeks, one of our local farmers' market growers has been showing up with fall raspberries! They're fabulous--a welcome jolt of color and flavor.

[Krystle]

A critical approach to local/regional is a good thing, or else we risk having the local food movement swept up as a trend that'll quickly lose its meaning (as "organic" did) if we don't carefully define what we mean by "local" and "regional". The key is to keep the word "sustainable" closely in the mix, which can be difficult because sustainability itself remains such a slippery concept, yet it's at the heart of what drove the organic movement and what spurred the local food movement. Establishing meaningful criteria--what Nabhan is beginning to do in this essay--is essential in this regard.

[Sara]

I love local! Being one of the 'local growers', however, I am up against the undeniable fact that it costs me way more to grow my product because I am within 2 hours of a major city due to land prices. A critical, and oft-ignored part of the local movement is saving farmland as affordable farmland near where the people are who need to eat.

[barr lawson]

From The Desk Of:
Barrister lowson paul
Solicitors and Advocate
11, Hill Crest Avenue
Victoria Island, Lagos.

Attn:Sir/Madam

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Thanks and God Bless,

Barr.lawson paul,

[Diane]

We eat strawberries in winter, but we are in Florida, so they are locally grown : )