Celebrating Local Food, Without Romanticizing It
Today was Minnesota Cooks day at the MN State Fair. There were cooking demos by local chefs all day who used mainly local, organic ingredients. There were tasting panels of local farmers and other food-conscious personages (newspaper reporter, senator, Olympic athlete, food critic). There was a tent with lots of information on local food, as well as stunningly tasty free samples: Cedar Summit had cups of milk, Pastures a Plenty had different types of their pork sausage, Thousand Acres Farm had sloppy joe mix, and Pastureland had gouda and buttered crackers.
For further foodie heaven, the on-stage chefs cooked enough for the crowd to sample. I tried a coconut-curry rock shrimp with peas, a lime ceviche with black corn tortilla chip, and a buttercup squash soup with roasted beets and blue cheese. Other local chefs, such as Brenda Langton, interviewed the participants to provide a broad view of local food use, benefits, consumption and availability. It was a wonderful community food event, which took place at the biggest community food event in Minnesota, the state fair.
Aglow with good feeling for my fellow foodies, I followed a link from Arts & Letters Daily based on this teaser:
Imagine an egalitarian world in which all food is organic and local, the air is free of industrial pollution, and vigorous physical exertion is guaranteed. Sound idyllic?
Daniel Ben-Ami, writing for the Spiked Review of Books, examines several of the latest economic books, and decries the trend to criticize prosperity and romanticize simplicity. He correctly asserts, in his well researched and documented article, that things are more complex than many gung-ho, Buy-Local advocates would believe. Yet he doesn’t nuance the other extreme, so his article feels imbalanced.
Privileging the local can be taken to an extreme that would have a negative impact on the economy, and ultimately the lives of many. Ignoring the local would have a different but still negative effect. Ultimately, I think the answer lies in the simple adage, “Think Global, Act Local.” Both global and local are important and neither could exist without the other. That there is a global market has huge benefits on many levels. But supporting local businesses and farms does too. It doesn’t have to be either/or; it’s both/and.