Local Food Movement—changing our landscape

An afternoon tour of Clockshadow's rooftop garden in Milwaukee's 5thWard.

Last night, as I enjoyed my simple, yet delicious, Minestrone Soup of locally grown Yellow Eye Beans, red onions, Purple Stripe Garlic, and green cabbage from farm markets, as well as Beaver Dam Peppers, an array of heirloom tomatoes and herbs from my garden, I thought about how rooted the concept of eating locally has become in our culture.  The 5^th annual Eat Local Challenge kicks off soon and if I look back over just the last 5 years of good food advocacy, I find that we can see and taste the fruits of our labor.  

At home in Milwaukee, the landscape of our city has literally changed—with gardens and restaurants and markets and production facilities and festivals and food carts dedicated to local food cropping up all over the city. Nationally, the cultural landscape has shifted as well—the local food movement having reached the ears of corporate marketers who now place pictures of farms in ads and farmers in commercials and label anything they can “local” or “fresh.”   

Back in 2007, when Milwaukee’s first Eat Local Challenge began, many aspiring locavores were struggling with the question of whether eating locally all year long (much less for two weeks in September) was even possible.  Five years later, the question has been answered agreeably (yes, one can eat locally year round in Wisconsin, but especially during harvest time) and the setting in which we’re making choices has dramatically changed.  Not only can we find local food on the menus of dozens of restaurants and in our local groceries, it now seems standard fare to feature, if not to build one’s entire menu, around locally grown foods and to label local options at the co-op or grocery store.  Five years later we have farmer’s markets year round, giving eaters and producers more options.   Community gardens, backyard gardens, front yard gardens, rooftop gardens, school gardens have grown by the hundreds due to the efforts of so many individuals and organizations.   Grant funding for programs connecting local food and healthy residents is reshaping neighborhoods and helping create wellness in our communities.

The Eat Local Challenge continues to grow—in reach and depth.  This Saturday, August 25^th, at the Urban Ecology Center, the planners of the Eat Local Challenge & friends are once again bringing our community the Eat Local Resource Fair.  Local food vendors, workshops, and tips and tools from local organizations will be available for free to anyone interested in deepening their knowledge of our foodshed.  

While celebrate we should, we do have a long way to go—the one size fits all, industrial approach to feeding people still prevails globally our food system.  We need to continue working to become more diverse, making room for farms and food businesses of many sizes and shapes.  But.  There are real, measurable impacts to the food movement.  And the feel of our foodways has changed as well…with more terroir at our tables, there’s more poetry on our plates.

Protect the Wilds of Wild Rice

Photo from a wonderful, in depth article on Wild Rice at Circle of Blue.

Real wild rice is at risk of disappearing.   

Manoomin, the “good grain” in Anishinaabeg, the only native grain to Northern America, the richly delicious and nutritious aquatic seed that is a keystone traditional food of Anishinaabeg tribes (Ojibwe/Chippewa, Ottawa/Odawa, and Algonquian) has yet another threat to its existence.   Unique to the Upper Great Lakes' region, Manoomin, which is on Slow Food USA’s Ark of Taste (and one of only seven US Presidia) for its amazing depth and diversity of flavors and its rich cultural heritage, is respected around the world as a true American food.  

But can we protect it here in Wisconsin?

Wisconsin State Assembly Bill 426, said to have been written “for” mining corporations, would repeal several environmental protections and limit public participation to streamline mining projects.  Of particular note is Gogebic Taconite's plan to open an open-pit iron ore mine in the Penokee Range in northern Wisconsin—a move which would directly affect the nearby Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Tribe.  An open-pit iron ore mine with relaxed environmental standards would be devastating to the tribe’s watershed—including the wetlands that are home to wild rice.   

Concerned? If in Wisconsin, contact your legislators. The Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters makes it easy here.

              

You can also help by supporting producers,  read more about wild rice and find Native distributors from our region in a recent post of mine and at Native Harvest..  

And, if you need some more inspiration, listen to my friend, writer and environmental advocate Eric Hansen, speak about the risk of mining to the ecology of the Upper Great Lakes here.

New Dietary Guidelines for Americans: Eat Less Junk

When I told someone recently that the new 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs) were finally published this week (!) she responded with something like, "So? People are just gonna go on eating what they're gonna eat."  Oh ye of little faith...  Regardless of the fact that people are ultimately responsible for what they put in their mouth, and knowing full well that the DGAs are created by the same body (USDA) that regulates the food industry, these guidelines are important because they help form the basis for nutrition policy in Federal food, nutrition, education, and information programs--think school lunch & SNAP--and can create tidal waves in the food industry.

At first glance, the 2010 DGAs have not changed much from the 2005 edition, but the changes made are significant.  Firstly, these guidelines were not published, as per usual, as guidance for “healthy” Americans, because they then would not be applicable to the majority of the population due to the epidemic of lifestyle related chronic disease.  These guidelines were published for an unhealthy population.  The document starts off by describing the state of the nation’s health, and though these statistics are well known, they are startling:  almost 50% of adults over the age of 20 have type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes, heart disease is rampant with 37% of the population having cardiovascular disease, overweight and obesity affects the majority of adults and a large minority of children, and health disparities abound.  In light of these troubling facts, the new DGAs encourage people to consume fewer calories in general, less of them from junk food:

Focus on consuming nutrient-dense foods and beverages. Americans currently consume too much sodium and too many calories from solid fats, added sugars, and refined grains.² These replace nutrient-dense foods and beverages and make it difficult for people to achieve recommended nutrient intake while controlling calorie and sodium intake. A healthy eating pattern limits intake of sodium, solid fats, added sugars, and refined grains and emphasizes nutrient-dense foods and bever­ages—vegetables, fruits, whole grains, fat-free or low-fat milk and milk products,³ seafood, lean meats and poultry, eggs, beans and peas, and nuts and seeds.

That's pretty solid nutrition advice.

These DGAs also address the food environment, exploring the Socio-Ecological Model of Health —there is a whole chapter dedicated to encouraging all sectors of society to work together to improve American’s food intake and activity patterns.  One recommendation I enjoyed; "Develop and expand safe, effective, and sustainable agriculture and aquaculture practices to ensure availability of recommended amounts of healthy foods to all segments of the population."  The elephant in the room here though seems to be the missing recommendation to stop our current subsidy system; which creates the overabundant supply of cheap SoFAS.  But, the fact that the DGAs seriously consider the food environment, means we can probably expect more funds trickling down to community driven, good food programs.

There’s a lot we could go into, and I will explore more of the details, wading through particular food groups in future postings, but for now, suffice it to say that the DGAs do remain very industry friendly.  One doesn’t expect to find issues such as resource depletion, food sovereignty, food justice, ecology, or traditional foodways seriouusly considered in the DGAs...but I somehow found myself hoping for it nonetheless.  (When the USDA is charged with promoting the meat and dairy industries, how can we expect them to come right out and tell people to eat less CAFO beef or acknowledge the water pollution of large dairy operations or even that much of the American population is actually lactose intolerant???)

So while the DGAs do not really address questions of sustainability, if all American’s switched their diet to one patterned off these rec’s, we’d actually reduce our ecological footprint markedly from where it now stands while improving our health drastically.