It's about making choices that make the land more beautiful and lively," or choices that lead to its destruction, said Barbara Kingsolver last Thursday night at Emory University. She meant choosing to eat local foods, rather than foods shipped thousands of miles to one's table. Kingsolver, her husband Steven Hopp and their daughter Camille Kingsolver wrote Animal, Vegetable, Miracle A Year of Food Life about their adventure in local eating. The book has stayed on the best seller list, as welcome and vivid as real, home grown tomatoes. Kingsolver and Hopp's talk at Emory was free with tickets required, and it sold out quickly, ran a waiting list, had people standing in the back and all balconies and choir lofts full. The graceful, neoclassical Glen Memorial Chapel rang with laughter and applause.
There have been a couple of rather lugubrious local food stories lately. We have read about an unhappy "locavore" man in New York who neglected his family to spend hours gardening and a Canadian couple who involuntarily lost weight eating locally. The Kingsolver book is not one of them. Her family had moved to where it had roots, in Appalachia, and set out to cultivate a fertile "holler" (small valley). They considered what they were not willing to give up—coffee and flour for home baked bread. The decided that supplementing local food with fairly traded exotic things was reasonable. They did not go to extremes.
Chickens with names
They waited to start their local year until the propitious time, when asparagus was up and the local farmer's market was open. The younger daughter could finally indulge her passion for chickens by starting an egg business, "Lily's Lovely Layers," eggs from chickens with names. The young entrepreneur bought chicks that would lay different colored eggs so that she could please her customers with blue, white and brown mixtures.
No one lost weight on their local food regimen. Lily both gained weight and grew. But the purpose of the experiment was not to enhance their own health, or to gain or lose weight. It was for the health of the community and the earth. "I'm the facts guy, the academic," said Steven Hopp, waving his hands. In the book he says "Americans put almost as much fossil fuel in to our refrigerators as our cars…We're consuming about 400 gallons of oil a year per citizen—about 17 percent of our nation's energy use—for agriculture…the lion's share (besides petroleum based fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides) is the trip from the farm to your plate.
Human Cost of Globalized Crops
Even more than energy consumption, the human cost of globalized commodity crops concerned them. "Most people no longer believe that buying sneakers made in Asian sweatshops is a kindness to those child laborers," wrote Hopp "Farming is similar. In every country on earth, the most humane scenario for farmers is likely to be feeding those who live nearby—if international markets allow them to do it… For more information, visit viacampesina.org."
This may make it all sound too high-minded, but the book is funny, playful, intimate, like hanging out in the kitchen with a witty old friend. A member of the audience asked, "How exactly do you roast tomatoes?" and the authors hollered, smiling, "Read the book!" It is full of recipes, directions to more information, article citations and websites. It is densely researched and yet passionate. Read it. Plant a tomato. Not now, wait until spring. But even before you can start your garden, you can go to a local farmers market, tell your grocery store you want local foods, and support your own local farmers. Kingsolver asked, "Will the farmers in the audience please stand?" They got a heartfelt ovation.
Kingsolver rarely speaks in public. She chose to speak at Emory because the University has committed to a sustainable local food program. She donated her honorarium to Georgia Organics and related organizations.
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