Meeting Our Maker
The following is reprinted from Ryan Hayhurst at Niagara Escarpment Organics. It's too good not to share.
Perhaps you might have caught a glimpse of last Saturday's globe - 'Brace yourselves for apocalypse now' is a pretty bold headline. Perhaps you might have caught a glimpse of last Saturday's Globe?
Add this nice summary of environmental doom's day scenarios and financial meltdowns to the increasing social instability, itself inseperable from the resource scarcity and disenranchising power hierarchies that is the root, of the North vs. South, rich vs. poor, North Korea vs. the World divides....now top it off with a pinch of icing sugar and the news that Jamie Kennedy is having to close one of his fine dining establishments and I think we can surely conclude the the end is near. Right?
Personally, I think Wednesdays' news of Mr. Kennedy's demise, paired with a side order of Michael Pollen's 'The Optimistic Omnivore', only demonstrates two things:
1) Rich people do occasionally eat at home, maybe more so now
2) Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Pollen, like ourselves at NEO, believe so strongly that we can, should and will soon have to be feeding ourselves more locally grown organic food and the longer we ignore this fact the further into an apocalypse of our own making.
However, to say that local food is 'arguably killing his business', would I think (and I suspect the author just did) put the wrong words in Kennedy's mouth because I am sure that he knows as well as we do that it is not that good local food is too expensive, it's that mass produced foods from the global marketplace arrive in our grocery stores and run of the mill restaurants at a price that would be almost impossible for you local diversified small scale grower to match. And as our culture continues to prove year after year, people would rather devote 10% more to their entertainment and technology budget than to supporting a network of small local growers that are aptly stewarding the land and nurturing the water, soil air and communities which make life possible...leaving our environment and long term health at risk.
Similarly, our Government is more concerned with 'getting shovels in the ground' on building new roads for their (our) newly purchased public car company than they are with implementing solutions that address the underliying unsustainable nature of our industrial global economy and move us toward a new paradigm where we can still think and share knowledge at a global level, but do a much better job of meeting our material needs as locally as possible, especially when it comes to food.
Of course, this might mean have to support local farmers who might charge a little more than Walmart for salad greens. Or perhaps having to eat an apple that has a blemish on it or a carrot with a crook in its neck. It might even spur some of us to rip up that lawn and get a garden going - good now we're on our way. Stop at the farmer's market before going to the grocery store - this seems perfectly logical. Send my unruly teenager to work with Farmer Ryan under the hot summer sun instead of playing videogames - now that's a great idea!
Of course, if people see this as some cruel and unusual punishment (how dare you take my cheap food away from me - tonight's the Cup finals and the guys are coming over for bugers and beers!?) then clearly Jamie Kennedy's not the only one with a problem. So how do we convince people to spend more on food when they'd rather spend it on their cell phone?
Maybe try and convince them of food's worth, of food's primal place in our lives. We need to get back into the web of life, the food chain that links every being to everything else and tell people, heck show people, what a beautiful place this planet is.
Celebrate food as often as possible, talk about it as much as you can. Sure pair it with a glass of wine, but forget not of the terrior that gave that wine it's distinction. Miss not an opportunity to let people know where those greens were grown, how that carrot was harvested, why Small is Beautiful and which hierllom tomatoes have unsurpassed character. And don't just do it when there's a big game on or a holiday to celebrate - make meals the focus our our everyday lives and discover the joy, love and conversation that can come out of our food.
To borrow that now tired phrase, "be the Change", please folks. And no, I am not saying that everyone should rush out to Jamie Kennedy's and pay $50 for a sandwich. We are, however, at a crucial time in the history of food when our consciousness about what is right and wrong is on the rise, and we have to keep voting with our dollars.
Everyone one of us has to take responsibility for getting ourselves and our food system ready for the post carbon economy. If we fail to, not only will we loose a sense of our own gastronomic selves, but we'll have to live on imported GMO everything from our southern neighbours, that is, if they have any surplus to offer up after their industrial economic world gets rocked for real in the next 10-20 years if the water shortages don't get to them first.
When that ship starts sinking, Canada may be in a better position that most nations due to our abundant resources, but if we don't have strong community based local food networks, our fortunes are going to end up like that last poor guy through the buffet line - a couple of pickled onions and some overcooked meatloaf, if we're lucky.












