Saturday, February 26, 2011

Food In Community

Most of our food comes from far away; all the out-of-season food does. Most of us depend on distant others for this most basic of life’s necessities. I have never known a time when this arrangement wasn’t good enough, but in recent years I have come to wonder if it really is good enough. Is it good enough for me to have no experience growing any of my own food? Is it good enough for me to ignore my connection with the earth in this way? Is it good enough for me to have no food that comes straight from the ground here where I live? Is it good enough for me to trust the long supply lines utterly? Is it good enough not to be in a community that produces food? Is it good enough to live in a community where nutrition is almost exclusively tied to one’s ability to pay? Is money the source of life rather than the earth?

What if our food supply lines were to be broken? Would we not have to become a food producing community? I noticed in the “Master Gardener Manual” that the seedlings of Tumble Weeds (Salsola Iberica) are edible – hmm. In a time of extreme need would we not come together to maximize all our food producing resources? Would we not have to get much better at identifying nutrition and maximizing it? Could this be done in isolation? Wouldn’t it have to be done in community? I am not suggesting that famine is coming, though famine has been a part of human history. I am wondering if it is good for us as a community to have so little skill in raising our own food – good not just in terms of nutrition but also in terms of our relationship with the earth and each other.

These considerations have moved me into the Master Gardener Program.

Roland