ATTRA News, a publication of ATTRA (Appropriate Technology Transfer for Rural Areas), a project of NCAT (National Center for Appropriate Technology), Fall 2002
You wouldn't expect to find foodies on the front lines of the Revolution- unless that's the name of a trendy new bistro with a long waiting list. And you won't find food faddists heading for the barricades over a broken buerre blanc or stringy arugula. Yet often without realizing it, these gourmands are sauce-pan subversives, striking at the very heart of American agri-business, with their demands for fresh, premium ingredients of local distinction. For the most part, they don't want what industrial agriculture has to sell-the GMO corn and iceberg lettuce and food-like cheese product- but they often don't have ready access to local, conscientiously raised meats and produce.
All great cuisine, like all politics, is local. Europe's stunning variety of food styles (not to mention those of Asia) is no less than the grand sum of a thousand thousand local cooks working with local ingredients to create regionally- distinct bills-of-fare. Well into the 20th Century, even in the industrial world, transportation was slow and refrigeration nonexistent, so most perishable foods-including meat and fresh dairy products-had to be produced locally. Chefs and home cooks alike knew where their ingredients came from, which farmers had the best lamb or asparagus, which dairy had the best cream. This, in turn, spurred farmers to produce better lamb and asparagus and cream. So, while the cooks of Europe refined their great cuisines, European farmers kept pace through selective breeding and innovations in agriculture. They learned to become efficient by working small farms, frequently on rough terrain with poor soils. They terraced steep river valleys to plant vineyards and control erosion, bred the cyanide out of almonds, raised sheep and goats where cattle couldn't graze, and generally got the most out of what they had, each farm eager to boast of its unique tomatoes or olives or pears. And, but of course, its wine.
That's still the way it is in many parts of the world-the parts we call "under developed"-and was everywhere, in fact, until about the fourth decade of the 20th Century. Even in the late 1980s, in a city the size of Beijing, the vegetables in the market in Haidian District came from the commune or one of the hundreds of tiny private plots just outside town. And in France today, the grassroots demand for full-flavored poultry-the sort we sometimes call "free-range"-has spurred the creation of the "Label Rouge" certification program, under which almost one-third of French chickens are raised outdoors, in small flocks, and come to market with their source cited on the package. Parisians can trace birds back to their origins and come to know the farms that produced them. It is a kind of connection sadly lacking between American farmers and urban consumers- and not one that the agricultural giants want to see made.
Despite some regional distinctions-in New Orleans and the Southwest, for instance-American cuisine is in its infancy, and most Americans eat not wisely but too well. Sustainable agriculture can help change that, for it is, first and last, about food, its quality, safety, and regional diversity.
But food is also business. It is in production, marketing, and distribution that sustainable agriculture must win its biggest battles. Winning a sustainable share of the market means producing a dependable supply of the foods that discriminating cooks covet. But restaurateurs, especially, too often find frustration in trying to rely on local producers for regular deliveries. To sustain itself, sustainable agriculture must not only offer products that surpass those of factory farms in quality, it must also rival them in reliability and efficiency of delivery.
One of the front lines in the campaign to bring the bounty of sustainable agriculture to America is in the kitchens of professional chefs and serious home cooks. Foodies can be among farmers' most powerful allies, but only if their expectations are both raised and, more importantly, met.