Cobb - Reclaiming our food : how the grassroots food movement is changing the way we eat

RECLAIMING
OUR FOOD

How the Grassroots Food Movement Is Changing the Way We Eat

Tanya Denckla Cobb

FOREWORD BY GARY PAUL NABHAN

PHOTO ESSAYS BY JASON HOUSTON

For Cecil, who sacrificed, supported, and cheered.
Dedicated to all the stewards of our food.

The mission of Storey Publishing is to serve our customers by
publishing practical information that encourages
personal independence in harmony with the environment.

Edited by Nancy W. Ringer and Gwen Steege
Art direction and book design by Dan O. Williams
Text production by Gary Rosenberg
Indexed by Christine R. Lindemer, Boston Road Communications

Text 2011 by Tanya Denckla Cobb
Photography 2011 by Jason Houston

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages or reproduce illustrations in a review with appropriate credits; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other without written permission from the publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cobb, Tanya Denckla, 1956
Reclaiming our food / by Tanya Denckla Cobb.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60342-799-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Vegetable gardeningUnited States. 2. Organic gardeningUnited States.
3. Community gardensUnited States. 4. Local foodsUnited States.
I. Title.
SB324.3.C63 2011
641dc23

2011020050

BY GARY PAUL NABHAN

Reclaiming Our Food comes to us at a critical moment a watershed in the history of American farming, food processing, and distribution. Never have so many Americans used food banks, food stamps, food pantries, and soup kitchens. Never has so much food-producing land been converted to residential or industrial uses, or its water and soil degraded to the point of no return. Never have so many farmers and ranchers thrown in the towel due to rising production costs and diminishing savings accounts that might otherwise have allowed them to invest in better land stewardship and water conservation. With fossil fuel and groundwater reserves depleted, global climate uncertainty rising, and the economic downturn continuing, it is no wonder that many of us are convinced that we will never again be able to grow, harvest, distribute, and access food as inefficiently and uncaringly as we have over the last century.

While three out of every four meals in America still come through national grocery chains, big-box stores, drive-ins, and industrial-strength cafeterias, the other quarter of Americas food is now coming to us through the kinds of community-based, independently owned and operated innovations that Tanya Denckla Cobb has so elegantly described in these pages. She has taken the pulse of a fledging alternative food system that is barely out of the nursery but growing by leaps and bounds. The threefold growth of farmers markets in the United States since 1995 with an increase of 16 percent more markets per year and a 114 percent increase over the last decade is but one of many indications that the grassroots food movement is truly changing the way we eat. So is the growth of community-supported agriculture projects, from 60 CSAs in 1990 to well over 3,500 today. With 850 CSAs forming during the two years immediately following the global financial crisis of 2009, perhaps these grassroots efforts were the only portion of the food economy that did see much growth.

But what Cobb so deftly demonstrates is that communities are not turning to these innovative strategies for economic reasons alone. We are motivated out of concern for the health of our children and our elders, and out of concern for the health of the land. We are not necessarily opting for local food to reduce food miles, fuel costs, and greenhouse gas emissions; what matters to us is that our food can be traced to human hands, hearts, and minds that brought it to us through intelligence, patience, and hard work. The gift of this book is that we see the faces and hear the voices of the many agricultural creatives the innovative land stewards, food distributors, chefs, and early adopters of foodshed consciousness who are remaking our food systems at this very moment. Not only are they hoping to bring health and even wealth to rural communities and urban food dead zones, where toxic industrial foodstuffs have accumulated, but they are doing so for moral, religious, ecological, and social reasons that the commodity food giants have not yet fully embraced. Rather than trying to turn around the Titanic as it heads toward the perils of giant obstacles in its path, these agricultural creatives have hand-crafted lifeboats that can raft our most precious foods to safety during these tumultuous times.

More than anyone else before her, Tanya Denckla Cobb has documented just how diverse the grassroots food movements are in terms of the participation of cultures and faiths, races and classes, and folks who live at every spot along the rural to urban continuum. This is not merely about wine and cheese tastings or sit-ins against junk food in schools. Republican, Democrat, Tea Party, and Green Party members are all engaged, sometimes bringing in different ideological perspectives, but often because they converge around the notion that we all have a right to access and eat food that truly nourishes our bodies and communities. Rather than only fighting bad food practices and policies, these people model, exemplify, and support good food practices and policies. Moreover, this book is not laden with generalities; it provides you with enough detail that you can take a strategy found to be successful in one community and adapt it so that it may be applied in your own hometown or foodshed.

Best of all, Cobbs eloquent prose and Jason Houstons compelling photo essays can help us reimagine our food system, so that each of us is inspired to be part of some foodshed design team that changes the way we access food so that it is more efficient and equitable, resilient and diverse, nourishing and healing. Looking at the many smiles and expressions of wonder in Houstons photos, it is also abundantly clear that this alternative food system is far more fun and rewarding than pushing a shopping cart through a supermarket and standing in line to buy tasteless, rootless, fructose-laden crud. Read this book, taste its wonders, and a fresh new world will open up to you every day you sit down at a table to break bread.