Where does our food come from?

I was pleasantly surprised last week when an old friend e-mailed to let me know that he had been reading the blog. Matt has been living in Idaho for a number of years now and writes on topics related to the outdoors and, of course, local food. Here are two of the pieces he e-mailed me.

They are both short editorials.
Look behind the label offers a brief introduction to the array of "eco-labels" we encounter at the supermarket and how one can begin to make some sense of them.

Where's the beef from? asks the fundamental question of the local food movement.

Both pieces relate to this basic idea of connection. I wonder if this local food movement is a reaction against the increasing disconnect and isolation in our culture. The illustrations of our individual isolation in our everyday lives abound: the solitary commute to work, cubicles at work, Moms and Dads who rarely see each other because they are on different shifts at work, kids running to a dozen different activities, automated check-out lanes at the store, on-line shopping, and hours spent in front of our electronic distractions (computers, television, video games, movies...). What could be more basic to life than air, food, and water? Is it possible that food provides a sense of connection that we may not even be conscious of? Connection to the farmer who grows the food. Connection to the people we meet at the farm or market. Connection to the plants, animals, and land that provide our food.

"There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot.
Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher 'standard of living' is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech...
We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect."
-- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

If you have never read "A Sand County Almanac," it is one of the seminal works in wilderness literature. Along with Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and John Muir, Aldo Leopold was one of the first European-Americans to clearly articulate an environmental ethic. I use the label European-American, because there were many Native Americans who had been speaking out against our careless use and destruction of the natural world for some time.