This weekend has included a focus on the source of our food, highlighted last night by viewing for a second time the movie Fresh. Today my attention was pointed to an episode of Nightline about a family in Pasadena, California, growing all of their food on 1/5 of an acre. And then someone alerted me to a video of Joan Dye Gussow talking about why she grows her own food. From the Cooking Up a Story web site:
This Organic Life [Gussow's book] tells the story of how she began her first garden, the challenges, and the small triumphs as a new gardener. Her interests and abilities in growing food grew over time. Soon she had fruit trees, berry bushes, along with the many vegetables in the annual garden. But it’s not necessarily a gardening book, it’s more of an ongoing inner dialogue from someone who cares deeply for this planet. She kept wondering, how can I get my food closer to home? After a eating a clementine orange, she reflected on how many miles had it traveled to get to her? When the genetically modified tomato FlavrSavr came on the scene she was concerned how a farmer would lose the right to save his own seed. And, as bountiful as California was, it was facing serious agriculture challenges from soil erosion, water, among other concerns. Would the current food system be able to continue to put food on our tables?
Her book was written back 2001. Have the number of people asking these kinds of questions grown? Are there now more people growing their own food? Or am I just noticing these people more because of my new interest in the source of my food? What do you think?
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