Local. Sustainable. Seasonal. Zero waste.
These are the buzzwords as food pundits from across the spectrum galvanize, slowly and hazily, into an increasingly unified movement bugling the praises of local, sustainable eating and decrying the lumbering, gargantuan status quo of American food production.
I agree. I believe, in broad strokes, that food should be wholesome and attainable, that people should be able to prosper from its trade, and that food production and distribution shouldn’t harm our planet.
But once you start looking closely, you see that at best, the vision is fuzzy and imperfect, rife with sticky issues like:
Trade. The steak you ate last night was grass-fed, open-range and organic. Good on you. But it came from Australia, about a billion miles away. Hello, carbon footprint. Do we dismantle this resource-sapping, pollution-producing system? How do we replace it without putting anyone out of business?
Supply. Of course you want wild, line-caught, un-farmed (and antibiotic-free) Alaskan salmon. But guess what? So does everyone in the growing line behind you at the fish counter. Talk about a perfect formula for overfishing, even with strict regulations. Will there even be wild salmon in 20 years? Do we care?
Semantics. You want good corn, so you reach for the bin of Olathe ears, often marketed in the Denver area as “local.” In fact, Olathe corn comes from almost 300 miles away. That’s the same distance as Maine to New York. But you’d never hear Maine lobster called “local” in New York. So, how does Olathe corn qualify as “local” in Denver? Is “local” defined politically or geographically?
Practicality. Come January, what will you toss into your “seasonal” Colorado salad? Fresh produce is rare come winter. Is there a practical, small-footprint solution? Or will we have to change, across the board, our expectations and demands? Do we look to science to find a way around this with new breeds of produce or new methods of winter farming, or do we look to, and change, our own behavior?
Quality. Local Colorado cheese is good and all, but I’m not willing to give up the good stuff from Europe. No way.
Price. No matter how you break it down, food with provenance simply costs more.
To be sure, potholes abound on the road to a new food culture, and they require attention. But they mustn’t throw us off course. Because the bottom line is, the eating habits and food-production systems we have now simply will not last.
They can’t.
We’re overfertilizing, overprocessing, overtransporting and over-relying on highly productive crops (like corn) that overtax the soil. We know this. And we know that our generation, and the next, will have to find sweeping, landscape-changing solutions.
But I’m worried about how this will impact the social landscape in decades hence. From what I can see, the large and growing movement toward “more responsible” eating is becoming more exclusive, not more inclusive. Rather than uniting us, this new food culture threatens to divide us, into those with the means to choose how and where their food is produced, and the rest of us.
I hope that over the next century, this issue brings us together behind a common solution. But I fear it might split America in a way we haven’t seen in a century.
Dining critic Tucker Shaw can be reached at 303-954-1958 or at dining@denverpost.com.
Got an answer to the looming food crisis? Think it’s a nonissue? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
