Food in Boston

Welcome to Food in Boston’s first, and quite possibly last, fiction review.

0. Opening disclaimer

Rarely do I purchase fiction in hardcover, and this book was no exception. A few months back, I saw a notice on urban planning critic and peak oil author Jim Kunstler’s thought-provoking Clusterfuck Nation that he would soon be finishing a post-peak oil novel, and was willing to send review copies to people with relevant blogs. I sent him a quick email and forgot all about it. Much to my surprise, a couple of weeks ago my review copy showed up, just about in time for me to read it by time it hit the stores (which was last week).

1. What is it about?

The novel is set a number of years after terrorist attacks and the loss of access to petroleum have disrupted the United State’s ability to function as a nation. It covers a few weeks in the life of a small community in upstate New York, struggling with lawlessness and the absence of modern medicine and conveniences. Although it tells a story set in the future, World Made by Hand doesn’t read like any science fiction I’m familiar with. What is familiar about this book is its vision for our future, drawn largely from Kunstler’s previous book, the nonfiction The Long Emergency.

2. Why might a FiB reader be interested?

One of the origins of my interest in local food systems has been a growing awareness of the fragility of the supply chains that provide us with relatively cheap food from California, Mexico, and further abroad. The possibilities of climate change and peak oil threaten to disrupt these supply chains, putting our access to food in question. Even two or three days without these long-distance food imports could empty a major US city’s supermarkets. What might it be like to live under different circumstances?

The future depicted in World Made by Hand is perforce one of extremely local food. No fossil fuels are available to transport food from across the country or the world; even getting a boat down to Albany for trade is fraught with peril due to the absence of government or law enforcement. Local production of plants takes on a whole new importance in this scenario — for food, of course, but also as fuel for stoves, stock for alcohol, material for clothes, and opiates for surgery.

World Made by Hand depicts the northeast as a relatively decent place to live under the changed conditions. Boston proper doesn’t fare as well, with the racial conflicts common to larger cities, and big problems caused by increasing sea levels and extreme weather.

Of course, this is a work of fiction, not a window into the future. One of its charms is its success in presenting both the bad and the good of a worrisome possible outcome for our society. Kunstler depicts a community that finds ways to work together, eat and drink well enough, and enjoy itself, despite a lack of fossil fuels and imported avocados.

3. Closing disclaimer

There’s plenty of lovin’, killin’, and backwoods dentistry/surgery described in varying amounts of detail, so the squeamish might want to steer clear.

Tuesday’s local food forum at Lucy Parsons included a ton of information, questions, and ideas crammed into 90 minutes. Rather than try to capture it all, here’s a few snippets that stuck with me.

I don’t think you need an excuse to hold something like this, but a nominal reason for the event was the recent release of Vandana Shiva’s new book from South End Press, which includes a troubling-but-inspirational essay from James Lionette of Lionette’s Market, who kicked off the night’s discussion. Other panelists were Adrieanna Bozeman & Kettia Louis, interns at the Food Project; Matt Kochka, grower at ReVision House; and Jean Claude Bourrut, grower at the Farm at Long Island Shelter.

Economics

It still doesn’t sound like anyone’s getting rich around here producing or selling real, local food. That said, some of the panelists see potential for a better economic picture, especially if the proximity of producers and consumers in local food systems can be better taken advantage of.

There are certainly innovative arrangements being made already to get good local food to Bostonians in an economically sustainable fashion. For example, ReVision House does some interesting collaboration with local farms, including redistributing food from Drumlin Farm in their CSA, and from Allandale Farm at their farm stand. These have both been successful ways of getting local food to people in their part of Dorchester.

The Challenge of Winter, and Limited Land

This came up a number of times: how can we feed ourselves locally through the winter? A decentralized root cellar network could help. James Lionette argued that there’s a gap on the demand side: too many people still act like children and turn their nose up at turnips & cabbage, but those are what were traditionally eaten around here in the winter (along with meat & other animal products, of course). Jean Claude Bourrut’s farm feeds 2,000 shelter guests daily; there’s no way they could produce enough food on their 2 acres to store a significant supply for that many people. ReVision’s Matt Kochka ran the numbers and came up with ~900 farms within 40 miles of Boston, which still don’t produce enough to feed everyone in the metro around the year. Jean Claude followed this up by reiterating that there just isn’t enough farmland to support the people in & around Boston as long as we’re going to use it for golf courses & the like.

A farmer from Lincoln’s Blue Heron Organic Farm shared some thoughts about how much potential suburbs have for producing food. The main barrier has to do with the relative market values of real estate and of food. Suburbs can overcome this using conservation policies, as is the case in Lincoln where they and many other farms are located.

A recent emigrant from the Berkshires pointed out that there is, in fact, a thriving local food system there, and it’s an easy trip from Boston for anyone who’d like to get a bit of the experience.

Things aren’t all bad; we can always make sprouts in our kitchens, and can & otherwise preserve food during the summer. Getting through the winter in these parts has traditionally been done by preparing in the harvest season.

Local Grains?

A little (expensive!) spelt & bulger is produced in the Champlain Valley, but generally the economics of producing grains in the NE are much less favorable than for veggies or animal products. There was some confusion about King Arthur Flour being owned by one of the big agribusinesses; it looks like they’re actually a 100 percent employee-owned business. Maybe the point was more about their grain coming from industrial producers?

Farm Bill

We talked about the general situation with the farm bill, as well as its impacts on our local food system. People from the Food Project who had recently visited Senator Kennedy’s office heard that nobody had been in touch with the senator about the importance of preserving the Community Food Projects money — if I understand correctly, this helps keep the Food Project running in Boston, and similar initiatives throughout the country. More info at the above resource, and at Slow Food USA. It looks like the bill is about to hit the Senate floor, so there’s still time to contact Senators Kennedy and Kerry & let them know about our needs here in Boston.

Just finished Revolution at the Table, Harvey Levenstein’s account of the changes in American eating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There’s a pretty clear lesson to be gleaned from these pivotal years: people don’t change their eating habits based only on taste, health, and cost. Social factors, including economic aspirations, are also significant. Fortunately for the purposes of Food in Boston, Levenstein provides a local example.

In 1889, three prominent members of the first wave of nutritionists (including Ellen H. Richards, the first female grad of MIT) launched a project that would become known as the New England Kitchen. Their aim was to help poor people learn how to get by on less expensive foods - say, eating some beans instead of mostly beef. The public kitchen would lead by example, providing affordable meals that fit the nutritionist’s understanding of healthy eating.

While the first New England Kitchen in Boston met with some success, it didn’t seem to end up influencing people’s diets. Other public kitchens in the same mold were even less successful, particularly when opened in immigrant neighborhoods where altogether different cuisines ruled. The nutritionists, disgusted with the failure of the project, decided that the poor didn’t make rational decisions about food, and that it would be better to focus on reforming the middle class’ dietary habits. They thought that changes among the middle class would inspire the poor to emulate their betters, and to a degree this turned out to be true.

The period covered in Revolution at the Table saw the birth of most of the factors affecting our current food system. Academics and food corporations, in particular, began to establish their positions as arbiters of the nation’s food choices, often through strange and irrational ways. Levenstein’s survey should be of interest to anyone who cares how our nation’s views on food came to be what they are.