Food as instrument of economic security

I struck up a conversation in Mama Jean’s Market over some turnips last year. There were three patrons there, and each had their own reasons for buying local. I fell into the carbon camp fretting over the miles racked up by my long-haul tomatoes or grapes. A woman shopping for hormone-free meats did it for safety and health reasons, but the third man surprised me. His reason was economic security.

“Someone picked that turnip, and brought it here,” He said. “That means stable jobs for the farmer, the market, and the trucker right here in our community.”

“But aren’t you just taking a job away someplace else?”

“Not if they grow their own turnips.”

Boy did I feel like I had fallen off that truck. I had never considered local food as an instrument of such economic security and simplicity before. To this day, I wonder if he knew about the Well-Fed Neighbor Alliance. I discovered them at the farmers market later in the year.

The goal at Well-Fed Neighbor is nothing less than the development of a permanently sustainable local food system. They see food as the cornerstone of our community, according to co-founder Ruell Chappell.

“Ultimately, we are an alliance of individuals dedicated to the sustainable relocalization of our food and our economy,” he says.

One of their first projects was to encourage more local gardening. It was wildly successful. The 1,000 Gardens project produced 3,500 gardens. This year, they aim to cultivate 10,000 gardens.

“Ultimately the benefit in education is just as important as the food grown,” Chappell said. “The educational value alone makes it worth doing. Food doesn’t just appear on shelves. It takes time and work to produce.”

Local food is also under local control, and that creates security. Right now, our region only has a few days worth of food on hand, for example. We rely on a vast network of freight and supermarkets to supply our food from around the globe.

“We ought to know by now that we can’t have any control over a global economy,” Chappell says. “If we localize the economy, we give control back to people in our community.”

With their standard permanently planted in the ground and their scrupulous political agnosticism, Well-Fed Neighbor keeps the door open for all. They have managed to attract a diverse following. All three of the Mama Jean’s shoppers mentioned above would likely find something of interest at their website: wellfedneighbor.ning.com.

They even encourage you to post and blog on your own. You can get everything from tips to information on upcoming events.

If food is indeed central to a community, then that website is the commons for locavores where the town crier and the crank, the farmer and the foodie exchange and share information. Ultimately they are assuring our minds are as well-fed as our stomachs.

News-Leader