09/03/23: 'Local' in the media

I hung up the phone.
“Local,” I repeated to myself. “Huh . . .”
“So what are we supposed to bring tomorrow?” he asked, looking up from his newspaper.
“She wants us to bring a dish that is ‘local.’” I replied, emphasizing her terminology by mimicking quotation marks with my fingers. “Any ideas?”
“’Local,’ you said? That’s quite the craze these days, isn’t it? I think I saw an article about that in the Times the other day.” He got up from his chair, walked over to the recycling bin in the kitchen, and sifted through the flattened cereal boxes and flyers until emerging with the sought-out paper in hand. Paging through the sections, then the leafs, he finally set the paper on the counter opened to the article.
“Here . . .” he ran his finger down the page and began to read aloud.

‘After being largely ignored for years by Washington, advocates of organic and locally grown food have found a receptive ear in the White House, which has vowed to encourage a more nutritious and sustainable food supply.
The most vocal booster so far has been the first lady, Michelle Obama, who has emphasized the need for fresh, unprocessed, locally grown food and, last week, started work on a White House vegetable garden…
…At the heart of the sustainable-food movement is a belief that America has become efficient at producing cheap, abundant food that profits corporations and agribusiness, but is unhealthy and bad for the environment.
The federal government is culpable, the activists say, because it pays farmers billions in subsidies each year for growing grains and soybeans. A result is an abundance of corn and soybeans that provide cheap feed for livestock and inexpensive food ingredients like
high-fructose corn syrup…
…The ideas are hardly new… What is new is that the sustainable-food movement has gained both commercial heft, with the rapid success of organic and natural foods in the last decade, and celebrity cachet, with a growing cast of chefs, authors and even celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Gwyneth Paltrow who champion the cause.
It has also been aided by more awareness of the obesity epidemic, particularly among children, and by concerns about food safety amid seemingly continual outbreaks of tainted supplies…
…Ultimately, [Vilsack, the new secretary of agriculture] said, agriculture and food policy should fit into the Obama administration’s planned overhaul of health care, by encouraging nutrition to prevent disease. It should also be part of the effort to combat climate change, by encouraging renewable energy and conservation on farms
…There are already signs that the sustainable-agriculture track is bending farther than before. The conservative pundit George F. Will wrote a column endorsing many of Mr. Pollan’s ideas, and a prominent food industry lobbyist who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to reporters said he was amazed at how many members of Congress were carrying copies of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.”
I’m not sure how much it’s penetrating the mom shopping at Food Lion,” he says. “I’ve had so many members mention Michael’s
name to me, it’s staggering.’

“Pollan – as in Michael Pollan? Don’t we have his book?” I asked, trying to wrap my head around all of the references made in the article.
“The Omnivore’s Dilemma. It’s on the shelf in the office.”
“Yeah, that’s it. Does it have recipes?” I asked, hopeful. I hadn’t gotten around to actually reading the book, but had heard so much about it…
“No, it’s not that type of book. It’s more of a discussion about issues of agriculture, health and the food industry.”
Apparently, I didn’t know as much about the book as I thought. What I needed at that moment was a recipe, not a criticism.