A friend of mine used to have a poster in her apartment that read “Vote With Your Fork”. This was something I regarded as a tongue in cheek play on words for the foodie movement that didn’t have much relevance for me. Since this time, a lot of things have changed that have made me realize just how relevant that poster was for me and for anyone who cares about the health of their community. We don’t have to look much further than November of last year when saw massive food recalls because of Salmonella contaminated eggs in Ohio affecting the entire country to realize just how disenfranchised our forks have become. And the fork is just one example. In an era of “too big to fail”, we need to start thinking of eating local, buying local, shopping local as true forms of civic engagement.
Obviously this is a very large issue that I don’t intend to exhaust by taking up all the web room here at Onein3Boston, but this notion occurred to me based on a reader comment from my last article. The basic assertion of the comment was that since I had praised the people of Boston for rejecting attempts of the Wal-Mart Corporation from opening its doors in any of our neighborhoods, I was being Classist, looking down at those whoshop at Wal-Mart or any equivalent store. This was certainly not my intention, but it’s a notion that I hear often, especially living and growing up in a working class neighborhood. No one I grew up with cared much for name brand clothes or expensive food, we shopped at Bradlees or Flanagan’s and wore this as either a badge of honor or just accepted it a statement of reality. I can certainly understand how this has carried through to the Targets and Wal-Marts of the world, but I think the time has come to start seriously looking at who and what the businesses are that we support as a community.
Oftentimes, we feel like we should (or sometimes have to) go for the best deal in town, but don’t look at how that deal affects us after the point of sale. Take food for instance, most produce in the United States is picked a whole week before being placed on supermarket shelves, and most large supermarkets have their food shipped from more than 1,000 miles before it ends up on your table. They have done this because large scale farms are able to cut the best deals to large buyers and pass the savings on to you. What they have also passed on to you is preservatives, pesticides, and genetically altered food that your body is not naturally prepared to interact with. Not to mention that they’ve also passed on the business of thousands of local farmers trying to make a living in the cities and towns of your state. Food, to me seems to be, as that guy on the radio says, “the biggest no brainer in the history of earth” – local food did not have to travel, so it’s fresher; it contains many of the same bacteria that you breath every day, so it keeps you healthier by boosting your immune system; and, most importantly, it supports someone who will most likely turn around and put that money back into your very own community. Unless of course, he or she shops at one of those stores supplied by Chinese vendors. And we wonder why all the jobs are shipped overseas.
I’m not an expert on these things by any stretch of the imagination, but I do know this: the world is getting smaller and smaller and, for many reasons, this is a great thing, but for the strength and health of individual communities, this is an increasingly frightening reality. That is, unless we begin to act in the best interest of our communities. Farmers markets and local food markets may seem to be a boutique industry for the hippies or liberal elite, but we need to move past that. Especially since, in many cases, it’s cheaper than the bargain shops (I shopped at them on food stamps while serving with AmeriCorps)! We’re all fed up with bank bailouts and corporate lobbyists, but what are we doing about it? Sure we can vote for new lawmakers that make new promises, but the only way to truly make a difference is to stop giving them your money. You want change you can believe in? Start with your fork.
