Grist links to a piece on urban gardening and the class divide that still plagues the sustainable food movement. The article covers why the folks who run the Food Project decided to keep selling in their own neighborhood and not at the fancy downtown market where they could make more money, and perhaps assure the sustainability of their own organization.
Steve Sando tours industrial bean fields and comes to understand why people are so astonished at how great his beans taste (really folks — his beans are delicious). I ordered several packages of beans from Steve last spring when we were all talking about Farmer’s Markets, and planted some. They’re growing great guns — the white cannellini runner beans are blooming and waving away out there. I just hope the frost holds off long enough for them to really get ripe.
Michael Pollan tells Trivalley Magazine what he’s growing in his garden, and the author of that article demonstrates, with this little blurb, the smugness problem that plagues so much of the real food movement:
Pollan practices what he preaches in his garden and in his diet. He favors locally produced, organic whole foods. Living in Berkeley makes eating local easier because there is so much locally grown fresh food available year round. He visits the North Berkeley Farmers’ Market on Thursday and shops at the Berkeley Bowl Marketplace, Whole Foods, and the Monterey Market.
Gack. I like Michael Pollan’s work — and in fact, I’m working on a post about one of his older books, but gack. Maybe it’s my general dislike of Berkeley but give me the urban garden in a bad neighborhood in Boston over the self-congratulation that infects so much of the rest of the movement. (I have the same issues in our local food co-op — really people, get over yourselves. It’s just a peach. You’re not going to heaven over it.)
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