I make my living at farmers’ markets and know my core clientele well. It generally doesn’t sport “Gun Control Is Hitting Your Target” t-shirts, so it struck me when such a one showed up at our booth. In answer to my teasing, the wearer asked a telling question: “What could be more conservative than eating what my grandparents ate, eating it in season, and knowing my farmer neighbors?”
I had to admit he was on to something.
The local-foods movement, springing from a generally affluent, generally left-leaning, and disenchanted consumer base, has been so thoroughly identified with a “liberal” mantra that the movement is often derided by the right. To be sure, much of the poetic allegiances, arbitrary “local” circumferences, and irrational fears of all things Monsanto grates on the nerves of those who pride themselves on reasoned decision-making. Yet for those of us who see folly in centralized power, this movement has something to tell us. It is reinventing how many of us eat — and how an increasing number of us produce — food.
