The food movement's role in revitalizing environmentalism

[phantom power]

Recently, even Time magazine, has discovered the power of the food movement to "save" green politics. Anyone living in Seattle or Portland over the last several years is well aware of the revolution afoot. Who hasn't awakened on a Saturday morning to a neighbor's clucking chickens? And who hasn't marveled at the variety of local kale at the Puget Consumers Coop? The words "organic" and "local" are ubiquitous in the northwest. But they've also become synonymous with urban, coastal, and elitist. Foodies themselves, like farm-raised fish in a barrel, have become easy targets: comedian Fred Armisen is the most recent to lovingly skewer this sensibility on his new cable show "Portlandia."

Such stereotypes obscure a history of hard work. The roots of the contemporary food movement in the Northwest run far deeper than Seattle's hastily tilled parking-strip gardens. The movement is more geographically dispersed and firmly established than most of us realize. Most surprising, despite its coastal image, its birthplace is not Seattle or Portland. This region's food movement pioneers originated in ... Eastern Washington.

That's right. The Northwest origin story of what used to be called "alternative agriculture" began in gritty, conservative Spokane. During that city's World's Fair in 1974, a motley group of farmers, professors, and students from nearby universities met to debate the environmental politics of food. In those dark days of energy crisis and Nixonian cynicism, these "environmental heretics" saw the light. Although the politics of food had no place in mainstream environmentalism in the early 1970s, young people, such as Mark Musick and David Holland thought otherwise. Along with a growing group of like-minded allies, they began to merge the politics of food with the politics of ecology. They called it Whole Earth Ecology.

Without the benefit of Facebook or food blogs, Musick and his friends used mimeograph machines and microbuses to spread the word. That fall more than 500 people gathered from all over the Northwest to convene the landmark Northwest Alternative Agriculture conference in Ellensburg. It was a historical meeting that, according to Musick, brought everyone "down from the hills." Gene Kahn of Cascadian Farm was there. Darlyn Rundberg Del Boca, the woman behind Seattle's first P-Patch was there. Farmers and co-op managers from across the region attended.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2014403019_guest06sanders.html

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

1. Every time you go shopping you vote with your dollars.

It's up to you.

[AlecBGreen]

2. you said it!

:hi:

[Wilms]

3. Case closed.

:toast: