zucchini larceny 179did. Industrialized Europe has lately developed suspicions of the central-
ized food supply, precipitated by mad cow disease and genetically modi-
fied foods. The European Union—through government agencies and
enforceable laws—is now working to preserve its farmlands, its local food
economies, and the authenticity and survival of its culinary specialties.
Here in the United States we are still, statistically speaking, in the
thrall of drive- through dining, but we’re not unaware that things have
gone wrong with our food and the culture of its production. Sociologists
write about “the Disappearing Middle,” referring to both middle America
and mid- sized operators: whole communities in the heartland left alarm-
ingly empty after a decades- old trend toward fewer, bigger commodity
farms. We are quicker to address our problems with regional rather than
national solutions. Local agencies throughout the Midwest are devising
their own answers, mandating the purchase of locally grown organic food
in schools, jails, and other public facilities. Policies in many states aim to
bring younger people to farming, a profession whose average age is cur-
rently about fi fty- five. About 15 percent of U.S. farms are now run by
women—up from 5 percent in 1978. The booming organic and market-
garden industries suggest that consumers are capable of defying a behe-
moth industry and embracing change. The direct- sales farming sector is
growing. Underneath our stylish clothing it seems we are still animals,
retaining some vestigial desire to sniff around the water hole and the food
supply.
In the forum of media and commerce, the notion of returning to the
land is still reliably stereotyped as a hare- brained hippie enterprise. But
image probably doesn’t matter much to people who wear coveralls to work
and have power meetings with a tractor. In a nation pouring its resources
into commodity agriculture—corn and soybeans everywhere and not a
speck fit to eat—back to the land is an option with a permanent, quiet ap-
peal. The popularity of gardening is evidence of this; so is the huge growth
of U.S. agritourism, including U-pick operations, subscription farming,
and farm- based restaurants or bed- and-breakfasts. Many of us who aren’t
farmers or gardeners still have some element of farm nostalgia in our fam-
ily past, real or imagined: a secret longing for some connection to a life
where a rooster crows in the yard.