time begins 337dead. Alaska was experiencing a farmers’ market boom, with the “Alaska
Grown” logo showing up on cloth shopping bags all over Anchorage. Tod
Murphy’s Farmers Diner, in order to accommodate more diners, had relo-
cated south to Quechee Village, Vermont (near Hanover, NH). Other
like-minded eateries now lay in the path of many a road trip. Hundreds of
people were signing up online and reporting on their “Locavore Month”
experiences. We had undertaken a life change partly as a reaction against
living in a snappily- named-diet culture; now this lifestyle had its own
snappy diet name: “The 100-Mile Diet Challenge!” What a shock. We
were trendy.
As further proof that the movement had gained significance, local eat-
ing now had some official opposition. The standard criticisms of local food
as Quixotic and elitist seemed to get louder, as more and more of us found
it affordable and utterly doable. The Christian Science Monitor even ran a
story on how so much local focus could breed “unhealthy provincialism.”
John Clark, a development specialist for (where else) the World Bank, ar-
gued that “what are sweatshop jobs for us may be a dream job” for some-
one else—presumably meaning those folks who earn a few dreamy bucks
a day from Dole, Kraft, Unilever, or Archer Daniel Midlands—“but all
that goes out the window if we only buy local.” He expressed concern that
local-food bias would lead to energy waste, as rabidly provincial consum-
ers drove farmers in icy climes to grow bananas in hothouses.
That’s some creative disapproval, all right—a sure sign the local- food
movement was getting worrisome to food industrialists who had here-
tofore controlled consumer choices so handily, even when they damaged
our kids’ health and our neighborhoods. Shoppers were starting to show
some backbone, clearly shifting certain preferences about what foods
they purchased, and from where. An estimated 3 percent of the national
supply of fresh produce had moved directly from farmers to customers
that year.
The “why bother” part of the equation was also becoming obvious to
more people. Global climate change had gone, in one year, from unmen-
tionable to cover story. “The end of the oil economy” was now being dis-
cussed by some politicians and many economists, not just tree huggers
and Idaho survivalists. We were starting to get it.