512 Modern Agricultural Reforms
mean when they speak of ‘foodshed’ thinking. The increasingly globalized food
system of today encourages a sense of placeless food. Sure, we might know that in
North America oranges come from Florida in the winter and from Brazil in the
summer, and it may even say so on the signs in the supermarket produce aisle. But
here place is used mainly as a sort of brand. We get little sense of the lives of those
who raised, sorted and shipped these oranges. We get little sense of the environ-
mental implications of their methods. They’re just oranges, some cheaper, some
more expensive; some sweeter, some a bit more dried out. But thinking of the food
we eat as flows in a foodshed, like flows of water in a watershed, gives direction to
the movement of food, and thus an origin to food in specific places and in the
specific lives lived there. Foodshed thinking makes all food homemade, for it con-
nects us to the home places of what we eat.
Foodshed thinking also teaches where we ourselves are. ‘The foodshed is a
continuous reminder that we are standing in a particular place; not anywhere, but
here,’ write Kloppenburg, Hendrickson and Stevenson.^27 It leads to what Thomas
Lyson has called ‘civic agriculture’ – a ‘locally-based agricultural and food produc-
tion system that is tightly linked to a community’s social and economic develop-
ment’, in Lyson’s words.^28 And it is leading to it with a will. Communities across
the world, especially in those places where food had become the most placeless, the
most monological, are returning to local foods, and the dialogic connections to
people and environment that is their sweetest taste. In the United States, we have
seen an enormous growth of farmers’ markets, farm stands, pick-your-own,
community-supported agriculture (CSA) projects, community gardens, commu-
nity farms, community kitchens, institutional buying of local products, and small-
scale food processing. For example, between 1994 and 2002 the number of farmers’
markets around the country rose from 1755 to more than 3100, a 77 per cent
increase.^29 There are now more than a thousand CSA, or subscription, farms in the
United States, with more than a hundred thousand member households.^30 Although
they are sometimes threatened by development pressures, the growth of commu-
nity gardens and community farms has been bringing agriculture right back into
the city, making the eaters the growers.^31 People are coming to savour the taste of
place and the enjoyments of eating locally, eating seasonally, and eating in ways
that support local farmers and local communities.
The point of local agriculture is not that North Americans need to give up tea,
coffee and bananas. The point is that, in a food system in which what we eat may
come from thousands of miles away and where the typical food item is handled
33 times from field to supermarket shelf, there is abundant room to cut way back
on the ‘middlemen’ so as to give a greater share of the food dollar to farmers,
while giving eaters healthier, tastier, more environmentally friendly, community-
supporting and quite possibly even cheaper food.^32 And everyone gains a sense of
connection, of dialogue between grower and eater.
PFI has been among those groups that have in recent years worked hard to
provide that connection and dialogue. Through its Field to Family project, PFI has
worked to combine issues of equity and sustainability with local eating and local