{"id":244715,"date":"2011-12-09T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-12-09T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/the-slow-lane-farm-to-table-and-my-gag-reflex\/"},"modified":"2011-12-09T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-12-09T08:00:00","slug":"the-slow-lane-farm-to-table-and-my-gag-reflex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/the-slow-lane-farm-to-table-and-my-gag-reflex\/","title":{"rendered":"The Slow Lane: Farm-to-table and my gag reflex"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brook Larios | SDUN Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n

I can\u2019t stomach being cutesy. Yet, we\u2019re a culture of people who love cutesy, we embrace it; we sop it up. To us, it\u2019s like a sundae doused in unicorn laughter-flavored syrup, like a helping of perfectly al dente macaroni topped with three rich artisan cheeses. Artisan. There\u2019s one of those cutesy words. Like farm-to-table or farm-to-fork or sustainable. I\u2019ll admit it; I\u2019m guilty of using them all.<\/p>\n

A few years ago at the Hillcrest Farmers Market, I ran into a local grower who saw the world a little differently than most. He was a corporate guy turned earth worshipper and he didn\u2019t care much for rules. When I introduced myself as a sustainable food writer, he looked at me as though I carried the plague. He asked, \u201cWhat is sustainable food?\u201d<\/p>\n

Good question. <\/p>\n

Touting my role in the sustainable food movement was simple; describing it with a modicum of intellect was not. Fresh, clean food \u2013 sure, but that doesn\u2019t explain why we use these words to describe the foods our great-grandparents ate.<\/p>\n

We use the cutesy nicknames because labels are easy; they allow us to communicate a broad concept without having to define it. They roll off the tongue; describing the system with which they\u2019re associated does not. The grower\u2019s point was this: All food is sustainable. You eat it and it keeps you alive. Even the Yellow 5-, Red 10-laden variety.<\/p>\n

He had me. I blushed, thanked him and walked away.<\/p>\n

This column began as a Thanksgiving piece. I scrapped it. With millions experiencing food scarcity (read: starving), sometimes the type of food we eat simply seems less impressive than the fact we eat at all.<\/p>\n

In a recent article published in \u201cThe Economist,\u201d writer John Parker posed this question: With an estimated two billion person increase in the world\u2019s population by 2050, will there be enough food to go around?<\/p>\n

Being a picky eater, as one might expect, is a luxury. But should it be? Traditional and organic farming, Parker pointed out, could feed Europeans and Americans, but not the world. He did not, however, take into account groups like Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF), which brings solar power to developing communities so children can study when winter light ceases early in the day and so their parents can grow crops to nourish them when that season\u2019s sun is scarce. Groups like this acknowledge the industrial systems we\u2019ve created aren\u2019t working like Monsanto would have you believe. Heavy-hitters like SELF, whose board of directors includes green advocate Ed Begley Jr., are working directly with these communities to enhance the framework already in place \u2013and it\u2019s working.<\/p>\n

There are two camps of people most closely linked to the world\u2019s food culture, Parker went on to explain: Those who wonder, \u201cwhat should we have for dinner\u201d and those who ask, \u201cwill there be anything for dinner.\u201d Our food system is tiered and, while there\u2019s no quick fix, localizing it is a key step in breaking those layers, in nourishing our neighbors despite their economic circumstances.<\/p>\n

In certain parts of our own county, there are fewer economical barriers to fresh, locally and ethically grown produce. The City Heights, Linda Vista and San Marcos farmers markets accept EBT (the semi-newly named food stamp program). In an evolved food system, more farmers markets would begin this practice. Those of us who can afford to pay for our local growers\u2019 bounties would support them by paying in full, for theirs is a life where nine-to-five means nothing. Weekends aren\u2019t acknowledged by those with whom they work (meaning the vegetables, fruits and herbs). <\/p>\n

Those cutesy words? A thing of the past. The things of our past, like neighborhood markets of fruits and vegetables untouched by pesticide science? Our present.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brook Larios | SDUN Reporter I can\u2019t stomach being cutesy. Yet, we\u2019re a culture of people who love cutesy, we embrace it; we sop it up. To us, it\u2019s like a sundae doused in unicorn laughter-flavored syrup, like a helping of perfectly al dente macaroni topped with three rich artisan cheeses. Artisan. There\u2019s one […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1330,"featured_media":244713,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"The Slow Lane: Farm-to-table and my gag reflex","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11593,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-no-images","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1330"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}