I recently strolled through the local Trader Joe's and could not find a single product on the shelves from Bali. With the publicity around United Nations Conference on Climate Change being held in Bali this past December, it would have been a natural promotion for Trader Joe's.
Trader Joe's wants you to think of itself as your neighborhood grocery store. They also refer to their Web site as "your island paradise."
They tell you that "We travel the world in search of interesting, unique, great-tasting foods and beverages."
That may not be what we need in a world where the costs of transportation are becoming an increasingly large factor in the price of all products. That may not be what we need as the environmental costs of transporting all of those products continue to rise, contributing ever more greenhouse gases to an atmosphere that is already overloaded.
I picked on Trader Joe's, as it is easily illustrates the point I want to make. I do shop there as they have products that we can find nowhere else. Please don't consider this a slam at the entire company. The appeal of Trader Joe's is the allure of the different. They have made a successful business at providing things that you can not find in the major chain stores like Safeway.
There is another alternative for food we eat. Alice Waters made culinary history with her Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley. Her approach has been just the opposite of what Trader Joe's represents. Waters has built a superb cuisine out of that which is local, fresh, high quality. Such recipes fill her cookbooks. She has even taken this "revolution" into the schools, setting up programs for schools to grow at least some of their own food. Children eat what is good for them and come away filled not only with nutrition but an appreciation for what went into the growing and preparation.
Every time we walk into a grocery store we make choices that go against our own best interests. Most of the stores offer a wide range of cheeses, either imported or packaged to look as if they were. I happen to like cheese, but I am always looking for those from California. In the state that gave you "Got Milk" it is amazingly difficult to find a good California made cheese for sale, even though there are many.
When we talk about buying fresh, or buying local, that sometimes translates into visiting the Farmer's Market on the weekend. Even then, most of what is available is not truly "local." Almost none of it comes from the Santa Clara Valley anymore.
Some of our groceries have a special section for local wines. I would want to see a special section for local cheeses. I would want to see special attention paid to seasonal, locally grown produce.
I know that this does not fit the business model for most chain store operations. They need the scale of centralized purchasing. They are so compartmentalized in their approach to delivering product at the highest profit that they don't easily allow decision making to be distributed in the organization. We even have economic writers who best example of
sound economic thinking is to encourage people to work ever longer hours and buy your produce from Chile.
There are many different approaches to feeding ourselves. Barbara Kingsolver's book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, is a year long saga of living as a locavore, someone who eats only local produce, or home grown food. It must be popular as I had to wait several months before being able to check it out at the Morgan Hill Public Library. So some are getting the message.
My wife and I prefer the home grown approach. We are lucky to have a lot large enough to allow us to build an orchard of sorts. As a result, I don't think that there is a day in the year when we do not eat home grown fruit. We are able to pick what we need when we need it. It is always pesticide free. It is always delicious. Even now we are eating fresh mandarin oranges and kiwi that we grew ourselves. We have fresh orange juice every morning. We have no need to take vitamin supplements.
Buy locally, visit Andy's Orchard or LJB Farms. Stop by the Market on Saturday. I encourage our restaurants, like Alice Waters, to integrate local product into their menu and local wines and beers as beverage selections. If you don't think that local producers can provide you with what you need, work with them to improve their products, to provide a greater range of product rather than just one crop per farm monoculture.
We need to maintain a viable local agriculture and should make a special effort to buy locally grown. It is good for our health. It is good for the health of the planet.
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"Anytime you have an opportunity to make things better and you don't, then you are wasting your time on this Earth"
~ Roberto Clemente
Wes Rolley is an artist and concerned citizen. Reach him at wrolley@charter.net.
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