Into my ever-expanding home library (shelves, I need shelves!) came last week Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (AMV), which a reader recommended via email. I'd fully intended to pick it up eventually seeing as it, along with much of journalist Michael Pollan's oeuvre and The 100 Mile Diet, are very much the cornerstones of locavore lit (would that I could say I was the first to use that phrase...).
AMV was a New York Times bestseller, natch, given the popularity and overall stickiness of locavore books, articles and ideas, especially among the progressive set. And since Kingsolver's a successful novelist, AVM opens up some important sustainability notions to a broader audience. It's beautifully written, a thoughtful and informative account of how Kingsolver's family moved from Tucson, Arizona to a Virginia farm and set about to "[abandon] the industrial-food pipeline to live a rural life--vowing that, for one year, they'd only buy food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it."
As much as I applaud anyone's efforts at following their bliss, there's a big problem with the book's high-mindedness. Most of us who live in the arid, climate-challenged parts of the country simply can't pick up an leave for another state with our family, as Kingsolver writes, "like rats leaping off the burning ship" to move to a place "that could feed us: where rain falls, crops grow, and drinking water bubbles right up out of the ground." Some of us have jobs. Others have families. Most of us have both. All demand consideration in our lives.
I know she didn't really mean to frustrate me personally, but I found some of her remarks--especially the sinking ship's rat bit--a tad callous. I assume that was unintentional. Yes, on page 180, there's a bit written by Kingsolver's husband, Steven L. Hopp (Kingsolver's entire family contributed to AVM, which is a lovely touch seeing as many of us never really write alone), that promotes container gardens and such for climate- and land-challenged folks alike...and he suggests an online visit to the American Community Garden Association, but the notion comes a little late in the 354-page book, frankly.
Funny, too, that the very road that lead Kingsolver's family out of Tucson was likely the one--or similar to one--that brought her to the city as a young woman, presumably because she found the place's then-quirky charm appealing. Sprawl, limited access to "fresh and local," nonrenewable water resources...they drove her out later...but she stayed for a heckuva long time...a couple of decades in fact.
If one buys into Richard Florida's creative class notions (and not everyone does...just ask Joel Kotkin), one might even argue that Kingsolver's very presence (as a member of what Florida terms the "super-creative core" of artists, writers and intellectuals--as well as other Bohemians) presaged the city's over-development. In short, she and others helped attract others to live there...which brought still others who shared her enthusiasm for the place...which brought developers, supermarkets and created demand for water to be routed to a dry climate newly overburdened by people...all this while the sprawl caused a loss of authenticity and started to drive everyone away again. (Actually, a quick Google search revealed that Tucson is having issues attracting and retaining young people, a demographic that values authenticity when considering where to work/play/live. Florida spoke to a civic group there last year on how to turn the tide...so I'm not pulling this out of thin air.)
Certainly, I don't really blame Kingsolver for her former city's sprawl. Nor do I credit her personally with Tucson's population ebb-and-flows, too many grocery stories and water shortages. Heck, I'm part of the nation's sprawl problem myself, though I've tried to write a tiny bit about initiatives designed to curb it to offset some of my own impact. I do, however, want to point out the many ways in which I think Kingsolver's book (and some of the acclaim that accompanied it) is short-sighted and illustrative of some larger sustainability issues that need attention. We already have a set of common misperceptions to overcome...that gardening is "hard" or time-consuming or myriad other excuses that keep people from just diggin'...we don't need to add "you can only do it successfully in certain climates." That's not entirely true (see "For Further Exploration" below). Besides, if the Bedouins can do garden in the Negev Desert...well, a girl in a arid climate stateside can dream, right?
At root, the kind of talk Kingsolver engages in regarding her flee from Arizona frustrates me...turns me off...and yet I'm precisely the type of progressive gardener-type that the book is marketed, too. Well-educated, middle-to-upper middle income, an "eco-mom." My original sin is that my street address is in hot, dry and drought-stricken Texas, not Vermont, I guess.
Am now beginning to understand a quip I saw online about gardening, locavorism and other homegrown sustainability matters as being exclusively liberal trends. (Bless 'em, but the fact that it was San Francisco that shot out of the gate with the first city-wide Victory Garden revival is going to play into that "it's a liberal thang" meme. And that will be equally unproductive and dismissive.) Eerily, as much as that statement torqued me at the time (Isn't self-reliance supposed to be a "conservative" approach? Aren't there conservatives participating in the We Can Solve It initiative? Dang, even the founder of the WWI-era garden movement was a Republican!), I'm clearly not alone in picking up that our pro-home garden hands are oft regarded as tilted more toward idealism than practicality.
That perception will get in our way, I fear. And we have to work diligently not to feed it. (Aside: to his credit, Michael Pollan raises the issue about city and country folks' extant distrust in The Omnivore's Dilemma, another newbie book to my locavore lit library. The bit about the Big City newspaper reporter who called Pollan in shock about the "Jesus fish" on a subject's door was both amusing and insightfully illustrative of the divide.)
Hang on...I'm going to risk playing Cassandra again...if the locavore and nascent Victory Garden movements base their case too much on the coastlines and more verdant areas of the country, we will become a nation further divided. Maybe not red vs. blue states, more like green vs. brown...but the net effect is the same. In idealizing the continent's edges and stopping short of looking more holistically at what can be accomplished through home gardens and local farmer's markets, even...gasp!...corporate organic efforts.
We have to tread carefully, thoughtfully and inclusively to create a widespread acceptance of initiatives such as the nascent Victory Garden revival. That's one big reason that I'm so passionate about framing many of our grassroots efforts around "patriotism" and "heritage." Yes, I'm swapping my serious Cassandra hat for a Pollyanna-esque plumed chapeau when I make this leap, but I'm quite serious about this matter. Properly discussed and refined, those words...the ones that signify our patriotic gardening heritage...can be a gateway to seeing efforts in every city, county and state as being appropriately region-specific but collectively and essentially American. (Pssst...come back tomorrow and you'll get an earful about the "liberty garden" vs. "victory garden" vs. "peace garden" discussion rising in the blogosphere.)
One final note...and am now swapping the flashy hat back for the more ominous, hand-wringing Cassandra one...if, heaven forbid, we do not address global climate change quickly and efficiently and do in fact see higher temps and water shortages across the globe, then teaching what it takes to garden well in dry, hot places like Tucson right now may become important for people in places like Virginia to know later.
We have to be in this together, from the get go. And we need to push ourselves to think more dynamically, more inclusively and more systematically about how we bring sustainable change to our country. Yet, seeing as while I write the first draft of this post, on a sweltering, dry summer day during a drought, it's actually begun to rain...no...pour. Well, call me superstitious, but I see a sign that there is indeed hope for us all.
I'm willing to bet on it, in fact.
I'll close with a radical approach...by recommending that you read Kingsolver's book, too...if you haven't already...because I also believe at base that in reading and discussing works that illustrate America's diverse points of view...even ones that provoke and frustrate us...we can refine our efforts in a constructive, beneficial manner for the betterment of us all.
Now, if I can just persuade myself to stop ranting and finish reading the darn book myself...I know Kingsolver means well and all...but a few of her words get in my way.
For Further Exploration:
• Here's an earlier post of mine that shows, via links to maps, just how much work we have to do to bring along the nation's mid-section to make locavorism and VGs part of every day life. Here's my semi-rant about the challenges of my micro-climate.
• Check out this a recent article about a local Texas writer who headed out to start a farm...only to discover critters challenges and other realities of the farmin' lifestyle: "Raising Chickens Gives Family New Appreciation for City Life" (San Antonio Express-News, 20 June 2008).
• There's a marvelous article about the beauty of growing veggies--"Digging Up Dinner: A Vegetable Garden Can Supplement Your Table and Spruce Up Your Yard" (Slate, 20 June 2008). If you take a quick look at the reader's remarks, you'll see a thread about the timing of the piece being "bad." There's an assumption is that everyone who reads the story has the same timeline for gardening. I'm actually starting to think about my fall garden and the winter veggies, too. So, for me and others in my region, it was indeed a timely bit of writing.
• A shout out to Tractor Supply Company, whose in-store magazine (Out Here) touts locavorism in a story written for those of us in rural and semi-rural areas. It may seem that folks in those...these?...parts would naturally eat locally, but that isn't always the case. As much as I believe in transformative grassroots efforts, I also accept that a certain amount of what we achieve will require support and seeding of our ideas through businesses/corporations. It's just the way it is...we personally need only support those companies who share the bulk of our values, but we also have to recognize that most Americans will only discover deeper sustainability issues through mass culture and big business. And, if they do sign on to promote VGs and other initiatives, it won't be the first time businesses have pulled their weight in sustainability-type issues...industry was essential in the early Victory Garden efforts. Some companies even gave their employees bits of land upon which to raise food. Again, beware the "us against them" mentality lest it impede the collective us.
• Raised beds...they're a great option for many with climate, space or time constraints. Square Foot Gardening (the book by the same name is below) makes it easy-peasy.
• Toby Hemenway's Gaia's Garden is a terrific book that talks at length about gardening in dry climates and offers practical gardening solutions that can be adapted to many areas. In his first few pages, he describes a fantastic desert garden in New Mexico. Highly recommended.
In My Home Library:
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